So, I would like to level this character and run flags/tank for RBGS. Are there any good guides available that addresses such? Most guides for guardians I’ve come across are either outdated, or geared towards PvE content
I don’t know of any. I started playing guardian at the beginning of the xpac and learned by trial and error. I’ve reached up to 2200 in RBG. Here are some tips.
-You will need two legendaries - Sleeper and Natural Order’s Will. The former you need for base sitting - popping incarn causes you to go immune to CC for 30 seconds. Incredibly powerful for base sitting. The latter you should use when flag running, although you may still use sleeper to get out of flag rooms without rogues being the most annoying thing in the world to you. NoW is just insane for survivability. You should have /equipset macros that allow you to quickly switch between the two when you go out of combat. I.e. you’re base sitting Stables. you use incarn with sleeper to defend the base, and the rogue runs off. While incarn is on cooldown, equip NoW until it is again off cooldown.
-It goes without saying, but on flag maps, do not exit bear form unless you know the location of the rogue(s) or other stealthies. Doing so will force you to blow your trinket if they catch you in travel/human form. To this end, be very careful about when you pop dash, or when you try to get a cyclone off.
-Take brambles in the first row of your talent tree. Using barksin causes you to perform an auto AoE attack, even while CC’d. Popping this next to a flag causes plenty of classes (mainly rogues) to waste big CDs like blind and not be able to cap. Further, rogues can’t kidney cap you.
-Do not trinket/waste cooldowns to stop a rogue capping that used smokebomb. Smokebomb is 5 seconds, it takes minimum 6 to cap a point. Smokebomb us useless for capping UNLESS the rogue has help (someone else to CC you while they finish cap)
-On flag maps, be very vocal with your team - where you are, where you are going, etc…esp with your healers. It goes without saying that you should never outrun your healers. If your healer gets sapped, CC’ed or is otherwise in trouble, don’y keep running away unless you know you can get a fastcap.
-If you are Night Fae, don’t forget that shifting into soulshape RETAINS all the benfits of bear form. Don’t be afraid to soulshape even when you’re being targetted heavily. Just make sure when exiting soulshape you enter bear form again, and don’t get caught in human/cat form.
-Again if you’re night fae, and want to play slightly offensively, take Boomkin affinity in the talent tree. When it makes sense to, pop into boomy form and convoke people. It does MASSIVE damage, even as guardian spec.
-You should know how to play boomy (or feral) for at least Temple of Kotmogu and Silvershard mines. Tanks are next-to-useless on these maps. In temple, you need damage - the stacking debuff mitigates your survivability as guardian completely. In silvershard, you can’t hold a cart like you can “spin a flag” - its about numbers in the cart. You being a livelord in the cart circle means nothing if the enemy team outnumbers you. That map is about CC and kills.
-Remember swipe is spammable and free - if you aren’t doing anything else and don’t know the location of the enemy team’s stealthies, spam it. Why not?
TALENTS
1/?/?/?/3/2/1
The question marks are situational. As i said above, if you want to play offensively, take boomy affinity. Defensively, take resto, although be CAREFUL when you pop out to heal as, once again, using the healing spells takes you out of bear. Resto can be very good for FCing as you have ursol’s vortex - one more way to get away from enemies attacking you.
In the second row, i like renewal because i like to live. It has saved my life many times. Many people play wild charge on FC maps for the jump in travel/the charge in bear.
In the 4th row, You’re going to want mass entanglement for pretty much every map except when you are base sitting. Having bash as CC/interrupt when base sitting can be the difference between losing and keeping a flag (imagine you have used your interrupt, incarn is down, etc…bash is a great way to stop a CC being casted on you).
PVP TALENTS
I typically always take demoralizing roar. You’ll want Toughness on any flag sitting map. Malorne’s swiftness is a must for flag carrying. I usually take raging frenzy as a 3rd, as you’ll be using frenzied regen a lot, and all that rage will mean tons of ironfur stacks. It’s big, especially on FC maps where the other team is stacked with melee. If the other team is a caster cleave, i like overrun. Not only does it interrupt and stun the target, but knocks everybody in the area back (thus interrupting them as well)
I may add more stuff here as it comes to me.
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This is great! Thank you so much!
My pleasure! Just let me know if you have any specific questions, happy to help
Thank you! I am leveling a Druid specifically for guardian RBGs right now. I went Necrolord, looking forward to the upcommming changes. Would you still recommend Night Fey?
Another question, swapping my Druid to Horde to join my other toons, is there a preferred Druid race for flag running RBGs?
I like night fey as convoke is so powerful and fun for DPS, and in bear it’s a massive health boost (assuming you take the first tree, I forget here name) and also spams iron fur and heals on you if you can get it off. Soul shape is a great get-away or catch-up ability for a class that is already loaded with them.
Soul shape has helped me cap flags by doing a mini blink to the capture point when I’m otherwise slowed or rooted to oblivion and can’t risk leaving bear
That said, I haven’t explored the other options much and don’t really plan to haha
As far as races, I think Tauren takes the cake. Added health that scales, and war stomp is situationally very valuable. I don’t see why you’d ever take troll (or volperà is an option I think?) unless you’re going for aesthetics
Troll berserking good for balance offspec, but I think tauren is the safe pick
It goes without saying, but on flag maps, do not exit bear form unless you know the location of the rogue(s) or other stealthies. Doing so will force you to blow your trinket if they catch you in travel/human form. To this end, be very careful about when you pop dash, or when you try to get a cyclone off.
Instead of stealthing do you just stand far way from the node when base sitting then to mitigate Saps?
Also does that guardian leggo make you break out of CC? Or just activatable when not CCed
I usually stand farm away from nodes anyway as most people will spam some quick aoe before trying to cap flags. Myself, i always hit an incap roar before capping a flag to try to break a stealthy out who’s standing closeby.
But no, always stay in stealth. Being out of stealth makes you run the risk of getting sap capped. If i see a smoke bomb go out, i stay in stealth until about 4 seconds of the cap, then i start spamming moonfire. Guarunteed stop cap everytime. then quickly jump into bear. You can choose to get a 30 yard distance while spamming moonfires on the rogue, or rush up to the flag. If you rush up, expect a blind. You will need to pop a trinket on it or pre-emptively pop incarn (or, if you manage to get close enough to the flag, you can pop barksin to make them waste the blind)
The leggo doesn’t break CC< only makes you immune when activated
I like playing Highmountain for that extra +1% Versatility and that extra charge/stun (can be very useful when escaping multiple enemies)!
Legacy of the Sleeper combined with Incarnation talented is extremely powerful. I personally stack it with the Venthyr covenant Ravenous Frenzy as it allows you to draw maximum potential from the ability (you can’t be CC’d, so you can keep on attacking and stacking the boost effects every second) and it also boosts both your damage and healing which then allows you to be more versatile depending on what your group needs ; you can cast a Wild Growth when you’re free or Rejuvenation + Swiftmend on a healer if they need it, depending on which map you’re playing in. I find Venthyr better than Night Fae for the only reason that the burst stays longer, stacks very well with Legace of the Sleeper AND allows you to both damage and heal if the situation changes in the middle of your burst. It also can’t get silenced and you can’t get CC’d as I said so the covenant ability will ALWAYS be at its full potential. On the opposite, I find Covoke of Spirits to be strong but on a very short time and you can be silenced while casting (which happens a lot in high rating RBGs).
That being said, you also have to find your own playstyle and experience it for yourself in random battlegrounds ; you have to learn when to use your cooldowns and, most of all, not to use them all at the same time so you can stay alive longer.
If you’re interested, I have a Youtube Channel on which I only post Guardian Druid PvP stuff! If you’re interested in either Arenas or in RBGs I’m sure you’ll find some interesting tricks to learn! If you have any question, don’t hesitate to comment or to message me in-game if I’m online and it’ll be a pleasure for me to answer to more specific questions!
Good luck in your training 
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-If you are Night Fae, don’t forget that shifting into soulshape RETAINS all the benfits of bear form.
Could you please clarify this? Just tested it out and my health dropped down as soon as I shifted into soulshape out of bear.
That’s odd. When I soulshape, my health - and the rest of my stats - remains the same.
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There’s a conduit that allows you to retain health and armor for a few seconds after shifting. Do you happen to have that?
Are you sure you were guardian specd when doing so?
Yeah that could be it too. Vyth is Guardian
No, it gives you extra health and armor for a few seconds after shifting into bear form, not leaving bear form (Additionally, leaving bear form will instantly remove the bonus health and armor).
[Editing mine]
Yes, this only applies to Guardian spec druids. Feral, Balance, and Resto druids do not get this bonus to Soulshape.
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This is amazing info, thank you. More pls lol
Great info, I was going to make a post asking the same thing.
Is there anything significant that changed with 9.1 that would make any of this information irrelevant? I was also trying to find a good guide for Guardian PvP but there aren’t any.
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Thank you, this is very helpful. I think your post is now the de-facto Guardian RBG guide!
Great, tip!
Since someone asked, I just logged in and confirmed that this is still true. All my stats (hp, armor, vers etc.) are the same in soulshape as in Bear Form!
On which maps do you think this would be useful? I’m typically comfortable with resto aff.
My question is, how do you know you’re going to get this map? You can’t change spec from Tank to DPS in the BG prep room like we do in randoms, right ?