Jut want to edit my post. Remember, this is my fantasy for bear. Don’t take it too personal.
Also, if you could redesign bear, share how you would do it. Or if you like bear the way it is, why?
Some thoughts on guardian. Looking at the changes in 10.1.5, while they are welcomed, they don’t really address what I find frustrating about bear: boring game play, and lack of cool visuals. The spec needs some love but more importantly, a redesign. I have always felt bear (and feral) never nailed feeling like a powerful arcane infused beast.
Redesign:
Button bloat: Mange and Swipe are too similar and both a bore to push. Taking away Swipe adds more uniqueness to Mangle and reduces button bloat.
Resign Maul/Raze. I like this ability but needs a facelift and needs an interaction. I say replace Maul with Raze baseline. Not only should Maul be a heavy hitting ability, the button that feels good to push, but should interact with Moonfire; for example, Maul has a 10% chance to make your next Moonfire do 50% more damage. This ability must have a wicked animation, maybe some crazy psychedelic arcane slashes and sound effects that linger just a little before fading, like you’re cutting space and time.
Ironfur: Give Ironfur some baseline damage when you use it. Ironfur also needs some new talents to make it more fun to use. A choice talent; Ironfur reduces spell damage, or Ironfur pulses arcane damage.
Berserk: Love this ability, but I think it should be redesigned to a 30 sec ability and do damage on use. This would really solve some of the survivability/damage issues bears are seeing, and add another meaningful ability to use often. Again, this ability should do damage on use and have a new, awesome animation.
Pulverize: Get rid of this!
In short, base rotation would be the interaction between Mangle and Thrash, between Maul and Moonfire, Berserk and Ironfur.
Guardian needs redesign, not just talent switching. I feel strongly about points 2 and 4. I would love to see a bear have more savage, arcane empowered abilities.
Also, 100% agree with changes Oxez has suggested in their post.
What I am talking about is baseline rotation and interaction. There would still be aoe with maul and thrash. Ursocs Fury, Incarn, and GG are talents, not what I am discussing. And I have always disliked Pulverize.
With the upcoming changes, I think all they need to do now (on the spec side) is merge the build-a-bear talents, take FR off the GCD, and move up UFR and SM into the Unchecked Aggression and Perseverance spots.
The class side is a whole other can of beans. I’d swap Dispel and wild growth and add a connection from Barskin to the new dispel and from nurturing instincts to astral influence.
At the bottom of the tree, I’d like to see HotW reworked into an offensive cooldown that buffs your actual spec. The guardian version of natures vigil could also use a buff.
Tl;DR:
Baseline berserk
Replace HotW with Incarn.
Swap dispel and wild growth
Add connection from Barskin to the new dispel node
Add connection from Nurturing Instincts to Astral Influence
Take FR off the GCD
Turn pulverize into a self buff instead of a debuff on the mob
We absolutely need something. There is a little mob of elites (3) guarding a chest in the cavern. I watched a paly clean them out. I’m at 418ilvl and died several times trying to clear them out. Using all of my interrupts, self-heals, you name it. We are so magic squishy!
Why does everybody spit out the same generic feedback regarding buttons not “feeling good” to push or “button bloat”. Do we think asking for a button that “feels good” to press offers any value to a discussion about a druid redesign?
All of these opinions can be summed up as wanting to make our abilities more powerful and reduce the amount of buttons we have to push. That is how bear started when everyone was complaining they were too boring to play with swipe spam.
Not “feeling good” is a valid point. I’m sure it means something slightly different to all. What I mean is that Maul feel unnoticeable to me. It just a button that I quickly hit. There is not cool animation or sound effect. I feel that all of bears abilities are boring in that sense. Making maul also hit harder is a cherry on top.
I think some fun button that feel good to push and have what I am talking about are abilities like DK’s Eye Bean, pally’s Final Verdict, or lock’s Chaos Bolt.
I hope that helps to explain what I am looking for when I say Maul does not feel good to push.
Put it further down the tree on the left side where theres physical damage abilities, and add something to it. Like when chosing Maul you also get the 60% snare effect on Maul and Mangle.
Baseline Maul doesnt generate rage or give anythig defensive, so it doesnt have much going for it for a tank ^^
Could make a little circe of Maul related talents, like the berserk talent-circle feral has. In there you start of with Maul and add effects you want/need for different situations.
Abilities that feel good to push are Divine Toll and Shockwave but those abilities are major cooldowns in a spec’s toolkit. You can’t really compare them to a spender ability. Shield Block and Ignore Pain “feel” the same as pressing Iron Fur or Maul.
If they could rework Convoke as a ranged snap aggro threat like Divine Toll in the Class Tree and we had the ability to still spec into Incarn then that would “feel good”. The problem is feel good doesn’t make it practical. That could be considered OP if overtuned but it would still “feel good”. Blizz has stated that they tend to ignore any feedback on the basis of “feel good”.
Just something to consider when making a suggestion.
I am not talking about talents. For me, relying on talents to make a spec feel decent is not good design. UF is a boring interaction and feel like it a lazy way for ppl to go down a maul route. Incarn is good, I would keep that but I still would want to see Berserk changed. And GG is fine too but I still would like to see Maul redesigned and proc an empowered MF.
Also, this is just my fantasy. How would you redesign guardian, if at all?
It’s a resource dump that’s damage, for when defensives aren’t needed. It’s the same reason healers damage abilities are tuned higher at a base level than their DPS counterparts. So you can actually level and do content in your preferred Role.
Raze?
In 10.1.5 they’re separating Maul and Raze so you don’t have to choose in between. You have them both all times for all scenarios now.
HoTW + Convoke is what you’re looking for. The damage output is enough snap aggro. Especially when you run back in with your Thrash and MF spam.
Grizzle, I realize GG is an interaction between Maul and MF. But that is a talent, what I am saying is that the interaction should be base line, and for Maul to be changed.
You seem very defensive, Grizzle. These are all just personal thoughts.
How would you change guardian if at at all? What fantasy with bear do you want to see or does the current state of bear melt your butter for you?
I understand what you’re saying. But you have to realize, with talent trees that give us options to play the way we want (within the limitations of the class/spec that is), we actually have very little “base line” things.
To have more baseline things, we’d have to go back to only really getting to pick 4-5 “talent/option” choices like we had in the past.
Having options is a good thing.
I started Guardian in BFA when they were in a worse state than they are now, and they’ve stuck to those roots for the most part since then. I enjoy the way Bears play and their themes.
I’d honestly only really change around talent points/talent placements. They’re doing an alright job with it going forward in 10.1.5, but I still feel like we need to change a few things around.
Not having access to both Soothe AND Remove Corruption from the class tree seems a bit odd. Soothe feels like it should be baseline for the entire class. Convoke/Incarn also feels like it needs to be moved over into the class tree as well.
Berserk doesn’t need 3 different nodes for it to be a complete ability. Combine the 3, and reduce a few numbers if need be.
Etc, etc, etc.
The biggest issue with asking me this kind of question though is: I play by “feel good”. I like the way Druids play. Do I have my qualms with certain aspects of the class/specs? Sure, absolutely do. But I play classes and specs that I find fun. I don’t follow every patch note, or every PTR testing. I roll with the punches and make the best of every situation with what I’m given.
If it’s no longer fun, I’ll give my reasons and play something that I find fun (Sin Rogue and Feral Druid are nearly identical…and I play both…but Feral is 2-3x more fun for me). I’m not a “make my spec OP or I quit” kind of person.
There are things that can definitely improve a class, all classes. But I don’t think everything needs a rework just because someone else got it
Well, we differ on what we enjoy as baseline for bear, and that is okay. I’m glad there are people who enjoy playing bear. I would say that baseline changes all the time, arcane mage comes to mind. And if baseline changes, I think the design team is more than capable of making new and interesting talents that interact with the new baseline.
Not having access to both Soothe AND Remove Corruption from the class tree seems a bit odd. Soothe feels like it should be baseline for the entire class. Convoke/Incarn also feels like it needs to be moved over into the class tree as well.
Berserk doesn’t need 3 different nodes for it to be a complete ability. Combine the 3, and reduce a few numbers if need be.