Well met, fellow shapeshifters!
I’m a returning player, last played in the middle of Shadowlands. I play a Bear and have done some research into playstyles. I see that one of the simpler styles is to macro Ironfur to everything and use an arcane build. I don’t really care about min/maxing my dps and I definitely don’t like form swapping during a fight, so this seemed like a good option. So I copied what looked like a good talent build and then made a few adjustments (from some active talents to passive ones). Again, I like a simpler game that I can relax and enjoy the fights, the artwork, the storylines, and, of course, the company of friends.
My basic rotation has been Thrash and Mangle on cooldown. Lunar Beam on cooldown. Incarnation on cooldown. Moonfire to fill in any spare GCDs. So it seems like there’s really no need (or room) for Swipe (other than rounding up trash packs)?? Oh, and Barkskin/Survival Instincts as needed. I’m never rage capped and I’ve always got 2-4 stacks of Ironfur going. Is that kind of the basic gameplay? Again, I really only care about maintaining threat and staying healthy.
If someone has some time and wants to critique (or laugh at) my talent build…
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Midnight reworked the rage economy so i dont recommend macroing ironfur to anything for auto casts, that was mostly because of a talent that made ironfur do damage and cost near nothing so youd want to spam it off gcd as much as possible; both of those are gone.
It also made maul/raze a pretty important ability for both hero talents as the apex’s power comes heavily from its maul interaction. So if you dont need the ironfur for large melee hits (spell cast bosses or hybrid damage mobs, any amount of downtime) youre better off using rage on maul for the gore procs, absorb shield talents, or raw damage/threat. Nothing really requires more then 2 ironfur stacks at this point so extra rage should be going into maul/raze.
Swipe is and has for a long time been generally dead, better off filling with moonfires as EC, only realy useful if someone face pulls a whole second pack and thrash is on cooldown so you need a quick aoe threat grab.
Arcane build is fine, better for aoe then single target since it lacks priority damage to the point youll loose threat to co-tanks some time if you arent managing your mauls right, but is very tanky and has a lot of good self healing.
Druid of the claw doesnt really require shapeshifting too cat anymore, you can, it still has some talents for if you want too and the new persistence talent made it safer to do all everything wether catweaving for damage or throwing out off heals.
It had better single target damage, better maul/raze scalling and is still very tanky, slightly less self healing though.
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Thanks for the tips. I’ll try un-macroing IF and see how the rotation is to maintain 2 stacks and use the rest on Maul. I do like seeing the procs indicators pop up on the screen, so I’ll probably like this more. It’s a bit more active engagement, but I’ll give it a shot.
I’ll most likely be doing 5-man content. I’d only be doing a raid in a pinch if the guild is desperate for one night, in which case they’ll know what they’re getting. I’ll probably do a little of the raid finder mode too, but for that mode it really doesn’t matter how good or bad you play.
Any thoughts on my talent choices? Any recommendations for changes? As I said, I go for Passives as much as possible to simplify the rotation.
Thanks again!!
5mans probably going to want to take Raze.
I’d Look over at wowhead or icy-veins for one of there builds for Guardian.
Marco’ing IF to Abilites right now is an especially bad practice because of what was mentioned before. You’ll be Rage Starved quite often that you will miss out on Maul/Raze or a Regen at the moment you need. But if you aren’t doing High Keys and want to go passive most of the time. You could probably macro it to like Mangle and get by. Mangle typically isn’t spammable and generates Fury. You’d still be generating from other sources. But i’d still keep a IF bound when you need more. Which is another reason to just not Marco it to an ability you are still going to want to have a keybind for it, why bother. The ingame CD manager does a decent job of tracking IF, so knowing when its about to fall off or stacks isn’t hard.