[Guardian] Legion Discussion

[Kaeth]

For what it's worth, Restoration Affinity with the 50% bear penalty may not be hugely impactful, but it double dips into Mastery. With the 2pcT18 bonus, it's not uncommon that I get a 27k healing tick from Ysera's Gift (when including the Nature's Guardian portion). In my current gear, with Mastery procs, Ysera's Gift ticks for 3.5% of pre-Mastery health.

It may still be fairly weak, but I'll take that over a 15% movement speed boost or an extremely situational range boost for picking up adds in a world where we're expected not to sit at 100% most of the time. If I'm having trouble picking up adds, and that 5 yards is really going to make a huge difference, I'll switch to Balance Affinity for that fight.

Regarding FR: I was still stuck in the mindset of using it as a maintenance heal even knowing full well that, post-patch, it's not up to the task. But one of the first things I did to test my fuzzy tank out on patch day was jump into a Kazzak PuG. Second Fel Breath ... keep Iron Fur up to trigger the set bonus, Mark of Ursol to mitigate the breath itself, and FR immediately after it hit ... most of the outside healing was overheal at that point. You can also always keep one charge on cooldown when you're not tanking a boss that uses more than one big hit in a row.

[Arlee]

So what I'm getting about which affinity is best seems like it depends on the situation and what you need the most in that situation. Which I guess is probably a good thing and what they are aiming for. Thanks for expanding on those for me though it's helped a bunch

[zurm]

Brambles is deceptively powerful. It works on EVERY hit, and it both absorbs and reflects that damage. It is actually pretty potent on lots of low hitting mobs. In dungeons it actually adds up to a pretty significant portion of your damage. That said, it's not really chosen for defensive reasons... it's the best (only, really) dps option in that tier. If you don't need more survivability, you go brambles.

Frenzied regen isn't the same ability it was. Every existing tank had it's self healing gutted except DKs (because that's their thing) and DHs (because they are new). You have to think about it totally differently. If the content you are doing is trivial... FR will be trivial. It's only really strong when you're getting absolutely trucked. Also, it gets MUCH better with artifact traits, and the legendary boots if you get them. Also make sure you pick Guardian of Elune as your talent and use FR wisely. there are a few WA's to track it's heal so you know the best time to hit it.

[Hobbs]

It's better at 110 more so with the Artifact perk and also with GoE talent, its a reaction based heal spell like taking a big hit from a boss one of their CD's. It scales on damage taken, and it does 6 ticks spread out over 3 seconds which is even better than the old version. For example, the old version would heal for say 600K in a single hit now you didn't need that much and lets say 200K of that was over healing. With the new version with the same 600K heal, it would do 6 ticks of 100K each over 3 seconds now while its ticking you take a hit again for 200K damage after 3 ticks of the 6 have gone so now the last 3 tick thru and heal you back up again and this time because that 600K heal was spread out over 3 seconds it no longer had 400K EH and 200K OH it was 600K EH (used 600K heal because it was easy to explain mathematically). Depending on what I'm tanking i usually keep 1 ready and 1 on CD, but for certain mechanics i will save them and use when needed.

I appreciate the rundown, but I know how the spell works. I mainly just wanted to see if anyone on beta could give a brief explanation as to its strength relative to saving the rage for more ironfurs or ursols, and the way people see it fitting into mythic dungeons and the raid tier. Thanks for the post, was still helpful. I should have been a bit more specific though. Sorry!

Never mind!! Yours plus the other posts covered what I was looking for. Clicked respond before reading all the posts. Thanks friends.

[Nevcairiel]

Regarding Roar:
Well the raid utility of being able to do raid wide movement increase (Synergy with Artifact) every minute is so OP. I can't see why anyone wouldn't take it. Especially since only bears can do it now afaik? I could be wrong but I am under the impression that other druids can't do it.

I prefer not to give up one of my key movement talents for some raid utility which gets barely used in a meaningful way.
In HFC the only fights we really used those with proper impact was Archimonde, at least in our raid, and as it would happen that fight could do without Wild Charge if it needed to.

Its not like Stampeding Roar ceases to exist without the talent, so it still sees some use.

Regarding Brambles:
What's your take on that? Is it right that it is absorbing pretty much nothing? Is it purely for more dps output instead of a damage reduction utility? Absorbing 1700 damage off a boss ability doing 1000 000 damage is basically pointless.

Brambles scale with attack power, so its not a fixed value, but sure, its not quite as strong against hard-hitting bosses.
But on the other hand, its really quite strong with a lot of adds or trash since it literally affects every single hit, say in Mythic+

Compared to the other talents in that row, its not like its really leaving you much better choices to pick even for raiding, though.

[Kujako]

Brambles scale with attack power, so its not a fixed value, but sure, its not quite as strong against hard-hitting bosses.
But on the other hand, its really quite strong with a lot of adds or trash since it literally affects every single hit, say in Mythic+

Compared to the other talents in that row, its not like its really leaving you much better choices to pick even for raiding, though.

While I liked the damage output of Brambles, I found the rage generation of Blood Frenzy to be the clear winner. Keeping in mind that it generates rage on each tick of the DoT on each target.

[Drib]

Brambles scale with attack power, so its not a fixed value, but sure, its not quite as strong against hard-hitting bosses.
But on the other hand, its really quite strong with a lot of adds or trash since it literally affects every single hit, say in Mythic+.

As I already mentioned befor, the advantage of Blood Frenzy is, that it scales with the number of targets, hence you take even less damage per target the more targets there are.

[Nevcairiel]

As I already mentioned befor, the advantage of Blood Frenzy is, that it scales with the number of targets, hence you take even less damage per target the more targets there are.

Blood Frenzy only generates rage, where is the less damage coming from?
I suppose if you convert that into Iron Fur then? Or am I missing something else?

[Kujako]

Blood Frenzy only generates rage, where is the less damage coming from?

Rage can be used to lower damage taken!

[Dreyen]

Feral nor Boomkin actually do more dps than bear for me. At least not considerably.
I'm dummying over 2 minutes on feral for 42k dps, moonkin 40k dps and guardian 41.

You have to run GG and lunar beam, so you get moonfires and an cd to use when out of energy. I actually did like 4-5k more dps than bearform as feral affinity... I think I capped at 45.7k dps?

[zurm]

You have to run GG and lunar beam, so you get moonfires and an cd to use when out of energy. I actually did like 4-5k more dps than bearform as feral affinity... I think I capped at 45.7k dps?

That's still such a small amount of extra dps for the cost of sacrificing up to 80 rage and losing a ton of defenses. With the removal of HOTW, I was really hoping affinities would do 30%+ dps over bearform to make it a viable way to do some extra DPS...

[Dreyen]

i guess affinities need to be in a grey zone, in a way it's like hotw but 100% uptime so the damage benefit can't be THAT high. HotW damage contribution was insane too, most likely more than blizz wanted.

[Braindwen]

That's still such a small amount of extra dps for the cost of sacrificing up to 80 rage and losing a ton of defenses. With the removal of HOTW, I was really hoping affinities would do 30%+ dps over bearform to make it a viable way to do some extra DPS...

As I mentioned earlier, my bear DPS is ~27k, and my bearcat DPS is ~37k. That *is* a 30%+ DPS increase from using feral affinity (on live, at least). A lot of the low numbers people are getting are from trying to stay in cat form the whole time; even if you're not currently tanking, you need to fill the dead time where you're just regenning energy with bear attacks.

[zurm]

even if you're not currently tanking, you need to fill the dead time where you're just regenning energy with bear attacks.

While that's a fair point, that's also AIDS level gameplay, on the order of seal twisting for ret pallies back in the day. The form itself should inherently be more DPS, and then some safeguard put in place to prevent the exact gameplay you just described (energy regen pauses for non feral druids when out of catform might be a good start).

[Braindwen]

While that's a fair point, that's also AIDS level gameplay, on the order of seal twisting for ret pallies back in the day. The form itself should inherently be more DPS, and then some safeguard put in place to prevent the exact gameplay you just described (energy regen pauses for non feral druids when out of catform might be a good start).

Fair enough, but personally I don't have a problem using shapeshifts to DPS, and since the rotation has no meaningful randomness to it, it's actually not at all hard to do. Honestly, I find it a lot of fun using the simple bear phases to plan ahead to what to do in cat form.

Plus, you're never going to pull near the 13 SSPM (shapeshifts per minute) of the full rotation in a raid. Just imagine hopping out to cat form for 5s whenever you taunt-swap. It's a far more practical way of getting damage out of the talent than having to spend extended periods in cat.

[Dreyen]

As I mentioned earlier, my bear DPS is ~27k, and my bearcat DPS is ~37k. That *is* a 30%+ DPS increase from using feral affinity (on live, at least). A lot of the low numbers people are getting are from trying to stay in cat form the whole time; even if you're not currently tanking, you need to fill the dead time where you're just regenning energy with bear attacks.

What are you doing for your rotation? Going back to bear while energy fills up? I gotta agree that sounds like aids gameplay, i thought catform autoattack damage couldve been enough to outdo the bearform advantage since it's 20% of my cat damage. using a rip>rip>fb rotation for my finishers

Edit: NM just tested it, 40k dps as bear, 42-43k as cat... and 52k dps stance dancing between bear and cat. Not the best gameplay but it's definitely worth it for a 30% dps increase.

[Hobbs]

Pretty pumped if bearcat remains viable. Bearcat in cata was loads of fun, although it would be nice to not have to shapeshift every few seconds. Still would be cool if we had to, just not quite as cool imo.

[Braindwen]

What are you doing for your rotation?

You've probably got it mostly down anyway, but for others:

Cat form: Standard priority, maintain bleeds, fill with shred, bite if rip has plenty of time left (I'm also finding about 2 rips per bite). If you'd need to wait for more than about half a second, shift to bear. This is more about knowing your haste/energy regen and what abilities you can get away with, rather than reacting on the fly.

Bear form: Spam maul, thrash then mangle then cat form. Thrash first since you'll only get one of each anyway, it stacks up the bleed/R&T earlier, and gore procs actually do matter for getting enough rage for a 2nd maul.


Thinking about it a bit more, probably the best way to boost up cat DPS without helping bearcat is to crank up feral affinity's energy regen. The reason bearcat works out so nicely right now is that the time you spend in bear generates nearly exactly 100 energy. Boosting up energy regen would help cat with its downtime issues, while mostly resulting in wasted energy for a bearcat rotation. You could also boost up auto-attacks, and shift power from the bleeds to shred so we don't get as huge a benefit from a few very efficient globals.
Still, as long as R&T works in cat form, I think you'd be pretty hard-pressed to make bear thrash not worth using... but rolling bear thrash while DPSing in cat form is actually nothing new to us. The whole reason I noticed this rotation was because I was used to WoD where lacerate and bear thrash were worth keeping up during HotW (granted this was more of a soloing thing, and if you were just bursting you usually ignored bleeds).

Or they might not do anything with it, since it's not likely to be a huge issue. The rotation will probably be much less terrible in a raid where there's actually stuff to tank, and awkward enough not to be worth much elsewhere.

Or this could randomly end up being viable, and the huge increase to max energy makes the whole thing so much nicer: Chatoyant Signet note: Not at all likely.

Or they could just nerf the hell out of feral affinity so they don't have to deal with it. That's a possibility too . We shall see.

[rufflezau]

Im ok with the bear changes.

Although I can't just spam swipe the huge HP bar I missed.

Logging on with 750k hp after having 450k was pretty sweet.

I do look a bit skinny now but fully pumped to see rock bears!!! XD

[dexx]

As I mentioned earlier, my bear DPS is ~27k, and my bearcat DPS is ~37k.

I'd like to hear how your rotation goes. When i try shifting in and out of cat to maximize dps, i do maybe 10% more than pure bear.

Cat form: Standard priority, maintain bleeds, fill with shred, bite if rip has plenty of time left (I'm also finding about 2 rips per bite). If you'd need to wait for more than about half a second, shift to bear. This is more about knowing your haste/energy regen and what abilities you can get away with, rather than reacting on the fly.

Bear form: Spam maul, thrash then mangle then cat form. Thrash first since you'll only get one of each anyway, it stacks up the bleed/R&T earlier, and gore procs actually do matter for getting enough rage for a 2nd maul.

Thats pretty much what i'm doing. I must not be timing it just right.