[Guardian] 7.2.5 Legion Guardian Guide by Pumps

[Dahti]

You can't, just gotta look for a path or walk through. I already skip Displacer on that fight (I like GR so MC'ed can book it after they break), it's not a huge deal unless melee are screwing you over and dropping rot on you.

My melee do this on normal/heroic, can't wait to get into mythic!

[CenariusTheForestLord]

Just checked on PTR, baseline Incap Roar still exists, talent makes it into a fear that doesn't always break on damage. Might have a chance to break like all fears are, and the mobs do run away like a normal fear, but don't seem to run far if you have the Thrash slow on them. Seems very situational, glad we didn't lose baseline Incap, personally not sad to see Displacer go as I never used it but I can understand why some are. Surv Instincts still has 2 charges as expected.



Eh, I would honestly rather have GG baseline than Guttural Roars, as someone who primarily does Mythic+ and doesn't raid I almost never even take GR. But GG to me is required for the spec to feel complete, even in situations where Incarn is technically better I hate taking it because the spec feels wonky without GG procs.

Also, new Guardian Legendary looks pretty nice to me, 40 rage on use and 40 rage over 4 seconds when using Barkskin, looks really nice for getting quick rage on the pull to get AM up without having to take something like Bristling Fur.

I use GR in every single M+. 60% movement speed between almost every trashpack is a huge deal. Masspulling without it is impossible. There's no choice in the tree whatsoever.

[Soulwell]

Anything on pulverize? Wondering if that will be the go to talent, I really miss it's playstyle.

[Daan]

With 7.1.5, Pulverize will be the to-go talent I heard.

[Dreyen]

pulverize will be the single target talent: its the highest dps for ST. It also has a much better ramp-up than rend and tear. rend and tear is much better for aoe however.

[MCDoom]

Did the extra 1% extra DR really make it worth picking up now or am I missing something?

[dcc626]

Did the extra 1% extra DR really make it worth picking up now or am I missing something?

it also hits like a truck.

[Dreyen]

it's more than that. R&T is 6%, pulverise is 9%. R&T is 10% with the legendary legs, but it takes a long time to ramp-up and it takes a legendary slot just to have 1% more.. that said it is MUCH better for aoe damage while pulverize is much better for single target damage. Survival wise i think pulverise is the winner since its stupid to use a legendary only for 1% DR when you can use other great legendaries like prydaz or boots.

[MCDoom]

it's more than that. R&T is 6%, pulverise is 9%. R&T is 10% with the legendary legs, but it takes a long time to ramp-up and it takes a legendary slot just to have 1% more.. that said it is MUCH better for aoe damage while pulverize is much better for single target damage. Survival wise i think pulverise is the winner since its stupid to use a legendary only for 1% DR when you can use other great legendaries like prydaz or boots.

This is true, it's just in the past pulverize was was rarely mentioned as a talent worth picking up and just now people are talking about it being the go to talent for single target. Looks like we'll finally be getting some choice now with talents when it comes to st/aoe now that SoTF is getting a buff. I assume it will be R&T/GG for AoE and pulverize/SoTF for ST now?

[Dreyen]

its barely mentionned becuase it wasnt worth it. I think ST wise it was an upgrade over rend and tear, but it was very insgnificant, came with a more complex playstyle and hurt your aoe dps a lot since you swipe less. The buff doubles it's damage and increases it's DR by 1 so it's much better. I still think R&T will be my go-to but for any ST focused fight ill def pick up pulverize.

[Mandibleclaw]

To be honest I can't play without charge. And as long as charge is not baseline I will always pick charge over Gutteral Roar, that's why I feel that row has an actual choice since legion since I switch between the two, although 70% of my time is Wild Charge.

I also like the playstyle of GG, so even if it's not the 100% the way to go and the other options are now actually viable I don't actually think I'd be switching it.

I always liked pulverize so I'm looking forward to try it.

[Spepijn]

Like many people here, I use Pawn to see what piece of gear is best for me. To get my stat weights I use the sim from Ask Mr. Robot. Until now it has always given me the usual order of stats, Vers>=Mastery>Haste>Crit>Agi, but last night something different came out the simulation. It was telling me Mastery>>Haste>Vers>Agi>Crit. So thinking I did something wrong I redid the simulation today and it gave me the same order:
Mastery: 1.07
Haste: 0.43
Versatility: 0.34
Agility: 0.27
Crit: 0.21

www . askmrrobot.com/wow/simulator/report/590382b0dbf4423d822e3a828e0369de = Link to the simulation results
imgur . com/a/XMlgo = Imgur of results
eu.battle . net/wow/en/character/draenor/Caveh/simple= Armory

So I am not sure what is going on here and some advice would be nice.

[Zoopercat]

@Spepijn - I'm from Ask Mr. Robot. I'm not sure what would have caused that change, other than natural differences in the sim, like different talents, or you got a different legendary perhaps?

One thing to note, we have some updates coming to our NPS measurement tomorrow and that will likely change some stats. Self healing is getting a bigger piece of the pie, for example, and we also have another stat that tracks death chance more closely (which is what gives a weight to stamina). Just a fair warning

In case you aren't familiar with our tanking sims: they are new. Tested a lot, but still being fine-tuned. The reason is that we built a new type of tanking simulator that we (as players) haven't had before for theorycrafting. In the past, the best model gave tanks infinite health and had a boss wailing on them. Pretty simple. Our simulator uses your real health pool, gives you a team of healers that are scripted to act in a typical way, and a real boss with real damage intervals (Ursoc for now, Mythic+ coming in a week), and you can die in the sim.

Because of this, the old methods of measuring tankiness weren't quite right - they were built for the other type of sims. So we came up with NPS and released a blog post on it a couple weeks ago to get feedback. And now we have some updates after all of that feedback - coming tomorrow I believe.

[moobear]

Thanks, this is helpful info Zoopercat! One of the most challenging aspect for guardians is balancing dps items (mainly necks/rings/trinkets) when mitigation becomes negligible. Are there any upcoming updates which will help us analyze this further? I realize a lot of this is fight dependent; however, it would be great to analyze not only "tanking" simulators, but also factor in damage as well. Will these future updates incorporate this at all? Can we account for this somehow within the current application, and if so, how?

Thanks for the great work, love the site!

[Spepijn]

Thanks for the reply Zoopercat. The sims where done with the same talents and please don't talk about legendarys. I think I am one of the few that doesn't have a legendary yet (no, Sephuz's Secret does not count!)
Anyhow, I'll try again after the update and see what it tells me then.
Keep up the good work!

[Zoopercat]

@moobear - we've run some tests on tank damage and found (very initially) that stats aren't affecting damage THAT much. But this is preliminary and we have more testing to do before we make decisions about it. But lets assume stats do affect tank DPS a lot, then that is something we'll try to factor in. I could see something like... if your chance to die is 0 (or near 0), then focus on DPS.
@Spepijn - Ahh legendaries, I feel your pain. Yeah if all of the settings were the same, I can't think of anything that would have changed it. I believe you that it changed! But we haven't done a site update in the past week that would have changed it. If you have a couple of past reports you can share with the other weights, that might help me dig into it, just to satisfy my curiosity.

[Spepijn]

Still under 10 posts so can't PM Zoopercat so posting it here.

www askmrrobot.com/wow/simulator/report/a9ab6b1ac09749679a9f15e9c337fb53 is from 14 nov
www askmrrobot.com/wow/simulator/report/590382b0dbf4423d822e3a828e0369de is from 1 dec
The only diff I see is that I got 10 more artifact traits. Have fun satisfying you curiosity

[trifrost]

it's more than that. R&T is 6%, pulverise is 9%. R&T is 10% with the legendary legs, but it takes a long time to ramp-up and it takes a legendary slot just to have 1% more.. that said it is MUCH better for aoe damage while pulverize is much better for single target damage. Survival wise i think pulverise is the winner since its stupid to use a legendary only for 1% DR when you can use other great legendaries like prydaz or boots.

So in term of maximize dps on ST fight, do we just spam pulverize everytime we have 2 stack thrash or just enough pulverize usage to just keep the buff rolling?

[Deleted]

classically the best way of using it always was: Get 3 stacks, use pulv the gcd before thrash comes of cd, repeat. This keeps the dots as high as possible without wasting pulv uses. And if you know something dies soon, take all the stacks off that you can for some additional burst. This obviously only applies if you are not in need of the damage reduction that very moment, so it helps to go second on the boss.

[Dreyen]

So in term of maximize dps on ST fight, do we just spam pulverize everytime we have 2 stack thrash or just enough pulverize usage to just keep the buff rolling?

I figure the optimal way is to have a 5stack thrash, replace a swipe with pulverize and thrash immediately after so you always have 4 stacks. Maybe I'm wrong and it doesn't matter though.