[PvE] Current state of Guardians?

[Arielle]

Did anyone see the Midwinter AMA on Reddit? They talked about their tanks a bit, agreed Paladins are in the best spot at the moment (Probably true) but then went on to say their Brewmaster also has an equally geared Druid but Druid tanks are bottom of the barrel so he went with the Brewmaster.

Any clue why he feels this way, he seems pretty adamant about it. I've felt Druid was pretty strong through this patch. Though I did feel squishier than my warrior until I got a little more gear. Purely anecdotal but I always blamed it on Second Wind because most of my experience was with dailies and LFR.

http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments...ld_ama/c9dfro9

Could be any number of things really. Most likely tied to our lack of an absorption mechanic that affects special attacks, and raid utility that scales with Vengeance. Both of which Paladins and Monks have in spades. Other tanks are also less reliant on their passive mitigation than we are (Armor), and thus less gear reliant. When you're doing crazy progression like these guys are, you bend quite a few rules to get the job done.

The important thing to remember is that none of this affects anyone outside of the top 1-2% of players, at the most. Probably even less than that.

[Deleted]

The important thing to remember is that none of this affects anyone outside of the top 1-2% of players, at the most. Probably even less than that.

It surely affects even at low skill raiding levels. If tank is easier/stronger/op, it helps lower skill level guilds progress more easily just same way as it helps higher progress guilds. I was tanking Tortos normal on my very casual guild's 25 men raid as we were lacking proper tanks and well, it was not nice experience. 600k+ Snapping Bites from tortos coming far too often through active mitigation (which is really subpar for guardians). Would been faceroll easy with paladin tank in same situation.

[Viromand]

Did anyone see the Midwinter AMA on Reddit? They talked about their tanks a bit, agreed Paladins are in the best spot at the moment (Probably true) but then went on to say their Brewmaster also has an equally geared Druid but Druid tanks are bottom of the barrel so he went with the Brewmaster.

Any clue why he feels this way, he seems pretty adamant about it. I've felt Druid was pretty strong through this patch. Though I did feel squishier than my warrior until I got a little more gear. Purely anecdotal but I always blamed it on Second Wind because most of my experience was with dailies and LFR.

http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments...ld_ama/c9dfro9

As far as i know (havent raided top100 since BC) you have to compare tanks 25 and 10 man too. Paragon said Pala Druid is the best Tank combo atm in 10m. In 25m, Monks seem to be really nice. I personally think all tanks are equal with same gear and same skill, you can tank anything with each tanks some tanks give you advantages on some fights some on others. pala are the best right now but its not like they are a 10 rest 3-4. its more like 10-9-8-8-7 on one fight 10-9-9-9-9 on another.

Its not about how much dmg they take its the utility they bring, thats why pala is the best right now. I never seen a good monk or know anything about them. but normaly it goes like this

Fights with debuffs or where the hands of pala are really stong pala is best.
Fights where you need burst heal or burst dps or a strong dps offtank that does dmg without vengeance you would want a druid.
DKs on fights like animus where they can solotank the greater add the whole fight. Or if you where you can use a fully staccked bloodshield very good.
High movement, aoetaunt, raidspeelreflect or stuff like that you want a warrior
dont know anything about monks tho.but they scale like hell

[Purpleisbetter]

Zen Meditation, Avent Harm as a raid mitigation CDs, huge DPS, chances to survive 1-shotting abilities, strong off healing (absorb + zen sphere / chi wave), very effective against magic damages; giant minus is how inadequate monks may be when undergearing content in 10m(been thru that personally).

If u don't push world first; monk is awesome, as much as the other tanks. Well at least in that department, blizzard did a fairly good job.

[kaiadam]

Did anyone see the Midwinter AMA on Reddit? They talked about their tanks a bit, agreed Paladins are in the best spot at the moment (Probably true) but then went on to say their Brewmaster also has an equally geared Druid but Druid tanks are bottom of the barrel so he went with the Brewmaster.

Any clue why he feels this way, he seems pretty adamant about it. I've felt Druid was pretty strong through this patch. Though I did feel squishier than my warrior until I got a little more gear. Purely anecdotal but I always blamed it on Second Wind because most of my experience was with dailies and LFR.

http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments...ld_ama/c9dfro9

I'm the one who posted that statement. Let me expand a bit. (For the record, my druid was actually ~15 ilvls higher and I was willing to take a significantly undergeared monk into a progression raid than a fully geared guardian.)

All tanks feel balanced around one thing and one thing only: a patchwerk boss that hits for a stream of autoattacks worth under 20% of your hp total with no special abilities. Druids perform admirably in this situation, but that is hardly a standard raid scenario.

Lets bring up an example that "feels fair" - Triple puncture. On horridon, triple puncture, especially after a double swipe, is always paired with a melee attack. Warriors: mitigate both abilities with a block, or completely absorb one with a barrier. Paladins: SoTR to prevent up to 60% of the damage of each. DK: Deathstrike during the double swipe to build up a shield to absorb one of them. Monk: stagger both of them, maybe a guard on top of that. Druid: a.) hope tooth and claw is up and apply it, or b.) if it's not up, savage defense and hope you dodge the melee. Normally, averaged over a long period of time, druids will only take marginally more damage than other tanks from this triple puncture + melee burst, but it is an absolute fact that if every other tank class used their active mitigation, they will 100% survive triple puncture + melee, whereas Druids, perfectly played, will simply die X% of the time from it and there's nothing you can do. Sure, you can say "use barkskin, last stand, shieldwall, etc." to survive it, but those are limited resources and sometimes you have to tank long enough to exhaust all of those + all healer externals. What then?

That was actually the fairest example I could think of this tier. What about some unfair ones? Lets see - Tortos (Snapping Bite). Druids are the only tanks in the game, who when played perfectly, cannot guarantee that they aren't put into bat hp leech range after a snapping bite. Ji-kun (talon rake) - this is even more unfair, not only does this ignore armor but you can't even dodge it. On heroic 25m, I'm actually scratching my head on how the hell I'm supposed to survive the 4th stack of talon rake (it happens) when I'll need to bring my druid in for alt raids. On one of our progression attempts, the other tank died and I literally solo-cooldowned up to 7 stacks on my monk, with the possibility of taking 2 more before I was completely out of tricks. A 7 stack talon rake does almost 3 million damage. How many 1-3 million attacks can a druid take, spaced 20 seconds apart? Then we come across Hard Glare from Durumu, which is again undodgeable so it negates savage defense, and on top of that reduces healing to spite frenzied regen as well. Or how about massive slam on dark animus? Tell me how a guardian can be expected to take a string of 400-600-800 explosive slams every 1.5 minutes at minimum and live through 4 minutes of phase 2 burn?

This isn't just restricted to that "top 1-2%" that was mentioned earlier either. An enraged Horridon can and will 1-round a guardian with a triple puncture + melee even on 10 normal. What about all those normal guilds stuck on that fight? Every raid with a non-guardian tank can use her to solo-tank Tortos for a boost in dps. If you have a guardian tank? Well, it's doable if your tank is significantly more skilled than the encounter requires, but how is that fair? Ji-kun? Monks can solo tank that in normal mode, no problem. Druids? hah, you're screwed if your offtank dies at 30%. The list goes on, but theme remains the same: druids aren't as heroic as any of the other tanks.

And while they bring good utility to a 10man, in a 25m setting the guardian doesn't really bring anything useful to the raid. Roars are covered, there's three other offspec tranqs and two offspec h-tides, of course there's 7 battle rezzes, and there's five other toons capable of providing a permanent 5% crit that doesn't go away when you cast. On the other hand, there's nothing that they bring which compares to a warrior's crit/mocking banner and shattering throw, or a paladin's battle healer/hand of protection/salvation/sacrifice, or a monk's raid-guards and avert harm.

TLDR: A guardian is the only tank, that when played perfectly, lives and dies at the hands of the RNG gods with very little utility. That is unacceptable from a high-end progression PoV so I ditched the bear and picked up the beer.

[exochaft]

I'd quote a lot of what kaiadam said, but there's really no point if I agree with it. Especially with this tier of boss fights, there are too many "tank killer" mechanics that bypass a Guardian's active mitigation toolkit in terms of damage prevention/mitigation, especially in a heroic 25man setting.

For a boss like heroic Horridon, I'm sure many tanks are quite familiar with Dire Call + Triple Horn + Auto attack, which is especially deadly near the end of the encounter... outside of pre-planned cooldowns, about all a Guardian can do is boost his/her EH so much to survive the damage (I personally increased mine to survive 3 auto-attacks when Horridon is enraged w/o dying, but the RNG of SD can still be a cruel mistress). For heroic Tortos, I actually have to DPS since other tank classes could deal with Snapping Bite much easier than me, and I didn't have much built-in CC to control the bats alone (especially for the stomps, other than speed... which is not so good when your strat is to have melee DPS them down). At least for heroic Ji-kun, glyphing SI is enough to have a cooldown for every Talon Rake and live if you have enough EH, but the main point is that other classes of tanks have active mitigation that can deal with these deadly mechanics while Guardians tend to have to use major tanking CDs in their place, since many bypass armor and cannot be avoided with confidence via SD. I recall I made a statement in some previous thread that I gear my 10man Guardian more towards DPS and my 25man Guardian more towards EH/survival, and these are some of the reasons why.

About the only time I really felt strong as a druid was when we hit enrage on Twin Consorts, and I managed to dodge every attack for over 30 seconds. While such situations can occur, that was purely RNG. Part of the reason Blizz gave druids superior armor was to combat the RNG inherent to SD, unfortunately the times when our survival really counts, our armor and/or SD cannot be relied upon. At the same time, I do enjoy our tanking model overall, and I mostly am irate at the constant appearance of boss mechanics that makes Guardian tanks fairly impotent compared to other tank classes.

[Arielle]

It surely affects even at low skill raiding levels. If tank is easier/stronger/op, it helps lower skill level guilds progress more easily just same way as it helps higher progress guilds. I was tanking Tortos normal on my very casual guild's 25 men raid as we were lacking proper tanks and well, it was not nice experience. 600k+ Snapping Bites from tortos coming far too often through active mitigation (which is really subpar for guardians). Would been faceroll easy with paladin tank in same situation.

Why would you ever put a Guardian on Tortos when we're so much better at the Bats anyway? There's always going to be individual mechanics where one tank is better than another. You could also say Guardians are OP on Council because we don't have to swap assuming proper play.

Druid: a.) hope tooth and claw is up and apply it, or b.) if it's not up, savage defense and hope you dodge the melee. Normally, averaged over a long period of time, druids will only take marginally more damage than other tanks from this triple puncture + melee burst, but it is an absolute fact that if every other tank class used their active mitigation, they will 100% survive triple puncture + melee, whereas Druids, perfectly played, will simply die X% of the time from it and there's nothing you can do. Sure, you can say "use barkskin, last stand, shieldwall, etc." to survive it, but those are limited resources and sometimes you have to tank long enough to exhaust all of those + all healer externals. What then?

The chance that you don't have a T&C up for this exact circumstance (assuming hit/exp caps, and 20% melee haste with raid buff which is completely reasonable) is about 8%, or 0.6 (chance it doesn't happen on melee) ^ 5 (avg # of melee swings between puncture).

Of those 8% chances, you won't dodge say 45% of the time, give or take depending on gear and procs. Down to 3.6%.

Give say an average encounter length of 12 minutes (grabbed from Something Wicked's last kill) and a triple puncture every 10 seconds,
you get 72 punctures (again give or take depending on dino movement). Of those, 3 will go through a Savage Defense and T&C. Plenty few for cooldown usage.

Obviously I'm not saying that there aren't other practical realities that wouldn't interfere and drive the number up. Since I haven't done heroic Horridon myself (and probably won't for a couple of weeks at least) I don't know if this math stands up to reality or not. All I'm saying is that I don't necessarily buy this argument from a purely mechanical point of view.

Lets see - Tortos (Snapping Bite). Druids are the only tanks in the game, who when played perfectly, cannot guarantee that they aren't put into bat hp leech range after a snapping bite.

I always thought the mechanics behind Snapping Bite were kind of odd. I assume there's a reason that a Guardian wouldn't just do Bats on heroic as well as normal.

Ji-kun (talon rake) - this is even more unfair, not only does this ignore armor but you can't even dodge it. On heroic 25m, I'm actually scratching my head on how the hell I'm supposed to survive the 4th stack of talon rake (it happens) when I'll need to bring my druid in for alt raids.

It doesn't ignore armor, unless that's something new on Heroic. As for surviving 4 of them in a row, I wish you luck with that one.

An enraged Horridon can and will 1-round a guardian with a triple puncture + melee even on 10 normal. What about all those normal guilds stuck on that fight?

Assuming the Guardian in question isn't using cooldowns for the Enrage, sure. But that's a silly assumption to make.

And while they bring good utility to a 10man, in a 25m setting the guardian doesn't really bring anything useful to the raid. Roars are covered, there's three other offspec tranqs and two offspec h-tides, of course there's 7 battle rezzes, and there's five other toons capable of providing a permanent 5% crit that doesn't go away when you cast. On the other hand, there's nothing that they bring which compares to a warrior's crit/mocking banner and shattering throw, or a paladin's battle healer/hand of protection/salvation/sacrifice, or a monk's raid-guards and avert harm.

This I do agree with, despite the silliness of your examples of normal modes in ToT.

I also agree with Exo's point in that our AM mechanics are useless for avoiding "tank killer" abilities, particularly ones that are instant damage and sail right through armor. We're really good at reducing damage from melee swings, but not things that will actually kill us. Frenzied Regen doesn't do us any good if we can't survive the hit in the first place.

[trifrost]

I also agree with Exo's point in that our AM mechanics are useless for avoiding "tank killer" abilities, particularly ones that are instant damage and sail right through armor. We're really good at reducing damage from melee swings, but not things that will actually kill us. Frenzied Regen doesn't do us any good if we can't survive the hit in the first place.

And that kinda miff me that there's nothing we can do to pre-empt those tank killer abilities. Things would have being totally different if Frenzied Regen is redesigned. Maybe split the FR heals into 50% shield and 50% into a 3 sec Hot or something. At least this way, we can do something to at least mitigate those tank killers......

[Zokudu]

As far as i know (havent raided top100 since BC) you have to compare tanks 25 and 10 man too. Paragon said Pala Druid is the best Tank combo atm in 10m.l

I find all this really interesting but I wanted to point something out. The Paragon interview that mentioned this also stated they used Sejta as an OT and he rarely tanks things. They're really using his OT DPS which we have covered is very good and one of the benefits of Druid tanks. He only taunts long enough to let the Paladin drop stacks of whatever. I.e using kaiadams example, Paladin takes 4 or 5 stacks of Talon Rake, Druid takes 2, then the paladin takes 5 again.

Hardly a real endorsement for the quality of Druid tanking. Also, kaiadam, I'm glad you saw my post. Really puts Druids in T15 into perspective.

[Mowse]

Is there a reason on 25man heroic Jikun to take more than 2 stacks of talon rake? We killed it on 10 man and neither tank did..I had survival ready for every second except the spawn of the fourth nest, and I just used ironbark. Really, even using SI for the second stack is overkill, but after a quill it can be nasty. Tanking is no where near the most difficult part of this fight - coordination between the nests and dps is the focus.

Maybe guardians aren't the best tanks in comparison to the available classes, but I really see no reason a guardian couldn't tank their way through heroic ToT. Even Horridon, yes, it was a pain in the ass, but I was still able to down him. A good cooldown rotation, modified strategy, and cool heads can get your way through the enrage. We just had our OT range taunt him after direcall so that his immediate melee didn't hit me and I could be healed back up to take the hits. Granted, we did not go back and try to kill him again the next week because FUCK that lol, but it is still very possible - and it wasn't because "oh god tanks are such a problem!" it was because as a 10 man not having a third decurse on the last door can be a huge pain in the ass, and our boomkin doesn't raid on Tuesday, so it's a pretty big waste of a night.

I agree with the overall sentiment of the post, and you obviously did what worked best for your situation, but it's really not as doom and gloom as you say. I do find it disappointing that there are mechanics that we simply are not best suited for (snapping bite being the most glaring one), but since I am not racing for any world titles, I find more accomplishment in being able to say I've cleared what I have as a "subpar" tank.

[kaiadam]

To clarify, yes, druids aren't so bad that you can't clear stuff with it. If prot paladins had a "tankiness rating" (henceforth referred to as TR) of 10/10, druids would probably be 7/10 on most fights. Dailies and heroics require a TR of say, 0.5, of course any idiot tank can do it. Lets say normal horridon requires a TR of 2. Then a bad/undergeared paladin who is only performing up to 20% of his potential ... hey he can still beat it, whereas the same skilled guardian can't.

Small disparity, but whatever, the druid who can't kill normal horridon complains his class is bad but gets talked down when he complains because he's, well, only performing up to 20% of his potential. Alright, whatever. Lets move to a random heroic boss that needs a TR of roughly 4 to down him. Dopey paladin comes along, playing at half his potential, laughably downs the boss. Same dopey guy on a druid can't, looks over his logs, but sure, there's room to improve. Lets say we're talking heroic Lei Shen here and suppose you need a TR of 6 to beat him. A decent paladin playing at 70% of his potential can handle him np. A decent druid playing at 70% of potential fails miserably. In fact, this druid needs to almost be playing at 90% of his potential, an almost humanly impossible level.

What if you want to try higher difficulty maneuvers that help you kill bosses faster? For example, to help out with the dps check on h-Lei Shen, my tank partner and I take the decapitate at point blank range, then proceed to tank the boss through the debuff to abuse vengeance. Can a druid do that? nope.

I mean, obviously, a well-played druid is capable of killing everything, but it's just harder for him than say, a paladin. Or more correctly, it's harder on the raid as it forces the raid to sometimes adopt suboptimal strategies, or use more of its external cds on the tank that could have been splashed on the raid.

Arielle, while I forfeit the point that a perfectly played guardian is capable of killing normal mode bosses without too much trouble, a.) that's sort of the design of normal mode b.) no one plays perfectly. I'd estimate that I'm playing perhaps at 60-70% of my class' potential on farm days and MAYBE 80% on my best attempts. I can find fault in my fraps at least once every 10 seconds or so even on my best performances. The vast majority of wow's population is playing at 20%-40%, if that. And right now, druids are in a bad enough state that players of those levels will struggle to do what their similarly skilled paladin brethren can with ease.

Also:
(Normal mode, druid, no cds used)
[01:57:29.873] Dought afflicted by Talon Rake (2) from Ji-Kun
[01:57:29.873] Ji-Kun Talon Rake Dought 550370

(Heroic mode, monk, no cds used.)
[00:39:29.815] Daught afflicted by Talon Rake (5) from Ji-Kun
[00:39:29.815] Ji-Kun Talon Rake Daught 392331 (A: 1527329)

[Mowse]

Fair enough. I feel like optimal and suboptimal strategies mean different things in the world of the top 10 and everyone else, however. So far, I've really seen no need to modify the basic strategy of any one fight just because of myself. Sure, if we had a prot pally, we could just cheese everything and go make a sandwich while the boss writes an apology for being created, but I really wonder if it's more of a balance issue, or if the fights just really favor a paladin's toolkit more for whatever reason.

I am definitely not arguing that bears are better than other classes for any particular fight. I just think people should be careful how they discuss an issue like tank viability, lest we return to the dark ages of Vanilla where bears are concerned.

Edit: Not to say you have single handedly made it so bears will never find a place in raiding again, lol. Your second post does better justice to your point, but your first post made me feel like I should just go delete my character right now

[SGTGrumblez]

550k seems a little high for Normal Ji Kun...


[10:18:16.846] Sgtgrumblez afflicted by Talon Rake (2) from Ji-Kun
[10:18:16.846] Ji-Kun Talon Rake Sgtgrumblez 377288

[10:20:15.524] Sgtgrumblez afflicted by Talon Rake (2) from Ji-Kun
[10:20:15.524] Ji-Kun Talon Rake Sgtgrumblez 326850 (A: 23859)


[10:21:58.164] Sgtgrumblez afflicted by Talon Rake (2) from Ji-Kun
[10:21:58.164] Ji-Kun Talon Rake Sgtgrumblez 336108


So yah 550k seems high...

[Arielle]

550k seems a little high for Normal Ji Kun...

No, it's about right for normal 25m.

[kaiadam]

It's slightly on the high end but definitely within variance. Both examples are from 25man, is your data 10 or 25?

[Themessiah]

Reasoning like that exemplified in the latter part of the thread is why recently I've been feral rather than guardian. As a guardian I'm benched for the most part this tier; other tanks bring more utility which isn't as covered elsewhere. Fortunately for me, the reroll wont be as bad if the savage roar roar buff does in fact go through.

[Viromand]

I find all this really interesting but I wanted to point something out. The Paragon interview that mentioned this also stated they used Sejta as an OT and he rarely tanks things. They're really using his OT DPS which we have covered is very good and one of the benefits of Druid tanks. He only taunts long enough to let the Paladin drop stacks of whatever. I.e using kaiadams example, Paladin takes 4 or 5 stacks of Talon Rake, Druid takes 2, then the paladin takes 5 again.

Hardly a real endorsement for the quality of Druid tanking. Also, kaiadam, I'm glad you saw my post. Really puts Druids in T15 into perspective.

Yes i know, but since most fights need two tanks its ok for me, If i use your example on jikun the reason you let paladin take so much stacks is cause he will get alot of vengeance and Paladins sclae best with vengeance. then a OT with strong dps is very good for that fight, maybe some druids dont like it that way but thats how it is.

And like what kaiadams said, his data is from 25m and I agree with him on almost every point he made, druid beeing the only class not beeing able to shield or mitigate a attack with a 100% chance.

Horridon HC is a tank fight i agree with that and druids suck there, but all in all they can tank every hc boss in this tier with another tank, if you are not a topraiding guild, caus a) you will likely have better gear due to the fact you will have farmed more bosses till you hc first kill or b) you will go to bosses that suits your raidcomp better than another one first. This doenst help with the fact that druids have some problems with mitigating some abilities, but for that you will almost always have a second tank to help you with.

I cant stress this out enought this is for 10m, 25m is different cause most bosses hit a bit harder some bosses even alot. best example is megeare pre nerf where they had more life and did the same dmg as in 25m, where it was the hardest boss for tanks cause the dmg was insane.
Druids need little button to make their heal a shield or maybe an extra to SD.

[Deleted]

All that talk about raiding... I'm afraid I won't be playing Bear anymore, sounds so hard...
Or is it easier than it sounds?

[Mowse]

All that talk about raiding... I'm afraid I won't be playing Bear anymore, sounds so hard...
Or is it easier than it sounds?

Don't let them scare you off. If you understand your class well enough, you can do any fight.

[Kiqjaq]

All that talk about raiding... I'm afraid I won't be playing Bear anymore, sounds so hard...
Or is it easier than it sounds?

Bear? Super easy in terms of rotation.
I haven't tried since 5.1, but I was able to bang out a macro that you can spam and it'll do the entire rotation on its own. After that you just use your cooldowns and manage active mitigation (you can add it to the macro, but that's quite suboptimal), along with other tank jobs.

Wouldn't recommend it for heroic raids though.