Not really, I feel like its unplayable compared to every other tank in the game.
Even doing low level content as you say, any other tank will feel a lot more powerful in survivability and damage.
I used to like it more than right now. I love the class fantasy of being a big bear, tearing through my enemies with my giant claws. While thatâs still there visually for the most part, the problem with Guardian right now, and the reason for so much negativity is they are the weakest tank at the moment. At the very highest level you will hit a wall with Guardian where you simply canât survive, where the stronger tanks can.
You can argue that such a level is only seen by the top 1% of the playerbase, but any weakness will trickle down to the lowest level.
Blizzard re-designed the Guardian talent tree for 10.0.5 but it didnât really improve the spec much. The same thing goes for the buffs we got yesterday. Itâs a small help, but unless Blizzard does something with the top issues for Guardian, the spec is doomed to be at the bottom.
Very weak against magic damage
Very weak at the start of any pull (unless you have leftover rage from the previous one), because you donât have enough rage to get ironfur going until somthing smacks you down to 20% HP. Even if I pop Barkskin in the opener, I sometimes wonder how my health bar just disappears in 1 second. The 20% buff that was given to ironfur should have been applied to baseline armor instead. In comparison, a Prot Warrior has the same amount of armor passive as a Bear with 1 stack of ironfur, and they have shield block on top of that. Guardian Druid used to be one of the best tanks against physical damage
Guardian mastery is good in theory, providing more %HP and healing taken, but the problem is scaling. Right now you need around 1000 mastery pr 2,5%. If they buffed mastery that alone would help with a lot of Guardian survivability issues. Youâd have a bigger HP pool to just soak large hits, especially magic and then take more healing to be topped off. This used to be how Guardian was designed, but now there are several tanks who have the same or even more baseline HP.
Talent tree is poorly designed, with too many important nodes at the very bottom far left/right sides. This makes it nearly impossible to make a solid, well rounded build with good synergies. If you pick defensive options, your damage plummits, and either way they are placed at oppsite sides of the tree or hidden behind bad nodes, making it too expensive to get them.
We need 4 points just to have the same version of Incarnation as we had in Shadowlands. Imagine if Paladins needed 4 points to have their regular version of Avenging WrathâŠ
So itâs not that Guardian isnât enjoyable for many players, but it doesnât feel good to know you are much weaker than the other tanks, which your group has to compensate for in some way.
This is how I like guardian, tbh. Playing a massive damage sponge that can heal itself right up again feels good.
This isnât a good comparison. The base version of Avenging Wrath is purely an offensive CD and does nothing for survival at all. To get the full benefit of AV still needs 3 points invested, but the most significant difference is that only one of them is in the spec tree. I donât see how they could do that for druids, though, when thereâs so much diversity across the specs.
I actually really appreciate how you brought these points up, was quite eloquent and I respect that.
I know on a M+22 stealth doesnât matter, nor does off healing and many other things that are in the Druid toolkit. But isnât that something that has to
go into balance as well, the utility?
I mean, if we ranked as well as everyone else, yet still had the off heals, the cc, the stealth, and quite a few other tools we bring, does it not bring in a challenge to balance the class/spec?
I know every spec wants to be meta, and agree, there shouldnât be the gap there is right now in ability and representation, but there has to be some give and take no?
Iâm sure for end game players, this becomes even more maddening, because the class is so fun with all the abilities and they donât want to be forced to another tank, loving Druid so much to do end game content.
I hope there is a middle ground somewhere, I really do. I am having fun, and as they say, we pay, play something you enjoy. So i am.
Hopefully adjustments come. Regardless, I donât think I have ever visited a class forum and seen it free of complaints, and thatâs from the release of wow. Donât expect it now.
I guess youâre right. One thing they could have done is just replace berserk with incarnation, which is a point saved in the bloated talent tree. Doing a couple of keys on druid this week and the main issue is I just get annihilated in the opener until I can get enough rage for 1-2x ironfurs. Even with Barkskin or Rage of the Sleeper active my HP is dropping like it does on Blood DK, but I donât have the same ability to top myself.
Did a +17 HoV (My druid is 400ilv with 4 set and decent trinkets). Was out of rage when I got to the first 2 Shieldmaidens by the stairs when you exit the hallway before Hyrja. Decided to pop barkskin early and thought Iâd be fine. Looking through my death log and it went like this:
-3,87s: Earthshield
-3,47s: Shieldmaiden attack
-3,45s: Riptide
-3,40s: Barkskin
-3,37s: Shieldmaiden attack
-2,27s: Shieldmaiden attack
-1,87s: ironfur
-1,47s: frenzied regen proc
-1,26s: Shieldmaiden breach armor (we stunned the other cast)
-0,08s: Shieldmaiden attack
DEAD
This to me is just absurd. Dying to 2 regular mobs within 3,5 seconds, through barkskin. And this is to physical damage, which is supposed to be a strength of Guardian DruidâŠ
I tried some tanking on my druid and decided to go with monk instead. Been having a great time so far, druid tank sadly is not in a great place right now. Low keys donât count.
I enjoy it as well. Apparently we are bad compared to all the other tanks, I donât know, I donât play with other tanks. I wonât argue either. I find it fun to play, I have two healing buddies who still want to heal me despite having pugged with other tanks, so I can do some content. Like you I enjoy the fact that we can stealth, throw out a bit of ranged damage when stuck in a further away puddle on SBG wormboss, throw out some convoke heals on a AoE phase,âŠ
Talent tree isnât ideal, wish Berserk-talents werenât used as gatekeepers personally, but I actually have fun trying out new builds.
Tanking in Guardian spec feels like forgetting to activate defensive stance in Vanilla. Itâs doable if the rest of your team picks up the slack, but why would you ever want to subject others to tha?
Playing 20-21 keys on my guardian druid is a stark contrast to my prot warrior. Sure, Iâm comparing the objective weakest pick with the strongest, but the gap between the two feels astronomical.
OP: Itâs nice that youâre enjoying guardian in low keys, but currently the overwhelming consensus is guardian is fairly useless for the higher end of M+ and raiding. While damage output is fine, theyâre just too squishy.
Google âmplus wowâ to see the high key spec representation, where guardian has been, so far, in the lowest tier the whole expansion.
And there are paladins and warriors and DKs and monks and DHs (all the other classes, in fact) who have timed +27 keys.
The best guardian in the world is currently ranked 41 below all those other tanks, and the next guardian in the world rankings is ranked 114. Thatâs clear evidence that tanking high keys is more difficult for guardian than for other tanks.
(There was a feral timing +25 keys back in SL before the rework, but no-one claimed that as evidence that feral was âperfectly OK and not holding players backâ. If one class is consistently underperforming compared to others, something needs to be done about it.)
I didnât. I just responded to other comments. And that thread you linked is full of misinformation.
I donât have any argument with the OP. I love guardian too. Iâm just sad that itâs weak in high end content because thatâs what I enjoy doing. (I also play feral in raid, and Iâd like to be able to do keys on my druidâs tank spec, but I might just as well apply for 20s as dps as bear. Thereâs about as much chance of getting invited.)
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They are gods/goddess.