I'm hating the removal of Symbiosis, it was a phenomenal situational ability.
Overall, I'm really disliking where this game is going in regards to abilities. Seems like it's going toward 5 button LoL gameplay.
I actually like coming to a new fight and thinking about what abilities I have that could contribute to making it easier. Symbiosis was a huge part of that.
Guardian specific changes... Is it just me or are we looking like absolute beast powerhouses for WoD?
Tooth & Claw seperated from rage, getting 2 charges - free mitigation scaling with damage intake.
New Mastery looks to be bypassing Resolve, but since it's based on the same unmitigated incoming damage, looks to be a strong smoothing & overall damage reduction. Also scaling smoothly in AoE situations, unlike what Warriors and DK's got with new Riposte.
Rage generation shifted from auto attack to special attacks doesn't seem like a big realistic change. We were pressing them anyway, now we'll just get rage along with dishing out damage at the same time.
Primal Fury nerfed (from 15% to 5%) seems bad, but considering it now also affects special attacks AND scales with AoE tanking (5 rage per successful dodge) it's not that bad. Especially when you factor in Haste, which looks to be incredibly strong stat come 6.0. Reduced Mangle CD, reduced global cooldown.
It's like Sanctity of Battle which made all pallies go fullout haste, only even better because unlike pallies, it increases rage gen from ALL our abilities (pallies, excluding procs only get 5/9 HP generators sped up). Add to that increased Tooth&Claw procs, which are free to use with the leveling perk...
Talents also look very strong, especially compared to other tanks CDs. We'll have to see how Gladiator stance turns out though.
One is SI for 3sec, 1min cd, perfect for all the hardhitting, unavoidable attacks we've been sucking at whole expansion. Triple puncture, Talon Rake,...
Pulverise looks like a default go-to, increasing damage done, decreasing damage taken by a respectable amount, while also providing some flexibility and resource hoarding for periods when you want higher defences (Think Siegecrafter's Protective Frenzy, Nazgrim's Execute on 3 Sunders, Malkorok Blood rage,..) or simply bridging the gap between other CDs and/or Savage Defense on a prolonged high damage intake encounter (solo Thok p1 - amazing).
And 100% SD for 4 seconds.. Incredible OP/cheesing potential. Means 16 seconds of being unhittable. Boss Enraged and is hitting for 738 millions? NP, because if you can plan on it and hoard the charges, extend the fight by 16 seconds into enrage. Huge for DPS checks.
Granted, bosses enrages have generally changed from oneshotting people with melee one by one to simply instantly wiping the raid with various raidwide damage abilities (Malkorok, Thok, Siegecrafter, Dark Animus,...) but I bet we can still find a use for it. There's been plenty of encounters in the past with high-dodge cheesable mechanics.
Overall, it's hard to tell how we'll be because of the plethora of other WoD changes. The multitude of %DR changes especially look like they're bringing a more CD-active gameplay for us (which I warmly welcome) that has been a barren wasteland for us now. Barkskin, SI, MoU, yay.
But if you look at what other tank classes got...??
Pallies got some of their EF strength removed, from Bastion of Glory. Doesn't mean much, since it has to be rebalanced anyway, its scaling with vengeance is absurd. Most of pallies have to be rebalanced because of Vengeance damage output removal.
Warriors Gladiator stance we'll just have to wait and see in reality. Otherwise, quite unchanged so far, apart from getting shafted by new Riposte in AoE situations and getting some benefit out of haste.
DK's we'll also have to see, too many changes in limbo to be able to judge well. Riposte treatment (which is still their only benefit from Crit) and boring and possibly sucky (compared to ours at least) lvl100 talents aren't looking amazing, gotta say.
Monks are basically staying the same, but their current lvl100 talents are NOT strong. First is aright, passive magic damage reduction (They get ~15% magic DR, but they have to purify it) we already have. 2nd is almost solely a damage increase, situational and actually hurts their resource hoarding capabilities. 3rd is aright, but far from as strong as it sounds - out of those 10 seconds of free chi, half will be wasted because of energy cap. Also, they're the only other tank that has gotten +20% stamina from leveling perks.
It's almost certain they'll be getting some love in the future as well, but at least in cases of pallies, monks and warriors, I doubt there'll be as big a changes as with us. DK's likely will however.
In light of this tank balance disparity, I'm actually more worried that in a WoD world of higher HP pools and bosses hitting for less, healers having limited mana and throughput, where SD is already quite strong, we've been brought WAY over the OP line with all these changes. Personally, I see nerfs incoming.