I think Guardian druid just are lacking overall; from damage, to engaging playstyle, to our defensive rotation.
I just don’t know what Blizzard wants Guardian to be because if you look the pros vs cons of tanking as Guardian, we have far more cons than pros. It’s the balancing act that has plagued feral/guard as a spec and it’s the reason why it got split.
Now both are having identity issues on what kind of play style they’re suppose to represent and Blizzard hasn’t figured out what they want to do for them.
Going on a tangent, but an analogy that asmongold made is that many specs after Legion are jigsaw puzzles with pieces missing.
Guardian for example, might have 3/4 of the puzzle finished, yet we’re missing maybe a single piece that would fill up the corner so that the image is recognizable. Whether or not Blizzard realizes that, despite many streamers such as Metrohaha, Belluar, and Sco acknowledging that Guardian druid is in a weird/boring state since Legion.
I don’t profess to be an expert raider or M+ master.
To be honest, I haven’t enjoyed played Guardian druid because of how empty it feels since Legion.
I mean just look at bears in the real world, they’re pretty simple animals, and I think that’s what Blizzard intended. Maybe emphaize that Bears are suppose to be stronger than an adult human by allowing their abilities to crush their defenses. Something true to being a bear, yet simple enough to implement.
It’s taken us two years to even get Rage of the Sleeper back (sort of) and that’s being put on a legendary.
Blizzard’s design philosophy is just plain bad. That’s the only way to say it. Seems intended more to ensure the design team always has a lot of work to do than anything.
This caught my attention in particular because if you step back and think about a warrior tank for a quick second, the number of shout / roar abilities they have feel as though they’re more thematically linked to Guardian.
There are frankly a lot of thematic abilities that Guardian could have that would solve a lot of its identity issue if time was invested in trying to improve the spec in the first place rather than these band-aids.
We have discussed the purpose of Maul for years and at this point a rage dump is really not needed any longer. The affinity row solves the off-tanking dps niche nicely without the need for a rage dump ability.
There are a host of things with Guardian that frankly no longer make sense with how content is designed and with how other tank specializations have shifted in their own design throughout the years but yet no QoL changes have been made to address these lacking concerns, e.g. thrash requires 3 globals to get the full dot, maul requires 40 rage and competes heavily with active mitigation.
True, glad you caught that part about Bears. I believe Guardian druids right now are more akin to early day warriors, simple rotation, and easy mechanics.
We use to have a few roars that made us similar to warriors: Challenging roar, and Demoralizing Roar. However we also had a unique aspect that other tanks didn’t have, we were a dodge tank and our crit % affected our tanking. i.e. Primal Fury, or even today with Lightning Reflexes.
The continued lack of a snare mystifies me. Create a PBAOE roar that snares, take it off the gcd, and put a cd on it, for example - it’s not rocket science. Snaring mobs should be a part of every tank’s tool kit, along with active mitigation, an OH S defensive cooldown, and taunts.
My only concern about going back to a crit-focused play-style is how it will affect Guardian Druids going into PVP. As it currently stands, crit is practically universally considered to be the worst stat in PVP precisely because Blizzard had nerfed the effectiveness of crit in PVP. Thus, a crit-focused play-style would severely gimp Guardian Druids who wanted to PVP. Unless Blizzard was going to change that, or allow Guardian Druids to be the exception, it might be better for Guardian Druids to finally be proper hp tanks, proper damage sponges - something we currently are not. I mean, I could be wrong - I’m open to better suggestions, so long as we take into account all aspects of the game.
I think all Guardian druids can agree that the one thing we lack is a real niche.
There should be certain aspects of end-game, whether its a boss, a dungeon, or something where you go wow this is so much easier to manage as a Guardian than any other tank spec in the game; but no such scenario exists while you can find countless situations where the opposite exists.
I personally don’t care what our niche is; only that our spec have one and that content exists across all modes of end-game that highlights & favors our niche. There should always be some end-game scenarios where having a Guardian druid is a feels good moment.
There is nothing that a Guardian druid brings that you can’t get by taking any of the other tank specs and/or druid specs in Shadowlands; but you certainly get a lot more utility/benefit by taking other tank specs than a Guardian.
We always get the response that we have brez and stampeding roar, but with those options being available to other specs and now roar baseline for all druids; we no longer even have that.
My only concern with that is that all the tanks will want such a niche, which means it either comes down to who the raid leader thinks is the worst mechanic to just deal with it with a less-effective tank (which will probably end up being Guardians), or leave out DPS in favor of people who can swap between specs throughout the Raid.
Every tank should be able to handle each mechanic. Where the differences should come in is how. Brewmasters may be called upon to use their teleport because they just can’t handle it, while Guardians use a combination of Frenzied Regen and Survival Instincts, but it may also be effectively countered with Warriors and Paladins using their Blocking buffs, etc.
But what I am saying is that the “how” is still a metric you can measure as a raid leader and based on your requirements, using certain tanks may make a boss or fight mechanic more trivial allowing you to be a bit more creative on your roster as a whole; e.g. beat an enrage timer.
Take Mythic KJ as an example, there are a number of reasons mythic groups took guardian druids. That’s not to say that other tanks couldn’t do it, but running that tank composition just simplified the fight.
Then you still run in to the problem of leaving DPS out so you can rotate your tanks through the raid. In a raid like Nya’lotha, that would mean every single person who wasn’t healing would have been expected to tank at some point in the raid. Bye bye Warlocks, Mages, Hunters, etc, we don’t have room since we have to rotate our tanks.
For Mythic KJ, at the time the number of Guardian Druids doing it was only very slightly ahead of the number of Blood DK’s doing it. And by that I mean less than 1% difference, it was neck and neck.
Guardian brought Stampeding Roar, Blood brought Gorefiend’s Grasp for the Illidan special phase.
If Feral had actually been good in Legion, then the number of Guardians would probably had been lower, since Roar could have come from the cats.
Honestly, I think @Leishaan is missing the point here. What @Naros was saying wasn’t all that difficult to grasp: currently, Guardian Druids are not really superb at anything - heck, they won’t even be bringing any unique utility to the table anymore come SL! They don’t really have anything going for them, anything that sets them apart. Why choose a Guardian Druid over a Blood Death Knight, a Brewmaster Monk, a Protection Paladin, etc.? What are Guardian Druids really good at that any other tank was not as good, if not even better, at? That’s what @Naro means to say by, “Their niche.” It’s about strengths and weaknesses. He’s asking - no, we’re asking, “Where do Guardian Druids really shine?” Right now, the answer seems to be “Nowhere” - and that’s leading to an acute identity crisis for the spec.
Editing for clarity:
For instance, some people had mentioned the possibility of returning to the old crit-focused dodge-tanking, and I said, “Why not make them a true and proper hp tank?” These are examples of “Niches.” Dodge tank, hp tank, etc. It’s not about Guardian Druids being the best, whether for specific things or overall; rather, it’s about answering the question: “What is so unique about Guardian Druids? What is their ‘Specialty’? What sets them apart?”
More that you’re missing my counter-point. Don’t feel bad, my brain works in very odd patterns to reach conclusions. My wife rarely understands my thought processes.
Right now the Guardian niche would be “Tank Trainer”. It’s simple, easy, and doesn’t require a lot of work to make it reasonably effective. That’s a problem because it doesn’t really allow for pushing high keys, Mythic Raids, or dominating whatever PvP fetish one is in to.
My point was that whenever there is a “niche” thing to do that would be effective in a raid, that leaves someone out somewhere. Often the “niche” is a mechanic, and sometimes it is a natural evolution of its skills. Need I remind you of what the tanking schema was like in Vanilla (not Classic, mind, Vanilla)?
Part of the situation is just bad all-around tank design, but also bad encounter design which doesn’t allow for every tank to have a way of dealing with the situation so the raid leader is more concerned for the player running the tank more than the class the player is using, as opposed to what it has been since Vanilla.
For those who want to play their Guardian druid, that itself is a out right slap in the face, completely disrespectful, and furthermore unacceptable.
Of all the damage specs in the game, I’d argue Havoc is the poster child for a “Dps Trainer” and yet they are absurdly easy and have the toolkit of a god.
In the past, the idea behind a Guardian was their lower than normal damage was offset by the fact they were super thicc tanks and could take a beating better than any other tank class. There were some interesting ideas a bear could do with pulls that would otherwise be far more difficult for other tanks due to how well they mitigated damage.
That type of niche was fun and different.
Why that stopped being a thing and why we had to go down this every tank has to be homogenized and then differentiated but yet they never bothered to address the latter across all specs within a role; only selective ones.
Exactly 100% agree.
But I also think there is value in not only making sure the toolkits are flushed, although that is most definitely the top priority here, but also thinking about ways to really make a given tank shine here or there; let them have their moment.
If you take every tank in their current form and think specifically about M+, every tank outside of VDH and Guardian have a host of situations where their toolkit allows them to shine and be superb at that content for one reason or another.
I really hope they take some of this advice to heart and really think about what they can do within the scope they have defined to try and shore up these shortcomings so everyone in a role is on a more even play field.
I never said it was acceptable, just pointing out that due to a relatively simple ability set, it allows a Guardian to be more aware of the world around them to focusing on their class’ mechanics. This concept comes up a lot in this feedback, if you may have noticed.
Very true. I rather miss the old roars we used to have, along with Faerie Fire. But again, Guardian has had nothing but trims with little added on for years now. We even lost an anti-magic armor akin to Ironfur in Legion because “it made us too powerful”! Honestly I didn’t see that, but WoD was the first time I was able to get up to end game content when it was current (dang altoholism).
But this gets back to my earlier point. One of two things happens in those situations, either no one wants to have any tank but the one that can deal with that situation (or the worst situation), or the tanks are selected over DPS so that they can swap in between encounters. The former happens far more often than the latter. Indeed, the former has happened pretty much when Molten Core had opened with no one accepting either Paladin or Feral Tanks, only Warriors.
To pivot for a second. I’ve been watching more Guardian gameplay than I have Balance and Resto.
One thing that stands out to me are the spell animations. Bears feel boring, and look boring. Compare the Bear toolkit to a Death Knight or Paladin on looks alone. Bears are bland.
One major thing I think Bears need are updated animations and an updated button toolkit.
This isn’t a suggestion. This is more of “this playstyle offers something far more engaging and includes some items on a wishlist.” If you could imagine how it would play out, I’d be curious to hear if it doesn’t cover some gameplay issues.
Offensive:
“Mangle” -> Generates 15 Rage. Reduces the cooldown of “Primal Instincts” by 3 sec. Grants an application of Ironfur.
Thrash -> Costs 30 Rage (6sec cooldown). Causes all nearby enemies to Bleed for X damage over 21 seconds. Stacks up to 2 times. Shares cooldown with Swipe.
“Maul” -> Usable after Dodging a melee attack. Your next Mangle within 8 sec deals 40% more damage. 1.25sec ICD. Off the GCD. (“Bloody Paws”)
“Swipe” -> Any enemies affected by your Thrash are afflicted by Infected Wounds. Deals 20% more damage per stack of Thrash. Shares cooldown with Swipe.
Defensive:
“Ironfur” -> Increase armor by X for 6 seconds.
“Primal Instincts” -> Grants 75% Dodge for 5 seconds and 20% Avoidance. 45sec Cooldown. Replaces Barkskin.
“Survival Instincts” -> Reduces all damage taken by 50% for 8 seconds. 3min cooldown.
“Frenzied Regeneration” -> Heals 15% of your total health over 3sec. 25sec recharge. 2 charges.
Utility:
“Wild Charge” -> Incapacitates the target for 3 seconds.
“Challenging Roar (Affinity)”:
• Feral --> Taunts all nearby enemies and activates Berserk. Lasts 8 seconds. 5min cooldown.
• Balance --> Taunts all nearby enemies and causes Moonfire to silence the target for 5 seconds. Targets cannot be silenced by Moonfire multiple times. Lasts 8 seconds. 5min cooldown.
• Resto --> Taunts all nearby enemies and applies Rejuvenation, and Wild Growth to all party members. Lasts 8 sec. 5min cooldown.
Passives:
“Lady and the Child (Passive)” -> Moonfire applies to a second nearby target. (Moonfire Rank 2)
“Mark of Ursol (Passive)” -> Each time you cleanse a Poison or Curse, reduce the remaining cooldown of Frenzied Regeneration by 12 seconds.
“Gore (Passive)” -> Thrash, Swipe, and Maul have a 25% chance to reset Mangle’s cooldown and cause your next Mangle to hit up to 3 enemies.
The goal was to move away from being GCD locked, and focus a bit more on combos. (Primal Instincts -> Maul -> Mangle.) There’s a bit of a feedback loop as well, a string of procs can feel like big damage and help get your mitigation off cooldown sooner. Primal Rage was added as a way to work with Primal Instincts.
Challenging Roar was an attempt to add some utility. Whether it be a generic choice, like Berserk, or something that can definitely see some clutch usage, such as Moonfire silencing targets…and combining that with a baseline LATC. Big effect for a big cooldown.
Spells lead into other spells. And those spells feed back into system. Rather than mashing buttons, you can mash with meaning, basically.