These are the changes that Blizzard just put on the PTR for the Guardian druid. What you guys think?
Druid
Soothe, Remove Corruption, Moonfire, and Rebirth are no longer castable in Cat or Bear form by default.
Feral Druids now have a visible passive learned at level 22 that allows Remove Corruption and Soothe to be cast in Cat Form.
Guardian Druids now have a visible passive learned at level 10 that allows Soothe, Remove Corruption, Moonfire, and Rebirth to be cast in Bear Form.
Developersā notes: Guardian Druid is limited in its practical ability to use some utility abilities while tanking, and weāre loosening that restriction by allowing Remove Corruption in Bear Form. Weāre also cleaning up Druid shapeshifting rules slightly: the use of magical-themed spells, in Feral forms, is allowed by passive upgrades given to Guardian and Feral specializations specifically. This represents their special mastery of their āhomeā form that allows for limited spellcasting, and from a gameplay perspective, this allows Feral/Guardian Druids to use spells in form where there is a strong practical need. At the same time, there are situations where there is no fantasy justification or gameplay need, and spellcasting might be more restricted. For example, non-Guardian Druids can no longer cast Moonfire in Bear Form.
Guardian
Ironfur and Maul now cost 40 Rage (was 45).
Mangle now generates 10 Rage (was 8).
Developersā notes: Ironfur is intended to be maintainable with high uptime, up to 100%, and have some overlaps on top of that. Currently, depending on talent configuration, Druids may only be able to barely maintain full uptime on Ironfur. Making Ironfurs much more available should allow better control over timing and overlaps, as well as improving Guardian mitigation overall.
Shifting to Bear Form now gives 25 Rage (was 20).
Developerās notes: It should now be much easier to get the first Ironfur activated promptly after engaging an enemy, due to the increased starting Rage and lower cost.
The could just give them two new spells:
Call of the Cubs:
Call forth a army of cubs to taunt off all mobs on the area for 10 seconds.
Call of the Arch Druid:
Call forth a heavenly druid that gives a magic protection to all friendly players standing in the shadow of the tree for 3 seconds.
not so bad 5 rage may seem like not much but thatās a 9% nerf on the cost.
Also the nerf on the prot, we wont be top 1, but small buffās are always welcome.
Now need Swiftmend to be castable in bear when chosen Resto affinity talent
5-10% mastery buff
Brambles baseline with a 50% damage buff to it
And some sort of group utility cd and we good to go
Beserk is a terrible cd, a better cd would be something that had more group utility
For example
Tree of life - summon a tree of life that reduces damage taken by all allies in 30-40 yrds by 20% for 15-20 seconds And if anyone dies during this they are re incarnated when the spell ends
Edit: this would also be a good spell for feral group utility but it may need to be on a group cool down like heroism otherwise it could be abused I suppose
Well sort of agreed - another cd would be fine too. But it could come in handy to pick up and maintain aggro during critical moments. Just a trash and swipe spam for AoE isnāt that much fun either, is it.
OP here, forgot to change characters before posting unfortunately.
Since this is only the first batch of changes on the PTR with more coming down the way, I hold an optimistic attitude over the whole situation.
The changes to rage cost and rage generation with Iron Fur is a step to the right direction. The Druid is designed around the concept of layers/stacks gameplay, so this keeps the identity of the core gameplay and reinforces it.
Like Restoās heal become stronger the more HoTs you have stacked on your target, This is also how Guardianās Iron Fur was supposed to work for the longest time.
Making it easier to pool rage so we can always maintain 1 stack of IF while waiting to stack it up during periods of intense damage.
The change in letting us Remove Corruption in Bear Form is long overdue, like 10 years long. Paladins and Monks could use their respective Remove abilities since their conception.
But I would like to see them come up with an intuitive way to access the rest of our utilities like Entangling Roots, Hibernate, Heals etc. without the risk of dying or just let us use all of them while in Bear Form .
Further improvements should be:
Maul needs to find a purpose in our kit. Personally I love the days it had a proc chance to be free and provide the Tooth and Claw debuff on the target. Maybe a similar version should be reintroduced.
Frienzied Regenaration coming off The GCD and possibly getting some short of buff or redesign. They already said they wont return it back to the Legion design since it was too similar to DKsā Death Strike, but it definitely needs some tweaking to become a more decent defensive heal ability.
An Offensive CD should be re-introduced into our basic kit. Berserk was taken away to make way for Rage of the Sleeper, but with the pruning they have done they have left us with none.
Also Incarnationās intended goal was suppose to be an upgraded version of some kind of CD for each Druid spec. I makes the Devs look extra dumb that in the case of Guardian it actually upgradeās nothing and it just gives us an Offensive CD.
So either bring Berserk back to our basic kit, with Incarnation being the talented upgrade as it always was prior to Legion.
Or give us Rage of the Sleeper as a basic CD and replace Incarnation with Embrace of the Nightmare as a new talent upgrade option for Rage of the Sleeper(of course it needs some tweaking on the numbers) .
Mastery adjustments need to be made. Our mastery is the answer to our lack of Parry and Block, either buff it or bring some extra new form of extra passive defensive.
Talent tweaking needs to be done, clearing up the role in every row, getting rid of useless talents, introducing better options or just buffing under-performing options.
The devs have a lot of preexisting material they can work with to bring the spec back into being more exciting and strong.
Honestly, I would be happy if they took Frenzied Regen off the GCD. It really does not belong there, and it should not feel like a tradeoff or a punishment to use a self-healing cooldown that you have been saving. That alone just makes bear less fun to play, let alone makes an already weak spec weaker.
The buffs are definitely a step in the right direction, but they donāt go far enough.
I have lost my fiath in bear, and my pleasure to play it after BfA launched, yet i loved it during legion, when it was basically a rockā¦ and a rock that could pack a nice punch on occasion. It is still salvageable, yet it needs a little bit more love, than usual.
I do not know what to suggest, since my knowledge on balancing numbers is worse than bad, yet I would like to see an increase in dmg, maybe a little bit more. Or, mentioned earlier, return of a baseline offensive cooldown, that would give a bear an edge either in aoe pulls, or single target damage (still- it is interesting, why neither bear nor brewmaster got one).
As for healingā¦ since bear is all about prepearing for big spikes of damage and proactive gameplay rather than reactive what about something like this:
Frenzied Regeneration- heals you for x% of your maximum health during x seconds and then for additional % of damage taken during Frenzied Regerenation was active.
This would give bear some additional sustain, would not be so similar to death strike and still fill the bear niche of āpreparing for damageā.
As for mastery, i would like to just see an increase to % health gained. Bears have been known (or at least I remember bear to be in WotLK) for being basically a hp sponge and nowā¦ it seems to me this trait was forgotten at best.
Some better form of magic migitation would be nice, but increase in hp and changes to FR i suggested may be enough?
This is very true considering the new design of it. In Legion FR was a reactive cooldown, you pressed it when you got hit by a big attack and you would heal based on a percentage of the damage you have taken.
Right now FR is a proactive cooldown, you see a big ability coming that you canāt stop, and you press it before it hits, since it now heals a percentage of your max health. Now more than ever it doesnāt make any sense for FR to be on the GCD.
As i see it, if you enlarge the HP pool and self heal, that would be the magic def itself. Coz its no matter what type of damage you return it with heal.
Selfheal is the most universal def itself.
Heal - remove FR from GCD and make it scale with mastery and versa. Affinity heals should be castable in bear form.
Def - IF cost seems going better. Boost mastery a lot, bear suppose to be meat tank.
Mobility - wild charge should be base skill.
Thrash should have its slow effect back.
Utility - hibernate should work on more types, on more then 2 dogs in 2 dung. Add humanid there. Then can sleep aswell.
Remove corruption(done), root, etc castable in bear form. Why the hell half of our tools dont work in bear form?
Damage - One little damage CD baseline, simillar to moonkin or cat, and boostable with talant. Base damage +10-15% depending on CD.
Affinity - rework affinity, now it changes nothing.
IDK, may be something like. Resor - gives you heal castable in bear form, slight magic def. Cat - ST damage skill or bleed effect, dodge, speed. Moonkin - AOE damage and attack range and something else. But all in all, they should give some BEAR usefull skills, not just passive.
Looks - make bear/cat form separated from weapon transmog.
Iām glad Blizzard are finally moving in a direction that lets us use some of our magicwhile in bear form. For too long Guardian Druids have had a theme where we are ājust bearsā. Guardian Druids are not simply playable hunter pets, we are Unmovable Forces of Nature, harnessing the Druidic power of the land whilst in a mighty bear form; it is time our kit recognised this.
We should not be limited to simply abilities that āan ordinary bear could use.ā Iām a Druid, not an animal.
I can agree that these changes are small band-aid fixes. Much needed though so they are welcome.
After testing the Rage cost changes I can say they are not in any shape or form huge, but they make our job of keeping IF up easier.
And that is coming from a Guardian who doesnāt play with any rage enhancing talents (Blood Frenzy, Brittle Fure, SotF or GG).
The next PTR build should address our more pressing issues as already listed in this thread previously.
Frenzied Regeneration (Rank 3) is learned at level 85:
Frenzied Regeneration spends up to 30 additional Rage to immediately heal you for up to 18% additional health.
Note: This spell is affected by Guardian of Elune, but not affected by mastery.
It was hard to understand this developer note and it took me sometime interpret it, but I think what they are saying is:
They added a 3rd charge of FR going from 2 to 3 charges.
They also added an additional effect on FR making it so that if you spend more than the regular base cost of 10 rage using it, it will instantly heal you for u for a % according to the extra rage you spent, up to 30 rage/18% additional health on top of the 24% of max health HoT effect of FR .
I will test it tomorrow but if I interpreted this change correctly, then it seems like they do not want to bring it off the GCD.
Instead they want to turn into into a more powerful self-sustaining option against magic damage.
Its an interesting approach on the matter, and Iām not sure if it is a buff or a nerf. Real time testing needs to be done first.
What concerns me though is the fact that FR its NOT affected by our Mastery, nerfing it even further than before.
Unless an upcoming overall buff to the efficiency of our Mastery is in the works Iām worried.