Guardian Alpha Patchnotes

[exochaft]

Celestalon since confirmed that it's currently behaving as intended.

Suppose it may kind of be necessary for Guardian mastery to not affect physical DoT effects, and it's been a weakness we've had for a while anyways. It may be a slightly rude awakening for new bears going into Highmaul that aren't expecting their fancy mastery to not work against certain physical mechanics.

Still, with the RPS going into progression (stat balance aside), Guardians don't really feel like active mitigation tanks versus passive ones after all these beta builds. Don't get me wrong, the package still works enough to keep us balanced with other tanks, just feels off that 60-70% of my self-healing via actual heals/absorbs would occur if I just sat there doing nothing, even more if we just did a DPS rotation that incidentally included T&C. Doing some test runs with a Blood DK had our self-healing/absorbs and damage taken about the same, the only difference is that most of my self-healing didn't require me to push any button. May just be semantics at this point, since using our AM is definitely still worth using despite the massive amount of passive survival going on in the background.

[Dreyen]

our AM still feels very active to me, especially if you take GoE. I actually really like GoE and hope it'll be an actual equivalent to pulverize, it's definitely the talent that require the most skill to use, as it's timing is very important, whereas pulverize is just a keep 100% uptime ability and Bristling is just another cooldown.

[Arielle]

Frankly, Pulv should've been 10%, if not lower, from the start. The solution is not to buff the other talents to make them equally OP, it's to nerf the damn problem talent. The only problem is that this has been so obvious for so long that there's really no way it'll actually get fixed now after it's been left alone so long.

Still wouldn't fix the problem. Pulverize would still be significantly better than the other 2 talents even at 10%. At least on paper. I do agree that Pulverize is too strong, but the question then becomes does it make us too strong relative to other tanks, or just relative to the other 2 talents. We can't really answer that.

Still, with the RPS going into progression (stat balance aside), Guardians don't really feel like active mitigation tanks versus passive ones after all these beta builds. Don't get me wrong, the package still works enough to keep us balanced with other tanks, just feels off that 60-70% of my self-healing via actual heals/absorbs would occur if I just sat there doing nothing, even more if we just did a DPS rotation that incidentally included T&C. Doing some test runs with a Blood DK had our self-healing/absorbs and damage taken about the same, the only difference is that most of my self-healing didn't require me to push any button. May just be semantics at this point, since using our AM is definitely still worth using despite the massive amount of passive survival going on in the background.

Basic Heroic level gear has us around the same level of RPS that we had at the end of T14. It's actually not that bad. It forces a choice between SD and FR every 60 Rage, and some fights actually swap which one you want at a given decision point which is cool.

Granted a lot of that is because you basically have to take SotF to get to that point, but with Pulverize being the way it is there aren't any other options.

[Grubjuice]

pulverize is two different problems: one is the incompatibility with an aoe-rotation problem, the other is the "overly strong constant mitigation compared to the other two talents" problem...

they have to be solved separately

[trifrost]

Regarding Pulverize/Aoe issue, maybe change Thrash to be a pure melee hit w/o a thrash dot but instead add a stack of lacerate dot stack? Then just Thrash x3 to get 3 stack lacerate dot and Pulverize?

[exochaft]

Basic Heroic level gear has us around the same level of RPS that we had at the end of T14. It's actually not that bad. It forces a choice between SD and FR every 60 Rage, and some fights actually swap which one you want at a given decision point which is cool.

Granted a lot of that is because you basically have to take SotF to get to that point, but with Pulverize being the way it is there aren't any other options.

That RPS level still has some issues, especially, as you said, taking SotF is pretty much mandatory to reach that in the initial progression with the combination of choices we have. While choosing between SD and FR is an interesting choice if the content demands it, SD can still fail to do anything. Previously having rage to do something else allowed us to actively do something about it, now it's almost purely passive outside of major CD's (although when T14 was current content, we were pretty much in the same place, at least we have T&C this time). The whole "tanks more reliant on healers" could still work with more RPS at our disposal and tuning our AM/passive mitigation around that, I just have issues with how passive we've become in an active mitigation world. Considering the weight of our secondaries and the scaling potential of said secondaries, I don't foresee RPS increasing very much throughout the expansion, either

Could just be the leveling of the playing field in terms of tanking, as in making tanking more accessible to all players of all skill levels. In MoP, the difference between a good bear and a bad bear was pretty significant. In WoD, the gap appears to shrink significantly, thanks to the increased passive survivability of Guardians and the general direction of tanking. Maybe I'm just an old, grumpy bear.

[Arielle]

SD can still fail to do anything.

The chance of this happening in Heroic T17 gear is ~2%. Or, not worth worrying about.

Talents are really where the skill differentiation comes out.

[Braindwen]

The chance of this happening in Heroic T17 gear is ~2%. Or, not worth worrying about.

Technically, if we assume 4 attacks in that window, it'll always be (.55)^4, or ~9.15%. Not all dodges are because of SD.

However, when thought of this way, you realize something about other tank's AM. It also has a chance of not doing anything. Shield Block, for example, could end up doing nothing because you were going to avoid/block every attack in that window anyway. In fact, as warriors gear up with more mastery/crit, Block will probably end up less likely to do something than SD .

[Jaydenkor]

But doesn't Shield block also add//increase Crit Block stuff as well?.. meaning .. unless the warrior parry/dodges every attack in the window, that *using* shieldblock will always accomplish something?

Technically, if we assume 4 attacks in that window, it'll always be (.55)^4, or ~9.15%. Not all dodges are because of SD.

However, when thought of this way, you realize something about other tank's AM. It also has a chance of not doing anything. Shield Block, for example, could end up doing nothing because you were going to avoid/block every attack in that window anyway. In fact, as warriors gear up with more mastery/crit, Block will probably end up less likely to do something than SD .

[Braindwen]

But doesn't Shield block also add//increase Crit Block stuff as well?.. meaning .. unless the warrior parry/dodges every attack in the window, that *using* shieldblock will always accomplish something?

Nope.

It's just adding block chance, and damage if they talent for that. For my warrior on beta, it's worth about 51.25% block chance for 6s. The 4pc bonus does make it add block value (and a massively OP amount of it at that), but that's a tier bonus and not part of the main spell.

While a warrior will never take a full hit with block up, there's a chance ((1-.5125)^4=5.65%) that that would have happened anyway, and casting block did nothing. It's really not that different from SD. In fact, 45% dodge is MASSIVELY more powerful than 51.25% block, so really SD is a much stronger ability.

[Sonnillon]

Maybe not the best place to ask, but what would be the best gems be? As I am fully crit-gemmed then by reading this topic it seems that crit is the absolute worst stat, so what should I choose as replacement? And does anyone know what happens to the hit/x-stat or exp/x-stat gems?

[uzumati]

Maybe not the best place to ask, but what would be the best gems be? As I am fully crit-gemmed then by reading this topic it seems that crit is the absolute worst stat, so what should I choose as replacement? And does anyone know what happens to the hit/x-stat or exp/x-stat gems?

For 6.0 just Stack as much Mastery/Haste you can get your paws on, Harroms(Multistrike) and Juggys(BA/Leech) trink work well also. Hit & Exp turn into Haste/Crit can remember which into which. I have been using Mastery, Haste/Mastery, Crit/Mastery to get socket bonuses, but should probably ignore bonuses on crit/mastery and just use mastery. This coming from raid testing on ptr.

For Wod, still waiting for sims, it looks like Mastery/Multistrike to take advantage of UM, but a Mastery/Versatility build is looking interesting.

[Sonnillon]

What about the socket bonus? Still go with 120+ agi for bonus if available? I just need to work implementing my spare feral gear with mastery/haste ... The horror of upgrading...

What gems should I get for SoO after patch (I have a sneaky feeling that the prices will go up (specially for my limited budget) lands) on my present char (link in sig)?

[Deleted]

pulverize is two different problems: one is the incompatibility with an aoe-rotation problem, the other is the "overly strong constant mitigation compared to the other two talents" problem...
they have to be solved separately

Why is incompatibility with aoe "rotation" a problem per sé? I find this is precisely what makes pulverize so interesting.
As for the second part, I don't think it's better than other tanks, only better than the other 2 options. (imho)

[Dreyen]

Why is incompatibility with aoe "rotation" a problem per sé? I find this is precisely what makes pulverize so interesting.
As for the second part, I don't think it's better than other tanks, only better than the other 2 options. (imho)

I don't see how pulverize destroying our aoe dps makes it interesting? You literally can't use aoe outside of once every 12secs with pulverize. It's especially stupid when the rest of the talent tier doesn't deal with damage at all. All pulverize should be is a 100% uptime damage reduction at the cost of a harder rotation.

Gladiator's resolve for warriors is 5% damage reduction, pulverize is easily 100% uptime as well and is 15% for a minor loss of lacerate ticks. I mean cross-class talent tier don'T have to be balanced though, but i fully expect bristling fur and GoE to be equal with pulverize, but the nerf from 20 to 15% DR being a part of the "tank squish" leads me to believe blizzard thinks pulverize is fine, and that they probably just intend it to be the baseline talent outside of fight gimmicks..

[Raugnaut]

What about the socket bonus? Still go with 120+ agi for bonus if available? I just need to work implementing my spare feral gear with mastery/haste ... The horror of upgrading...

What gems should I get for SoO after patch (I have a sneaky feeling that the prices will go up (specially for my limited budget) lands) on my present char (link in sig)?

Agility is almost entirely for dps, with some dodge granted. It DOES provide some amount of AM, but its such a small, small amount that its not worth much.

If Blizz doesn't improve crit/haste for mitigation, then you'll just go straight mastery and skip crit/haste.

[Arielle]

I don't see how pulverize destroying our aoe dps makes it interesting? You literally can't use aoe outside of once every 12secs with pulverize. It's especially stupid when the rest of the talent tier doesn't deal with damage at all. All pulverize should be is a 100% uptime damage reduction at the cost of a harder rotation.

Wat.

It's not like there are (at minimum) 4 GCDs other than what's necessary to maintain Pulverize in a 12s window or anything. You realize you can drop Mangles too right?

Agility is almost entirely for dps, with some dodge granted. It DOES provide some amount of AM, but its such a small, small amount that its not worth much.

Actually it's a lot better than you're giving it credit for. It's nowhere near as good as Mastery, no, but it's still pretty good.

[Dreyen]

Wat.

It's not like there are (at minimum) 4 GCDs other than what's necessary to maintain Pulverize in a 12s window or anything. You realize you can drop Mangles too right?

4 GCDs is already half of your GCDs, add maybe another GCD to make sure pulverize doesn't drop even for a few miliseconds, you end up with 3gcds to aoe instead of 8.

I might seem overly zealous about this, but I personally don't understand why you seem to want this to be in release? The entire talent tier is about survival. Mayeb if pulverize was the top single target, GoE was top aoe, and bristling fur was inbetween or something... but it's not the case. All I can figure out is that you don't really care or think it's not a big deal, but for a lot of people it will be a big deal, and it's just bad gaming philosophy to just say "oh well not that big of a deal".

As far as agi, is it really that good? We lost crit from agi, so it's just AP and dodge?

[Braindwen]

Another thing to keep in mind is the rage cost of using Pulverize. At 5 targets, using lacx3->pulverize loses about 30 rage compared to just doing thrash 4 times (depends on your crit chance, but not by much). This only gets bigger as the number of targets goes up. Considering that, the DPS loss, and the fact that Pulverize probably deserves a nerf, there's a fair chance we won't bother with Pulverize while AoEing. Our entire lvl 100 tier could be useless or near-useless when aoe-tanking.

Agility is AP, dodge, and nature SP*. It's the most AP you can get from a stat, so it's a solid stat to boost all of our heals/T&C absorbs, as well as dodge playing nice with SD. Even ignoring all that though, it's a fantastic DPS stat that we would not turn down.

*CW+DoC crit build . Perhaps not the most effective setup, especially with all the wasted GCDs healing, but interesting nonetheless.
http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/...aling&source=1 (ignore that dungeon tank dummy thing, 'twas the raid dummy).

[Raugnaut]

Agility is AP, dodge, and nature SP*. It's the most AP you can get from a stat, so it's a solid stat to boost all of our heals/T&C absorbs, as well as dodge playing nice with SD. Even ignoring all that though, it's a fantastic DPS stat that we would not turn down.

The amount will vary. Theoretically, Mastery will overtake Agility/BA for AP gainage, once you reach a certain amount of AP. With 2 tiers, and the inability to gem/enchant Agi, that is not likely to happen this expansion.