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…
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.
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.
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.
They moved the talent placement of Raze, so it should easily be attainable in any build. No reason to avoid a multi-target Maul that gives a damage shield off of 30% of the damage done and deals an extra 40% damage with Moonless Night.
The reason could be quite simple for DotC – a limited amount of rage. Rage is needed for ravage, for each new set proc, and for ironfur. There simply might not be enough for Raze.
Raze becomes ravage when ravage procs so theres not really any competition between them, and you want 100% uptime on the apex aoe for the damage and healing which ravage cant gatuntee so in aoe dotc still 100% wants it.
Single target its optional for both hero trees but thats to be expected.
Ravage allows you to have Dot Apex’s uptime at around 100%. Raze will only weaken the damage of this dot, since the damage of the raze is less, and the dot will be rewritten.
Let me repeat: there’s not enough Rage for everything at high keys. You need to spend Rage on multiple stacks of Fur, you need to spend Rage on Ravage, and, on top of that, you need to spend Rage on Set procs - giving Ravage with Set proc at 120 Rage, which will be spent down to zero in one click.
If we remove all the bugs, it might be useful. But for now, it will only reduce DPS and require a talent point. The DPS reduction, for example, would be due to the fact that you’d rewrite a strong DoT from Ravage with a weak DoT from Raze.
Moreover, Dot Apex can have more than 80% uptime without raze, there are logs with almost 100% uptime.
And on top of that, in super high keys you simply won’t have enough rage to raze if you use all or almost all of the set’s procs.
I really appreciate all the information and advice. As I mentioned, though, I am a super casual player. I’m not really interested in min-max, certainly not for dps. I’m really looking for “easy mode”, but not quite to the level of the single button option. I did try playing with IF not macroed and it wasn’t too bad. I only got a couple Mauls weaved in which didn’t really seem worth the effort, but I was able to get a couple of Frenzied Regens in at critical points in the fight, and even though my healer is pretty good, with the talent that converts (most of) the FR overheal to a shield, it’s win-win.
Anyway, I’m really enjoying my return and looking forward to Midnight. And I’m looking forward to following the Guardian Druid threads. I always remember it being a pretty good community. I’m also leveling a Prot Paladin and Prot Warrior, but my Bear will always be my fave.
this is mine full defensive build, the moonfire heals you meanwhile the thrash shields you. and the Frenzied Regeneration makes a huge shield on you, and of course you are inmortal on Incarnation, and with Dream of Cenarius proc you can heal your allies with Regrowth or consume when use Frenzied Regeneration to make a more huge shield
This looks really interesting, Hadzumi. Thanks! Gonna try this out tonight. Not a lot of differences from my current build in the Druid tree, but definitely some changes in the Guardian tree. (Also, I had the 4th column in the Elune tree, but the third column is definitely better!)
One question: does Ursol’s Warning magic damage reduction benefit from Ironfur? Because that would make it an amazing talent!
Also, it sucks that Scintillating Moonlight, a purely defensive talent based on Moonfire, is gated behind Vulnerable Flesh, primarily a dps talent based on Maul. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Then again, the entire Guardian tree is gated by Maul, so what do I know.
Yes. The more armor, the greater the percentage of magic damage reduction. 10% of the armor percentage reduction, rounded up. That is, a maximum of 9% magic damage reduction.
Yes it scales with armor from ironfur, giving ironfur light value against magic damage but because of how armor itself scales the bonus has some harsh diminishing returns.
This is not true. It recalculates based on the remaining damage and deals it out over the new debuff. You do not lose any damage from this.
The reason you think this is happening is that Ravage is so much stronger than if you only get a few ticks of Ravage dot left, recalculated with a Raze dot, the damage number looks smaller over the course of the ticking.
Easily testable.
Hit Ravage, add up all the dots.
Hit Raze, add up all the dots.
Hit Ravage, hit Raze after a few ticks, add up all the dots. The numbers (barring crits or buffs) will be equal.
It isn’t bad, and I frankly MAY take it for single target raid encounters with alot of magic damage, but given how starved for talent points bear is, this talent is often skipped.
It may seem weird, but you are going to want to take them. A lot of people are loving the FR shielding talent, but personally I think having more armor and damage is going to end up better. Going with 11sec Iron Furs and lots more Maul damage.
The shields from the bigger, more often Maul/Raze/Ravage through UF I feel will outweigh the ocassional FR shield without requiring extra globals. We will see how it works, but bear is shaping up to be really nice.
