Guardian druids take too much damage?

[Arielle]

Are people like...still doing Warlords CMs as if they were Mists CMs?

You can't do that.

[Braindwen]

Are people like...still doing Warlords CMs as if they were Mists CMs?

Since most of the complaints I've seen about CMs are about bosses... probably not.

Unless people are supposed to CC the boss.

[Deleted]

I myself got Ilvl 614 and did not have problems with tanking.

Keep in mind that mangle crits can give you the instant heal which is very handy, gives good rage ect.
so pro tip of the day.

Always mangle on CD
best ability we have by far for everything. incl when you AOE

[Deleted]

I just finished daily CM (Skyreach) , Itemlvl 617.

We only wiped once on a fail-pull. Dmg was high but definetly not too much. We pulled slowsly and cc't 1-2 mobs each group.

Sometimes Dodge being random caused heavy spikes , though.

[Crihnoss]

I myself got Ilvl 614 and did not have problems with tanking.

Keep in mind that mangle crits can give you the instant heal which is very handy, gives good rage ect.
so pro tip of the day.

Always mangle on CD
best ability we have by far for everything. incl when you AOE

Wasn't that part of Leader of the pack? which is Feral only.
Honest question

[Ghier]

If Bear gave +100% armor instead of +250%, there would be someone saying they are doing fine. With an outstanding group; i'm sure it would be possible to do heroics with +100% armor. That wouldn't mean that everything is fine.

[Arielle]

If Bear gave +100% armor instead of +250%, there would be someone saying they are doing fine. With an outstanding group; i'm sure it would be possible to do heroics with +100% armor. That wouldn't mean that everything is fine.

Since nobody has provided evidence of anything wrong, I'm going to say that yes, everything is fine.

Since most of the complaints I've seen about CMs are about bosses... probably not.

Most of the complaints I've seen have been about trash.

/shrug

[mmokri]

Grimrail Depot heroic (also Skyreach sometimes) is death sentence, too much magic damage. Mastery is useless, healing is too low as usual (from vanilla).

Without pulverize uptime I cant complete other dungeons. Also I never use savage defense, because it seems useless against main problem - magic damage.

So instead of thrashing trash, I use thrash once-twice, then Lacerate x3 on one.

- - - Updated - - -

Also... It was much easier to do pre-nerf cataclysm heroics with feral gear and guardian spec, than right now.
Pre-nerf cataclysm heroics were hard, but specing cat right now and off-healing party makes heroics easy mode.

[Ghier]

I wonder why DPS queue times are ~1 hour. Hmm... I just can't figure it out, quite puzzling.

[Dreyen]

Grimrail Depot heroic (also Skyreach sometimes) is death sentence, too much magic damage. Mastery is useless, healing is too low as usual (from vanilla).

Without pulverize uptime I cant complete other dungeons. Also I never use savage defense, because it seems useless against main problem - magic damage.

So instead of thrashing trash, I use thrash once-twice, then Lacerate x3 on one.

- - - Updated - - -

Also... It was much easier to do pre-nerf cataclysm heroics with feral gear and guardian spec, than right now.
Pre-nerf cataclysm heroics were hard, but specing cat right now and off-healing party makes heroics easy mode.

Grimrail has a lot of avoidable mechanics. The main culprit i can see are the mobs using shrapnel (looks like a flamethrower), you have to move away from it, otherwise it stacks a damaging dot up to 5x and your healer will be struggling hardcore.

Otherwise grimrail is probably the highest tank damage heroic.

I'm using guardian of elune just to go maximum dps in heroics anyways... pulveirze is clunky as shit, as good as it might be, i dont feel like its the best talent for heroics since you are switching targets so often and your uptime suffers between pulls/mob kills.

[axxey]

Guardian of elune is win, it's way better than pulverize for current content, when we get to raids it may be another story.

Seriously, all these people complaining should switch to it, it easily buys plenty of windows for healer to stabilize you and there's tons of double attack, enrage, attack speed and hard hitting melee mobs in heroics to maximize it's use.

Interupts, interupts, interupts! I have faerie fire(glyphed silence range interupt), skull bash and normal bash rotating on cooldown a VERY high amount of the time, i even use typhoon upon occasion as an interupt. Stopping damage from happening with interupts and stuns is huge, much more so than any mitigation cooldowns or self healing you could be doing after the fact.

Cooldowns! aren't just for bosses, 2 min recharge on survival is tiny, I'll very regularly use it on the pull of a big pull(when not CCing), faerie fire caster, charge central mob, thrash, skull bash a different caster, position group while caster interupted and movable and then get enough rage for savage defence and stabilization.
This is most of the time, the rest of the time is roots or CC on one specific mob in each pack(you dont have to rely on other people to CC melee) before engaging the others slightly off it or pulling them back.

I've tanked 3 CMs and healed 1, I've probably tanked every heroic at least 5 times and have healed them all with various tanks. All tanks are spikey when don't execute right apart from DKs are gods and monks are squishy bitches.

[-Doko-]

Since nobody has provided evidence of anything wrong, I'm going to say that yes, everything is fine.


Most of the complaints I've seen have been about trash.

/shrug

Completing the cms is not an issue, I've done every cm daily twice except for the first day. They are actually quite easy if you heavily cc trash and do mechanics on bosses. The problem is the timer, we bring jack shit in terms of aoe stuns and the time it takes to get a SD off is insane if there's any downtime between trash pulls due to the geography of the CM

[Deleted]

Resto Druid here.
Something is definitely off about guardians. I usually only heal my guardian druid friend (who is a good player) and got used to the amount of damage he takes that I just thought heroic content is hard as hell. Then, when he was offline, I tried a few pug groups with warrior/paladin tank and boy are they easy to heal (even in worse gear).

The heal over time alone keeps them up.

For my guardian friend I have to have all hots up and start spamming healing touch, leaving almost no time for group heals.

We even had a warrior spec protection, grab a shield and tank and it was easier to heal than a fulltime guardian druid.

So I cannot say exactly what it is, but bear tanks are definitely hardest to heal.

[exochaft]

Completing the cms is not an issue, I've done every cm daily twice except for the first day. They are actually quite easy if you heavily cc trash and do mechanics on bosses. The problem is the timer, we bring jack shit in terms of aoe stuns and the time it takes to get a SD off is insane if there's any downtime between trash pulls due to the geography of the CM

If Guardians are trying to get silver/gold times, then trash is definitely dependent upon who else you bring other than the tank, because some of that trash is brutal without hard AoE lockdowns. While interrupts are certainly important, there's a plethora of mobs that have multiple spells that all are painful grouped with friends of a similar ilk... can't get them all! I've been rather tempted to try Guardian of Elune over Pulverize for CM's, as Pulverize uptime is horrid if you aren't on a boss (some bosses, it's rather nice to have). Bosses do hit hard, but trash is where most of the problems in a CM will exist. I've actually found Guardians to be pretty decent at bosses or gimmicky methods of dealing with mechanics in CM's. About the only advice I can give to others is to use all your cooldowns, even on trash... and them health pots are nice, too.

If there is an issue with bosses, it usually comes down to luck. While my group was working on gold for Everbloom, it's crazy how different each pull of the first boss in that instance turned out to be due to random luck. Sometimes my health wouldn't budge except for his breath, other times I was hovering at 35% HP praying for the first phase to end w/o my death. If I could pin it on anything, it would have to be rage. Not going into a fight with a good amount of rage can be a death sentence, as you may get hit hard several times before you can even use SD (or T&C or FR effectively). It's good practice to go in with a CD up to mitigate such occurrences, although the outcome may not always change. Tempted to try rage pots, not sure if they share a CD with invis pots... in which case they may not be an option.

*edit* - Should mention that yes, CM bosses do wreck face still. If you fall behind in terms of health, it's very hard to catch back up as FR can't do what it used to do in MoP. Ironically, the best catch-up method is to use a health pot since it scales with Resolve right now. If they took that away... well, let's just say CM's would be pretty ugly.

[Aùssa02]

Since nobody has provided evidence of anything wrong, I'm going to say that yes, everything is fine.


Most of the complaints I've seen have been about trash.

/shrug

Since you are probably the most recognized bear tank around.

How do you feel about our rage generation currently? I felt like in Skyreach on the 3rd boss (the big bird) it was a bit of a lottery if I could generate enough rage for the first Piercing Armor (And I had to avoid using Maul at ALL to make sure I had mitigation up.). It might just be that since I am geared mostly towards cat, my suboptimal gear gimps my rage gen but it felt very hard to generate enough rage.

[Deleted]

Since you are probably the most recognized bear tank around.

How do you feel about our rage generation currently? I felt like in Skyreach on the 3rd boss (the big bird) it was a bit of a lottery if I could generate enough rage for the first Piercing Armor (And I had to avoid using Maul at ALL to make sure I had mitigation up.). It might just be that since I am geared mostly towards cat, my suboptimal gear gimps my rage gen but it felt very hard to generate enough rage.

Berserk.
gg, more than enough rage.

For CM's:
It's still doable as a guardian.

[Wrexxi]

Grimrail Depot heroic (also Skyreach sometimes) is death sentence, too much magic damage. Mastery is useless, healing is too low as usual (from vanilla).

Without pulverize uptime I cant complete other dungeons. Also I never use savage defense, because it seems useless against main problem - magic damage.

So instead of thrashing trash, I use thrash once-twice, then Lacerate x3 on one.

- - - Updated - - -

Also... It was much easier to do pre-nerf cataclysm heroics with feral gear and guardian spec, than right now.
Pre-nerf cataclysm heroics were hard, but specing cat right now and off-healing party makes heroics easy mode.

I don't see why you wouldn't still be using Savage Defense, unless you're just not interrupting. Caster mobs still will hit like a truck with melee swings once you interrupt, so I still feel like Savage Defense is your best bet.

[Deleted]

Berserk.
gg, more than enough rage.

For CM's:
It's still doable as a guardian.

Yay, "doable".

[Kagonos]

Since nobody has provided evidence of anything wrong, I'm going to say that yes, everything is fine.


Most of the complaints I've seen have been about trash.

/shrug

I'm not getting it either Arielle. In fact, I've been running heroics since the second I did my PG:Silver and in that time, I've had not a single complaint from a healer about how hard I am to heal. IN FACT, I've been innundated with compliments so far. I've had 4 friends requests specifically because of my tanking in heroics and I have been called out by several people in randoms for my tanking and how smooth the run has gone.

If you're struggling, then perhaps it's time to look a little deeper at how you're using your abilities. I'm not going to call anyone out on here for being bad or anything, but pulverize is currently really strong IF you manage it and keep it up at all times which can SOMEtimes be a little tricky when there's a ton of mobs, but is otherwise pretty fucking easy. I rarely ask the dps to CC, so I'm doing full group AOE spam pulls and I always pop barkskin entering the fight, use SD with my first 60 rage, I don't hesitate to use SI if I feel like things are getting hairy or my healer needs to "catch up" FR feels plenty strong when I dip or am taking only magic damage.
In Everbloom, there's a ton of skippable trash, but inevitable there's a silly hunter who likes to disengage into a pack that we are skipping and pulls while I've already got a full pack on my ass, so I have to go pick up a bunch of unexpected mobs and even that feels completely survivable. People have even been saying to me that they feel bears are OP right now and are likely in line to get nerfed along with Glad stance warriors. I completely disagree that bears are in a bad spot right now. As with EVERY SINGLE EXPANSION TO DATE bears have undergone some significant changes, but this time doesn't feel like it's anywhere near what it's been in the past. Will they tweak things? Probably, but my suspicion is that healing will be buffed, because it's definitely harder than it used to be.

TLDR: Bears are fine as long as you are playing them right. Get the right stats on your gear: bonus armor, mastery and versatility are good (in that order); crit no longer valued the way it used to be (currently lowest stat.)

[Ozoi]

Yay, "doable".

Pretty much. We're extremely lacking compared to other tanks but at least it's "doable." I guess some people are fine with that.