[Guardian] 6.2 Discussion thread

[Dreyen]

I mean, the basic DPS rotation of monks, DKs, and warriors is not much more involved than that of a guardian. . .

TBH warrior feels more dynamic with revenge and shieldslam procs, i ahvent played a BRM but you have to plan your energy ahead to kegsmash when its off CD.. DK is probably the most braindead though.

I guess my maul suggestion would probably be enough. Tanks are mostly intereting when your active mitigation truly matters, which i feel it doesnt matter much this tier.

[xskarma]

I haven't played bear for long, but from playing it in 6.2 I think Pulverize would be an interesting addition to the basic rotation if they made it so you didn't actually lose your Lacerate stacks.

Make Pulverize an ability that gives 5% damage reduction based on how many Lacerate stacks you have on the target (max 3), but don't remove those stacks. Make the buff like a 15 sec duration, but put a 6-10 sec cooldown on Pulverize so we don't just spam it for extra damage (while still making sure the damage it does on use is significant enough).

That should spice things up enough that we'd use it as the default "damage" option of our last talent tier. It would mean we drift towards using that on farm content when we try to maximize damage, and would make our damage rotation slightly more engaging while our attention for survival becomes less so.

[Rioo]

TBH if it was jsut me, I'd rework maul and Tooth&Claw a bit. Make T&C procs cost zero rage, be a bit rarer but more powerful, that'd make the procs actually something you track... then make regular mauls expensive but powerful. Perhaps our rage gen would need to be tuned a little better though, as I think it's pretty stupid we have more rage than we can handle, making us spam maul no matter what anyways...

This would be awesome. Would make haste more fun too. I wonder if Blizzard balanced maul to be shitty on purpose to keep bad tanks from spamming it for DPS instead of using the rage on AM.

[Deleted]

This would be awesome. Would make haste more fun too. I wonder if Blizzard balanced maul to be shitty on purpose to keep bad tanks from spamming it for DPS instead of using the rage on AM.

Could be true tbh, but we still seem to be the 'spammiest' of all tank classes.

[Casagrande]

I wonder if Blizzard balanced maul to be shitty on purpose to keep bad tanks from spamming it for DPS instead of using the rage on AM.

That's a choice I'd like to have available, though. More defensive vs more damage. The closest we have to that choice right now is pulverize vs. not pulverize, and it's a pretty small difference.

[Deleted]

TBH warrior feels more dynamic with revenge and shieldslam procs, i ahvent played a BRM but you have to plan your energy ahead to kegsmash when its off CD.. DK is probably the most braindead though.

I guess my maul suggestion would probably be enough. Tanks are mostly intereting when your active mitigation truly matters, which i feel it doesnt matter much this tier.

DK is actually arguably the most involved and difficult "rotation" to pull off correctly, assuming you're using Blood Tap and playing properly. Having to balance always sitting on a rune pair with tapping in the right rune state requires somewhat more presence of mind than any other tanking spec, really.

Warrior and Paladin are honestly both abso-fucking-lutely braindead. There's really not much you can do horribly wrong other than not filling your globals.

[Gothmog]

T&C has long been something I've been in love with, apart from the fact it does fuckall -.-

It needs exactly what Dreyen suggested. To the dot bang on change needed.

Regular Maul impacting our RPS is in a good spot IMO. It's just the problem that it suffers from the same treatment all tank survivability-damage tradeoffs have - it's just too damn trivial.



In other news, we stabilized p2 somewhat and... WOW, 2nd tank add!

250k DTPS for up to 50 seconds. Burning through 2x BF, 2x SI, 2 vigilances, 1 sac, 2 Ironbarks, all selfhealing imaginable, running WUE and it's still SO much damage. Multilacerating, so there's actually 0 external overhealing in that entire period as well.

The only other comparable case of such heavy and lasting tank damage has been on Blackhand, tanking siege+boss. Nothing else comes close.

Ofc, we could be smart and stop boss damage to kill the add before all the mini adds come in, or have tank soaking take the boss and whatnot... but that's all boring!

[Jellospally]

T&C has long been something I've been in love with, apart from the fact it does fuckall -.-

It needs exactly what Dreyen suggested. To the dot bang on change needed.

Regular Maul impacting our RPS is in a good spot IMO. It's just the problem that it suffers from the same treatment all tank survivability-damage tradeoffs have - it's just too damn trivial.



In other news, we stabilized p2 somewhat and... WOW, 2nd tank add!

250k DTPS for up to 50 seconds. Burning through 2x BF, 2x SI, 2 vigilances, 1 sac, 2 Ironbarks, all selfhealing imaginable, running WUE and it's still SO much damage. Multilacerating, so there's actually 0 external overhealing in that entire period as well.

The only other comparable case of such heavy and lasting tank damage has been on Blackhand, tanking siege+boss. Nothing else comes close.

Ofc, we could be smart and stop boss damage to kill the add before all the mini adds come in, or have tank soaking take the boss and whatnot... but that's all boring!

The P2 tank adds shouldn't apply more than 3 debuffs(ours generally do 2). I don't use any externals on them long as I only get 3 debuffs. I sometimes use a sac when I get the 3rd add in p2 and we are moving the boss for shackles just depends where the adds hp is at and where my SD charges and Rage is at and if I have a healing touch.

We also only have 3 CDs... so ya. Sac/Vigi/PS and the PS is generally accross the room soaking fire when we would want it anyway. So I generally take nothing and Trox uses the rest since add 2 and 4 are a lot worse than 1 and 3 in p2.

[Sonnillon]

What's the best selection of talents for Normal Archimonde? My co-tank is a very squishy pally, so I need to be beefy to survive the shit . We are slowly but steadily working on phase 2 right now (cannot really say about the speed which the adds are dieing cause usually close to half of raid is dead anyway by that time :P).

GoE would be probably good for the time when I have tons of stuff on me, but I still am fond of BR for the "accidental" moments... Only thing which actually manages to kill me is me being stupid and having boss and add on me at the same time. So I guess I might as well run with GoE.

However I got my hands on WuE WF version, I tried it on couple of pulls, but for some reason I didn't really notice that it would do me any good, I felt that Pol's was better for the extra mastery.
I just don't feel personally that WuE does much for me :/, maybe I am just a bad tank (go figure).

[Jellospally]

WuE is only good for when hits are actually doing real %s of your HP. Otherwise its meh.

The bigger part of why its better on a lot of fights vs Pols is because it works on all damage mastery is only good for melees.

BF or Pulv for Archi. DoC and Cenarion Ward on every fight unless you can get real effect use from HoTW Cat dps and Soul of the Forest on everything too.

[Sonnillon]

WuE is only good for when hits are actually doing real %s of your HP. Otherwise its meh.
The bigger part of why its better on a lot of fights vs Pols is because it works on all damage mastery is only good for melees.

Hmm. I usually die to a combination of melee hits + stacks of X-debuff on me (due to paladin being dead (again)), so in the long run having WuE would be more beneficial. I do guess Pol's and WuE will have to be swapped, specially for fights what have the possibility of high stacks of various stuff. Guess I need to do more thinking then before the fights.
I do have noticed that later phases in several fights the damage really start to rake in, which constantly keeps my HP low and I have to rely more on self-healing.

Cause the 3 trinkets are the only one which I have right now . Due to locking myself to 12/13 this reset for groups Archi tries, then I will have to pray that bonus roll will yield me Anzu's which seems to be kinda the go-to choice nowadays as the second trinket.

I will stick to my BF then, simple to use for a simpleton like me :P. My Pulverize up-time (along with few other buffs) is kinda low, so is a complete waste . Only talents which I change are the level 100 ones mainly anyway, and by reading this topic trying to HotW on Gorefiend.

[Jellospally]

Just remember 1 SD generally is better if you dodge even a single melee on most bosses.

Obviously frenzy has its uses but SD is always better unless its already up or on CD or I guess if you somehow are only taking like 75% magic damage which really isn't any fight.

Yes Anzu + X is best.

[Gothmog]

We're focusing boss damage in p2 to skip 4th round of Chaos+Allure. It's the roughest one, having to be done at the same time, chaos's moving, chances of someone getting gibbed and if not, silly high overall damage. Tranq would cover it I guess, but...

Instead, we'll just avoid the whole risk of it, save tranq for p3 Infernals and have the tank shoulder the load while burning through otherwise unused externals. We do run with a whole zoo of externals so why not *shrug*

I'm a bit biased tho, tanking shit like this, where you actually have to play a survival game and popping one cd/external doesn't cut it is what's the most fun. And we get to experience it so freaking rarely it's depressing when you think about it.
It's not that we never die, but 70% of deaths is to being a derp and making a mistake. 25% is to random spike you/healers didn't cover in time. 5%, or heck even less is to damage you saw coming but was just too much.
WTB more stress tests like this!

In the last few pulls I went to 6 stacks. Frankly, it doesn't feel like a ramp up in damage all that much because of all the running away from shackles and healing Doomfires before.


We haven't had problems with 3rd add cause the pally just bubbled off the stacks np.
Gonna tank with DK tonight, BoS during Doomfire soak is /godmode I hear. That'll be good for ~20sec, I imagine 3rd add will have to die a bit sooner than 2nd


Normal Archy.. Pulverize actually isn't a bad idea, especially if (as you mentioned) you get to parts where overall HPs is lacking and you're left low for extended periods of time. Same for WUE.
It's a real contender for my 2nd add rodeo too, but there just aren't enough globals to keep lacerates on a lot AND Pulv AND all the dancing that has to be done.


What part are you guys wiping on, you've been there for a while. Could be kill anytime now I guess?

[Sonnillon]

Yeh well... I FR more then SD and neglect some of my T&C procs as well, but luckily (well if you call me sucking lucky) I am not the reason why we wipe. I just have loads of room to improve both damage dealing and CD usage vise ^^ .In reality I can hold my own for at least a bit when my co-tank dies until he gets ressed, even with the add up, but I guess it's just the gear that gives some room and covers for my lousy skill.

But I just cannot seem to multitask with keeping eye on the raid and tanking at the same time (although my stupid WA are right in front of my face). I have a co-raid lead, but he is still lacking on the reaction time in calling things out (so hopefully my delegation of RL duties will help improve my tanking part...), so hopefully with more practice he gets a hang of it.

Anyway we are not even close to a kill yet. As we raid 2 (2 x 3 hours) nights per week while keeping progression to 1 night out of these 2, and if we suck to bad on progression we'll just move on to some other boss. We won't do progression on the second day cause some people in group are not there mainly.

I recon we have total of 35ish wipes on him as of yesterday , we need lot more probably. Still trying to get Iron Reaver Heroic as well on the side, but apparently green fire dodging is not for the group .

Last night (with 18 pulls) we finally started getting to phase 2, if people didn't blow themselves and others up in phase 1 xD. We found out that the moving in circle and stacking under boss for Allure was the way for the group to go .). The Wrought in phase 2 was handled nicely (more or less), chains were not an issue (even if peoplke were late in moving) we just need more practice in phase 2 with moving from Allure and dealing with the adds and once we got that one down as well, we should get to phase 3.

It still manages to surprise me, when I get fixiated by the orb, I do believe that I was the reason for few melee dieing on couple of attempts.

The funny thing is that we have the DPS for the fight, if people would stay alive bit better then we would have gotten bit further already :P

[Jellospally]

We're focusing boss damage in p2 to skip 4th round of Chaos+Allure. It's the roughest one, having to be done at the same time, chaos's moving, chances of someone getting gibbed and if not, silly high overall damage. Tranq would cover it I guess, but...

Instead, we'll just avoid the whole risk of it, save tranq for p3 Infernals and have the tank shoulder the load while burning through otherwise unused externals. We do run with a whole zoo of externals so why not *shrug*

I'm a bit biased tho, tanking shit like this, where you actually have to play a survival game and popping one cd/external doesn't cut it is what's the most fun. And we get to experience it so freaking rarely it's depressing when you think about it.
It's not that we never die, but 70% of deaths is to being a derp and making a mistake. 25% is to random spike you/healers didn't cover in time. 5%, or heck even less is to damage you saw coming but was just too much.
WTB more stress tests like this!

In the last few pulls I went to 6 stacks. Frankly, it doesn't feel like a ramp up in damage all that much because of all the running away from shackles and healing Doomfires before.


We haven't had problems with 3rd add cause the pally just bubbled off the stacks np.
Gonna tank with DK tonight, BoS during Doomfire soak is /godmode I hear. That'll be good for ~20sec, I imagine 3rd add will have to die a bit sooner than 2nd


Normal Archy.. Pulverize actually isn't a bad idea, especially if (as you mentioned) you get to parts where overall HPs is lacking and you're left low for extended periods of time. Same for WUE.
It's a real contender for my 2nd add rodeo too, but there just aren't enough globals to keep lacerates on a lot AND Pulv AND all the dancing that has to be done.


What part are you guys wiping on, you've been there for a while. Could be kill anytime now I guess?

Funny enough we actually changed to that last night after i posted.

I do first and third add still. First dies before I get more than 4 so I don't use anything outside of Barkskin/CW.

On 3rd I get 5-6 stacks while moving and still generally can do fine without anything sometimes I get a purity when we move(since no one needs it on that one I guess... i don't ask for it pally just uses it).

It def is more painful but I guess our healing is pretty high in that regard since I just BF on spawn > Bark/CW around 3 stacks and chain 2 SIs once I get 5 and I seem to be fine. Its pretty bad if I put 3 SDs in a row back to back without a single dodge. Damage feels like shit on me there. At least I am running Berserk during 3rd add so I have a butt load of rage to frenzy with.

Ya Trox does like 90-120k hps generally. Breath does like 10m+ healing alone. Like he can't die during breath with add on him. 1 out of like 50 breaths he uses doesn't last the whole add and I just taunt boss if he really needs otherwise hes just sitting at 100% cuz of breath.

We got a lot of p3 pulls last night. Mainly the 3rd infernals. Its the wall of p3. It goes like Void Stars > Infernals > World in Flames shit > Source all like 4 sec apart.

Stars spawn move for 2 sec and infernals are falling and you have like 3-5 seconds to kill them before the dodging shit starts and Sources spawns the instant the last move picks its spot.

[Rahbzul]

I've been tanking since BC, been a bear ever since. To my understanding the guardian stat prio (6.2) is stamina>armor>mastery>versatility>multistrike>haste>crit. My thinking behind placing versatility before multistrike is due to the fact that versatility is a trifecta stat. It not only increases dmg and healing you do but also decreases dmg you take on a consistant* basis while multistrike is a chance* at getting two extra attacks or heals off for 30% efficiency. So, how is a chance stat better than a base stat in this case? Very interested to see your thoughts. Stay gnarly!

[Dreyen]

The real strat priority is Bonus armor > Multistrike/Mastery > Vers > Haste > crit for survival... so you want to get your hands on multistrike and mastery gear as much as you can and you're already expected to have BA in every slot that can anyways.

Versatility requires more rating than other stats to get 1%, so it's not that great. Multistrike is a chance, yes, but it procs off lacerate ticks, mangle hits and autoattacks... so it does proc a LOT and is more or less reliable due to it. Also, if you have 20% chance to multistrike, that's two 20% chances to get a multistrike, so you have more than 20% chance to actually get a multistrike on your attack.

Multistrike gives your more health on average than stamina does, and is your best damage stat. The increase in hp stabilizes your survival more than any other stats by a lot, even if it does not reduce your damage taken. It also allows spells like hots and beacon to overheal less.

[Rahbzul]

Multistrike makes a lot more sense now over versatility. I was unaware about the multi/stam and over healing bit. UM is going up alot higher now with the new setup. Thank you for taking the time.

[Gothmog]

http://imgur.com/r2LqF89

So close to finishing in August :/

3 DPS got themselves killed on the dance 20 seconds before the wipe. Talk about wiping on silly ^^

[Jellospally]

Lol nice... we finally killed it. Like 220ish pulls.