I see a whole load of posts saying that Guardian is F tier, isn't worth playing, and that groups will actively decline Guardians in their current state. But why?? I have had no problem pushing 10+ keys in half blue gear, I completed the mage tower in 4 attempts with 2 266 trinkets, and I'm aiming to complete a +15 before getting 365 ilvl. Guardian feels super strong, a lot of passive healing + huge defensive cd's means I hardly ever die. What's the real problem here?
At higher levels you start struggling hard vs magic damage, and this seems to happen a few keystone levels earlier for Guardian than the best tanks. It’s also a general issue with talent tree design. Most of the important talents for Guardian are at the bottom of the tree which requires more heavy investments into a specific side. In comparison, prot warrior have lots of strong talents higher up in their tree and more towards the centre path, which makes it easier to create strong builds.
So it’s not that Guardian is unplayable or incapable of doing content. It’s just a bit behind other tanks. When you get a talent rework that doesn’t solve the biggest problems and on top of that get nerfed, it’s understandable that players get upset.
On lower keystone levels it’s less noticable because your ilv can more easily overcome dungeon scaling. More mechanics can be ignored without dying, and since there is less extreme damage you don’t really get into situations where you are simply dead without cooldowns.
Was doing +18 Temple of Jade Serpent last week. Most people had around 400ilv, and the Hydrolance spell which is casted by waterspeakers in the beginning was chunking people for 60% of their HP. Doing the same key on +15 and you can pretty much ignore it and only focus on stopping tidal burst.
The TL;DR is the weaknesses of Guardian starts showing up a bit sooner than with other tanks.
It’s very hard for me to recommended what you should do. There are Guardian Druids doing high keys and there are some buffs incoming next reset.
I play my druid less now, but it’s mostly because I dislike the tree redesign they did with 10.0.5 and the nerfs to berserk:ravage. It’s perfectly capable of doing the keys I’m aiming for this season which is up to +20. I’m doing roughly the same keys as I do on my DK atm with the same ilv. Main difference is Druid does way more dps, but needs more planning with CDs against magic damage to live.
With some tweaks to magic damage mitigation and some fixes to the talent tree, Guardian has good potential and Blizzard is doing more frequent adjustments in Dragonflight. Atm it just seems they lack a bit of direction when it comes to Guardian, but that could change in a month for all we know.
If you should reroll or not depends if you like any other tank as much as Guardian. I could have rerolled to Prot warrior this season but I don’t enjoy the playstyle. I usually stick to the same 3 tanks every expansion, DK, DH and Druid. If one of them is far behind tuning-wise I’ll just bump it down to alt status and do slightly lower keys.
Compared to the other tanks atm you basically need to play a bit better and to some extent your healer as well, to make up for Guardian shortcomings atm which is mostly magic damage when you get beyond a certain key level.
I’m sure you can get KSH on it if you put in enough effort. Might just take more time and gear compared to the top performer atm which is Prot warrior. So depends how much you’ll get frustrated by that knowledge, or if you enjoy your druid enough to be the underdog.
If you are going a pug way - I wouldn’t stick to guardian, will save you a lot of sanity I had to many cases where people simply insta leave my group when they see orange, and not a brown tank…
They keys I’ve done mostly were from week1 on ~362-368ilvl bear. After suffering that one week I decided not to continue playing and migrated to wrath classic.
And doing 10-12 on week1 was quite a challange (no one had ilvl, sets, there were no nerfs to dungeons, etc.). Ofc by now I would be 400ilvl+ and probably somewhere in 16-18 key range, but I have no regrets for stopping on week1. I had enough bullying for playing bear in that one week. I did 2 more keys on week2, but that was it.
Am I noob? Yes I am, I only managed to clear a +12 on week1 with undergeared undertuned tank while also doing a dungeon for the first time ever and really not knowing the route/mechanics/etc. Happy?
But as always, people like you the only thing can do is bully and be hateful towards others I hope you are better than this in real life.
P.S I’ve checked your main, and I see that 415ilvl is now possible. So I wonder what is harder - a nerfed +18 with 415ilvl or unnerfed +12 on 360ilvl? You are very quick to judge others.
Was that addressed to me? You tell the forum how people were toxic towards you for playing guardian in keys below 15, and me saying those people are pathetic makes me a bully and hateful? As well as judgemental? If that’s what I get for being supportive to someone who was treated badly by other players, I guess I won’t bother in future.
I had to many cases where people simply insta leave my group when they see orange, and not a brown tank…