Guardian Rework Soon?

In Development The War Within Patch 11.1.5 PTR
1

It’s no secret that guardian druids are in an untenable position. The simplicity of their kit means that they’re a carry in the tank position unless they’re overturned, and that’s not fun for anyone.

I’ve long suspected that the lack of change velocity means that a major rework is in the pipeline, but so many seasons in, I have to wonder: is it ever coming?

3 biggest pain points:

  1. Enhance Magic Damage Mitigation: Introduce or improve abilities that allow Guardian Druids to better withstand magic-based attacks, aligning their durability more closely with other tank specializations. UW needs a massive buff.

  2. Revise Talent Tree Structure: Rework the talent tree to distribute key talents more evenly, granting Guardians greater flexibility in customizing their builds without compromising essential capabilities. Kill build-a-bear and bring some stuff up out of the bottom row.

  3. Introduce Unique Utility: Develop unique utility spells or abilities exclusive to Guardian Druids, ensuring their presence adds distinct value to raid and dungeon groups. Sky’s the limit on this one.

1 Like
2

How to fix bear:

Spec Tree

  • Drop Flashing Claws, Scintillating Moonlight, and all row 5 talents to 1pt for the same benefit
  • Merge Beserk talents into the top talent on the tree.
  • Move Pulverize and Lunar Beam into the places vacated by the bottom Beserk talents.
  • Change Pulverize into a 45sec AOE burst strike that provides some DR allowing for strong group pickup.
  • Scale Usroc’s Fury, After the Wildfire, and Dream of Cenarius to the level of health/damage tanks are working with so that they are comparably powerful to where they were last expansion before the changes.

General Tree

  • Change Symbiotic Relationship to have more power for non-Resto Druids so that it is actually useful.
  • Either make Rake not a required take for bears or allow it to be castable in bear form (Starsurge and Sunfire would be great too)

Druid of the Claw

  • Make Ravage activate every 3 Maul or Raze you cast.
  • Make Ravage not cost Rage and be castable in a cone in front of the Druid. (Added)
  • Make Wildshape Mastery provide 100% of Bear form armor and health.
  • Change Tear Down the Mighty to reduce the CD of Pulverize by 15seconds.
3

Refer to my post above.

  1. With the reduced 2pters in the tree, we’d be able to pick Flashing Claws and Scintillating Moonlight, absolutely shoring up any magic damage issues we have. With UF scaling we’d be able to have solid self healing as Druid of the Claw with that spec.

  2. 2pters and Beserk consolidation would fix this and allow flexibility and customization.

  3. Bringing the healing talents back into line with health/damage scaling would make After the Wildfire a nice option for group support in a very Druid-esqe fashion that was great when it worked. If Symbiotic Relationship was enhanced to provide decent healing to our marked target, a bear would be able to mark a ranged target and provide healing support to anyone in melee and a ranged person. That would be VERY strong, VERY druid feeling utility.

4

I think you’re cooking with grease.

5

Added

  • Make Ravage not cost Rage and be castable in a cone in front of the Druid. (Added)

This is so that DotC is not stressed for Rage so much more than EC is. EC can completely ignore maul/raze and spam Ironfur, leading to better defensiveness.

DotC already doesn’t take as many defensive talents, so stressing their rage more and not allowing them to cast as many Ironfurs compounds the issue.

6

Ravage being free would go a long way towards the damage problem. They never rebalanced us after frenzy was nerfed.

7

Lets hope we don’t get ignored.