Guardian Alpha Patchnotes

[Muezick]

Just a thought on the FR matter.

I think that FR, and other tank's form of heals/absorbs, are being put at the level of the filler heals that the healers are losing (heal, healing wave, etc.). I believe we will have the ability to be mostly self sufficient when bosses are using their basic auto attacks and low damage situations, but when special attacks or tank specific, high damaging abilities are occurring, we will be mostly dependent on healers.

Feels like the opposite of this is true on live right now, haha.

[Arielle]

My point is that the combination of alpha changes together results in either our defense being so passive or based on chance that our decision-making with active mitigation won't matter as much or will be ineffectual... while at the same time, the changes themselves being counter-intuitive to their own stated design goals.

I dunno if I agree with this. T&C you fire whenever it's up, yes. With fewer charges on SD you actually have to make a choice on when to use it. Without seeing the actual encounters it's impossible to know if we'll do anything beyond use it when it's up, but at that point you could say the same thing about Shield Block.

FR is the really interesting beast here, and the fact that Rage generation is - at least currently - limited in the sense that you have to pay attention to when it would be best to use an FR.

[exochaft]

I dunno if I agree with this. T&C you fire whenever it's up, yes. With fewer charges on SD you actually have to make a choice on when to use it. Without seeing the actual encounters it's impossible to know if we'll do anything beyond use it when it's up, but at that point you could say the same thing about Shield Block.

FR is the really interesting beast here, and the fact that Rage generation is - at least currently - limited in the sense that you have to pay attention to when it would be best to use an FR.

With the reduction of SD charges (and uptime goes down even more if you pick the 100% dodge SD talent, but let's leave that one alone for now), we're going to have to rely much more on mastery, which we don't have control over. As long as T&C procs don't suddenly revert to costing rage again, that's definitely a more controllable aspect, the question is whether it will be reliable enough. It probably will come down to raid encounter design before we can say for sure, unless we get a blatant Horridon scenario again where saving T&C for burst makes a big difference.

I'd say the difference between something like Shield Block and our active mitigation is that worst-case scenario Shield Block actually blocks stuff, while Guardians truly have to revolve around their EH because our active mitigation can proactively fail, making us rely on retroactive FR. I know we were talking about this back at the start of MoP, and sometimes it did feel like we would make a wrong decision with our active mitigation because we were limited with rage and the power of FR in case SD failed. I get that's why they're making mastery do what it does, making T&C cost no rage, etc. While I don't want to return to where using SD could be a wrong choice through no fault of my own, I don't want it to matter so little because I'm designed around a massive safety net that's out of my control.

Anyways, I really wanted to get on another topic, specifically about multistrikes For those that didn't see, they had an example of +24% HP refreshed with 25secs remaining, which mathed out to 24%*(25sec/30sec) + 2% = 22%. Well, if you refreshed Ursa Major starting from scratch every 5 seconds exactly, you'd cap out at 12% HP... so we'd have to have to have Multistrike procs every 2.5 seconds to maintain +24% HP (did quick napkin math, I think it's correct). That's honestly quite a bit of wiggling of HP, unless multistrike occurrences are expected to be off the charts for Guardians.

As is, I don't think I'd really rely on the HP too much without a real good guaranteed it will proc often, because if I had a really late refresh of Ursa Major or even just a few seconds delay, it could easy tank (pun intended) the HP bonus. Granted it has ample chances to proc, especially with Lacerate ticking every second and Mangle/auto-attacks on top. Maybe I'm getting tired of being overloaded with random variables in our survival toolkit.

[Dreyen]

Yea.. Ursa major sounds nice, but a bit too randomish for my liking. The fact it has to build up too, however at higher levels of multistrike it will be anythijng but random. Remember lacerate ticks at 1tick/sec, autoattacks and mangle multistrike will all proc ursa major.

Personally though.. id feel safer if ursa major was just a permanent +% hp, just like crit is for warriors and DKs.. not as cool sounding though. Perhaps a guaranteed hp bonus, and multistrikes give you more?

[Raugnaut]

Yea.. Ursa major sounds nice, but a bit too randomish for my liking. The fact it has to build up too, however at higher levels of multistrike it will be anythijng but random. Remember lacerate ticks at 1tick/sec, autoattacks and mangle multistrike will all proc ursa major.

Personally though.. id feel safer if ursa major was just a permanent +% hp, just like crit is for warriors and DKs.. not as cool sounding though. Perhaps a guaranteed hp bonus, and multistrikes give you more?

Beta-wise, we currently have the most HP baseline out of all the tanks- 60% stamina bonus, compared to 40% for monks, 35% for DKs, 25% for paladins, and 15% for warriors. We also have the highest armor- 330% extra for us, (Unknown as of yet whether that affects bonus armor). Given that plate has roughly double the armor that we do, we can roughly say that we have 165% for us (divide it by half), compared to 55% for DKs, 40% for Warriors, 10% for paladins, and nothing for monks. Finally, in terms of passive damage reductoin- 12% melee, 25% magical for us, 10% all for DKs, 25% all for Warriors/Monks, and 15% all for paladins. This leads to DKs taking the most physical damage, then Monks, then Paladins, then Warriors, then us. Ballpark Estimate, we take roughly 20% less damage from an unmitigated physical hit that does not bypass armor, and will have quite a bit more health compared to most all the other tanks. The way I see it, Multi-strike is a "bonus health". If tank damage is balanced around us having 30% more health from MS (not much multistrike required to get that sustainable), then other tanks will be loosing 40% health from attacks that would make us loose 20%. So, going by the new healing model blizz seems to be leaning towards, any health granted from Might of Ursoc will simply increase the breathing room healers have before they absolutely have to heal us. (Other tanks will lose 10% per hit, we lose 5%, but healers will have to expend the same amount of healing to top all of us off)

[Dreyen]

High HP and healing back up the damage is also our only way to survive abilties that are intended to kill a tank without active mitigation up. We might have more armor and hp, but other tanks have more basic damage reduction which closes the gap (We have 12% DR from thick hide while warriors get 25% from defensive stance.. we still win in total damage reduction of course)

I just wanted to express i don't really like the ramp-up on ursa major.

I still think they should change ursa major to give some damage reduction.. perhaps 1% hp 1% armor per multistrike? Something like that..

[Arielle]

Unknown as of yet whether that affects bonus armor

It doesn't. Don't feel like digging up the Celery tweet that confirms this.

12% melee, 25% magical for us

This is gone. But we have Pulverize instead. As it stands right now if you're not taking Pulverize you're doing it wrong.

[Raugnaut]

This is gone. But we have Pulverize instead. As it stands right now if you're not taking Pulverize you're doing it wrong.

As I've stated before, thats because either Pulverize is overtuned, or the other 2 talents are significantly undertuned. Either Pulverize needs to be nerfed all the way down to 5% damage reduction, or down to 10%, and the other 2 need to give a rage/damage benefit similar to what Pulverize gives.

Also, last I checked, Thick Hide continues to give both 12% melee reduction and 25% magical reduction in WoD alpha.

[Arielle]

Also, last I checked, Thick Hide continues to give both 12% melee reduction and 25% magical reduction in WoD alpha.

So it is, guess I was given incorrect information or they changed their minds.

[Finbezz]

I'd just like to say how much I've loving almost all the bear changes. They're finally doing stuff they should have done a while ago.
I missed most of MoP starting about mid-way through Vaults ( I really hated doing heroic feng) and WoD is looking up.

[exochaft]

So it is, guess I was given incorrect information or they changed their minds.

It probably has something to do with the massive HP that's currently in the works. I don't think Blizz could tune down FR also while reducing Guardian passive damage reduction, or healers would probably cry trying to deal with the massive HP deficit since their heals only do flat numbers instead of %HP. It's a side effect of having a massive health pool and being designed around needing it.

[Arielle]

It probably has something to do with the massive HP that's currently in the works. I don't think Blizz could tune down FR also while reducing Guardian passive damage reduction, or healers would probably cry trying to deal with the massive HP deficit since their heals only do flat numbers instead of %HP. It's a side effect of having a massive health pool and being designed around needing it.

Nah, it had to do with something completely different. But that's neither here nor there.

[Dreyen]

Readiness is gone... yussss

Was such a terrible stat since it's really fight dependant and has some strong breakpoint.. wish it stayed as a tertiary stat however.

[exochaft]

Nah, it had to do with something completely different. But that's neither here nor there.

I meant it more as a reason for them not to remove the passives if they were ever debating their removal versus information being wrong... unless we're missing each other again. Whatever, as you said, it's neither here nor there.

Readiness is gone... yussss

Was such a terrible stat since it's really fight dependant and has some strong breakpoint.. wish it stayed as a tertiary stat however.

At least Blizz stated it could remain on items such as trinkets. Even with just trinkets, it can really alter our game play and how we respond to situations. Blizz probably has toyed around with it being a tertiary stat, and it may have just ended up too underwhelming if you didn't have enough or it made getting gear with Readiness as a tertiary stat mandatory or restricted to only a handful of people (aka, gearing up one person with specific gear). Or, the amount they'd need to toss on individual gear even as a tertiary would make getting more than one piece with Readiness ridiculously powerful.

I'd say restricting the stat to trinkets or some other item slot as an artificial method of controlling how much Readiness one can stack is probably the right choice for now. The stat I'd like to keep an eye on is Versatility, especially since there isn't a single aspect of the stat that would not boost a Guardian's effectiveness. The comment about it not being tuned to be anyone's highest throughput stat seemed more geared towards DPS than tanks (I'd imagine Blizz will make Bonus Armor the best for tanks anyways), but we'll see where it falls.

[Dreyen]

Yea, versatility sounds amazing for bears, although blizzard said they don't want versatility to be the best secondary for any class.

[Raugnaut]

Eh, for versatility, it all depends on the stat budgeting for it. Lets say that you need 100 rating for 1% crit and 1% damage reduction from mastery, but 150 rating for 1% versatility. In terms of damage, that 1% crit wins out, mastery looses. In terms of damage taken, the crit looses, mastery wins. In terms of healing, Versatility wins compared to crit/mastery. Ect. Its all about how much budgeting you need to get 1% of anything.

[Deleted]

Its all about how much budgeting you need to get 1% of anything.

True, yet I can see them giving versatility the same budget as 1% crit, because some classes gain extra effects when they crit besides the extra crit dmg (resources, procs, etc). For classes that don't get extra benefit from crit, then versatility would be better than crit, but maybe those classes will still prefer mastery or haste over anything else (such that versatility doesn't become the best stat).

[Arielle]

Versatility is purely a math question and nothing more.

[Braindwen]

Yeah, not very exciting for tanks, considering every stat is *already* versatility. At best the heal+DR both improving tanks' survival makes up for its intended poor scaling, but that's about it .

[Grubjuice]

Versatility is purely a math question and nothing more.

it seems a bit... bland
but oh well...