Bear and World Quests

[Mallphas]

A call to bears.
I main Restoration and I've been doing world quests as Guardian since I leveled up with the spec. Recently I've tried to make them faster by going Feral. It was a wreck...
Since then, I was wondering about the stats priorities for maximizing bear damage output, since little mitigation is required for soloing open world content.

I would like to discuss the stats priorities aswell as possible weights because in this expasion I felt the necessity to keep multiple sets of gear in order to maximize efficiency, as I tank some mythics from time to time.

[Rhaxus]

Haste/Mastery seems to be the smartest choice if i recall the guardian discussion thread correctly

[Seditian]

Haste/Mastery seems to be the smartest choice if i recall the guardian discussion thread correctly

Versatility > Mastery > Haste when it comes to survivability. If you're focusing purely on world quests, I'd say Versatility = Haste > Crit/Mastery.

[CenariusTheForestLord]

Versatility > Mastery > Haste when it comes to survivability. If you're focusing purely on world quests, I'd say Versatility = Haste > Crit/Mastery.

I'm going to change a few statements here.
Purely dps wise Crit > Haste > Vers > Mastery.
This is because of feral affinity and dots being awesome with crit.
If you use balance affinity for bigger thrash radius, haste and vers are still really good and crit is a close third (it loses some value when you're not dotting)

Overall I'd have to say Seditian is right though. Vers will give you more damage and decent mitigation so you don't die. Haste is a close second since it does the same, more rage = more survivability, more hits = more dps.

[Wolfheart9]

If you're also prepping for 7.1, you'll probably want crit/mastery similar to cat. We'll be getting a percentage of dodge off of our crit, so it'l be two fold. If that stays. Vers is also solid too as others have said.

[CenariusTheForestLord]

If you're also prepping for 7.1, you'll probably want crit/mastery similar to cat. We'll be getting a percentage of dodge off of our crit, so it'l be two fold. If that stays. Vers is also solid too as others have said.

Crit already gives us dodge. It just was never baked into a tooltip because it was a late beta addition. (Going to doublecheck now though, getting uncertain)

[Mallphas]

I'm going to change a few statements here.
Purely dps wise Crit > Haste > Vers > Mastery.
This is because of feral affinity and dots being awesome with crit.
If you use balance affinity for bigger thrash radius, haste and vers are still really good and crit is a close third (it loses some value when you're not dotting)

Overall I'd have to say Seditian is right though. Vers will give you more damage and decent mitigation so you don't die. Haste is a close second since it does the same, more rage = more survivability, more hits = more dps.

I've never done the cat weaving before, Ill try that now with that priority and see how it goes.

If you're also prepping for 7.1, you'll probably want crit/mastery similar to cat. We'll be getting a percentage of dodge off of our crit, so it'l be two fold. If that stays. Vers is also solid too as others have said.

That is very usefull information. I'll get that in the mix asweel.

[syraphx]

Wait til you do the withered training mission, guardian is the ez mode (like any other tank). You can now pull everything in the room no problem.
As long as you interupt the elementals, it's retarded easy.

[Mallphas]

Wait til you do the withered training mission, guardian is the ez mode (like any other tank). You can now pull everything in the room no problem.
As long as you interupt the elementals, it's retarded easy.

Already got all chests when I got into the scenario yesterday. Just went facellroll to the end and finished with about 550 points. Bear is awsome.

[Sounder]

One thing to keep in mind is that if you finish a combat near full health, you could have pulled more at once and killed it all in about the same time. If you push that to a comfortable limit, then your survival stats are contributing to your kills per time.

(This is re: world quests. Withered training rewards being conservative until you know exactly what you can do without paying too much in army deaths.)

[Arlee]

If you use balance affinity for bigger thrash radius, haste and vers are still really good and crit is a close third (it loses some value when you're not dotting)

Huh, somehow I never realized balance affinity would give me a larger thrash radius >< I assumed it only affected Moonfire and the spells we'd get from the affinity.

[Etamalgren]

One thing to keep in mind is that if you finish a combat near full health, you could have pulled more at once and killed it all in about the same time. If you push that to a comfortable limit, then your survival stats are contributing to your kills per time.

(This is re: world quests. Withered training rewards being conservative until you know exactly what you can do without paying too much in army deaths.)

Ideally, you'd want to finish combat around 35% health or so, as long as you have the order hall 4 set. My health tends to linger around there most of the time while I'm pulling large groups of mobs, with frenzied regen and Rage of the Sleeper helping to keep me alive (along with 4% leech, but it's mostly white noise with over 3.5 million health taking 20k ticks)

The damage mitigation that Brambles does starts to get stupid the more damage reduction you have. With both the order hall <35% HP buff and SI, brambles makes you practically invincible to melee attacks.

Also, if you're going to use the guardian artifact for open world farming, go for Embrace of Nightmare's upgrade to Rage of the Sleeper -- It'll turn you into a nigh-unstoppable killing machine in AoE packs for 10s every 90s.

[Nevcairiel]

Crit already gives us dodge. It just was never baked into a tooltip because it was a late beta addition. (Going to doublecheck now though, getting uncertain)

You are correct, this has been available in 7.0 ever since it went to live. 7.1 just adds a new passive that explicitly says so, but the effect is not new. Crit is still garbage for defensive purposes afterwards, either way.

[Keenclaw]

Go bear!

Get Embrace of the Nightmare trait.
Pull all mobs.
Click on Rage of the Sleeper.
And yell "BREAK YOURSELVES UPON MY BODY!"

[Iry]

Get Embrace of the Nightmare trait.
Pull all mobs.
Click on Rage of the Sleeper.
And yell "BREAK YOURSELVES UPON MY BODY!"

Rage of the Sleeper(EotN) + Lunar Beam + Remulos.
Rares and 20+ mobs of enemies just melt.

[Mallphas]

Ideally, you'd want to finish combat around 35% health or so, as long as you have the order hall 4 set. My health tends to linger around there most of the time while I'm pulling large groups of mobs, with frenzied regen and Rage of the Sleeper helping to keep me alive (along with 4% leech, but it's mostly white noise with over 3.5 million health taking 20k ticks)

The damage mitigation that Brambles does starts to get stupid the more damage reduction you have. With both the order hall <35% HP buff and SI, brambles makes you practically invincible to melee attacks.

Also, if you're going to use the guardian artifact for open world farming, go for Embrace of Nightmare's upgrade to Rage of the Sleeper -- It'll turn you into a nigh-unstoppable killing machine in AoE packs for 10s every 90s.

Is it worth to use the class hall set for world quests? They not always have the best stat. I currently own the 6 pieces that gives me 500 agility.

[huth]

Huh, somehow I never realized balance affinity would give me a larger thrash radius >< I assumed it only affected Moonfire and the spells we'd get from the affinity.

It affects everything, including autoattack. You can basically melee stuff from outside melee range.

Rage of the Sleeper(EotN) + Lunar Beam + Remulos.
Rares and 20+ mobs of enemies just melt.

I wish Remulos scaled properly with Int... he's way stronger as Guardian than as Balance/Resto.(i.e. 2.5-3x the damage).

[Etamalgren]

Is it worth to use the class hall set for world quests? They not always have the best stat. I currently own the 6 pieces that gives me 500 agility.

The two set is kinda meh, but the four set is GOD MODE. The 50% damage reduction from the order hall's 4 set has 100% uptime while you're below 35% health, so it effectively doubles your self-healing and absorbs at critical health. To put it in perspective: I can go into the elite-infested part of Suramar City, pull 15-20 mobs into a building, and mow all of them down. It only gets more ridiculous with the 50% health buff from giving 5 Nightborne wretches 5 ancient mana each.