Guardian Alpha Patchnotes

[szandos]

Don't think you should compare with monks atm, they seem to be a bit undertuned on the beta right now and go splat as soon as hit by anything more deadly than a wet papertowel. I think the others are looking better, but I guess there's still a lot of tuning to come.

[Dreyen]

honestly, i dont get why blizzard lets us double dip with extra rage on thrash and dodges.. resolve should let us scale enough for aoe tanking.

[Gemini Soul]

Unholy DK got this...

Unholy
Necrosis You gain 5% more of the Multistrike stat from all sources. Death Knight - Unholy Spec. Your Scourge Strike, Festering Strike, Plague Strike, Soul Reaper, and Pestilence multistrikes deal an additional [ 1 + 3% of AP ] Shadow damage. Death Knight - Unholy Spec.




Then i went to wowhead and noticed that alot of specs got their xxxx Atunements name changed to something Guardians is now, Survival of the Fittest.

With DK getting a passive added to their Atunement, and all the other name changes to the other Atunement. Was thinking that all specs might get a passive like DK that work with their attunement.

With guardians being mastery, wonder what it could be.



Or is this just something they are going to do for specs that have MS Atunements

[Arielle]

It's just for specific specs that wouldn't ordinarily like MS that much because they have special triggers on other stats.

[Callsignecho]

honestly, i dont get why blizzard lets us double dip with extra rage on thrash and dodges.. resolve should let us scale enough for aoe tanking.

Coming from experience, the more rage the better. Savage Defense isn't something you can have decent uptime on anymore. Those 2 charges seem like they take forever to recharge, and, because of that, I'm hitting FR 99% of the time because that's the only thing we really have (and the heal is just so good). Tooth and Claw is OK and the new mastery is nice.

[Gemini Soul]

When the CM come out for testing and we get our wep, lets hope it does something for Bears while shape shifted. If not we need to post about this for the feedback.

[exochaft]

Coming from experience, the more rage the better. Savage Defense isn't something you can have decent uptime on anymore. Those 2 charges seem like they take forever to recharge, and, because of that, I'm hitting FR 99% of the time because that's the only thing we really have (and the heal is just so good). Tooth and Claw is OK and the new mastery is nice.

It also partially compensates for whatever secondary stat distribution we have, as even changing up the provided PvP gear from the vendor to favor different secondary stats makes a noticeable difference (at least it does for me, my bears are sensitive!). Working up some combat logs to parse the various results from favoring one secondary stat over another (i.e. always choosing gear with crit or whichever stat you want) to numerically show the differences, but even before I've finished there's a tangible difference.

That being said, one thing that's become noticeably worse on the beta compared to live is initial rage on the pull. It was a concern I had with Enrage being removed, as every bear would shapeshift and use it before a pull to get close to being able to use active mitigation once you land the first hit. On the beta, the ramp-up time isn't very fun. Rage generation averaged out seems workable in the long-term, it's just the short-term initiation that's pretty brutal, especially if you use SD only to not dodge the attack(s). While testing with the target dummies in Shat (*edit* forgot to mention, was doing raid/mythic with self-buffs and raid buffs), the only way I could guarantee not falling behind and getting a good start was to blow SI on the pull. Granted we'll have healers in a raiding/dungeon situation and some of the gear sets I was testing were not conducive to good initial survival, I just think the ramp-up time is too long currently.

Quick injection about Pulverize: I'm in agreement that it's basically required to make the rotation feel like a solid rotation. That being said, we shouldn't need a talent to make the rotation feel good, especially if the other two talents get improved to the point of being feasible. Also, the use of Berserk/Incarnation are definitely a pain to use with Pulverize.

[Callsignecho]

It also partially compensates for whatever secondary stat distribution we have, as even changing up the provided PvP gear from the vendor to favor different secondary stats makes a noticeable difference (at least it does for me, my bears are sensitive!). Working up some combat logs to parse the various results from favoring one secondary stat over another (i.e. always choosing gear with crit or whichever stat you want) to numerically show the differences, but even before I've finished there's a tangible difference.

I haven't gotten around to messing around with stats on my Druid yet, mostly because I haven't seen the need to do so yet with us being so strong. I have done it with every other tank though, because anything to help get through UBRS without too much trouble is preferred. I'll probably get to that tomorrow. My guess would be Haste+Mastery+Versatility, at the moment, in some order of priority. Multistrike is OK, Crit seems quite lackluster, and there is not Bonus Armor currently.

That being said, one thing that's become noticeably worse on the beta compared to live is initial rage on the pull. It was a concern I had with Enrage being removed, as every bear would shapeshift and use it before a pull to get close to being able to use active mitigation once you land the first hit. On the beta, the ramp-up time isn't very fun. Rage generation averaged out seems workable in the long-term, it's just the short-term initiation that's pretty brutal, especially if you use SD only to not dodge the attack(s). While testing with the target dummies in Shat (*edit* forgot to mention, was doing raid/mythic with self-buffs and raid buffs), the only way I could guarantee not falling behind and getting a good start was to blow SI on the pull. Granted we'll have healers in a raiding/dungeon situation and some of the gear sets I was testing were not conducive to good initial survival, I just think the ramp-up time is too long currently.

That's my same experience. Initial rage is the hardest part of a pull/fight. Everything else is smooth. I, too, found that the only way to last any amount of time on the Mythic dummy was to pop SI on the pull, which isn't the worst thing in the world if we have to do that with the various strong CDs we have. Once you get Pulverize up, things start to smooth out rather quickly.

Quick injection about Pulverize: I'm in agreement that it's basically required to make the rotation feel like a solid rotation. That being said, we shouldn't need a talent to make the rotation feel good, especially if the other two talents get improved to the point of being feasible. Also, the use of Berserk/Incarnation are definitely a pain to use with Pulverize.

I don't think Incarnation is worth it at the moment. Outside of the initial pull, I don't have any problems, and taking a talent for the first 10 seconds of a fight to get tons of rage isn't ideal, especially with Pulverize. Soul of the Forest is nice for the sustain. Mangle at 25 rage is really strong. The 15% damage is icing on the cake. I haven't found a point where Berserk can be used, or is necessary, with Pulverize and the Thrash change. It may not be bad on the pull to get the rage generation needed, but you have to delay Pulverize about 20-25 seconds at the beginning to do so. I can see it as a dps CD when you are not tanking anything and do not have to worry about Pulverize uptime. I hope they can bring the rest of the level 100 talent row up to Pulverize's level, but they haven't said anything about it yet.

[Braindwen]

Mind the bugs if you're going to try and test stats out. Particularly with multistrike: not only are lacerate ticks not procing it (making it ~40% as strong as it should be), the health buff is also lowering resolve. Especially if you're testing them on training dummies without a healer, you should find multistrike to be the weakest; possibly worse than having no secondary stat at all.

We can pretty easily math the stats based on what they should do, but not all of them work like they should in practice yet.

Also Incarnation has almost all the same bugs it had for the entire first patch of MoP: removes MoU, Bristling Fur and Ursa Major when it's cast and when it fades . So it's probably worse than it should be, although it admittedly isn't that great anyway.

[Dreyen]

tbh id love for incarnation to change... 30sec of mangle spam is bland, especially since berserk is the same exact thing. Incarnation could be a 20% haste buff? Though that'd mean it would lose efficiency once we reach 31% haste and up... unless they make our GCD cap less than 1.0s :P

[Callsignecho]

tbh id love for incarnation to change... 30sec of mangle spam is bland, especially since berserk is the same exact thing. Incarnation could be a 20% haste buff? Though that'd mean it would lose efficiency once we reach 31% haste and up... unless they make our GCD cap less than 1.0s :P

I think Incarnation needs to be redesigned to be a burst rage CD and not something that drags on for 30 seconds. I would redesign it to be something like a 3 minute CD that last for 15 seconds and doubles all rage generation from abilities. It allows you to continue your rotation without having to mindlessly spam one button or sacrifice keeping something like Pulverize going. Maybe this is what Berserk needs to be redesigned to be.

The problem I have with Guardian Druid CDs are that they drag on for far too long and you really never need that full duration to get what you want out of them. They also turn Guardian Druids into a 1 button spamfest for an extended period of time. These include Berserk, Incarnation, and even Heart of the Wild. Nature's Vigil is in a similar situation in that it lasts too long, but does provide some additional healing.

[exochaft]

I haven't gotten around to messing around with stats on my Druid yet, mostly because I haven't seen the need to do so yet with us being so strong. I have done it with every other tank though, because anything to help get through UBRS without too much trouble is preferred. I'll probably get to that tomorrow. My guess would be Haste+Mastery+Versatility, at the moment, in some order of priority. Multistrike is OK, Crit seems quite lackluster, and there is not Bonus Armor currently.

If the raid/mythic tank dummies are any sort of indication, bears seem to equalize a bit the harder things get (especially the mythic one). While I haven't finished collecting data (dumb bugs), it "feels" like I had better success with a crit-oriented build in terms of solo survivability. It could be a combination of crits lining up to make the initial pulls easier, as I did a haste/mastery build on even just the raid tank dummy and died super early several times because the rage generation was slow and SD failed in having me avoid hits. It may be one of those things that averages out on paper, but can have varying results in practice.

As you were saying, SotF may end up being the go-to talent in the first raiding tier. I think there's an overarching issue with the cooldowns such as Berserk/Incarnation, and it's not necessarily the length but the fact they mostly involve Mangle. With the current design of Guardians compared to live, Mangle really strays from the center stage (exacerbated if you choose Pulverize). It's important, but not so important that you can outright ignore everything but Mangle to use those CD's to their fullest. Incarnation especially could use some work, since about the only thing it offers beyond Mangle off the CD is taunt not having a CD... still could be useful, but it's not like Thrash/Lacerate/(formerly had)Swipe have cooldowns anymore. I'd have to say the design for these abilities makes sense on live, but they just don't work with the Guardians changes on the beta.

[Gemini Soul]

If incarnation doubled Rage generation and boosted our dps, it would be more inline with its live version now.

[Callsignecho]

If the raid/mythic tank dummies are any sort of indication, bears seem to equalize a bit the harder things get (especially the mythic one). While I haven't finished collecting data (dumb bugs), it "feels" like I had better success with a crit-oriented build in terms of solo survivability. It could be a combination of crits lining up to make the initial pulls easier, as I did a haste/mastery build on even just the raid tank dummy and died super early several times because the rage generation was slow and SD failed in having me avoid hits. It may be one of those things that averages out on paper, but can have varying results in practice.

I went with Haste+Mastery+Versatility build and I take even less damage than I did before with unoptimized gear. I only get a piece of gear with Crit on it if it is absolutely necessary. I have 2 Agility trinkets on to buff FR more. My unbuffed stats are Crit = 19.48%, Haste = 12.66%, Mastery = 35.64%, Multistrike = 0%, Versatility = 461 rating = 42% damage/healing and 22% damage reduction. Crit scales quite well, but I think it has to in order to be decent in comparison to the other stats.

I think SD is a trap to use at the moment. Every time I use it, I immediately regret it. The RNG is a killer. Spending 60 rage for a chance to dodge is crap when you are getting hit like a truck. FR being affected by resolve and buffed by attack power makes it leaps and bounds better, in my opinion. I might take SD off my bar and just use FR for an entire run of UBRS just to prove the point.

Also, if you see a tank jumping around or afk somewhere between the flight master and the Mythic test dummies, it's probably me.

[exochaft]

I think SD is a trap to use at the moment. Every time I use it, I immediately regret it. The RNG is a killer. Spending 60 rage for a chance to dodge is crap when you are getting hit like a truck.

This is partially why I don't think we're REALLY overtuned. Having a cornerstone of the Guardian toolkit being SD, as well as it being able to fail to do anything, is very difficult to balance if you want tanks to be more healer dependent. I was browsing over my raid/mythic tank dummy parses where I died really early, and they all were when the first use of SD failed to avoid attacks. Granted it's not a 1, 2, splat death (thanks to mastery and cooldowns), but it's a very unrecoverable scenario where healers may end up pulling their hair out playing catch-up. This is why I think Guardians have to be a bit more self-sustaining than other tanks, because when things go poorly that are of no fault of our own, we can't by default be a burden on our healers because of tank design.

Hopefully I'll have some guild healers on tonight to healbot me on the dummies, which should allow me to simulate "Bears Gone Bad!" and see how healers feel reacting/recovering to the scenarios.

[Gemini Soul]

This is partially why I don't think we're REALLY overtuned. Having a cornerstone of the Guardian toolkit being SD, as well as it being able to fail to do anything, is very difficult to balance if you want tanks to be more healer dependent. I was browsing over my raid/mythic tank dummy parses where I died really early, and they all were when the first use of SD failed to avoid attacks. Granted it's not a 1, 2, splat death (thanks to mastery and cooldowns), but it's a very unrecoverable scenario where healers may end up pulling their hair out playing catch-up. This is why I think Guardians have to be a bit more self-sustaining than other tanks, because when things go poorly that are of no fault of our own, we can't by default be a burden on our healers because of tank design.

Hopefully I'll have some guild healers on tonight to healbot me on the dummies, which should allow me to simulate "Bears Gone Bad!" and see how healers feel reacting/recovering to the scenarios.

While reading your comment i thought of a perfect way for them to make SD more AM and less RNG.

To replace our bear hug perk and give us a perk for SD to boot

While SD is active, any physical attack you take will trigger your mastery. In other words it would ignore the no shield from partially/fully absorb attacks aspect and use/refresh/overwrite the current one. To keep this from becoming OP, just has to be coded so it doesn't stack like Blood Shield.

So while SD is active we will either dodge or have guaranteed absorb for its duration, with them cutting a charge it needs some love.


On a side note, with the changes to our rage system, any one else going to be swapping their mangle/lacerate key binds like i am.

[Callsignecho]

While reading your comment i thought of a perfect way for them to make SD more AM and less RNG.

To replace our bear hug perk and give us a perk for SD to boot

While SD is active, any physical attack you take will trigger your mastery. In other words it would ignore the no shield from partially/fully absorb attacks aspect and use/refresh/overwrite the current one. To keep this from becoming OP, just has to be coded so it doesn't stack like Blood Shield.

So while SD is active we will either dodge or have guaranteed absorb for its duration, with them cutting a charge it needs some love.


On a side note, with the changes to our rage system, any one else going to be swapping their mangle/lacerate key binds like i am.

I don't think triggering our mastery is the way to go. It would actually be too OP to grant us/control an absorb on demand, even if it was coded to not be so broken. Fully buffed, by mastery is already at 56%. Our mastery is already really strong and I can see it getting nerfed. I think it needs to be something like a % armor increase, and that % needs to be worth 60 rage to spend. It would also make SD like every other tank's physical mitigation in that increasing a particular stat will make it better over time. 45% dodge that never gets any better just doesn't cut it anymore, especially for 60 rage.

[exochaft]

On a side note, with the changes to our rage system, any one else going to be swapping their mangle/lacerate key binds like i am.

Ironically, I tried doing that. The unfortunate part is that I've gotten used to the rhythm of the typical Lacerate every other GCD, and the new beta model is killing my finger that's in charge of the Lacerate bind. Figured I could buy a foot pedal, bind Lacerate to that, and get majorly buffed leg muscles by the end of WoD.... alright, I'd have to get two, I want my legs to be even.

[Teye]

It would actually be too OP to grant us/control an absorb on demand

You mean granting us something all 4 other tanks already have?

[Callsignecho]

You mean granting us something all 4 other tanks already have?

Other tanks don't have a huge physical mitigation absorb at their control.

The physical mitigations include:

Warrior: Shield Block: Increased block and critical block.
Paladin: Shield of the Righteous: % reduced physical damage taken.
Monk: Shuffle + Stagger + Elusive Brew: Increased parry and dodge and smooth damage intake.
Death Knight: Death Strike: Small physical damage absorb shield.

Giving Druids control of their mastery shield would be giving us a physical damage shield that is greater than half our health pool on a 9 second recharge with 2 charges.