[Guardian] 7.2.5 Legion Guardian Guide by Pumps

[Emancptr]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQDae35fvuQ&t

Here's a guide for how I completed the Challenge Trait (43 Traits, 907 ilvl, Luffa/Legs). Didn't realize that you could use drums in the scenario so it's a little more detailed than Pumps guide . If you're over 905 ilvl with good dps legendaries (Bracer/Legs/Trinket) and traits (pawsitive outlook and trash relics) I would 100% recommend incarn+lust+burn P2 and completely ignore my video.

[coocoo]

Luffa this Luffa that...
8 legendaries & still havn't gotten that damned thing :|

Got the Archi tank trinket tonight and was trying it out a little bit on Broken Isle, and... I hardly ever saw it show up doing any damage or absorbs. How do I make the most out of it, or is it only useful on raid bosses or high m+ hard hitting targets?

[roi]

You need to take damage (well, technically not, rather deplete the shield) in order to deal damage, yeah. If you have 7 mil hp, the shield absorbs a maximum of 2.1 mil incoming damage within 10 seconds (meaning you'd have to take at least 210k damage per second in that period for full effectiveness) and then explode for 75% of the absorbed amount (at most 1.575 mil damage, resulting in 21k dps average when used on cooldown). These numbers will be a bit higher in reality because of versatility and traits and whatever else it scales with.

In short, no more pussy pulls, grab everything with hp bars in range at once while world questing.

[Soulwell]

Eh I feel like the challenge isn't really doable without thrash relics. You can't really do enough damage and end up being in p1 for way to long. Also pants, pants are fucking stupid for this shit since you can't really be on the boss enough.

[Pumpsm8]

Updated a few things in the gdoc and here, mainly my 7.2 artifact route for post 35 traits. Good luck on your challenges boys only a few hours left.

[roi]

Slightly random question about Scintillating Moonlight: Does it have to be your own moonfire?

[Deleted]

So I just completed the mage tower challenge without Luffas so it is possible. It was hard as f**k, took around 130 pulls. Ended up running sephuz+Eko for legendarys, Ticho leech trinket and a 911 ilvl. I ran GG instead of incarnation and then the standard setup with Blood Frenzy.

The video guide that was posted on tank challenge thread was very helpful I have to say. Oh and getting knocked off the platform at 1% and then watching dots+npcs killing the boss is not good for the nerves xD

[mmouser]

For my group, progression is over so I have no need for "tanky" trinkets. What would be the best trinkets for bear DPS? I'm currently using arcano crystal and Archimonde's Hatred Reborn, but one of these days I'm going to get the legs and so I'll need another trinket option to replace Archimondes.

M+ or raid trinkets.

[pay928]

For my group, progression is over so I have no need for "tanky" trinkets. What would be the best trinkets for bear DPS? I'm currently using arcano crystal and Archimonde's Hatred Reborn, but one of these days I'm going to get the legs and so I'll need another trinket option to replace Archimondes.

M+ or raid trinkets.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1527758211 has the 7.1.5 list. Don't think 7.2 did much to alter the list.

[Dreyen]

Mark of ursol getting removed in 7.2.5....

I feel like this is overkill. Sounds like just a reason to add a weakness to bears, it would've been just better if it was heavily nerfed... Hell, I would've been fine with a 10-15% magic DR ursol, which makes it not worth using over ironfur unless the magic damage is that threatning. I understand their point that bears stack stats that are good vs magic damage, but still.

I'd much rather have a world where all tanks have no real weaknesses but specialities. (aka: a world where every tank has tools to deal with every situation, but some tanks are better than others, or do it differently, rather than having no tools for a specific situation at all)

[Daan]

After 12 years they gave us a magical deff, only to remove it again after six months.

[Rioo]

That's such a Blizzard move, taking something that just needed some adjustments and nerfing it to the ground by removing it. Just like the invasions lol. I haven't really played much this patch but guess I should farm the new traits and get the solo challenge done before 7.2.5.

[Mandibleclaw]

Mark of ursol getting removed in 7.2.5....

I feel like this is overkill. Sounds like just a reason to add a weakness to bears, it would've been just better if it was heavily nerfed... Hell, I would've been fine with a 10-15% magic DR ursol, which makes it not worth using over ironfur unless the magic damage is that threatning. I understand their point that bears stack stats that are good vs magic damage, but still.

I'd much rather have a world where all tanks have no real weaknesses but specialities. (aka: a world where every tank has tools to deal with every situation, but some tanks are better than others, or do it differently, rather than having no tools for a specific situation at all)

I see people saying they will still be good, and yea FR will be more relevant than ever now, but doing such bullshit mid expansion is shit they must stop doing. Multi million company with devs that can't pull their heads out of their asses to make a good design since the beginning. When u come back to the game after a 1.5 years unsub, presented with a specific design for ur class, they do not just bait and pull, mid xpac.
This company will always be stupid, and if that goes through without an acceptable replacement im gonna quit it.

[Raiju]

After 12 years they gave us a magical deff, only to remove it again after six months.

Your hp is it's own comparable AM to most other specs magic AM.
@Mandibleclaw so you think we should just have the worst tank balance we've ever had (outside of outlying encounters were certain specs were unviable f.ex. bdk on paragons) for an entire expansion? If you were playing a dk dh or warrior you wouldn't even be close to accepting guardians state the entire expansion.

Mark of Ursol's removal does not suddenly just make you a shit magic tank.

[stormgust]

Your hp is it's own comparable AM to most other specs magic AM.

Just that AM works on al gear levels, whereas hp requires you first to acquire the gear. It's completely moronic design to balance guardians solely around the top players, completely ignoring how this change would affect lesser geared players.

Also, a 25% HP advantage does not compare to a 50% reduction when used for the semi-regular large magic attacks, e.g. Ymiron's dark slash, when our damage reduction CD's are not able to cover for the difference for every use of those abilities (i.e. that one dark slash on mythic15+ will just kill you).

[Nevcairiel]

Just that AM works on al gear levels, whereas hp requires you first to acquire the gear. It's completely moronic design to balance guardians solely around the top players, completely ignoring how this change would affect lesser geared players.

Gearing up is easier then ever, you can basically just grind your way to 880+ on the broken shore. That argument doesn't really hold much value anymore.

Also, a 25% HP advantage does not compare to a 50% reduction when used for the semi-regular large magic attacks, e.g. Ymiron's dark slash, when our damage reduction CD's are not able to cover for the difference for every use of those abilities (i.e. that one dark slash on mythic15+ will just kill you).

MoU is 30%, not 50%. Also, Guardians still have the most (and strongest) mitigation cooldowns among all other tanks.
People need to stop looking just at their own class, but also at the context of their entire role. Even as a Guardian (like myself) one has to accept that the tank balance just isn't very good right now, and balancing means reigning in the outliers on both spectrums - top and bottom (just buffing everyone would mean content also has to become harder, which serves noone much)

What do other tanks in M+15 do against the Dark Slash? Not everyone has permanent defensive uptime like we do right now.
Play with your cooldowns, use external healer cooldowns if you have to. Between 2 charges of SI, Barskin and RotS, there is plenty to go around. Personally I'm also happy to wear tanking trinkets instead of going DPS like everyone seems to, so if this warrants actually using some tanking trinkets again, thats a bonus too.

Now, they probably could've just nerfed MoU to some lower value (making it rather meaningless of a button) or put a CD on it (which would still have similar cheesing potential if we can just stack all these different CDs), but they chose to remove it entirely - which personally I don't mind that much.

Guardians will continue to be among the strongest tanks, MoU or not. And Blizzard has probably also learned not to use as much pure magic damage in Tomb.

[Calfura]

One thing people forget to remember is that we have Adpative Fur as well for fights like Krosus where its uptime can be quite large and giveing us a 10% magic DR topping with MoU pushing it over 30%. Having 2 magical DRs for fights like that is a bit overkill with our HP.

If people dont like the removal of MoU, it could be put on a long CD and thr Adpative Fur could be turned into a proc that reduces the CD on MoU by some small amount (DR being like 10% with 45 sec cd proc reducing it by like 2-5 seconds area meaning MoU could work like the prevoius Adaptive Fur but still reduce the uptime on our DR for magic but still allow to pop an low DR) but overall its blizzards choice to what happens to us. I personally like that we lose MoU. Just bumps up mastery a bit for prog

[Raiju]

Also, a 25% HP advantage does not compare to a 50% reduction when used for the semi-regular large magic attacks, e.g. Ymiron's dark slash, when our damage reduction CD's are not able to cover for the difference for every use of those abilities (i.e. that one dark slash on mythic15+ will just kill you).

Yeah those demon hunters are great at dealing with dark slash.

Hint: Their magic AM isn't frequent enough to cover it and is 'only' a 30% on a lower hp pool than yours.

[Deleted]

Yeah those demon hunters are great at dealing with dark slash.

Hint: Their magic AM isn't frequent enough to cover it and is 'only' a 30% on a lower hp pool than yours.

@Raiju, well that situation is a bit more complicated when you consider that DH's have 20% passive damage reduction while we have 6%, and they have a lot more consistent self healing and soul barrier. There is a lot of things that play into that and I think we can discuss that in its entirety if we really wanted to, but I don't see where it will lead us.

My problem with this change is the following: It reduces the skill ceiling as well as the skill floor of bear tanking. Resource management and planning more or less go out of the window if all you can use your rage for is increasing your armor. On fights like Augur or the caster dude in the arcway, you basically have no use for your tanking resource anymore, and I can't think of a tank that is in that situation on any fight. Active mitigation was meant to give you something to do rotationally on a fight which is good for your defense, and I don't see that in those situations anymore. I mean even warriors which were complaining about the heavy magic damage in NH can still use half of their kit for it (IP), same with DH. We now are basically a meat shield with def cd's for this type of fight.

I would have rather seen them make MoU 10% reduction and stackable, that way you would have to think about your rage usage, especially on fights that have mixed damage, or you could have made it that using MoU removes your IF and the other way around. That would make it necessary for you to invest more of your attention to the actual fight and damage patterns, while this version removes all of those thoughts. You just need to ... well .... maul those bosses I guess?

Also, if you think the changes I proposed are not enough, then you could also take away one stack of SI and FR and half the uptime of Barkskin. Taking away all AM from magic damage fights doesn't make any sense to me.

Edit: Giving MoU a 20s CD and taking it off the prolonging trait and Guardian of Elune (so that you can't reach as high uptimes) wouldn't have been to bad, but still leave me with the quite unsatisfactory situation that it basically makes no difference whether you spent half of the fight in cat form from a resource point of view, because you won't use most of it anyway.

[Raiju]

Yes, tanks have differences - this doesn't change the undeniable fact that bears are the best at taking big magical hits on live - despite it supposedly not being their niche.