Not a single Guardian in top 50 io tanks

Classes Druid
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Highest io Guardian is rank 85, a full 300 io behind the top io tank and the only Guardian in the top 100. Every other tank spec is represented in the top 50, even Prot Wars (who blizz has at least acknowledge needed some help and started giving them some buffs, meanwhile nothing but nerfs for Guardian who are below Prot Wars now). And Guardian deserved to be nerfed into the ground why? It’s pretty funny how blizz reversed the proposed BDK nerf within days and gave them a slap on the wrist instead that made 0 difference in their rankings, yet somehow it was fair to destroy Guardian 4pc not once but twice and blizz ignored all feedback.

And why? Even pre-nerf BDKs did the same overall dps at the end of keys but it was way more single target dps rather than aoe, which is much more useful for timing keys tbh as the top DPS like destro warlocks, survival, mages, etc already bring plenty of aoe dps and priority/boss damage is more important to bring from the tanks and healers.

Now Guardian is way behind BDK on overall DPS and it’s less useful DPS coming in the form of just big aoe every 3 minutes when your surv hunters and destro can melt the same big pulls with any other tank, the guardians’ dps there is just unnecessary pad that doesn’t really help time keys. And not like Guardian at least buffs the groups dps instead like monks (5% debuff), dh (5% debuff) or warriors (shout + necro mastery share).

Guardians are 3 minute men, they are unkillable every 3 minutes then pretty much the worst tank by miles outside their incarn. And the 4pc gives little to no survivability and just plays into this 3 minute role and forces a talent pick. Being able to do a big pull every 3 minutes (if your healer/dps can survive it that is, which is a big limiting factor on many affixes) and being very weak outside of that is really not a healthy playstyle for Guardians. Outside of incarn they have threat issues, low dmg and are relatively squishy compared to top tanks.

How about a buff for our guardian brothers outside of incarn blizz?

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The trick is to out dps the ww monks on ST because blizzard doesn’t care about them but never out dps mages, the protagonist of wow, even if it is once every 3 mins. That’s how you get nerfed.

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Is Guardian Druid not being in the top 50 io tanks going to stop you from doing the content that you are doing?

There is a single Prot Warrior in the top 40. Does that now mean that Prot Warriors are now better than Guardian Druids?

Take io rankings with a grain of salt. The majority of the playerbase will never clear the same level of content as a player in the top 100 io ladder.

EDIT - There are currently over 1,000 Guardians over 3.1 io. That is well above the io required for any reward, title or achievement offered in game.

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I agree that not making to top 100io doesn’t make a spec bad, even tho there’s only 6 tanks in the game, but being a 3min cooldown unkilable machine is not healthy for the spec bc outside of that we just feel weak in dps and surv. I’m not a tank player but I tried guardian myself and it doesn’t feel that good.

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If they turned Incarn into a 2 minute CD or increased their damage, the other tank classes would lose their mind. Guardian’s placement in the “meta” is due to the more favorable interaction of the borrowed power with the other tanks minus Prot Warriors. If they nerfed certain lego’s or tier set bonuses, Guardians would be the only tank that you would see and PUG’s would be forced to learn how to pull around a 3 minuted CD.

I don’t see any tuning with Legos or Tier Sets that would fix Guardians. If they increased base armor value or damage reduction or even increased threat so you don’t have to blow CD’s on small packs might benefit us but I don’t see it changing how Guardian’s feel other than being even more easier to play.

“Feel” sadly doesn’t come into play with the dev’s when it comes to role design. “Feel” is direct feedback from the playerbase that usually isn’t supported by any data other than lack of data (representation). I am not saying that is right or even ok, but it is what it is.

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Gotta love the 1 or 2 whiteknights in every class forum that no matter how a spec is preforming will tell you it’s fine because they can do their 15s. Yes every spec is fine for 15s, that doesn’t mean that specs don’t deserve buffs based on how the top end is doing. Because like it or not reality is that invites are based on what the general players see from the top end. Even if you don’t need meta to do 15 or 20 keys, that doesn’t stop 95% of players from inviting based on the meta. So even if you can do 15s or 20s fine, it’s still far harder to get invites for these specs that are perceived as weak, and that is no fun getting rejected all day long and feel like you’re playing a weaker spec.

Helping out balance or feral or guardian with small buffs won’t hurt you, so why do you guys spend your time whiteknighting all day long with thousands of posts? Like you’ve done just 3 keys at 15 compared to thousands of posts… come on… why even bother commenting on balance if it’s completely irrelevant to you?

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But the 3 minute mega CD is what kills us.

And at least IMO, makes guardian horrible to play and I love my bear immensely.

I also tank on DK and Pally. been tanking Pally since TBC, and DK since BFA. So yes, luckily for me my tanking alts are currently some of the best.

But those 2 other specs have no long CDs, or at least not long CDs that can’t be reduced significantly.

Prot Pally: Wings + Ardent Defender basically makes me unkillable for 20s or so while outputting massive damage. Wings starts at 2 minutes, and AD is at 1:26 for me right now with conduits and talents. With the CD reductions you can get AD down to 45s easy for each pull. That leaves wings up at least every other pull. I use Seraphim as a mini wings for each pull and combine it with wings on every other pull.

BDK: DRW starts at a 2 minute CD. but again, with talents, conduits, legendaries and play style, good BDKs (not me) can get DRW to nearly 80% uptime. I can manage about 50% uptime. Without trying I can get DRW down to at least a 1 minute CD so its up every pull, along with Bonestorm and Shackle (kyrian). Makes me an unkillable DPS machine EVERY Pull.

Then I go to my guardian. every 3 minutes, I get to hit 1 button, and basically results in me being unkillable for 30s, but at the same time all I’m doing is spamming 1, maybe 2 buttons in that time period. It is boring an unrewarding game play. And on some weeks, it can get your group killed, like bursting, if i pull enough to make it worthwhile. And on top of it, there is no real way to reduce its CD except with sleeper legendary to get it to 2.5 minutes. And the Tier set just doubles down on it. So I’ve gone from an unkillable bear god to a more unkillable bear god…every 3 minutes. At least give us the ability to reduce the CD with abilities like mangle, ironfur, something, to get it to 2 minutes.

The advantage of being able to have big CDs up every pull or every other pull makes it easier to align with pug DPS CDs or healing CDs. 3 minute mega CD is too long.

Yes, can the guardian get 15s? Yup, no problem there.

I’d just wish they’d add more depth to guardian playstyle.

At least I have Resto…loving it and love its tier set.

edit: put in the proper acronym for dancing rune weapon (DRW). For some reason I was combining in my head CDR (cool down reduction) with DRW and come up with DCR…don’t ask.

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Deserve has nothing to do with it. I am not trying to white knight anything. Who doesn’t want buffs? Buffs are nice when it makes sense for the spec and actually improving the spec… What “buffs” do you suggest other than tinkering with a lego or a set bonus? That is simply changing the borrowed power. If you are trying to complete 30’s then you have an argument but you are not. You just are asking for blanket changes to the spec so you can get into LFG easier. You are asking for social crutch, not a class balance.

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Don’t have a horse in this race (although from every metric available Guardian’s single target while tanking is in desperate need of help), but this is incorrect information. Rank 1 title currently sits at 3475, well above the 3.1k you cite here.

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All I cited was that there were over 1000 Guardian Druids over 3.1K io. KSM, Mounts, and Achievements can be acquired at 2.5K io. Rank 1 titles are a different discussion that lets face it, no one in this thread is anywhere close to achieving.

Guardian ST is extremely weak but I am not sure if a ST buff is the “fix” that puts Guardian Druids in the top 50 io.

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This is the same logic league players fall into. Winrate = bad clearly.

Just because something isn’t #1 doesn’t suddenly mean it’s not good or needs buffs. Sometimes it just means that people haven’t figured out what to do on it in the current meta, or that (in M+ cases) they haven’t been able to push on a key week that is better for that tank than others.

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Not really, actually. A lot of the top players do things called PTR testing where they actually test changes that happen. Yes, things slip by but 90% of the meta is already planned out far in advance unless blizzard decides to do something about it. 9 times out of 10 they do not do anything about it so it becomes the actual meta.

Meta is the meta because it’s the easiest and best way. If you had people who walked to a well by foot, then someone built a vehicle for which they don’t need to expend the energy later on, though they could still walk on foot if they wanted to, the people on a vehicle would be at a huge huge advantage over those walking on foot. This would lead, then, into more things being done, more water being gathered in the same amount of time.

There are drawbacks, yes, but again the meta is the meta because it is simply the fastest and easiest way to get to a certain goal point that people set for themselves, be it to 1k mythic+ rating, 2k, 3k, 5k, 15k rating. The fastest and easiest way is what will attract the most people because by default we want to expend as little energy as possible getting our goals accomplished.

There’s people who don’t mind expending more energy, but then it becomes “you’re expending more energy for either no gain or very little actual gain.”

2nd place is the 1st place loser or the 1st loser of the bunch. If it isn’t the best it’s as good as the worst. That is the philosophy of the majority of players, of people really, actually, and why competitions are both good and bad at the same time.

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You say people do all the testing but SOD proved that to be wrong. Venthyr Boomy wasn’t played until near the end, and no one had the prep for it going into it and caused RTWF to be slower than it really should’ve been because of lack of preparation. Same thing with enhance during that tier. People can prepare all they want and simply lack 100% understanding because something else seems substantially stronger, so they invest the time into that.

Guardian is in a fine spot. It doesn’t have to be #1, in fact no tank spec has to be #1 at all simply because they all function in different ways. DKs vs spell damage/self sustain, prot pala for reflect damage + self sustain, so on so forth. Just because a specific niche isn’t 100% optimal for a spec doesn’t mean you don’t play it.

Source: Sub rogues in MDI.

And I absolutely guarentee you by the end of this season guardian will be up there. Just wait and see.

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People aren’t saying nor getting that guardian isn’t in a fine spot. They’re saying it’s in a bad spot only relative to the number 1 tank spot, but we all know every tank is “viable” and able to do everything good. The conversation isn’t “is it viable or not” it’s “is it fun, interesting, and the best?”

1 Tier in 900 tiers doesn’t mean much. I also agreed that certain things slip and pass by, but again everything that is on the PTR and tested, in most cases, actually comes to pass especially in regards to RTWF status.

I agree, again it’s not 100% correct, but when 8 or 9 times out of 10 you can see on the PTR and in those times where blizzard doesn’t do things to correct this, those from the PTR come to live just like that. It happens way more often and occurs way more often than one would hope or think.

I agree, but this is not how the mentality works. You do something like say, mythic+, and you pick the best for that niche that you’re doing. That’s how a lot of people operate. It’s like a hive mind mentality and it happens more often than it should.

I prefer underdogs because they’re a lot more fun to go against the herd/pack, and with sleeper specs. But this kind of mentality is rare, as everyone wants an easy ride, not a difficult one. I don’t blame people for it. I understand their feelings.

It will be average, unless it gets buffs. Every time it’s up there it gets nerfed because it’s the beefiest and most defensive tank already. If it were to also be the most damage, it would be the all around best tank, period, and for the most part can’t really have that.

It’s also the easiest tank to learn and a hard tank to master when it comes to raid and things like owl or kitty weaving n stuff. It is an easy spec to get good at, though, especially in mythic+ and doesn’t take much effort to play. It’s a ‘safe’ and ‘boring’ spec compared to a lot of other tank specs.