[Shadowlands ]Give your Feedback: Guardian

Classes Druid
116

6% Magic DR per Ironfur stack seems reasonable through Guardian of Elune. Or Moonfire causes the target to deal 8% less magic damage to you (Galactic Guardian).

Yeah, that’s pretty tough. Ideas like Challenging Roar, which tie into Affinity might be the better way to handle this issue. When it comes to Roots, I personally feel that you should be doing those actions pre-pull. Cyclone is a different beast entirely.

I don’t think it’d be unreasonable to use the “Blood Paws” proc (Maul empowers Mangle) to have a chance to further empower your next Mangle:
Feral Affinity -> Mangle has a chance to cast Thrash.
Balance Affinity -> Mangle casts Sunfire to the target.
Restoration -> Mangle restores 4% of your maximum health and deals 6% of your maximum health as damage to the target (Enraged Maul basically).

3 Likes
117

You should have about 2-3 GCDs to use defensive abilities. Your “high APM” moment is while Primal Instincts is active. On average, you should have 20% downtime (1 GCD rest after 4 GCDs used, 5 total GCDs.) A lot of it causes down to resets and defensive options, and coupled with Haste scaling.

My reasoning is specifically so that you can feel that these abilities exist within bear form. Otherwise, you just never get to see it.

2 Likes
118

Understood, and thanks for the clarification.

I just want to add caution here because I don’t think going down a path that will lead to empty globals is good for any spec. Guardian has been a spec that you have had something to use each global whether its filler swipe, active mitigation, a defensive, or self healing.

FWIW, empty globals have always been one of the most reported dislikes about certain tanks specs in the game and I’d hate to see that come to Guardian in any flavor. I think despite the intent and meaningfulness of the changes you’ve outlined, the sheer fact of having empty globals will be a major turn off.

I get Gore procs and the akin will help here with this to some degree, but you’re still opening the door up to a situation where due to bad rolls, you get a string of 4 globals, 1 empty global just because.

Maybe its not as bad as I imagine ofc, but having tanked on my BDK with these gaps in globals due to “rest periods”; as a tank it sucks and there is no other polite way to put it.

I think that itself outlines the inherent problem with affinities.

With your suggested changes for affinities, would those continue to be the only way to provide access to Typhoon and Vortex too? If so, then we’ve compounded these talents even more.

Balance Affinity

  • Need to caster-weave during off-tanking scenario
  • Need a knockback?
  • Need an AoE taunt and AoE silence

Feral Affinity

  • Need to cat-weave during off-tanking scenario
  • Need an AoE taunt with a mini hero for 8 seconds.

Resto Affinity

  • Need to healer-weave during off-tanking scenario.
  • Need a flee AoE grip?
  • Need an AoE taunt and group healing cooldown.

I feel like this is just trading what we have for something even more complex and over-engineered all for the sake of trying to make certain affinities more viable than they’ve been in the past while at the same time applying a completely unnecessary divide between Typhoon and Vortex.

Now lets say Typhoon and Vortex weren’t on this list (which IMHO they shouldn’t) and instead the affinities were augmented solely with your suggestions, then I could be totally on board.

I could see reason why for a given dungeon that is heavy magic why you might take balance if the damage is mostly on the tank, resto if the group takes occasional burst damage (or even bursting affix); otherwise feral perhaps on skittish weeks.

I’m not trying to nit-pick here, I just want to understand the basis really. What I don’t want to see happen is we get stuff added for the sake of adding things to try and make the Guardian community feel better but what we’re getting doesn’t really fundamentally solve the glaring problems we already have.

3 Likes
119

That’s fair. I agree waiting doesn’t feel great, but I disagree waiting is inherently bad. I guess I see it as “if the slow period is short, and you do get a moment with high APM, then it’s okay.”

120

One small thing that I think could help out raiding tanks is to make the switch to catform actually do damage. Part of the problem with the affinities is the global cooldown incurred when switching forms. So if they could add a damage effect when switching to cat, and one when switching back to bear that would be nice.

121

Just wanted to wish everyone good luck; guess feedback on the regular forums is meaningless and people who can’t post on beta don’t matter.

Logged in for the first time to play my character in over 4 weeks, did 4 bosses in M Nya’lotha and it’s just not fun anymore. The corruption, the borrowed power. My class just isn’t appealing.

I’m happy my guild offered to run me through the 7 other bosses for points but I just wasn’t happy knowing that this is what the future of WoW is. Sorry i feel depressed now.

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122

Well, be that as it may, I’m not going to give up trying. We have to make noise in the places that we can. That’s really all we’ve got.

You’ve been doing a fine job - along with many other notable figures in our community. I say we refuse to give up, we fight the good fight, and we see what happens. If SL is trash for Guardian Druids, we can always take a nice long WoW vacation and invest our money elsewhere - that’s a message written in a language that Acti-Blizz will certainly understand. At any rate, that is my plan.

Edit:

Don’t let Trolls - speaking both literally and figuratively - get you down!

Thanks for your time,

Barespanks

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123

I’d like to see more kit synergy. Give us a reason to apply Moonfire other than just damage. Give us a situation to press Maul over Ironfur.

Lunar Beam could apply Moonfire to targets in range. Maul could give a powerful offensive buff that encourages its use. Let us get more out of an affinity as a bear, maybe letting us cast Sunfire, Rake/Rip, or Rejuv as a bear.

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124

Well it does at present, sadly. I would change your statement to “it should have nothing to do with Guardian Druid Identity”, to which I rather agree.

If you don’t agree with me, what do you see the identity being at present? Not what it should be, but what it is?

Then add what you would like it to be.

I’m liking this idea.

125

I get the impression that there’s some kind of challenge going at Blizzard. How long can they go without implementing core class changes that customers have been asking for since Legion?

Adding “fixes” on legendary effects is the exact same thing the Legion team did.

1 Like
126

Carrying on from yesterday’s discussion…

Please understand, @Cyouskin, that my questions and criticisms - for what they’re worth - are all meant in good faith. I really am quite excited to see a bit of constructive conversation in this thread.

Before moving forward to another rather pressing issue, I’d like to take a moment and point out some points raised by @Naros… points that I simply must agree with.

First and foremost, something I didn’t really notice or think about originally, but in your suggestions Swipe is being put on CD? Swipe is our iconic filler. Like @Naros had questioned, what is our filler then? Moonfire? Auto attack? I’m not a big fan of losing out on our iconic AOE filler; likewise, I have to wonder if this would cause threat issues - depending on the length of the CD. Granted, Swipe spamming is “Boring” and uneventful, but it still serves a real purpose all the same: it helps us to maintain threat on multiple mobs, and fills our rotation out so we’ve always got buttons to press - even if it’s the same button, over and over. I’d take that, any day, over sitting idle, watching Auto attack and waiting on CDs.

The second thing that I’d like to reiterate is the comments concerning the usefulness of the Mark of Ursol passive. I’m going to approach this from a PVP perspective as opposed to a PVE perspective. All of what @Naros said obviously still stands, but we get a similar problem in PVP: when we really need FR to come off CD, we’re not likely going to be cleansing anyone - even if we could. That’s a GCD right there that could spell the difference between life and death when you’re getting hammered on by 4-5 people. It’s kind of like how Ferals had DPS tied into casting roots and Regrowth. It doesn’t feel very good. Being forced to cleanse to drop FRs CD feels the same. It’s like we’re being forced to try and use an ability that we don’t really get use all that often for one reason or another.

One other problem is the identity issue: Guardian Druids are still… not really anything, even with these suggested changes by @Cyouskin. I see @Cyouskin added a couple of dodge-based and dodge-affecting abilities to the toolkit here… so, are we going to be pushing to be dodge tanks? What I mean to say is, we need to be going “All-in”, we need to be moving in some tangible direction, if that’s the case - whatever the case may be: dodge tank, hp tank, etc. That’d give us an identity. We would be “The” dodge tank, or “The” hp tank, etc. Most of these things wouldn’t be too hard to achieve either. All Blizzard would have to do, really, is tweak baseline stats - and quite possibly, in the case of an hp tank option, tweaking the mastery passive to be just a bit more effective.

That said, on the matter of dodge-tanking, I’d like to take a moment and reiterate my PVP concerns: crit, which is used for dodge, is considered to be the worst PVP stat due to the reduced effectiveness of crit in PVP. If we get pushed into the direction of dodge-tanking, then Guardian Druids are going to suffer for it in PVP. Honestly, I still think that hp tank is probably the better direction, something useful in both PVE and PVP environments - not least of all because it would be fairly easy to implement. Make us the chonky meat shields we were back in Legion.

Another possibility, come to think of it, would be, say, to make us better at AOE tanking. That’s another possible direction, another possible identity for Guardian Druids: “The” AOE tank. Buff up those AOE attacks, bake in a slow and/or other effects - proccs or whatnot, I don’t know, and we could excel at that.

At any rate, I’m just throwing things out here and letting the more knowledgeable bears make the decisions.

Basically, eventually Blizzard has to make up their minds about the direction of Guardian Druids. What do you have to say about that, @Cyouskin? How about you, @Naros? Anyone? What would you like to see? I’m really, genuinely curious to pick your brains about this… I mean, I’m just a casual player who enjoys a bit of Bear PVP - or, rather, a lot of Bear PVP… I just don’t know as much about the class/spec as you all do. I don’t have as much experience with it. It’s harder for me to make appropriate suggestions for changes. At best, I can help point out problems.

Thanks for your time,

Barespanks

2 Likes
127

So to expand on this, I’m fearful that any type of rest gap in our rotation boils down to the following:

  1. Slow and much lower APM play style, think BDK.
  2. Threat concerns

The BFA expansion is a superb example of where even having a filler spell to spam did not always help generate adequate threat. Some will say that is a dps role problem and they shouldn’t use their high damage moves at the onset of a pull; and while I can agree with that – that degenerate play style is seen as “fine” for other tanks who can build threat much faster and more aptly than Guardian. That really shouldn’t be the case.

It’s one thing to be a player who doesn’t use your abilities fast enough or in the right fashion to build threat, that’s a player issue. But when you’re using the spec appropriately and still experiencing the issue, that’s a design issue IMHO.

So Cyouskin, if we have no real filler like we do now and end up with these small gaps in our rotation potentially, then what plans do the devs have to address the damage & threat output? We go through this debacle expansion after expansion where we aren’t balanced aptly and this is always an ongoing issue and very rarely so for other tanks.

So you brought up a couple of things

Dodge tank

The Monk tank already fits this niche with Stagger/Shuffle and I don’t think for the health of the game, we should have different tank classes that share a similar design or philosophy. Doing so begs the question - why are they different classes in the first place.

High Health tank

The whole premise with Guardian being a high health tank in the first place stemmed from the fact that we were a damage-sponge tank turned dodge-based tank; and in the event that we took a massive hit to the face because we didn’t dodge it; we needed the health in order to provide an adequate buffer so that healers could react before taking additional non-dodged attacks that would otherwise kill us.

With Guardian being the high armor tank at the moment, our health pools do not need to be like they once were. If you think about why Guardian had the highest health in expansions past, its then much easier to now understand why BDK and VDH fit this design presently.

AoE tank

With target caps in SL, I’m not sure how much value an “AoE” means. In any given pull, all tank classes should be able to hold threat and if they can’t its either a product of pulling too much, poor play, or class tuning.

Even if that is put aside for second, any AOE high damage tank will most likely end up being the default pick for content where that matters, namely Mythic+. What you end up doing is shifting what people complained about with Warrior dominating Mythic+ due to their insane damage throughput and now it’s Guardian druids.

While that might be great for us, we’re shifting an already existing problem. Then what comes of Guardian in the next expansion when this gets moved to the next FotM tank spec?

I don’t have any real answers or ideas to give at the moment.

I do think what is important is for Blizzard’s designers to acknowledge this is an ongoing problem and have a transparent discussion with the Guardian community on ideas and ways this can be triaged.

I personally have no issue being the “beginner” tank spec if that is the route that Blizzard wants to take but that shouldn’t mean that the spec is slow and boring, has no synergy, lacks visuals, and most importantly lacks tools to be equally effective at the same difficulty of content as the next tank spec.

As someone said earlier in this thread I believe, its all in the “how” you excel. Outside that, so long as all tanks excel, then we’ve struck gold!

1 Like
128

:hugs: For everyone, keep up the support for Guardian Druids. Wish we had a stronger presence in the Beta forums but love you all

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129

I hate the notion that any spec is the “beginner” spec, if anything it’s a lazy cop out. All specs should be relatively easy to get into, with an obvious enough floor/ceiling on play to differentiate good/bad players, and give incentive to get better. On the same topic, good play should be rewarding in terms of performance.

2 Likes
130

What if we took the name “Guardian” to another level and consider a “Momma Bear” concept ( Caféaulait’s picture as the inspiration)?

I’m still a little unsure where I want to take this, so I’m just spitballing it right as I think it.

Two concepts immediately spring to mind, then a third as I was typing.

  1. When targeting something that is targeting a party/raid member, damage is increased against this target. If the party/raid member has the Healer role, this damage bonus is doubled. If the party/raid member has the Tank role, this damage bonus is halved.
  2. An aura/presence in which party/raid members within 5-10 yards receive 5-10% less damage from area affecting attacks. This may be too powerful to be anything but a talent.
  3. I’m going to say this again, more Roars which will affect and protect, such as reducing enemy damage while providing some form of protection to the group. This could be something that the sound department could have some fun contributing to as well.
2 Likes
131

I think a combination of beefy health/armor tank, with damage redirect type abilities (Think the PvP talent denmother) would both return a lot of the “feel” that guardian used to have, provide solid utility, especially in 5 mans, and give them an interesting niche.

Of course, the problem you’d run into, is how easily something like that could actually backfire and make them the “bad tank”. In a coordinated group, that sort of utility would be incredible, in a pug, the rogue standing in puddles to maximize their damage might kill you.

A roar theme for their utility would definitely be a nice angle.

Intimidating roar baseline to give them a nice aoe interrupt.

Challenging roar baseline to give them the snap aoe threat that is kind of important in some situations.

Protective roar, share your next mitigation cooldown with the group. Something like a 30 second cooldown that is off the GCD. The possibilities would be interesting, share a frenzied regen to recover from a critical situation. Share a barkskin for a general “reduce the group’s damage”. You’d probably need to exclude SI to keep it from being TOO outrageous.

roar, aoe slow that maybe can’t be kept up permanently, but something like a 30 second cooldown with a 15 second duration would go a long way toward giving Guardian a reliable way to kite.

The best part? That’s a lot of new and interesting ways for guardian to use it’s rage. Choices that can be weighed, and decided. The base rotation would still be kind of boring, but you’d at least have the game of trying to decide if you want to burn your rage to roll higher ironfur (which should really have a small magic damage reduction component), OR if you want to only roll one ironfur, but share it with the group.

3 Likes
132

I like this concept. It could even be on a longer cooldown if all the specific protections that go off in a window of time are granted around.

Talents could even affect this as well, especially in the Affinity Department. Protective Roar would provide your current Ironfur or Barkskin affect baseline, then add Frenzied Regeneration if you have Restoration Affinity, increased Haste and Resource Regen if you have Feral Affinity (Cats were the fastest attackers back in the day), and increased Mastery and have Galactic Guardian if you have Balance Affinity. This is just a first start at looking at it, and have Affinity do something besides just add things we’d have to shift to use.

3 Likes
133

I’ve been considering this too. I think a simple “fix” would be to separate Swipe and Thrash (in my example). From there, Thrash buffs your next Swipe by 60%; and Swipe would be tuned a bit lower. I’d prefer you want to press Swipe last in terms of damage priority…unless buffed, then it’s cool to be top.

This is also feeds in to the “combo” playstyle.

TBH, I’m not sold on my own idea. It was an easy grab, but might not practical use. The goal was to encourage use of non-Guardian and non-Feral abilities.

This sounds like it’s too forced. I don’t have a solution that makes sense (casting in bear form is not something I think fits my idea of Bears.

My idea of Guardian is a rampaging beast. If I were to do a complete rework, you’d get a far better interpretation of that theme. (In my examples, I’m trying to stay within community feedback.)

In these examples, Bears are beefy tanks, and they use Dodge as a way to “relax” the incoming damage. It’s more hybrid, but leaning towards damage sponge.

Basically, that 3sec isn’t meant to define the gameplay, but rather an ode to a different time. Bears should be beefy. An extra 20% HP overall might be more than enough to achieve that feeling.

Total rework. Guardian, to me, should be a rampaging beast that embodies the rage and spirit Ursoc and Ursol.

I can make a new post with my rework, but it’s not something I think everyone would enjoy.

Guardian Rework Idea:

Any damage values are simplified to make the relationships easier to understand.

Offensive Spells:

  • Mangle

    • Generates 15 Rage.
    • Deals 100 Damage.
    • Cooldown: 6 sec.

  • Ferocious Charge

    • Generates 10 Rage.
    • Lunge at the target, granting Ironfur.
    • If you are within 5 yards of the target, you will lunge through them.
    • Range: 10 yards.
    • Deals 140 Damage.
    • Cooldown: 15 sec.

  • Thrash

    • Generates 10 Rage
    • Deals 20 Damage instantly. (AOE)
    • Deals 90 Damage over 9 sec. to each target hit.
    • Cooldown: 6 sec.
    • Proc: Your next Swipe deals 60% more damage.

  • Swipe

    • Deals 40 Damage. (AOE)

  • Maul

    • Costs 40 Rage.
    • Deals 90 Damage.

  • Moonfire

    • Generates 5 Rage.
    • Deals 10 damage instantly.
    • Deals 160 damage over 16 seconds.
    • Each active Moonfire increases your healing received by 3%.

Defensive Spells:

  • Frenzied Regenation:

    • Recover 15% of your maximum health over 3 seconds.
    • Charges: 2
    • Recharge: 45 sec. per charge.
    • Cooldown: 3 sec.
    • GCD: Off

  • Ironfur:

    • Costs 40 Rage.
    • Increases your armor by 20% for 8 seconds.
    • Cooldown: GCD
    • GCD: Off

Cooldown/Utility:

  • Relentless Assault

    • Ferocious Charge continously attacks the target, dealing 20% more damage for each successive hit. If your target dies, you automatically pick a nearby target.
    • Grants Ironfur on initial cast and stuns all targets hit for 4 sec.
    • Channeled: 3 seconds. Cast every 0.75sec.
    • Cooldown: 2 min.

  • Avatar of the Wild Gods

    • Brace yourself, granting Ironfur and increasing your avoidance by 75%. All friendly players behind you gain 25% Avoidance.
    • Channel: 6 seconds.
    • Cooldown: 6min.
    • Art idea: Spell effect is your character model, transparent, with a spectral wind flowing to either side of you. (Denotes the area of effect.)

  • Rage of the Sleeper

    • Reduce all damage taken by 25%.
    • Deals 15 damage to all nearby enemies each time you take damage.
    • Duration: 10 sec.
    • Internal Cooldown: 0.5sec.
    • Cooldown: 90 sec.

  • Barkskin

    • Reduce all damage taken by 20% for 12 sec.
    • Cooldown: 60 sec.

Passive Effects:

  • Rampaging (Trigger)

    • Your Mangle, Maul, Thrash, Moonfire, and Ferocious Charge critical strikes send you into a Rampage.

  • Rampaging (Buff)

    • Duration: 6 seconds.
    • Buff type: Enrage
    • Increase your damage done by 15%.
    • Increase your movement speed by 20%.
    • Relentless Assault recovers 50% faster.

  • Insatiable

    • Suffering loss of control applies Rampage.
    • Reduce the duration of loss of control effects by 50%.

  • Grievous Wounds

    • Mangle and Maul deal an additional 4% of your maximum health as damage to the target.

  • Gore

    • Mangle and Maul gain 30% increased Critical Strike chance against Bleeding targets.
    • Swipe has a 25% chance to reset the cooldown of Thrash.
    • Maul has a 25% chance to reset the cooldown of Mangle.

  • Vicious Paws:

    • Thrash, Swipe, and Maul have a 33% chance to make your next Mangle hit up to 3 targets.

Talents:

  • Brambles

    • Rampage grants a shield for 5% of your maximum health which absorbs 25% of incoming Physical damage, reflecting it back to the attacker.

  • Blood Frenzy

    • Mangle and Maul gain 50% Critical Hit Damage on Bleeding targets.

  • Bloodrage

    • Generates 10 Rage every 1 second for 6 seconds.
    • Cooldown: 60 sec.
    • Passive: While Rampaging, recover 0.5% of your maximum health every 1 second.

  • Soul of the Forest:

    • Mangle generates 5 additional Rage.
    • Mangle deals 25% more damage.

  • Galatic Guardian:

    • Moonfire causes the target to deal 8% less magic damage to you.
    • Moonfire strikes a second nearby target.

  • Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc

    • Passive.
    • Increase your maximum health by 15%.
    • Gain immunity to crowd control effects while channeling Relentless Assault.
    • Ferocious Charge has a 25% to not incur its cooldown.

  • Earthwarden

    • Mangle generates 1 application per target hit, up to 3 stacks.
    • Absorbs the next auto-attack made against you, up to 30% of your Agility.

  • Survival of the Fittest

    • Reduce the cooldown of Rage of the Sleeper and Barksin by 33%.

  • Guardian of Elune

    • Applying Moonfire to an enemy recover 3% of your missing health.
    • Each time Moonfire deals damage-over-time, you have a chance to rage 5 Rage.

  • Rend and Tear

    • Thrash increases the damage of 3 Swipes.
    • Each stack of Thrash rerduces the target’s damage to you by 2%.

  • Challenging Roar

    • Replaces Lunar Beam
    • Force all nearby enemies to target you for 8 seconds.
    • You deal 20% more damage to taunted enemies.
    • You take 20% less damage from taunted enemies.
    • Activates Rampaging.
    • Cooldown: 90 sec.

  • Pulverize

    • Replace Maul
    • Deals 90 Damage.
    • Consumes all applications of Thrash to deal 60 additional damage per application consumed.
    • Consuming 2 stacks of Thrash is a guaranteed Critical Strike and applies Ironfur.
13 Likes
134

I like the direction of the rework that you proposed. After my first pass of reading those changes it would seem to make the playstyle of the Bear a more aggressive tank.

I think that is the best description of dodge as it relates to Bears that I have ever read.

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135

On lunch but with a quick read through I am absolutely in love with this idea. I mean after all when you make a bear mad - well better run and hide. I love the offensive and defensive and the synergy.

2 Likes