I have tanked long enough on different tanks to get not all tanks are equal. It is more quality of life more than anything.
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I was being deeply sarcastic. I’m implying that some of the tanks get way way more love and attention. Cough monks and warriors cough
It was a reference to animal farm, which Brewa caught on to.
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It would be really nice to see this not be the case because it gets so repetitive expansion after expansion to where some specs are clearly after thoughts if at all.
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Ghostcrawler has flat out stated that Blizzard devs play favorites.
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It should be a slightly more compelling decision with the bonus Agi from Layered Mane going away. On the other hand, rage is going to be a lot more scarce, so there’ll be less excess rage to disposition.
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Looks like that “new” pvp talent is going to smooth us right out.
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Me putting down other bears? The guy came out of nowhere to try and trash talk me throwing shade because I don’t want a puzzle game rotation on the spec.
When you say “the spec is boring” Blizzard sees “make the rotation into a puzzle” which is the last thing I want. Guardian needs help, especially with the garbage changes in Shadowlands, but leave the rotation alone and fix our utility. I mean, just look at the feral rotation (it was even worse before) it got that way because people complained feral was too boring, So they decided to make it into a game of snapshotting puzzle bullcrap.
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That sounds like you used Maul instead of Ironfur. Maul is a trap. You can decide to use it to increase your DPS, sure, but you’ll be squishy. Most people pretty much never touch and don’t even have it on their action bar. Which is also why many guardian druids are complaining about low DPS numbers. You have to decide between doing ok damage, and actually tanking.
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I enjoy Guardian mainly for the thematics of it. I agree that it’s mostly:
Mangle -> Thrash -> Swipe -> Swipe - Ironfur - Mangle -> Thrash… etc.
The choices kind of boil down to:
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Am I getting noticeably hurt? Ironfur. If not, Maul.
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Do I need some healing? Frenzied Regeneration. If not, wait.
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Big pull? Barkskin -> Thrash -> Swipe a lot
It SEEMS to me that Blizzard could get some really interesting choices out of the Affinities that aren’t simply utility things or require shifting. Some random, off-the-top-of-my-head (that are, by no means, good) ideas:
Balance Affinity -> Make me feel like a Bearkin!
Ironfur replaced with “Forest’s Aid”. Summons a Treant at the caster’s location, attacking nearby opponents and causing X% of damage received by the caster to be redirected to the Treant. Lasts for Y seconds.
“Moonfire” replaced with “Insect Swarm”. Calls a swarm of insects upon the target opponent, dealing X damage over Y seconds and causing their attacks a #% chance to miss.
Remove “Galactic Guardian” … because I always thought “Galactic Guardian” was just a weird talent (both in it’s space-y name and the interaction of charging the direct damage of an ability that just got applied). I’m admittedly biased here. I really dislike this talent despite using it.
Some kind of imbuing of the Guardian Druid’s claws with Solar or Lunar energy (like a Rogue-esque poison thing? Maybe something with 2x Solars on left/right paw, 2x Lunars on left/right paw, and something with one of each?
New Ability “Solar Flame” – only usable against targets with max stacks of Solar-imbued debuff. Consumes stacks. Deals small AOE damage around them.
New Ability “Lunar Light” – only usable against target with max stacks of Lunar-imbued debuff. Consumes stacks. Deals heavy single target damage to the target.
Gains “Solar Beam” – because reasons!
Feral Affinity -> Kitty That Tank!
Rage meter replaced with Energy meter.
Combo point mechanic enabled.
Mangle/Swipe/Thrash cost energy & generate combo points
Ironfur costs combo points. Lasts longer with more points.
Maul costs combo points. Deals more damage with more combo points.
Gains “Frenzy”. Costs combo points. Lasts longer with more points. Increases Energy regeneration rate by X% and causes combo point generating abilities to add an additional combo point on Crit.
Gains “Pounce” - Briefly shifting into cat form and leaping to the target location, returning to the previous form upon landing. Usable in all forms.
Restoration Affinity -> Flourish Bear?
Ironfur replaced with “Blink Dragon”. Summons a Blink Dragon nearby the caster’s location, reversing X% damage received after Y seconds.
Frenzied Regeneration replaced with “Flourished Ground”. Mechanically the same; just spawns grass / flowers wherever the Guardian Druid steps.
Maul gains "Splatters of blood fall to the ground, fertilizing the growth of poisonous mushrooms. "
Thrash gains “Causes all nearby poisonous mushrooms to burst, inflicting nearby opponents with Poison, dealing X damage over Y seconds.”
“Moonfire” replaced with “Summon WIsp”. Summons a wisp that surrounds the opponent, distracting their efforts – causing their next X attacks to deal Y less damage.
For the Solar Beam & Pounce abilities; they’d be usable in any form – while doing open world questing, or dungeons – I never… ever shift into Moonkin form to hurl spells. Maybe I’m playing it wrong, but I just want to be able to use things while in Bear form that make it more interesting.
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I don’t think there is anything wrong with wanting synergy and more fun things that don’t really adjust the rotation too much because I think there is value in having a tank rotation that by itself is relatively simple and not over-engineered.
I do think however this is the least of Guardian’s issues in SL. Our self healing is very lack luster, moreso than in BFA, the damage in-take is a bit high mostly due to there being far more magic damage across all dungeons, and our toolkit just doesn’t have the tools to handle it very well.
It’s precisely why Guardian and Prot Warrior are both dumpster tanks in SL when you pair them up against any of the other 4 tanks.
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Yeah, I havnt had Beta access but watched Yumytv/Growl’s video on M+ tanks Best to Worst…and…it’s sad when the rankings literally are :
Protection Warrior and Guardian Druid are the worst.
All of the remaining tanks could be top tier as they are all somewhat close and all powerful in their own way.
Oh. Great.
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I know this may not be an exciting concept, but what if one of Guardian’s mechanics, either baseline (like part of Thick Hide or Mastery), Ironfur, or both, reduced Bleed Damage and/or duration?
A lot of Bosses and even trash mechanics are Bleed-based. Just like Monk’s Staggering helps offset certain mechanics, this could be a reason to have Guardians tank an encounter as to reduce the healers’ need to keep them alive or even have them take one more Tank Swap hit than other Tanks have.
Not as fun as having active Roars might be, but something to use. Thoughts?
I believe the Kyrian ability already removes bleeds.
It does, but why must it be borrowed power?
This is nothing different than when the devs took a portion of our baseline kit and put it as traits on the Artifact Weapon during Legion only to never restore that functionality to the spec baseline when the expansion ended.
Relying on this borrowed power is no different and really shouldn’t be the answer to fixing gaps or giving Guardian something that makes it unique or different from other tanks.
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Agreed.
Blizzards formula seems to be adding systems atop systems and then plugging the holes with borrowed power… then stripping it away.
Wrath is widely considered the best Expac - No borrowed power.
TBC is widely considered the contender for best Expac - No borrowed power.
MoP is widely considered the best PVP expac. - No borrowed power.
In shadowlands I will be putting together a weekly tea party for my vampire friends so they like me more and I can suck slightly less slightly faster. I do not want to be a vampire-bear, but soulshape drops bear form and that can potentially 1 shot me. Working as intended.
I can’t stress enough that this is a bug and should be reported by everyone who wants to play Night Fae and are dealing with this!
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No, this is entirely as design. See how Displacer Beast operated for Bear in the past. The problem here is that Soulshape is a “shapeshift” so it knocks us out of form. For some reason the design team consider it completely acceptable that we suffer moderate to catastrophic negative effects from abilities or encounter effects that other classes and specs just freely can do or even benefit from.
The question in my mind is why would they design these things where Bear just can’t use them effectively. The answer is they just don’t care about Bear.
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It’s inconsistent because it doesn’t put you back into Bear Form. As Balance, you get reverted to Moonkin form when the effect ends.
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Would it be nice to Soulshape without losing bear form? Absolutely, but it’s definitely not useless in it’s current state. I was just finally able to get a Druid through the Night Fae intro quests the other day (the area was broken for awhile) and I’m enjoying Ursol’s or Typhoon with Soulshape blink for kiting and it has been very good.
I know technically the ability sequence goes into caster form then blinks/fox form, but aside from one case of brutal latency I have not taken extra damage blinking away from mobs that are in melee range; it seems to execute the blink pretty instantaneously.
In any event you should treat it like any other utility you have to drop form to use (BFA Swiftmend for example) and use it strategically. I think people are sleeping on Soulshape as a good gap creation tool, one that you just get if you want to play Convoke. I find it to be a lot more usable than Door of Shadows.
We already have that trash Tiger Dash for that use though.
So what you are saying is that this ability has a non-zero chance of killing you when you think it will save you. Good to know they still haven’t fixed that bug from Displacer Beast, only been in the game several years now.
I don’t see Warriors, Paladins, Demon Hunters, Death Knights, or Monks needing to make space from the mobs they are tanking to use this skill; they don’t lose their existing Resource or active Defensives; most of them have much stronger escapes than a 15 yard blink and speed boost already; best of all they don’t have a small chance of just instantly dieing because the mobs attacking them hit them post-drop of Bear form, but before the blink. Like I said, why do we get punished for having a shared skill when no one else does?