Guardian as solo offspec at 110?

[darksaiko]

So I'm rolling resto durid as main and still dubious about which offspec I'll be leveling with and that I'll be using for solo content at 110.

In WoD I played holy pally with prot offspec and my experience has been that although prot is pretty nice for Tanaan dailies and AoEing as much as possible, retri still went quite a bit faster (I tried retri towards then end)...

I'm curious if there's people who have played multiple specs at 110 and among them Guardian and can give an idea how much the difference is for using Guardian compared to a DPS spec?

[Project 501D13R]

from what I've heard on the beta tanks have a lot more soloing power than dps specs now.
so while a dps spec will allow you to kill things faster while soloing, a tank spec will make for much easier soloing.
and since they buffed tank damage with 7.0 it's not even that much faster, in TW ques I've beaten every dps I've been paired with other than a fury warrior who had shadowmourne.

[Mallphas]

I would like to know this aswell. But as I haven't found anything about this Im rolling feral just to be shure.

[Captain Fizz]

Kitty normally allows you to 2~4 shot mobs.
Bear allows you to grab 8 mobs and kill them.

Not much difference in time, a lot easier if you accidentally pull additional mobs in bear tho.

[zurm]

So I'm rolling resto durid as main and still dubious about which offspec I'll be leveling with and that I'll be using for solo content at 110.

In WoD I played holy pally with prot offspec and my experience has been that although prot is pretty nice for Tanaan dailies and AoEing as much as possible, retri still went quite a bit faster (I tried retri towards then end)...

I'm curious if there's people who have played multiple specs at 110 and among them Guardian and can give an idea how much the difference is for using Guardian compared to a DPS spec?

I've done this a ton, and tested it at multiple gear levels with druid. The general rule is that it is easier to do stuff solo as a bear than either DPS spec. While the DPS specs will kill a single target a good bit faster than the bear, if they pull multiple mobs they get hurt pretty decently and you have lots of downtime. Their cleave comes at a big cost to single target. As a bear you should be pulling 3-5 mobs at a time and cleaving them down (since you have a ton of natural cleave built into your single target "rotation"); if you pull too many mobs, simply pop your artifact ability and watch them melt. Also as a bear you can enjoy virtually no downtime (especially with resto affinity, but you should be fine with any affinity choice). On the other hand, a heroic geared boomkin can 1-shot a mob with full moon crits or kill them with two starsurge crits. Ferals don't have quite the burst of boomkin, but they have decent control in the opener and you can go from mob to mob more quickly, let dots finish off ones below a certain threshold of health and keeping your HP up with free healing touches. I also find ferals handle AoE better than boomkin (rip starfall 2.0).

Still, in terms of sheer ability to finish a world quest, bear wins hands down. There are certain talents that really help: brambles, Lunar Beam, and Galactic Guardian. Brambles just gives you a solid passive mitigation that really makes typical mobs tickle you. Lunar beam is great for AoE damage, and healing in a pinch if you need it. Galactic guardian really helps your aoe damage, allowing you to focus on swipe+thrash, instead of worrying about moonfire dot uptime. Once you get the embrace the nightmare artifact trait (the one that buffs ROTS to make it also give you 25% leech, 25% more dmg, and cc immunity), you truly become invincible and do absurd damage for 10s.

[theburned]

Resto druids can solo basically anything on max lvl, levelling is the issue because of the gear disadvantage we have.

[darksaiko]

Resto druids can solo basically anything on max lvl, levelling is the issue because of the gear disadvantage we have.

soloing sure, but if you're doing world quests for months then it's kinda nice when you play the spec that does it the quickest

[spleen1015]

So as a Resto leveling Guardian, what is the best path for the first 13 traits in the Guardian artifact with the idea that you are going to level Guardian and use Guardian for world quests, etc?

[Mallphas]

I think that the right path leading to Embrace of the Nightmare is better suit to leveling, as is power ups our Swipe. The left path empower Mangle and Maul (wich is worthless) and is better suited to single target damage.