So I’m a relatively new player who is just dabbling in arenas. I am also mostly a casual player. It seems to me that the issue at hand- viability of tanks in competitive arenas- is an issue more tailored for like the top 5% of players? If I enjoy playing guardian and like the playstyle, is it realistic that I will get back lash for my choice? I imagine the good players will beat me regardless.
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The point is strategies evolve and in competition people will play what counters effectively.
My competitive game is razz and to a lesser extent holdem. I adjust my playstyle all the time. People who you counter are always going to be miffed. Doesn’t mean you don’t do it.
Probably get back lash regardless of what you play.
Play rogue? You are a 1200 player that is getting free gladiator.
Play warlock? You shouldn’t be playing a squishy class currently. Git gud.
Play healer? Well, everyone loves a healer in pvp.
Found a good post by accident:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/crowd-control-diminishing-returns/728550
So there are diminishing returns on stuns. It’s still not enough though with burst dmg being so high.
You asked above what did you do after you trinketed. The answer would vary by class of course, but in short… normally not enough to survive in a 2v1 focus fire with staggered stuns. You may get off 1 GCD in between, if it is an instant, forget anything castable. Of course each class has a defensive set, I keep them hot keyed, but in may cases that’s not enough to compete with the scale of burst dps. It’s not even a fight.
Now you can get into group gameplay, of a AoE shout stun, when someone else is stunned. I understand the concepts of group pvp, and played it across a lot of different games.
I’ll just leave it at the dmg is too damn high, and the stuns are too damn long, and that comes from my personal experience playing pvp since Ultima Online. It can be done better where’s not a BOOOOM HEADSHOT Call of Duty Match.
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I don’t think you’re getting what I’m saying. I know what counterplay is. People don’t like losing, I know this too. The difference between what you’re saying and what I’m saying is that you’re not countering them at all. You have no win condition, just “lose slower” conditions. Tanks have always only been viable when some cheese was implemented and fixed shortly after. If tanks could kill you and also never die while being able to make dozens of mistakes and not be punished for it, it’d be unhealthy gameplay. It rewards bad decision making by leniency and forgiveness. Playing one is just frustrating the other team. It’s like in a 2v2 if you killed a rogue’s healer and he just vanished and avoided you in stealth for the rest of the 15min just to be an @$$. That’s the feeling people get. They’re not “miffed” about being countered. They’re annoyed you’re wasting their time because someone wants to feel unkillable for a little bit.
DRs are a very basic fundamental of WoW pvp. Again this just goes to show the knowledge/experience difference between certain people. I promise I’m not trying to be mean but I have a feeling you’re frustrated or feel this way simply because you’re just not that great at it yet. Kind of like how I was with running. Used to hate it until I got good at it, now it’s enjoyable.
I mean 2v1 are the epitome of not fair. If you die in a 2v1, so be it. In a team fight though, you rely on your cds and partners to peel. I understand how you feel. Wow arena is not very forgiving or generous to new blood. We’ve all been there and I get it. Damage is higher than bfa and I understand some may want a slower meta. It’s less stressful, less decision making in short time, and requires less reaction speed. It supports leniency in mistakes per minute and is overall just easier to get your footing in. I 100% know people feel this way.
Take this example by a situation I commonly find myself in. We’ll use rogues because they’re one of the egregious outliers at the moment right? Hear me out:
I’m in stealth looking for the enemy rogue. He finds me first and I’m now sapped in cat form. So immediately things are going through my head. This rogue likely has the crit legendary. I know how it works. 100% crit while in stealth and for 4s after the fact. So basically if I can stall him out for at least 4s, his dps literally almost gets halved. Ok so… I wait.
Rogue opens. I’m looking at his buffs. He pops shadow blades and I’m in a cheap shot or kidney or whatever. Since he committed cds, I expect the worse. Full on dance, shadow blades, likely to use dres or a trinket, Kyrian ability (echoing reprimand) etc. So what are my options? I’m curious, as a boomkin, (or feral I guess) what would you do? Think about that and honestly tell me after this.
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Ok so my options: I need to trinket to do anything. That’s a given. Or is it? I could skin, but if I use barkskin in cat, it may not be enough. He has a LARGE commitment on this opener and skin is only 20% reduction. No, skin is the wrong move. We already established I want to stall him, not survive and soak his opener. So I should skin and trinket right? No. Don’t skin, if you skin, then successfully foil his opener and start cd trading, you get no value from skin because he’s not hitting you. Then you won’t have it for later. So the correct move at this point is solely a trinket.
Ok what else do I do? I can’t just trinket,that doesn’t stop dmg. It only gives me a chance to respond. I have likely one global to react before he simply cheapshots me again for a dr stun. It has to count. Go bear? I could, and maybe overlap that with skin but what does it really do? He used shadow blades. He’s circumventing armor. Worth my trinket for simply more health? Not likely.
Do I try and cc him? Trinket bash? No. He’d trinket that, then stun me in cat, and I’d be in the same position as I was before my trinket just about.
Ok how about warstomp—> clone? Common druid combo. Except I can’t for the same reason. Either he’ll stun me during the .5s cast or trinket the stun and stun me in caster. He has kick anyway. No way I’m casting and fake casting spells death. Like cc’ing myself.
Typhoon for distance? He can shadow step. Distance alone won’t save me much.
There’s many things I could do. I’m not gonna list every single possible button. But what should I do?
Trinket
Immediately incap roar. This serves two purposes. One, it auto puts me in bear which normally takes a gcd. Two, it incaps him for 3s. Now he likely won’t sit it because his legendary gets wasted. So he’ll trinket the incap. I can use my global now one of two ways. Try and bash his trinket before he stuns me. This is the high risk high reward option. But since he knows when he’s gonna trinket, he can act much faster than I can react; theoretically anyway. So instead I could pop frenzy regen preemptively. That’s essentially an extra 33% health. I could overlap skin if the situation called for it too at this point. No way he kills me now with half his legendary duration gone and me with more health, damage reduction, and currently healing. AND if I get to 40%, my endurance conduit auto casts another frenzy regen. I’m safe.
This has allowed me to survive. Now the rogue has no legendary. No trinket. He blew cds. And it’s now my turn. Also if this was a 2v2 and my healer was sapped, this stall let sap wear off. Now if he gets blinded, my heals can use his trinket on blind.
You can’t under commit cds, to have to respect his damage. You shouldn’t over commit either though. Respond appropriately to the situation. This was all about what to do in one global to mitigate the remaining 3 dmg globals he had. Foil his kill window. One wrong move and you likely die. Yes, it’s fast. Yes damage is high. But it’s not un-manageable. This is one situation about one class vs another at one time during an engagement. Everyone has an answer. You just have to find it. You’re not stunned forever, you’re not helpless, and his damage isn’t infinite.
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I understand what you are saying and I am disagreeing with you. Guardian can kill people with the legendary and the covenant the person mentioned in the OP.
Now, I am reevaluating my stance. Not because guardians don’t have a path to victory in arenas due to damage, but because I am not sure even tanks can survive the current mongo that it is pvp.
For example, this was while I was in bear form. Didn’t think I had to pop BS, I was wrong.
https ://kekpe. pe/i/5fd11504eba96.png
36k damage in his opener while I was bear’d up.
Bear isn’t really that strong without ironfur running…Armor is something around 38% IIRC. I would have popped barkskin during the opener to knock that 36k down to a more manageable 29k on my 43k health.
Bear is beefy. You can just do a comparison of other tanks, or even DPS, with Health / (1 - DR%) to get an estimate of the amount of damage you can take before you die. Throw in frenzied, or ironfur, the cheat death conduit. Even DPS bear form with guardian affinity. It’s really solid.
https://kekpe.pe/i/5fd11504eba96.png
One thing you have to remember in your screenshot though is that damage ignores armor.
Shadow damage, nature damage, arcane damage.
A monk with Tiger Eye Brew, Assassination rogues, Kyrian Sub, even a lot of the new covenant abilities across most specs is some kind of damage that may ignore armor.
I don’t see many bears in Arena skirms or any games I played yesterday but I have been in a bunch of battlegrounds with them and I’m satisfied with them when I have one on my team. If players are jumping on you in bgs for being bear, truthfully, without a shred of guilt, ignore them.
Flapz explanation isn’t too far off from what I think most people would do. It seems pretty aligned with how I play druid at least but I’m still learning as well.
If it helps, find PoV from non bear druids, and see how they manage with less defensive tools and higher damage taken.
For bgs, try legacy of the sleeper and spec incarnation. For 30 seconds every 2.5 minutes you are Mr. Bear.
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Not saying you’ll never get kills but… once you climb the bracket a little I fear you’ll find much less success. Like… much less.
If you have this mentality then you need to adjust your play style. Do you think everyone auto loses? Or better yet ask yourself this, what do the R1/glads do that let them play the game where as you just fall? They play the same game you do right? Not being sarcastic here, I’m genuinely making a point.
You should read my scenario up top. You cannot expect to sit there and survive a rogue utilizing his legendary, covenant ability, cds, etc just because you sat in bear form. Also note that your armor means nothing against non physical damage. Shadow blades for instance.
Also again, I’m not saying you’re wrong with playing guardian. Especially in bgs. Flag spinners and carriers and such, they fill that role beautifully. I’m only mentioning the stigma associated with arena.
Sorry you wrote all that. I can leave it at I see your point, to a point.
I’m not a fan of the mega fast meta, it is that simple. You may like the 1.5 min matches, I personally don’t. Neither of us are alone in how we feel, it is a matter of opinion.
I play BGs a lot as well, which is the main reason I chose to play guardian spec. I played through 7 classes at the end of BFA to see what play style fits me best. I seem to always get left defending solo when everyone else takes off from the objective and got tired quickly of getting group stealth jumped. At least this way I have somewhat of a fighting chance.
As far as Arena, I’m going to test it , try to make it viable to the best of my ability. Now if that doesn’t get me some rating with whatever, that’s fine. I just want to play the spec as well as it can be played. I think in doing so, I’ll get some wins and have some fun.
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You are arguing with me using my own argument. I stated I was reevaluating my position and you are arguing that I should do just that.
Alright. lmao!
I’m hoping serrated shoulders puts a little more heat on melee. It’s a little bit more reflective dmg but will add up.
Rogues hit stupid hard right now. I was carrying a flag yesterday and had two of them blow me up (cool downs were down from escaping the rest of the team). They burnt through about 50k in a blink.
You got to watch out for geared rogues with a legendary…they’ll steal you f’n lunch money.
Lol well I’m just saying you made it sound like your reasoning was simply because you don’t even think tanks can handle it. I was saying they can. Other specs can so tanks sure as heck can. Just need to practice 
It’s good. Just typed little by little on my breaks lol. And bgs are a whole other monster. You’re right in that people will always have preferences. I speak mainly on behalf of the higher rated arena players and from an arena standpoint.
Lemme throw this at you too. This is 100% true. When damage was lower, like bfa, often times rated bgs (rbgs) had matches like in Battle for Gilneas where the victor was literally determined by who captured the first node quicker because after that, it was an everlasting stalemate. No one did dmg. Healers thus didn’t use much mana and no one died. Top tier even teams simple timed out. That, carried over into arena, means that matches were lasting like 15min. Longest tourneys in WoW history. It’s so incredibly boring to watch and okay. Golden guardians at one point even literally sat in stealth and waited for dampening to hit like 40% before even playing the match. All serious pvpers hate that.
Now that’s not without saying some things are insane right now and sub is one of them. I’m not arguing that. Watch Pikaboo’s videos and you’ll just about throw up lol. People trinket and wall and still die immediately. It’s a little nutty. I am confident blizz will address it as the season goes on and with more gear we’ll have higher stamina which will also help a lot.
Just quoting to tag you buy this goes for both of you. Bears are awesome in bgs and I support them in there 100%. With that said, don’t get discouraged in bgs. People have zerk. Raid buffs. Saltwater potions, etc. People are always insane in bgs. Plus you’re not supposed to be able to live vs multiple people anyway
Hey! I got even with that rouge. I didn’t bang bang he is ded, but got him down when I was prepared for him.
Progress buddy! Progress!!!
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Haha well in a 1v1 where he doesn’t catch you super off guard I’d believe that. You can keep him from doing his dumb stuff and whittle him down for sure. Rogues actually die pretty easily which is good.
In a nutshell, tanks don’t work in arena, because blizzard obsessively gives self heals to classes that have no business having self heals.
When everyone has sustain, it becomes a question of burst. Which means dps. Doesn’t help that blizzard explicitly nerfs tank specs in PvP.
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I’m not great, and make no illusions otherwise. I did spend some time doing guardian arenas in BFA teamed with a DH and we did ok. I think 1700. I’m not a serious arena player but would like to be.
In Guardian Bear form the other day a rogue killed me in 3 GCDs. Ilvl 180, 50k health, through my barkskin and the conduit for an auto frenzy regen. I could have probably survived it if i had blown incarn before the stun, or been quicker on my trinket and SI (was low by the time i got SI up) but still… if you can do that to a bear, thats REALLY bad.
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Ok, spent the day tooling around in arenas testing things. I think Night Fae is the choice to team up with legacy of the sleeper currently. I was big on venthyr and think it will scale better, but currently the fae is kicking butt.
Wait for interrupts to go out, hit incarn, and then convoke. You can use ursols if you want, but I like boomy affinity for typhoon. It helps peel covenant abilities very well. The extra range should make up for losing ursols.
The burst is very good, the peel is very good, and the survival is good.
Edit: Forgot to mention my highlight. I got teamed up with a prot warrior. Fun was had, not even sure what they do, but we seemed to come out on top a decent amount.
Thanks for sharing!
I also did some tooling in the arenas last night, ran 2s with a rogue and then a DH as guardian. Night Fae, Incarn, and legacy of sleeper build. Some observations:
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Guardian is very strong against melee. It is an anti rogue build; they cannot get through your health and can’t withstand your damage. Melee classes that have little self healing simply can’t keep up. Strong against hunters too. We ran through our first eight matches, but as expected, started falling off as we climbed the ladder. Had more success with feral once in higher brackets (ran with disc priest).
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This build does not have enough DPS to handle classes with sustain (warlock, shadow priest, protection pally, etc).
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we had no hope against a team with a healer, but I would like to try again with a good rogue.
I’m thinking this build may have some series upside in 3s. It will take a lot of pressure off your healer, and has enough DPS to spread pressure if the other team chooses to ignore you. May give this a go tonight and see how it fairs.
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