Maybe I’m just greedy but imo,
Balance affinity could be “Your spells have 5 yds more range, and have a chance to proc your Moonfire on an additional target after using a damaging ability.”
Feral affinity “You run 10% faster, you avoid/dodge “X” more, and your claws are just a little bit sharper. Ouch, bad kitty!”
Resto Affinity: "Your presence heals allies etc etc. Your leech is increased by “X” more
Except that shifting wipes our rage bar.
The GCD + wiping rage bar = there’s no point. The easiest solution is to just make all abilities usable in all forms. We’re one of 2 specs in the game that gets locked out of our class toolkit - the other being Feral.
Exactly Tewa,
GCD shifting would be great if it didn’t wipe our rage bar.
I don’t even have a problem with the affinity row, as long as it just focused on the passives.
I know most people poo-poo the non-Resto affinities, but there are times when they’re very useful.
I take Feral affinity when I need the speed, like Mythic Nzoth & Mythic Carapace. I’ve taken Balance affinity when I need to stay put but have bigger range, like Mythic Orgozoa.
What I object to is locking our abilities behind a talent selection. Especially when those abilities aren’t even usable in bear form, where we spend 99% of our time.
So what if,
shifting on its own GCD, as in not inhibiting your next ability but you also have to wait 1 sec to shift back
And either your rage was maintained
OR bears used energy/combo point system
Definitely super valid concerns but what would be a solution you could think of?
The solution is to make the ‘standard’ class-wide spells castable in each spec’s primary form.
Standard spells are: Regrowth, Cyclone, Entangling Roots, Sooth, Hibernate, Rebirth
(Basically, all the spells that a Guardian has to go into “people form” to use.)
These should be castable by each spec in its primary form, so:
Guardians can cast these in bear form (but not cat, for example)
Ferals can cast these in cat form (but not bear, for example)
Balance can cast these in moonkin form (but not bear, for example)
Resto can cast these in tree form (but not bear, for example)
The complaint against “all spells in bear form” is always “but the resto druids will be unstoppable!”. That’s dumb. Don’t let them do it. The only bears casting these spells in bear form should be Guardian. Ditto on cats - should be just Feral.
And please note that RESTO AND BALANCE DRUIDS HAVE THIS PERK ALREADY. The moonchickens can already Regrowth, etc. in Moonkin form. I just want to extend it to Guardian & Feral being able to do the same in THEIR primary forms.
While that could be the best solution efficiency wise, I personally like shifting…annnd I like the idea of being locked out of spells in certain forms 
, provided shapeshifting isn’t too hindering as it is now with the GCD.
I likened the Druid to a manual transmission, shifting into the right gear at the right time yielded results, while at the wrong time could be punishing.
Staying statically in cat or bear is kind of boring, though currently hard shifting out of form doesn’t work.
I’d rather see shifting integral, less hindering, while still providing real benefits and rewarding players for doing it well.
But I know my time has likely passed in the esport and borrowed power era we are in now.
Shapeshifting will never be taken off the GCD as long as it breaks snares & roots, because PvP.
I think a shifting only “shifting global cooldown” completely independent of any other ability that is not shifting would make most mages happy and be a qol change for us
Maybe. But I try and keep my suggestions so they’re as simple as possible for Blizzard to implement, and flagging a bunch of spells to be usable in bear form (as some already are, like Soothe) seems like a much easier fix than monkeying around with a new and separate global cooldown.
That would be a class mechanic redesign, and we’re way past that. Even getting simple fixes for bears in Shadowlands at this point would take a minor miracle.
Basically everything I said is still valid, except they nerfed Brambles shortly after I made that post in the BFA beta, so yeah. God damn BFA is a terrible expansion for Bear.
Yes and no. I have fun while playing a Guardian Druid, but very little of that fun derives from the class itself. Guardian’s rotation is dull with little or no meaningful interaction between abilities.
For me, Guardian’s is at its best when I can find little moments to pop out of bear and do something Druidy - throwing a heal when a boss is using an ability (that isn’t targeting me), switching to cat or travel form to kite, things like that. Unfortunately, not only are these moments few and far between, but we’re punished for them by dropping all our rage, and any active active mitigation.
Guardian Druid doesn’t really live up to the fantasy of a vicious bear, but I feel like that has more to do with the animations than the game play mechanics. Most of our abilities are some variation of “lazily swipes a paw at the enemy” with some particle effects layered on top. It isn’t super compelling. This is true of Feral as well.
I’m glad that we’re not dodge tanks anymore. RNG has no place in tanking, and it doesn’t fit our fantasy at all.
My biggest issue with Guardian is that as long as we’re actively tanking, we’re basically locked out of the rest of our class. Some have suggested that we just be able to cast everything in bear form, but to me, that kind of spoils the fantasy. I would like to have a reliable way open up a window where I can pop out and do something before switching back to bear. Something like the Monk’s Black Ox statue, or Balance’s Treants might work.
It’d be nice if we didn’t dump all our rage when we switched either. Warriors no longer have that constraint, and our cat form hasn’t worked like that in ages. Let’s get rid of it for Guardian too.
Probably my biggest complaint about the talent tree is that the talents I want to take, talents like Guardian of Elune and Pulverize that make our rotation more complex and rewarding, are overshadowed by purely passive talents that are mathematically better. The easiest option shouldn’t be the best!
I also find it hard to choose talents that have all or mostly defensive benefits over talents that have stronger offensive components. I’m looking at tiers 1 and 7 in the Guardian tree here.
Speaking of Tier 7, Lunar Beam is a real loser. The idea isn’t terrible, but it doesn’t compete offensively with Rend and Tear or defensively with Pulverize. The Anima of Life and Death, and Twilight Devastation have shown that percent health based effects can be fun for tanks. Could we adjust Lunar Beam to be percent health based?
The Affinity row (and likely the reintroduced Heart of the Wild) work alright for the other specs (Resto in particular), but it’s mostly pointless for Guardians since any time we’re actively tanking, we’re effectively stuck in bear form. The damage affinities might get some use in an off-tanking scenario, but with current turning, they offer little if any DPS advantage over just remaining in bear form.
Oh, and Wild Charge needs to be baseline at least for Guardian and Feral.
Guardian’s rotation is very easy, and the difference between executing priority decisions perfectly and maybe hitting Swipe a couple extra times before you realize Thrash is off CD is not nearly as big as it should be (especially with Twilight Devastation doing 30-50% of my damage completely independent of anything I do, but that’s another issue). The only difference between our single target rotation and our AoE rotation is that we start dropping abilities until all that’s left is Thrash and Swipe (maybe Mangle if you need the Rage).
And let’s acknowledge that Rage in its current state is a terrible resource. As another poster pointed out in one of these Guardian feedback threads, it’s basically just a janky two charge system for Iron Fur that serves mostly to deny us our active mitigation at the start of a fight. Maul by itself isn’t really a compelling alternative to Ironfur; though, with the Guardian’s Wrath Azerite trait, or Sharpened Claws PvP talent, it does become a lot more interesting. I wouldn’t mind seeing one or both of those effects baked into the base spell.
The only Legion Legendary I remember for Guardian is the OP combo of Lady and the Child with Nature’s Fury. =P Oh, and Luffa Wraps, but only because they were super helpful for the Mage Tower challenge.
Looking back through our old sets, these set bonuses are all really boring. >_< Here’s hoping Blizz can come up with something better in Shadowlands.
Like everything else about Guardian, our cool downs are dull. We don’t currently even have an offensive cool down, and while I’m glad we’re getting Berserk back, it was never something I was super excited to press. Our defensives are just “little damage reduction” and “big damage reduction.” There’s no subtlety, or nuance to them. I’m struggling to remember if Survival Instincts even has a visual effect, and Barkskin makes us look like just got run over and now there’s a tire tread on our back. >_< I appreciate what they were going for there, but it doesn’t quite work.
I feel like other tanks just have more going on. Their basic rotations may not be super complex, but there is a depth to them that Guardian just lacks. The same applies to their cool downs and utility. There’s just so little to differentiate a master Guardian Druid from a completely average one (at least in terms of class mechanics).
- Do you have fun playing Guardian druid?
No - I thoroughly enjoyed the Legion version of Guardian Druid but BfA killed any enjoyment i had for the spec. I went from Main Tanking Mythics to quitting wow for some time because of everything they took away. When the Visions came out i had a look at it and tried it again and even with corruption the spec feels god awful to play.
- What sort of things make it for you?
Legion Guardian Druid had things going for it but still felt a bit flat. Rage of the Sleeper was such a good artifact power and I loved Mark of Ursoc while we had it – Having the ability to dictate which damage you were going to take felt powerful/impactful and I would love that to come back (even if it was on a 10 second cd and only lasted for 4 seconds)
- In terms of “This is what a Guardian Druid is” do you feel the gameplay fits your idea of Guardian?
- Do you feel there are any major issues with the gameplay?
I don’t play Guardian currently (as i just don’t enjoy the spec ) but the problem i face with this is in it’s current iteration we’re not even the best damage sponge - We can take a hit but don’t bring anything interesting / exciting or relevant to Mythic + / Raid.
DH have their iconic Manuerveribility and Sigils
Monks have Stagger and Brews to smooth incoming damage
Warriors have powerful impactful Cooldowns, Baseline charges and leaps,
Paladins - Can heal without dropping their shields / Immunities / Blessings / Multiple Interrupts/ Slows
Death Knights - Powerful Self healing and Grips, Rebirth & Debuffs and slows
Druids - We have a Health Bar that is slightly bigger then most and the most armor buff, Rebirth and roars (which is now given to resto) and the ‘ability’ to shift (although a massive dentriment to us)
Right now we don’t have a way to slow consistently, There’s no interactivity between our spells besides generating rage which doesn’t do anything - Maul spends rage and deals damage but nothing else , Mangle generates rage and deals extra damage against bleeds, Thrash applies a bleed but that’s it - there’s some interactivity between Pulverize and Thrash but we have to sacrifice mathematical throughput for more interactivity within the spec.
Ways to fix this – Interactivity between them
Have Gore give us a choice on what to use it on – right now there’s no reason to really care about gore procs besides more rage. Give Gore the ability to change our abilities. An example would be Gore Procs Empowers your Abilities
Do any of these issues severely impact your experience?
Yes all of them severely impact the experience.
What talents interest you the most? Which one’s seem too lackluster?
None of them really interest me at all as they all are a bit lackluster. Heart of the Wild is a welcome return but I would very much like it if you could use the spells within bear form (even if it’s slightly nerfed or just get the full effect of the affinity while within the appropriate form)
Are there any talents you feel are too strong, or too weak?
Lunar beam should just be similar to Starfall or have the same change as Ravager in SL (It follows the target) and needs a buff in damage
Are there any talents you’d like to see added or removed?
Galactic Guardian should be made baseline as it’s interesting and changes up gameplay – I have toyed around with incarnation but my build for bear never changed at all in Legion.
Wild charge should be baseline – All other tanks have ways to close distance – Grips, Charger, Charge, leaps, Rolls – Why should we use a 2 minute CD just to close gap or have to run in like a chump?
What would replace them?
In terms of real gameplay experiences, do you feel Guardian is easy, average, or hard to play?
Easy – The only real challenge in gameplay is timing your Ironfur correctly
Are mistakes punished? Too little, too much, or fair?
We have no rage on pull so we just get chumped for 3 seconds – Tanks should be able to mitigate the damage incoming not desperate to survive. It doesn’t feel good when chunks of health are being taken from your Druid.
How does your gameplay change between single-target and multi-target (4-5 enemies)?
I stop hitting mangle basically.
Is there a specific order you should press buttons?
No Order as there’s no Interactivity.
How complicated is it?
Not complicated at all.
Is it hard to execute?
I roll my face across the keyboard.
What are some legendary effects you’d like to see?
Luffa Wraps, Tier 16,17,18 Set bonuses, Something that changes our rotation, Allows us to use our affinity spells within bear form, Give us Berserk Buff for a couple of Seconds, Summon a Astral Druid to copy our spells, Pawsitive Outlook as a legendary Power.
- The theme seems to be past bonuses and powers, anything catch your eye, or something you remember fondly?
Pawsitive Outlook, Scintilating Moonlight, PVP Den Mother
How does your experience playing Guardian compare to other tanking specs?
Paladin and Warrior tanking just give so much flexibility in what they can do.
- In terms of tiers when compared to other tanks:
{Low/Mid/High}rate the following for Guardian:
- Impact of abilities:
- Hint: Popping a defensive cooldown; how does it feel, look, and perform?
Low Tier – How many times (without it being announced) do you notice Survival Instincts or barkskin or Ironfur being cast? None. Impact wise i take a whole lot less damage which is fine but it doesn’t look cool or fulfill the fantasy.
Complexity:
- Hint: How much game sense is needed as a tank as a Bear, and what is unique to Guardian? And how would that compare?
Uniqueness is a stubbornness to accept that we are subpar and offer nothing or unique. Game Sense wise you probably need a lot more then other tanks as we’re that far behind we have to know mechanics that can potentially screw us.
Enjoyment/Fun:
- Hint: Do you enjoy playing Guardian more or less than other specs?
Bear Feedback Questions:
Yes
Their freedom, especially in the open world (flight/travel form, interacting with objects and shifting snares), DoT based damage and consistent active mitigation. I’ve always enjoyed being an actual bear and literally mangling or thrashing a mob to death.
I had a lot of fun with dodging stack resets in the past but reducing damage with something like Ironfur feels much better overall.
Frenzied Regeneration being on the GCD feels gross. Not having an interesting DPS cool down makes it much more boring. Our major cool downs are the same, bringing back Might of Ursoc or having another cool down would be nice. Not having my own slow can be crippling, especially if I don’t have a consistent one in the group.
Not having a slow is horrible.
Having the same buttons to spam during Incarnation is not particularly interesting. It doesn’t make it feel great to hit compared to Avatar or wings where you are doing burst damage.
Have a damage bonus applied to Incarnation or let it proc, ie bonus damage on the next Thrash etc.
Galactic Guardian and Brambles are cool. Pulverize is interesting but Rend and Tear is just too strong to take it. Lunar Beam and Soul of the Forest feel very lackluster. Affinities are okay too, it would be cool if Balance Affinity moonkin form was strong enough to be a DPS cool down, especially for solo content.
Bristling Fur feels too weak. Lunar Beam has never been good.
Lunar Beam could be removed and replaced with the Balance legendary shoulder set, giving some interesting interactions with Galactic Guardian. Please bring back Rage of the Sleeper.
Easy to play.
Fair
I spam one button instead.
* How complicated is it?
It is not complicated
* Is it hard to execute?
It is not hard.
The Balance legendary shoulders.
I like it more due to familiarity. The other specs have more interesting buttons.
{Low/Mid/High} rate the following for Guardian:
Impact of abilities: Low
Complexity: Low
Enjoyment/Fun: High
I’ll fill this out tomorrow. But I want to leave this here for now.
Blizz, Bears need help. I’m glad ya’ll turned on add-ons. Cause this is bad
yes, the theme and simplicity of the spec is what I’ve loved since a started tanking in TBC.
I would like to see more of the ‘nature’ druid style come into play, barkskin plays into this a little bit, but I’d like to see things like galactic guardian and lunar beam be changed to nature style moves. Also bears should have some sort of beserk or rage style move baseline, even a cool CD that made you lose control for a second and lash out, showing the wild side.
The lack of mobility and kiting potential while staying in bear form, lack of unique tanking cooldowns that would make them stand out, currently there is no reason not to take a different tank over them.
practically no reason to use maul outside of trivial content.
lunar beam needs to go, it would need to be replaced with something that reduces dmg taken or increases healing received, I would go with something similar to the old insect swarm that would either spread or bee an aoe around the target, dealing dmg and giving targets a chance to miss( or just reduce dmg dealt). Incarnation should just be beserk and baseline, put in something like ironfur charges explode in a aoe around you when they expire.
Easy, its a very simple rotation, which I like, having a brain dead rotation lets me focus on what is happening around me, not being locked into runes or the like gives me the freedom to react, I just wish there were more situational abilities in bear form, or at least let us use some of the ones our class has in bear form.
Unfortunately I will probably be retiring my druid come shadowlands, monk seems to be I want druid to be, simple rotation with lots of unique situational cooldowns.
Yes, always have. Always will regardless of what Blizz does to it because big ol’ Bear om nomming faces.
Being a bear and shaking it off and being able to keep going. The nerf’s to FR suck but they are still workable. I miss a bunch of things from Legion.
I think Blizz has lost this goal/sight with bears. From what I’ve seen most tanks are pretty equal on health anymore. Used to be we had the most health and were definitely damage sponge. Now it’s all tanks have equal health, other tanks have more kit tools to work with and utility. It’s like they really kinda just dont know what they want to do with us. They gave us a magic soak with Mark of Ursol for all of like a patch and took it away. They really should have just re-worked it instead of just getting rid of it all together.
I think they kind of need to sit and think about what they have in mind for bears. Our gameplay is definitely boring and needs work but it feels like they just dont want to spend the time working on it because they think it’s fine where it is.
They really made me hopeful with the whole ‘Hey some things from Legion will be re-worked into talents, etc and will stay’ and then Rage of the Sleeper went into the void never to be seen again.
I havnt had a chance to play Shadowlands to tell if any of these new changes will impact so I cant really make too much of an informed decision on the first one. I’m stubborn and will still play my bear regardless of how little love Blizz gives them.
As for the second one yes, there are changes they could make to make gameplay more fun for us. No I havnt thought of what it could be but just anything to let us know “Hey, yeah. We hear you guys, we’re working on it. We’re not ignoring you.” Would be great.
I’d like to see a change with Lunar Beam - I highly doubt anyone has taken it since Legion and even then I think I was the only nutcase that took it when I got Fury of Nature just to see what it would do.
But for changes for it - Gq has some good thoughts on that. I just know a change needs to be made or it should be replaced. If it moved with us and was changed, it might be fun to take every once in a while but eh for now it’s on the list where no bear will touch it.
But honestly if I had to do anything with Lunar Beam, I’d make it so it’s replaced with a Rage of the Sleeper talent. I held out hope that Blizz would have made this into a talent for us when they said some things would stay from Legion but nope.
Wild Charge needs to be removed, bears just need a charge baseline imo.
The Heart of the Wild one should probably imo be re-worked. Just speaking for myself on this one. I dont do cat weaving, I do dungeons mostly and I’d never take this. It seems like mostly something for Resto imo.
Galactic Guardian, honestly has always felt to me like it should be baked into the spec. Same for EarthWarden. Though I realize that a lot of these baseline/bake ins probably would never happen because people would think it’d make too OP or something. But honestly, they are usually ones you always see bears taking.
J just get rid of Earthwarden, bring back Tooth and Claw Passive except instead of activated by Maul, activate it by Thrash. Your autoattacks in Bear Form have a 40% chance to empower your next Maul for 10 sec. Empowered Maul causes its primary victim’s next autoattack to deal less damage.
You can accumulate up to 2 charges of Tooth and Claw.
I do not like the changes to the Affinities. Dont make us choose between Typhoon and Ursols Vortex. I love having that combo to drop a vortex and knock mobs into it.
To answer this - I feel that it depends on the player. As with most tanks. Sure people might think it’s easy and yeah, it can be if you know what you’re doing.
I’ve seen horrible bears, prot warriors, etc. Mostly because people fail to use defensive or just utilize what they have and utilize it well. So it depends?
I want my MoonBear/Lazer Bear back.
I would loooove to see - Lady and the Child Moonfire deals 20% increased damage and also hits another nearby enemy within 20 yds of the target.
And Fury of Nature - While in Bear Form you deal 30% increased Nature and Arcane damage, and are healed for 30% of all Nature and Arcane damage done.
These two were a bunch of fun. Moonfire up a bunch of things - free healing and a bunch of damage. Not to mention playing with Lunar Beam occasionally for fun was fun to me too (dont judge).
Runners up would be -
Elize’s Everlasting Encasement - Thrash can stack up to 2 more times.
And Luffa Wrappings - Increases the damage and radius of Thrash by 25%.
Yeah I skipped the last section.
I dont have access to Alpha forums but I’ve been compiling a list of things I’d like to see back since they had mentioned unpruning and I didnt really see any for Bear and just some general QoL Changes.
Like Tewa said “The solution is to make the ‘standard’ class-wide spells castable in each spec’s primary form.” (Forgive me it wouldnt let me quote again 
)
Having to pop out of Bear to cast a Cyclone is dumb. I lose my rage, plus everything else just to pop out of form to cast a CC? No. Giving this back baseline for -all- druid specs should make it usable in their main form.
Can we please get the slow effect Bloody Paws back to our Thrash like we had in Legion?
While on the subject of Legion effects - I’d love to see Adaptive fur come back as a conduit.
Since Stampeding Roar is baseline, let’s make Roar of the Crowd a conduit too.
I dont necessarily want this as a conduit but I really miss this : Scintillating Moonlight the damage reduction baked into Moonfire. That one was really enjoyable to me.
Removed abilites I’d love to see come back - Faerie Fire but with the Fae Silence glyph. A ranged silence and a damage ability, yes please.
Leader of the Pack? Yes, no, maybe so?
Enrage (even though I know that’s probably resounding no)
BEAR HUG! I’m like one of the few that actually really liked using this even if it was for the lolz. I loved that ability. Grabbing someone and squeezing the heck out of them was good times.
The next one is a bit petty of me but since we gave Stampeding Roar to all druids. Innervate both to us and Feral. Make it castable in our main form.
I mean hey, why should it be restricted to Resto and Balance when Stampeding Roar was Feral and Guardian and now it’s all specs?
Thats all I have for now. Sorry for the wall of text. It’s early and I’m bored.
Bear Hug was a cute idea but was pretty worthless in application since it’s (as far as I can think of) the only ability in the game that stunned the player when using it.
It would be easy to fix, though. Just add “While active, any damage dealt to the Druid is dealt to the target, instead.”
Ok. So I’ve taken some time to condsider this green texter post. I’m going to try to be optimistic here and take the perspective that Sigma reached out to Greenie here to post these questions. I imagine Sigma’s probably a bit fearful of the Bear community if he were to actually step into a thread-- not that we’d be unkind, but rather that he’d be tacitly acknowledging that our persistance (and possibly my “Hey Sigma” thread) actually worked. That said, here are some of my thoughts on Bears. (Although I think you should really read all the threads; there is a great deal of excellent feed back in them.)
In the last week or two, I leveled up a Prot Paladin and have been playing it as a possible switch for Shadowlands. While my Prot Pally experience is pretty limited, some of my Bear comments might be based on a comparison between those two specs.
First, one of my personal requests for a long time was the introduction of some type of ranged silence. We had it for a very short wondow with Fae Silence (the talent modified Faerie Fire). I’d love to see that come back. It is in line with the silence effect that Pally has with Avenger’s Shield. I really enjoy the ability to bring a caster into melee range. Fae Silence could fill that role. Alternatively, I’ve suggested a return of Insect Swarm which would put a cloud of insects around the Bear into which enemy casters could not target, drawing them into range.
Second, for a very short window we had an AoE stun. Well, it was a disorient actually, but it was a really nice feature. I likek being able to hit that Roar a second or so after a pull just to help the healer stabilize. At first, the ability made the mobs fear and run away, which of course frequently pulled more mobs, so they changed it to a cower effect. That lasted what, maybe 2 months? Then they broke it again and then just removed it entirely. I really liked that pseudo Shockwave effect. To be fair, my Prot Pally doesn’t have it either, but I’d still like to see it come back to Bears.
Third, I liked the AoE slow from Infected Wounds. Maybe it was a little too easy to apply with a simple passive on an ability we pretty much press on cooldown anyway, but it just seems like we should have it. Maybe add the slow effect to Incap Roar instead of Thrash? I know we have Typhoon, which can be a fun ability, but would having both really make Bears overpowered? This is lower on my priority list, but I did want to mention it.
Fourth, please give us an interesting DPS cooldown. Incarnation is not it. Berserk is not it. I’m really liking Avenging Wrath on my Pally. It’s increased damage AND healing (i.e. self-healing). Also increased Crit (weird they chose Crit, but OK I guess). And also makes the next LotP (Pally’s short CD self heal) automatically Crit. That’s an interesting DPS CD. RotS was similarly interesting, with a increase in damage reduction with a damage reflect effect. I think maybe RotS could also add a small damage buff.
Fifth, please get Frenzied Regen off the GCD. I don’t know anyone who thinks this is a good idea. LotP for Paladin is also on the GCD. It’s annoying there, too. I know there’s debate over the old version (heal back a %age of recent damage taken) versus the new version (flat 25%). But universally, people want it off the GCD. Hitting FR a millisecond too early and have it not go off is a really horrible feeling.
Sixth, Gore is a great passive. I like those things that proc and then light up a graphic and then you react… in this case, pressing Mangle. For Pally it’s a proc of Avenger’s Shield. Those are fun. There should be a proc for Thrash as well. If you could get an occasional extra Thrash press, it might make Pulverize easier to work into the rotation. But please let Pulverize leave a small bleed on the target so we don’t lose the bleed synergy waiting for the Thrash CD (or proc).
Seventh, let us cast more stuff in Bear form. Being able to cast LoH or FoL as a Prot Pally is really cool. Recently, our Healer died on the last fight in Sethalris and I was able to spam FoL to get us over the top at the end. I’ve tried doing that on my Bear and then the mobs come out and I have to switch back or risk getting killed. Brez in Bear form is great, but you gotta give us a little more… a few heals would be really great.
Eighth, Maul still sucks. I’ve never liked it. Even when it was off the GCD and was added to the next Auto Attack, it sucked. Of course that was before the days of Active Mitigation so I just macroed Maul into a few abilities and forgot about it. Now, Maul is on the GCD and the damage isn’t worth the Rage. Some people have even taken to macroing Ironfur into Mangle and just removing Maul from their bars. When Maul offered some bonus defensive effect (I think it reduced damage of the enemy target’s next AA or something), that was interesting.
Ninth, Swipe is fine for filler, but it’s so uninteresting. Prot Pally’s “filler ability” is Hammer of the Righteous, which is damage (with a cleave) plus can proc Grand Crusader. I know Swipe can proc Gore, so maybe that’s the trade off. But Hammer just feels more fun to press than Swipe.
Tenth, make Crit interesting again. Crit=Dodge seems kind of tacked on and it’s such an unreliable stat that nobody cares for it. Give us a small absorb on a Crit. That’ll make it more reliable. Or what if a Crit procs a free Thrash (ref #6 above)? That would make it appealing and interesting AND FUN.
Lastly (and I wanted to keep it to ten but oh well), the graphics. The animations for Bear abilities aren’t all that interesting. It’s all pretty much just a paw waved through the air. The ghosty thing on Maul is ok, but I almost never use Maul. On the Prot Pally, I’ve actually found myself zooming in a little (I normally pay at max camera zoom) just to enjoy the cool animations.
That’s enough for now. But I don’t want to leave without paying a compliment for them fixing up the Artifact Appearances for Shadowlands so we don’t feel our Transmogs have to suffer just to use those cool forms. I just hope the gameplay is also improved so I can enjoy that improved feature. Otherwise, I might be sticking with the Pally.
Negative. Though I am friendly with Sigma (met at blizzcon one year). This is just something i feel like i can help with