Debatable, but very likely depending on how you spec. I’ve seen a few beta testers go without convoke and was doing fantastic damage. For single target and small cleave, absolutely it will be the best pick but I’m not convinced it’ll be the best for mass AoE since it wants to spread bleeds and moonfires everywhere. You’ll get one or maybe two bites at best. Also worth noting we’ll be missing the mastery buff from Niya.
Convoke was nerfed this week to remove the chance to use Tiger’s Fury. IMO it wasn’t really a nerf at all since most people use Tiger’s Fury before convoke to get a chance for an extra bite. I’m going on a hunch convoke may get another nerf if they think removing Tiger’s Fury wasn’t enough.
I think what people like about it is that it gives Berserk an immediate bite upon pressing it when normally that damage would be spread out by your stealth Rakes, plus it gives the button a much clearer reason to be pushed in AoE which Berserk otherwise struggles with. Though on that second point I want to see how the Berserk Swipe changes affect Berserk before I say that Sickle is necessary.
I really like how feral is progressing atm, and I think the dev is doing a good job with them, however, I think convoke needs to stay. Meows focus on spreading bleeds and biting when available. When you have a reasonably complex spec like feral, it is best to have that one F***-it spell where you can hit the button and take a nice deep breath before setting back down into bleeds. I love bleeds, but sometimes you need that 2 seconds to get your cat off the keyboard. lmfao
I don’t really see bleed management as all that frantic. Things only really get busy when bleeds enter their pandemic windows, which isn’t all the time. Plus Feral already has a lot of natural downtime due to energy pooling.
Your not really pooling all that much for the new bleed build, tbh. In aoe, its pretty consistent. When i took convoke plus the increased dot duration, the play speed was nice and calm. but once i dropped convoke for life and death, and switched duration for the other option, it sped up RLY quickly. You can tell the difference.
Is that so? I don’t have beta access yet so I haven’t gotten a feel for it. Is that with a fresh level 70? Those new energy talents must do more work than I assumed since I would have figured that new-expansion-low-haste syndrome would mean a lot of pooling. That’s interesting.
Yeah, I don’t like convoke but I’ve come around to keeping it as an option. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it can’t exist.
I am concerned that it’s too strong though in comparison to Incarn. Incarn replaces berserk, picking convoke means you get convoke and berserk, it’s hard for me to see that combo being worse then just having Incarn.
You also get double-clawed Stealth Rake with Berserk now too, and the CP refund has immense value rotating Sabertooth and Tear Open Wounds windows.
Berserk doesn’t need to do ‘everything.’ CD’s can have different strengths and weaknesses.
Sickle is boring gameplay-wise and also makes using Berserk weird. If it was stand-alone, and even had some other effects, maybe it’d be more interesting.
Since not everyone has access to comment or write on the beta forums, I wanted to take a moment and cross-post this here, to gather feedback from a larger audience of Guardian druids so we could take ALL feedback back to the designers.
Post from Beta
So I have been working on a Guardian druid talent revamp, one which doesn’t add any new talents but instead focuses solely on re-organization to offer better player agency in paths and options. This is still very much a WIP but I wanted to share this sooner in case this could perhaps inspire the Guardian developer a bit.
Changes:
Moved Mangle to the top left.
Moved Gore as a sibling to Mangle.
Split Bristling Fur and Brambles into separate, optional pathing choices.
Moved Survival Instincts (Rank 2) as part of the main right path.
Rearranged The Galactic Guardian and Mangle/Maul talents
Moved GG-based talents to the inner left side of the tree.
Moved Mangle/Maul-based talents to the inner right side of the tree.
Twin Moonfire and Scintillating Moonlight are siblings of Galactic Guardian
Moved Layered Mane and Reinfurced Fur to the far right side of the tree.
Split Ursoc’s Fury and Dream of Cenarius, allowing DoC to be a sibling of Unchecked Aggression, as an optional talent.
Moved Stampeding Roar up a row and made it a sibling of Ravage.
Split Blood Frenzy and Soul of the Forest, moving Blood Frenzy to the middle of the tree, with accessibility from any type of build.
Split After the Wildfire and Guardian of Elune, moving After the Wildfire as a sibling of Persistence, as an optional talent.
Split Rend and Tear and Untamed Savagery, moving Untambed Savagery as a sibling of Fury of Nature, as an optional talent.
Goals:
Make some critical talents across multiple game modes more accessible.
Reduce the number of choices to improve the player agency.
Align all 3 capstone paths with similar numbers of choices, i.e. max 2 per capstone.
Future ideas:
Rework Modal Cooldown bonus, making it based entirely off player rotation, akin to things like Insatiable Blade, Anger Management, Righteous Protector, etc and have this reduction affect Incarnation and Berserk, depending on which are talented.
Move Innate Resolve as a sibling to Maul, directly in the center, and replace with a more interesting talent option, perhaps something new?
I welcome all feedback from my fellow fuzzies, and again I hope our designer can take some inspiration from this effort.
This is an undated recommended talent tree for Guardian, based on feedback from the beta forums (updated):
Nice work, though Id still like to see more imagination from the Devs .
Taking our existing build and spreading it in some sort of multiple point system to get back the same old single power just feels unrewarding and punishing if i don’t spend the extra number of points to get it back to current status quo and in the end… what is new for the next expac? Nothing really, just access to the same powers on my tree from this current expac.
Well minus having the disco bear possibilities if you’re willing to give up base talents i’ve always used like Rend and Tear and incarnation.
I know bears are often considered the “easy” tank, and god knows between my tanks I own, it is the only tank where I can fit all of my tanking abilities on on my naga mouse buttons without using a modifier key. My warrior for example, I ran out of places to put abilities on the UI and had to move abilities to where I would normally keep all my buffs like potions etc. So many options, so much utility much like my Paladin Tank.
Regardless, I started as bear and it’s my main. I can only play my other tanks once or twice then I miss my bear, who Ive put the longest time on.
If they really thought hard about it, they could bring back old vanilla talents to fill in the gaps so I don’t have to spend 3 point’s to get a single power back to its original form.
Hell Id put a point back into Faerie fire, and another point to make it a range silence.
Give me another point option to remove FR from the GCD…id spend that point in a heartbeat.
You know, quite honest, if they don’t want bears to have utility or high damage, then they should make it up in other ways, but having lowest utility, lowest damage and threat…really is quite depressing.
Happy about the balance tree changes,hoping bear and the class tree will get work next.
Since lycara’s teachings is just a boring stat improvment that most other classes have higher in their tree can it be replaced with the kindred bond legendary affect. It doesnt need the active part with the shared damage amp or healing but just giving us and a partner some stats would be nice.
A toned down symbiosis or kindred affinity; basing the stats off the spec instead of covenant like lycara’s does with forms.
Giving another class brez and having our normal utility pushed off in the corners of the tree; itd be nice to have something easy access (its center tree with a start node right above it) and useful for the group.
They seem to be going one by one to completely redo each of the Druid trees. So I expect Guardian to be next week. (Hopium) The reworks have all definitely been better than the first drafts though I’m a little concerned that the fast timetable won’t allow them enough time for refinement.
It’d also be nice if the class tree received the same treatment. Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t believe the class tree has gotten any updates since its first appearance? When it was first revealed I thought it was serviceable and better than our spec trees but now I’m thinking it could use an overhaul to be more in line with what other class trees provide. Plus the utility is a little biased towards the caster side and while I’m used to that it’d be nice to at least have some even footing there for once.
I am definitely hoping they release some info about the class and Guardian tree within the week or two as you are correct. There has not been any work done on the class tree after it was anounnced.
Being the only class tree with 3 point spenders left and Guardian the only spec tree with such. I really don’t want to go live with the current class tree, I am happy with what they have done with Balance and Feral though.
Pretty they need to fix those two trees up and make a two handed agility weapon for the end of the raid and at least to me I’ll feel set.
