Hello Druids, I have a question.
ATM I only play a DH because I like their tanking spec due to it not being a face tanking class and it’s high utility. I also like the fact that I can seemlessly switch beteween Veng for tanking and then play Havoc for pvp and other content like torghast.
I made a night elf druid and I love the tanking of guardian druids. It is high mitigation with great utility and high mobility. I do however want to play balance druid for other content such as pvp and torghast.
This all comes down to me asking, is it possible to switch between guardian druid and balance druid without much problem or will I have to try and farm separate gear for each from Mythic+?
Im probably one of the few druids that plays the guardian/balance combo and love it. Most druids I know or see either do guardian/feral or balance/resto because there is a ton of overlap between those specs.
Personally I feel if you gear haste/mastery then theres no significant problems in gearing. Haste/verse is ever so slightly better for tanking, but in my experience its not enough to really impede with anything.
Just so you know where I am at, I have done balance up to heroic raiding/+7 mythics and tanked up to heroic raiding/+4 mythics. Not cutting edge by any means but i definitely could tank higher. I just dont pug ever so i only do the keys my guildies want to do. I dont even have a legendary for my tank spec and +4 was super easy as bear. Bear tanks should have no issue surviving regardless of stats. They are just that tanky.
And with the way balance is structured with double dipping on mastery during CA, mastery will always be the top stat. I prefer haste for a lot of reasons.
I also am aiming for the Circle of Life and Death (CoLD) legendary (I will have it in about two weeks) and am speccing guardian with moonfire and thrash rage gen. It wont be as tanky as the barkskin legendary but ill be able to stack way more ironfur/use way more maul for dps on magic damage bosses. Its more dps focused general legendary. I dont have it yet but i think itll do just fine.
youll need seperate thrinkets/weapon
It does require some extra gear, but fortunately it’s a lot easier to work around leggo slots. Since you’d have both agility and intellect stuff, it also puts you at an advantage if you wanted to learn the other specs.
Secondary stats are actually weighted pretty close after mastery for balance. I’ve just been primarily been going ilevel > stats.
I’ve tanked 8s, healed up to a 7, and cleared a 9 as balance. IO is just under 600 - druid is very versatile. Kind of at the point where upgrades are so sparse that I’ve started leveling a hunter.
Get a decent group of friends and m+ is fun, with pugs it’s not as good.
I’m resto/bear. Just need to farm a wep/trinket for each. Stats on all the items change. I also boom for quests. Never cat, cant handle the POV.
I’m Guardian/Balance because I’ve always been a tank as warrior/monk but want to try out ranged for the first time without giving up tanking. As someone stated you only need to get trinkets/weapons separately. You can share other slots. However one thing that’s annoying is that sometimes you have to get 2 pieces of same slots for different enchants as some give intellect and the others give agility.
I swapped to druid this expansion because I love tanking (and healing), but was tired of being restricted to melee dps only for a whole expansion, especially with everything I read (and later confirmed firsthand) around Blizzard’s hate for melee this expansion. Dungeon mechanics, new affixes like Storming and Prideful, and Torghast all pointed to melee having a worse time.
Balance took some getting used to with the changes but managing eclipses and dots is now second-nature (heh).
To answer your question, I switch between guardian and balance all the time. You can do fine just by swapping the trinkets and weapon. Mastery is useful for all our specs, and the other secondaries aren’t bad except maybe Crit.
Definitely this. And Vers gear is extremely easy to get (e.g. all the PvP gear has Vers) if you feel you need more.
Can confirm that I am using this legendary and it’s so nice having one that is useful in all four of our specs (and isn’t clunky/weak to use like Lycara, Draught or Eonar). Yes, there are specialized legendaries that are much stronger at specific roles but until we have enough soul ash to be progressing multiple legendaries at once, having just one solid memory I can pour everything into has been a godsend. I will have it at 235 next week, and then maybe the barkskin one will be next on my list.