Looking for Guardian tips - Heroic Malkorok 10

[Drugshock]

Hello guys,

Sorry to get inside the Droods nest but I need some tips/help.

I’m the raid leader of a semi-casual/half-skilled 10m group that raids a few days a week.

Last raid we got to Heroic Malkorok. Only 7 tries that night. Hoping for a kill next Sunday.

And now that’s why I’m here. I’m looking for specific tips for my Guardian Druid.

Looking at lots of vids/logs I could see that Guardians can do lots of self-healings throughout the fight and INSANE FR healing during Blood Rage.

The main thing is, my Guardian refuses to “heal” outside Blood Rage. His point is that SD > FR (but on Blood Rage, ofc) and won’t be able to do both because of rage starving. So he will only hit FR if there’s extra rage.

Asked him to “Use FR if your Miasma shield isn’t at max (green) and SD all the other times”. He says no.
I’m the priest healer and, tbh, with our gear we prolly could kill it with 0 heals from the tanks… but srsly, at progress any kind of help is … help!

Since I’m not that familiar with this role (all I know is from readings/guides/logs), I’m here to ask some tips:
- Am I wrong, asking him to “trade Active Mitigation for self Healing” (his words)?
- Outside of Blood Rage, isn’t FR really good (cos of almost no overheal) to alleviate pressure on raid/himself?

Another small thing, asked him to go Incarnation (usable for both Blood Rages) because of Rage generation. He said Soul of the Forest would be better. Is that?

Got some logs, if any could check. Just a reminder: we didn’t get to see a Blood Rage yet (void zone wipes everywhere). -->
http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/FMAk8yftCvpj1RPB

Thanks in advance,
Hatebox.

[Dreyen]

Your guardian is doing it wrong with stats, he's at 7.5% expertise when he should go for 15%, hes reforging all over the place when he should reforge crit up to 79% > Haste, reforge from mastery if possible. He's gemming agi? That's pretty bad. For red he should go exp/crit, blue crit/hit, and yellow full crit.

As for SD>FR, he is right on that one, bears should maintain SD 100% unless they are low health. If he redoes his gear the way i told him, he will start overflowing in rage and probably not know what to do with it sometimes, on top of him doing more damage... I'd say if SD is on CD, he should FR if his miasma shield drops to orange, and he should always FR himself if it's at red. Should have plenty of rage remaining beyond that.

He should also drop soul of the forest.. incarnation is vastly powerful, especially if you consider he's talking half the time, so when he's not tanking and it's on CD, it's not that big of a loss. I also find dream of cenarius to be really a poor talent, it's rng-esque, you dont really need more self-healing, and nature's vigi is a great dps increase/raid healing that can be amazing on malkorok and will line up with everytime he taunts.

For blood rage, if he's solo tanking, FR healing is all he should be doing though.

[Drugshock]

Oh damn let me see, I believe he could have swapped to his Feral gear... could be that? dunno, just checked armory now

[exochaft]

He's still in his Feral gear when I just checked, but there's something to be gleaned from the pieces that are obviously tanking in nature. If he's feeling rage-starved when in full tanking gear, there may be a more optimal gemming/reforging method without going for set bonuses (most bonuses are agility, but crit gained from not matching sockets will beat out the RPS gains from agility... when you flirt around with the 79% crit level, then go nuts with agility if you desire). For example, depending upon how many blue sockets are in the gear, he could be gemming quite a bit of hit via crit/hit gems. However, if you already have tons of hit innately on your gear, you may have to make some reforging choices that are non-optimal for RPS, such as having to reforge out of hit on a hit/mastery item. Regardless, if you're sporting full normal SoO gear with heroic gear filling up certain slots, there shouldn't be an RPS issue even with poorly itemized drops (I managed tanking 10man H Malkorok with a 502 ilvl bear, and even with that crappy RPS it's doable to use SD full time with FR interspersed).

Perhaps the execution is causing issues for your bear? Going Incarnation at the very least (and I'm with Dreyen on using NV) will do wonders for allowing FR usage. I'm trying to parse the log, running into some bugs with that newer website, but it appears that there may be some poor ability usage that could lead to bad rage generation. For example, it appears that for the duration of the encounter, there was not even close to 100% uptime on Lacerate or Thrash (eyeballing the visual lines stuff, I'd guess 80% and 66% uptimes respectively)... this indicates not only a loss of damage but a loss of free Mangle procs. Also, from the T&C uptimes on the boss most of the rage is going to Mauls, and roughly estimating he's not using Mangles nearly enough (averaging over 6 seconds per Mangle use, there was almost 30 seconds between two Mangles at one point).

Now that I'm looking at it, the hit/crit of melee auto-attacks indicate that he's slightly below crit cap since he's still getting a few normal Hits it with no Dodge/Parry involved, so that may answer the gear question. I'm more confident that it's an execution problem, as there should be no excuse to not have full SD uptime with plenty of rage left over for FR (even with Maul usage). Your bear should probably focus on getting proper uptime on bleeds along with using Mangle optimally for maximum RPS. Also, if he's using DoC for the self-healing (which there was almost none from the log), FR is far superior with his gear level... plus using GCD's for Healing Touches could diminish the already poor offensive ability usage.

*edit* - I forgot to answer the two questions the OP mentioned directly.

1.) With the gear of your bear, there shouldn't even be a need to trade-off any SD usage for heals via FR. He's right when he says he shouldn't trade-off, but he's wrong when he thinks he'll have to.

2.) Yes, FR is really good since it's off the GCD healing that will usually top off a bear's bubble even if one is popped with the amount of Vengeance gained during this encounter. Not using FR except for Blood Rage is like shooting yourself in the foot... or stepping in a bear trap on purpose, perhaps. Gogo bear jokes.

[Arielle]

Who's going to be soaking Blood Rage? Why isn't the Warrior doing it solo?

If the Warrior solos Blood Rage then the Guardian should be HotW Wrath spamming at the start of the fight (and I'm not seeing a Heroism for some reason).

His bleed uptimes on what is ostensibly a Patchwerk encounter are terrible. Should be 99+%.

Why the hell is he using Swipe?

No Incarnation, no Berserk.

DoC for this fight is terrible.

Shouldn't be any breaks in Savage Defense uptime while tanking. Especially when he was Rage capped for those portions of time :| That's just embarrassing.

Previous points about FR usage are correct.

[Drugshock]

Who's going to be soaking Blood Rage? Why isn't the Warrior doing it solo?

If the Warrior solos Blood Rage then the Guardian should be HotW Wrath spamming at the start of the fight (and I'm not seeing a Heroism for some reason).

His bleed uptimes on what is ostensibly a Patchwerk encounter are terrible. Should be 99+%.

Why the hell is he using Swipe?

No Incarnation, no Berserk.

DoC for this fight is terrible.

Shouldn't be any breaks in Savage Defense uptime while tanking. Especially when he was Rage capped for those portions of time :| That's just embarrassing.

Previous points about FR usage are correct.

Oh, since Druids gear is a bit better, was thinking on him doing the rage. But we can try the warrior (I know Shield Barriers are amazing there). A side questions, how many stacks of the debuff you guys think would be safe to get till a taunt swap? 15-20?

About the Heroism, yeah, my fault. Was thinking about using it latter on the fight (close to after the 2nd blood rage / +50% damage on boss) but will throw it on pull tonight!

Swipe.... maybe to (don't know if i can use that word but...) cleave add? no idea, prolly rage waste? Should just burnt it single, or let the other tank/dps do that?

- - - Updated - - -

Ok guys, thanks every1 for the responses!
Let me try to sumarize it here, so I can show/tell the Big Bad Bear what to do.

1 – He has the gear (564ish ilvl) to be able to SD and FR heals when needed. Not a trade-off, got rage for both when played right. Should look at that 79% "crit cap".

2 – To be able to do “1” he must keep an eye on those Bleeds (aim to 99% on Lacerate/Thrash) and use Mangle on CD ffs!

A side note, he claims that he should pop Maul all the time for the Tooth and Claw damage reduction. On the last wipe he did use Maul 25 times vs Mangle 21 times. May be that’s why he’s rage starving? I mean, too much Maul, only rage left to SD, no FRs? (Edit: covered by exochaft). So, how to proper using Maul? Guides say "only when not tanking", is that right?

3 –Incarnation is totally better than Soul of the Forest on this fight, even when not solo-soaking Blood rage?

4 – Optimal L90 Talent for this would be Nature’s Vigil for extra damage/raid heal if Solo soaking Blood rage (pop it at the end + Berserk, Hand of Salvation and go pew pew on DPS?)

He’s in love with HotW and keeps using it for almost every fight. If the warrior is on the blood rage duty, he can keep HotW and spam Wrath at the beginning, as said Arielle… That’s it?

Thanks again for your time,
Hatebox.

[Arielle]

A side questions, how many stacks of the debuff you guys think would be safe to get till a taunt swap? 15-20?

30 seconds or so. Same as normal.

Swipe.... maybe to (don't know if i can use that word but...) cleave add? no idea, prolly rage waste? Should just burnt it single, or let the other tank/dps do that?

It was more of a rhetorical question . There should be 0 Swipe usage on Malkorok.

May be that’s why he’s rage starving?

SD > FR > T&C. That's the way it's always been.

3 –Incarnation is totally better than Soul of the Forest on this fight, even when not solo-soaking Blood rage?

Incarnation is almost always better when intelligently used for periods where you have high Vengeance. Definitely better for solo-soaking.

Optimal L90 Talent for this would be Nature’s Vigil for extra damage/raid heal if Solo soaking Blood rage

Correct.

He’s in love with HotW and keeps using it for almost every fight. If the warrior is on the blood rage duty, he can keep HotW and spam Wrath at the beginning, as said Arielle… That’s it?

Correct.

[Kioga]

Here is a copy of our logs from last night's mal kill. http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/6...?s=3432&e=3775

Not saying it is perfect but we got the kill and I solo'd the Blood Rage so it should give you some comparison. (Just don't tell Arielle abt those 5 swipes i fat fingered) But yeah I agree with pretty much all of everything Exo and Ari said.

I could see an argument for SotF since we stay on the boss almost the whole fight but Incarnation last 30s, can be paired with NV for increased dmg, and can be popped right before Blood Rage for a big dps boost during that entire phase.

[Drugshock]

Great, thanks!

Imma show him this thread and let's see how it works tonight.

[Neji]

Incarnation + NV for blood rage phase going back into fresh miasma shield phase is amazing. HotW doesn't even get any face time anymore on my guardian druid.

[Deleted]

hes right on wanting to prio sd instead of fr on malko for sure, and if there is a warrior that can solo soak the blood rage then i would advise him to do it instead as you can use your bear for some extra dps

logs of my kill this last week - http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-jx...?s=6013&e=6268

way i do it, i start tanking, go up to 30'ish stacks, right on time of the first blood of yhrarj, then 2nd tank taunts from me, i reset my stacks, take it again until blood rage, blood rage 2nd tank taunts and solo soaks it, i put up all my defensives + roar and go help soak the pudles, they dont hit for shit if u got your cds up.

blood rage ends, i go back on the boss to 30ish stacks and by that time its usually dead or so

cd wise i go with inc+nv and pop them at 15/20 stacks on the boss to make sure i make most use of my high vengeance and always have sd up while tanking him with high stacks.

just tell him to make sure he has his gear fixed