1. #1
    The Patient Wrestler10307's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jun 2010
    Location
    Dallas, Texas
    Posts
    323

    [Guardian] Thoughts on PTR / Tanking in 5.4

    Since we have a lack of bear threads here lately, I thought I'd try to start something regarding the buff we're getting in terms of health in the patch, as well as thoughts on the PTR and tanking SoO.

    I finally got my character transferred to the PTR to happily see I gained nearly 80k health in bear form at item level 522. If I went straight stam gems I would gain another ~30k.

    Does anyone think this buff might affect how you see stat priorities since we're gaining a tad bit of survivability?

    Also, any bear who has had a chance to test the new raid... what do you think of it in terms of tanking?
    Desktop: Antec Twelve-Hundred v3| ASUS VH236H | i5-3570k @ 4.5 | MSI 660ti PE | AsRock z77 Extreme4 | 16GB G.Skill 1866 | Havik 140 | Vertex 3 90gb Boot ssd | Kingston 240gb ssd | 620w Antec | Logitech G500, G510, G930
    Laptop: ASUS U36JC-B2B Tablet: HP Touchpad 16gb | Asus Infinity 32gb
    Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T3i with 18-55mm IS & 75-300mm
    Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...en/Cc/advanced

  2. #2
    There's actually been quite a bit of previous discussion concerning Guardians on the PTR, just most of it is pushed back a page or two because we haven't had any changes to Guardians in quite a few builds.

    Stat priorities will still be a person's choice and dependent upon the raid size and progression, but nothing will really change from what's on live. It's easier to go full crit until soft crit cap with the buffs to Guardians on the PTR independent of a person's progression and raid's skill.

    I've finally tanked every encounter at least once (Blackfuse has been elusive to me!) on varying difficulties, and Guardians should be just fine. Our innate EH coupled with the Barkskin cooldown being 30 seconds and the tanking LMG are really good, and there are quite a few fights that favor avoidance-based active mitigation well over DR-based ones. It's been a while since a co-tank has complained that I'm taking too long to get a determined stack of a debuff for a tank swap.

    It's very easy to arbitrarily say that we're in a better place on the PTR than live since we've seen nothing but buffs for the most part. That being said, there's plenty of times when we'll be thankful for the EH-boosting changes, as it does put much more control over our survivability in our hands.
    “Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.”
    “It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.”
    ― Alexis de Tocqueville

  3. #3
    Since we have a lack of bear threads here lately,
    WEll there are some threads on bears but the main problem concerning threads for druid is, all that has been done is pretty baseline and I guess all bears are happy.
    There are some discussion on trinkets and 4piece in the sticky guardian thread from arielle and a trinket thread from exo.

    The stats priority will be just as it is now, if you feel like you need more Stamina gem it, maybe gem crit/stam. If you feel like you dont need it just gem crit but dont forget you will almost always have alteast one Stamina trinket cause the CDR trinket is a must have.

    I hope this will answer some of your questions:

    Viabillity: So far Druids are just as viable as all the other tanks, and with some bosses (not as many as during first ptr testing) favouring heavy avoidance tanks. The only problem is see so far is that to be viable dps wise you would have to be crit gemmed, otherwise all the other tanks will do more dps than a bear. Also BrM monk dps got nerfed, and palas a bit too so all tanks will be about the same.

    Trinkets: The CDR trinket will be used on every progress encounter it is just too strong. The other trinkets are situational, having bloodlust or renatakis from current content will also help, but there are alot of deff trinkets to choose from, depending on bossmechanics you will change the second trinket slot alot (assuming you have enough to do so).

    Talents: There has been alot of changes to our talents that really improve our gameplay, especially the lvl90 talents got buffed, all three are viable and I guess will be switched alot aswell. With the SotF buff you will not have to take incarnation anymore, it still does more dps not sure about rps over 3min, but its closer now.

    SoO: there will always be encounters that prefer shuffle or sotr, still with our new buffs to physical our physical reduction will be close to a palas with sotr up. Barkskin uptime will help us alot on high special atack fights like nazgrim. Also the changes to the LMG will help alot. Cloaks is still a matter of your own opinion alot love it aklot hate the tankrpocc, so that completely up to you it will not be totally gamebreaking.

  4. #4
    Immortal Raugnaut's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    Frogspoison#1419 Battletag
    Posts
    7,134
    Quote Originally Posted by Wrestler10307 View Post
    Since we have a lack of bear threads here lately, I thought I'd try to start something regarding the buff we're getting in terms of health in the patch, as well as thoughts on the PTR and tanking SoO.

    I finally got my character transferred to the PTR to happily see I gained nearly 80k health in bear form at item level 522. If I went straight stam gems I would gain another ~30k.

    Does anyone think this buff might affect how you see stat priorities since we're gaining a tad bit of survivability?

    Also, any bear who has had a chance to test the new raid... what do you think of it in terms of tanking?
    Stam buff will have no effect on stat priorities. Yes, Stamina gems will give you more stamina now. However, since you should only get Stamina if you are trying to increase your EH/TTL values, Stamina will have the same effect for gemming/enchanting as before.

    Once you get the 4 piece (Or 2 piece. Whichever that makes FR/SD cause a HoT effect on you), the value of rage-gen stats will increase even more, as you can dump excess rage into FR, even when topped off, to build up a constant HoT effect.

    With the higher amounts of baseline armor on gear, the value of mastery will continue to rise. Sadly, its relative value for reducing the amount of healing needed from other healers is below crit/haste, and its value in comparision to Stamina for increasing the window where you can survive gibbing damage (Think 25 man Heroic Horridon for tanking Triple Puntcures, or H Dark Animus for taking Explosive Slam stacks) is significantly lower.

    The Barksking change, if it makes it live, is the biggest change for bears out of all changes. This grants SIGNIFICANTLY higher uptime on barkskin, and will allow druids to survive tanking burst periods significantly more often/longer then before. In addition, the 2 piece bonus, combined with this barkskin change, allows for a bit over 2 minutes of savage defense uptime, in addition to longer periods of savage defense uptime after that. (streches of 20 seconds of uptime after first reaching 0 charges and running out of time on SD.)

    If bears on PTR make it to live unchanged, I fully expect bears to be nerfed by 5.5. The amount of melee damage taken compared to all other tanks except monks will be stupidly OP.
    Quote Originally Posted by Moounter View Post
    I think your problem is a lack of intellect.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Raugnaut View Post
    If bears on PTR make it to live unchanged, I fully expect bears to be nerfed by 5.5. The amount of melee damage taken compared to all other tanks except monks will be stupidly OP.
    At the very least, it's a necessary evil for SoO in terms of the mechanics we will face and the design of Guardians in MoP. Otherwise, Guardians would be at a severe disadvantage on some encounters that bypass our active mitigation and armor (pretty sure the Barkskin change was due to and/or "the straw that broke the camel's back" was heroic Nazgrim testing and the Execute ability... we needed the change for that encounter, while it was probably a good change for others on top of that).

    Regardless, I think we're likely all in agreement that Blizz is going to change Guardians come 6.0 on some level, and the changes made in 5.4 may not be sustained due to them being a possible temporary measure. Even if the Guardian buffs are just a stop-gap measure for 5.4, I wouldn't say it puts us ahead of all tanks, just more in line with everyone else in terms of dealing with sustained/burst/unavoidable damage. The 5.4 PTR changes are likely quite necessary for Guardians to be competitive as tanks in SoO, as it addresses one of the primary concerns of ToT: frequent "tank-killer" abilities that bypass every line of defense of Guardians and require damage-reduction CDs with a similar frequency.
    “Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.”
    “It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.”
    ― Alexis de Tocqueville

  6. #6
    well the barkskin change is kinda seen as that much OP only due to CDR trinket and the set bonuses. on it's own it's just a normal boost to guardians because there's many complaints that we're lesser than other tanks in term of special attacks, even though I never felt any disadvantages ever and was able to do everything i was asked for in terms of raiding and progression, my guild was never slowed down because they have a guardian tank. Im proud of my bear pre 5.4 and happy abt 5.4 changes, especially the DoC one, Im gonna try it with the addon "clique" to heal people while raiding, maybe I'd get happy cuddles this patch ^^ Bear for life.

  7. #7
    For 10 man (and the majority of 25 mans) I'd say stat priorities are going to be exactly the same, however for those special bears working on heroic 25 man progression in the top 5% of the community or so they will be able to focus more on RPS than EH as they now passively get more.

    More specifically for 10 mans it means we're even awesomeer now. When geared for the content in tot we we're pretty near unkillable in 10 man thanks to some massive EH, the only real issue I had was taking a 3rd hit of talon rake on H jikun but even that was countered with SI or BS/BS combo. Even our first H horridon kill our dk died and I managed to take like 21 stacks of TP.

    Bark skin is getting reduced to 30 second cd, which is nice as it makes it more of an active mitigation button feel to give us that gaurenteed reduction when we need it, toss in the CDR trinket and we get a 50% uptime on the 20% reduced damage, toss in meta gem procs our high armor and the damage we're going to be taking is going to be very little compared to the other tanks.

    Doc also looks amazing, it will be interesting to adjust to but in 10 man it seems like we're going to be able to put out a lot of EH with it if we know what we're doing.

  8. #8
    well the barkskin change is kinda seen as that much OP only due to CDR trinket and the set bonuses. on it's own it's just a normal boost to guardians because there's many complaints that we're lesser than other tanks in term of special attacks
    It's supposedly entirely for Nazgrim and Nazgrim only. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes back to 60 sec in 6.0.

    DoC may or may not get nerfed. I think the healing needs to be toned down a little bit probably, but nothing super significant.

  9. #9
    Regarding trinkets, besides the new cd trinket, how do you rank them for 5.4?
    I see many comments that the new trinkets are not all that interesting for bear tanks & saying use Renataki or Bloodlust as 2nd, but how would you rank them given the various strengths (it does sound like people are talking about the hc versions only, but not everybody has hc/tf versions).
    Myself I have HC non-TF Renataki, but only normal TF Bloodlust & a normal tf sta trinket + normal TF RoR.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by coocoo View Post
    Regarding trinkets, besides the new cd trinket, how do you rank them for 5.4?
    I see many comments that the new trinkets are not all that interesting for bear tanks & saying use Renataki or Bloodlust as 2nd, but how would you rank them given the various strengths (it does sound like people are talking about the hc versions only, but not everybody has hc/tf versions).
    Myself I have HC non-TF Renataki, but only normal TF Bloodlust & a normal tf sta trinket + normal TF RoR.
    You cant really rank them due to their mechanics.

    you jsut have juggernauts for a bit more crit and selfheal, haromms for dps, living curroption for aoe dmg, and curse for stamina with a small dps increase. ebob detanator for mastery.

    I quess rooks with renatakis will be a solid choice, even if its not hc tf. There is one option if the stat amp trinket from strength works it can be good choice but havent tested it yet nor do I know if it works.

  11. #11
    Deleted
    Anyone aware of a macro that would work with DoC as Guardian that would now allow you to leave form. Only possible concern I have as Guardian is that DoC will occaisonally lead to us going out of form accidently when spamming the healing touch doc proc.

    I suppose an idea fix for this would be the same way they changed Growl. That you have to be in Bear form to use Growl. They surely could do the same thing for Healing Touch?

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Cornish View Post
    Anyone aware of a macro that would work with DoC as Guardian that would now allow you to leave form. Only possible concern I have as Guardian is that DoC will occaisonally lead to us going out of form accidently when spamming the healing touch doc proc.

    I suppose an idea fix for this would be the same way they changed Growl. That you have to be in Bear form to use Growl. They surely could do the same thing for Healing Touch?
    As I didn't come up with or test it I'll just link the thread, but according to the posters on Incbear they made a macro that was working on the ptr.

    http://theincbear.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1070

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by felcommander View Post
    As I didn't come up with or test it I'll just link the thread, but according to the posters on Incbear they made a macro that was working on the ptr.

    theincbear.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1070
    yeah I have seen this thread and read it all, and as Im gonna use DoC with clique next patch, I wanna try the macro in this thread but im not on PTR so I can't do it now I'm afraid. Another possible solution for me is a weakaura CD bar for the debuff but I guess this isnt rly practical sometimes.

    as for the trinkets I've gotten bloodlust hc thunderforged & retanaki hc ready for next patch in case they prove worth it and needed instead of the new trinkets. but what im rly sure im gonna go with the CDR trinket when I get it + something else.

  14. #14
    Deleted
    So is DoC to be better than HotW?
    And what about SotF vs Incarnation?
    Last edited by mmoc51af1d1acc; 2013-09-03 at 08:18 AM.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by zecxx View Post
    So is DoC to be better than HotW?
    And what about SotF vs Incarnation?
    It's not that it's better or not, it's gonna make all the choices in that tier available. It really depends on what u specifically want from that tier. which is kinda awesome. Nothing is better than the other. I currently use HoTW when I'm not tanking when we need a burst dps out of my role, on the pulls (durumu for example, my co tank DK pulls and I HoTW, it lasts exactly the whole duration till I need to take over the light beams, diching out like 180K-200K damage) or also when I need a superTranq CD (iron qon last phase, maegera 4th head) + I always felt like I needed that extra stats boost, but Im able to ditch it for DoC if I want now that we got that +20% stam buff.

    DoC is less damage more of big healing hit in form or ability to cast rebirth in form. this could be hugely beneficial for the raid or yourself, im gonna definitely try that out.

    you see the theme is pushing out of spec roles into play and every talent has it's own form of boosting those roles. You just have to choose what's rly beneficial for u at the time.


    SotF is substained rage generation over the whole time with less damage, and Incarnation is burst damage, ability to taunt in 1.5 sec ( i use that a lot on Horridon doors) and on demand rage regen because the mangle spam. Both are viable now and there's lots of people that are gonna take SotF now in combination with other talents.

    I don't really believe we can recommand 1 talent over the other which i think is the success that blizz aimed for.
    Last edited by Mandibleclaw; 2013-09-03 at 09:42 AM.

  16. #16
    I like what they did with the talents, I really like Doc especially after we hit he soft crit cap it allows us to boast mangle up just a bit more while we can shift over to haste for more rps.

    Though I think for 10m progression with the damage we can put out during incarnation on some fights it might just be way to much to give up to take sotf.

    Personally what I'll be doing.

    Sotf for fights where I'm getting hit like a truck the whole time, H primordious comes to mind, its just so much consistent damage that doesn't really ever ramp up (well it does just slow and gradually) seems like it would be nice to have that extra rage for more FRs (as there's a lot of magic damage)

    Inc for burst damage/burst damage taken. As always really, at least this tier we actually have the option to go to other things. I'll probably use inc for anything with a 1.5 min>timer, because it lets use alternate zerking and incarnation for rage to deal with the damage taken. Obviously if it works out well (I think of heroic megaera every time I was tanking the kill head I could use incarnation or zerking)

    Hotw when you need the big healing tranq (and can use it of course), I don't think we'll need this for the small HP boost, even 25 man heroic bears now should have more then enough HP to pretty much avoid Hotw unless you want to be lazy or have a legitimate use for it on the fight. (I liked it for H durumu, being able to dps during first phase lust was a lot of extra damage, and I'd be lying if I said I never used it because I was lazy)

    Doc I'll probably try using on fights with mostly single target damage, or on a fight like durumu where the special comes frequently enough that itd be nice to have the extra heal on top of FR.

    NV for any fight where the healing can be effective healing for most of the fight, burst aoe ect. I used NV a lot this tier and found that when used correctly, especially on progression it can really put out some decent healing numbers.
    Last edited by felcommander; 2013-09-03 at 11:39 AM.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •