PVE Guardian druid

Classes Druid
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Hello Blizzard! I want to talk with you about guardian druid (GD) mechanics. You need to improve this spec. Now this spec is totally useless. All other tanks have good mobility and saves. But GD has nothing.

For example:

DK:

  • healing (blooddrinker, death strike, blood worms, Bonestorm and etc)
  • def abilities ([Icebound Fortitude], [Dancing Rune Weapon], [Vampiric Blood], [Will of the Necropolis], [Anti-Magic Shell])
  • control talents ([Grip of the Dead], [Control Undead], [Death and Decay], [Gorefiend’s Grasp], [Asphyxiate])

DK has good abilities for kiting.

DK has great dmg.

He can’t die without healing for a long time.

Monk:

  • healing ([Eye of the Tiger], [Healing Elixir], [Expel Harm], [Vivify])
  • def abilities ([Fortifying Brew], [Ring of Peace], [Ironskin Brew], [Purifying Brew])
  • mobility and control ([Chi Torpedo], [Leg Sweep], [Paralysis], [Transcendence])

Monk has the best abilities for kiting.

Monk has great dmg.

He can use mobility ability to evade a lot of dmg.

Pally has good saves, mobility, very good healing and he can really good assist for party.

War is good too.

I don’t want to write about all. I want to talk about GD

Druid:

  • healing ([Frenzied Regeneration]). That’s all.
  • def abilities ([Barkskin], [Survival Instincts], [Ironfur] - it’s unreal! I need to generate 45 rage and i can’t sustain 2 stacks all time. This is main ability for surviving. I have to use it all the time. And if i use it i can’t use [Maul]. I can’t use maul, because I haven’t rage for it, because I need to use ironfur. Without ironfur mobs and bosses kill me. That’s all. By the way I have only 2 good def spells. 3rd spell is broken.)
  • mobility ([Stampeding Roar] is good but GD has 100% ms and nothing. He is just a slow piece of meat).
  • control ([Incapacitating Roar] is totally useless. WHAT IS IT??? I really don’t know how you manage to make it unplayble. What is it for? [Typhoon] not bad but useless for tank too.)

My suggestion:

GD can’t play arenas and u can limit spells for arena. You need just improve PVE aspect for this specialization.

1. Healing:

  • Frenzied Regeneration - zero rage cost. 1 charge and 15 sec cd.
  • Swiftmend - need to use in bear form. Up cd for 30 sec. Use only for yourself. Looks like TBC mechanic.
  • Ysera’s Gift - 0,5% every 1 sec. If I have 300k hp it’s heal me for 1.5 k per sec. Looks like monks’ Eye of the Tiger.

2. Def abilites:

  • Ironfur - need to reduce rage cost to 20 from 45 and up time from 7 sec to 10 sec. Max 3 stacks.
  • Earthwarden - 2 stacks per attack. Reduce dmg from 30% to 20%.

3. Mobility:

  • Just improve move speed from 100% to 130%. Now GD is a piece of meat. He can’t kite. He can’t run away from big aoe spells.

4. Control:

  • Incapacitating Roar - 45 sec cd, 5 yards stun for 4 sec. Resembles monks’ abilities. Now this spell is totally useless. TOTALLY. UNCONDITIONALLY. And u can limit it (ONLY PVE).
  • Thrash - you need to add slow for 20% for 15 sec (ONLY PVE).

-Entangling Roots - need use instant and in bear form. Time effect 1 min cd 45 sec (ONLY PVE).

5. Rage cost:

  • Maul - reduce rage cost from 45 to 15.
  • Mangle –improve rage generation from 8 to 10.
  • Swipe - add rage generation 2 per target.

In the end:

A lot of players want to play druid tank, but they can’t because he is really useless and unplayable, not reasonably balanced. People choose DKs, monks, pallys and wars. They are balanced.

I suggest good changes. It will only improve PVE aspect of the game. But it is really important for PVE tanking balance. Me and another players want to tank with GD. But another tanks are far better. And I think it’s not fair. For example DKs has unreal healing. Sometimes they have more healing than heals in mythic +.

Thank you for your attention, hope You will make some changes.

1 Like
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I don’t know too much, about much. But, I will confirm your assertion, that people do want to play GD but don’t.

A few things irritate me about the spec, and this is just from wondering around doing wq mind you.

Namely defensives on GCD like FR, also as mention by OP, many things seem to need rage cost looked at.

Also, I would like it better, if we could use FR as much as we wanted, since it already has a rage cost “bottleneck.” This would offset spell dmg we take.

I also see where those windows where we actually have 2 ironfurs up is actually quite small.

Biggest problem to me seems to be mobility. The way many of the stupid bfa dungeon mechanics are, you need to run like a girly man.

I agree, GD feels exactly like a “meat shield” and not much else, without much utility and even less mobility.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I have seen some GD on the m+ leaderboard with runs as high as 17+!! Granted, compared to others that are in the 22-23+ range, it doesn’t seem so favorable, but at least at more “moderate” levels, maybe they are Ok? I dunno.

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Really? No dude they are not okay.

https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-bfa-2/all/world/leaderboards-strict#role=tank:mode=unique:minMythicLevel=15:maxMythicLevel=15

Guardian Druid: %2.5 ( Yes look like OK )
Blood: %40
Warrior: %21 (They were at same tier with guardians and got rework.)

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I agree that Guardian druid, like other tanks has weaknesses. but as a Druid main in Legion, and somewhat in BFA. I have been through the ups and downs of the bear.

You can easily compare this to BDK’s Bone armor, and Heart Strike. if i am tanking alot of adds, and i have DoD down. I would want to spam Heart Strike for dps, while weaving in Blood Boils. but sometimes i can’t, cause i have to keep Bone Armor up.

Useless? can’t tell you how many times i’ve made Mythic+ runs so much more enjoying, by ccing atleast, 1 or 2 mobs that has an annoying ability that cannot my interrupted.
And Typhoon + Ursols Vortex works both great together as a welfare mass grip, or seperate for kiting.
Yes in PVP it might be useless, but it still got its uses…

Guardian Druid have it’s strength in mass aoe situations. as either Brambles, or Bloodfrenzy gives a huge bonus in either dps or survivability. Having Iron Fur cost reduced, greatly increases our uses for Maul. BUT because of the excces rage now, which you mostly have in big aoe situations. where we want to stack Iron Fur, and Spam Swipe+Thrash. We now rage cap, cause of the reduced rage costs and increased rage regen.

Your changes only really factor in the PVP aspect of Guardian Druid i feel, and would completely break it in PVE.

#4 Tank on Raiderio is a GD.

That is because their gimmick is self healing, and less armor. Where my BDK reaches about 8k armor WITH Bone Shield, and 4.5k without. my GD reaches 29k armor, with only 3 stacks of Iron Fur. where base is 6.5k. Yes they lack selfhealing, but so do Warriors.
My BDK is 402, and my GD is 398. And i play both specs, in Raiding and Mythic+ (i also had a bad perception of GD until recently) My GD is TobyRy-Nordrassil, if you would need to check.

They won’t.

I hope i cleared out the most important parts about your post, if not please do tell me.

2 Likes
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Thanks for the feedback, Tobyblood.

That was exactly what I meant by “Ok”.

My guess is that they are more than able for all content, short of the most extreme, e.g. m+ above 15+ is not a casual, or even casual-hardcore experience. Its pretty hardcore, and anyone in that range will likely have multiple tanks, and just play the best performing, esp. when one is noticeably better (bdk).

Said another way, the representation is not indicative of the gap. No reasonable person thinks BDKs are 10-20x better than the worse tanks. They are not even 2x better. Even if they are only 5, 10, 15% better, that is enough to skew the numbers and perception.

2 Likes
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The big problem isn’t the classes, although i agree that balancing and tuning is always good to somewhat balance the game.
But rather the Community perception.
I was in the boat of “Gd i bas, cause they got nerfed”. When in actuality i didn’t sit down to play it and see where it was bad and or good.
We’re too good at jumping to conclusions, or taking other peoples opinions as fact.

Point of my rant is; Every class can do the content that Blizzard provides us with. Some just do it very well, some lack abit. if you don’t find it fun, don’t play it.

1 Like
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I think the last sentence is golden:

“If you don’t like it, don’t do it.”

I have thought about going bear-man, but I haven’t–but not because I don’t think they are not capable of easily tanking +10 for weekly chest. It is simply because I don’t like the way tanks are supposed to tank–lots of running like a girly man.

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4, 115, 173, 272, 278, 409, 431, 504, 522, 531
Do you know what those numbers are? Thats the places of top 10 bears in world rate. Is there any other class named only once in 100?

Now back to topic. OP’s suggestion is too much overpowered. Lets make it more realistic.

  1. Heal - remove FR from GCD and make it scale with mastery and versa. Affinity heals should be castable in bear form.

  2. Def - make IF 2 sec longer. 9 from 7. Boost mastery a lot, bear suppose to be meat tank.

  3. Mobility - wild charge should be base skill.
    Thrash should have its slow effect back.

  4. Utility - hibernate should work on more types, on more then 2 dogs in 2 dung. Remove corruption, root, etc castable in bear form.

  5. One little damage CD baseline, simillar to moonkin CA+ICoE talent. Base damage +10-15% depending on CD.

  6. Looks - make bear/cat form separated from weapon transmog.

As the topic is PVE i speak of PvE side only.

2 Likes
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A bit offtopic.
Did you notice that there was not even one blue post in class section? It makes me think they dont read here at all. You know. Every class forum is full of tears. They said bears need love, they gave em love - kiss in forehead and sweet dreams words. Thats all. They did their jobe. No need to look in it anymore, even more no need to read some dirty places, like forums.
That was a big bit of offtopic. But thats fine, they will never see it anyway.

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I won’t go into detail what i think should be changed, as it is most likely going to be bias.
But what i stand by is making GD what it was, A big meat shield.

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honestly it would be enough if we get some magic dr (or cd) and revert FR back to legion.
I don’t have any other problem with my tank.
I just get hardcore smacked by magic dmg. I use my heals btw during many tanking periods when I use typhoon and ursols and it works more than fine for me, it doesn’t need to be usable while in bear

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