Guardian Alpha Patchnotes

[Teye]

Unfortunately, even with HotW Rejuve is barely worth casting.

You're forgetting that we're not going to be topped off most of the time. 100% uptime on Rejuv during HotW to assist healers with high incoming damage is incredibly valuable.

[Arielle]

I'm not sure why anyone would claim DoC is a damage increase. I mean, sure, if you never use a single HT it is. But if you took the talent for the extra 10% Crit on Mangle.....you're doing it wrong. Even more so in Beta.

HotW Caster/Healer is pretty much fine as it is right now, even with the Tranquility loss. HotW Cat is woefully underpowered though.

NV is "okay", but it would pale in comparison to DoC if the proc rate was anything substantial given how bad Crit is.

[Braindwen]

Yeah, NV is currently about 120k healing when paired with Incarnation with raid buffs. That's about 40% of a DPS'ers health. Meanwhile, 1 kitty rejuv during HotW is ~100k healing with no crits or multistrikes, and 1 bear rejuv is ~50k (they might actually bother fixing cat form healing since it's an expac, but given their rate of fixing bugs right now...).

NV will remain the default option unless DoC is buffed up, but you'll still pick HotW if you need your 90 talent to *actually* impact the group. It really doesn't need a redesign, unless that sort of healing ends up OP.

[Valkon]

One of my favorite things about DoC currently is that you can use it as a mini-LoH at the moment with some good timing. I very much enjoyed the gameplay there.
I think one thing people are forgetting come WoD, is that all of our heals are going to be balanced around a certain level of Resolve. This means that any non-damage-converted heals are going to do basically nothing to anyone other than ourselves or they would likely be overpowered for us. This kind of makes DoC almost entirely useless in my mind. There's only one fight in soo that I use that talent to heal myself, every other case I use it to heal up the raid which is not going to be feasible next expansion.

[Arielle]

I think one thing people are forgetting come WoD, is that all of our heals are going to be balanced around a certain level of Resolve. This means that any non-damage-converted heals are going to do basically nothing to anyone other than ourselves or they would likely be overpowered for us. This kind of makes DoC almost entirely useless in my mind.

Wut?

Healing Touch is Healing Touch. They don't arbitrarily change the SP (or in our case, AP) coeff when you take DoC.

[Raugnaut]

Wut?

Healing Touch is Healing Touch. They don't arbitrarily change the SP (or in our case, AP) coeff when you take DoC.

Does resolve affect Healing Touch when used to heal others? I remember Celestalon saying something like Resolve would only affect healing done to the tank, and not to others (BrM/Bear/Pally wouldn't be able to heal other party members for 200k with super high resolve for instance.)

So atm, with 200k vengeance, you can basically top off anyone else to full with a single DoC HT. But next expansion, with 200% healing with resolve, DoC HT will heal self for 100k, but only heal other players for 25k, stuff like that.

Not sure how it works atm myself.

[Arielle]

Does resolve affect Healing Touch when used to heal others?

No.

Obviously it'll be weaker on others than yourself, but still very strong relative to an HT from an actual Resto Druid.

[Raugnaut]

No.

Obviously it'll be weaker on others than yourself, but still very strong relative to an HT from an actual Resto Druid.

As in more then an HT from a Resto Druid? If thats the case, then it'll be probably be changed in the actual numbers pass. 80% of a Resto's Healing Touch sounds about right.

Still, Valkon's main point is that his favorite use of DoC currently is a spot-on LoH for dps/healers. I have used it quite often to that effect to get ppl in imminent danger out of danger in a single GCD, and it won't have that potential anymore. Essentially, DoC becomes an on-the-GCD Frenzied Regen for the bear.

In addition, I didn't think too much on the changes to damage/healing, and the significant increase in player health compared to player damage/healing in regards to NV. ATM, using NV results in close to a million healing per use, due to the high damage of Guardians while tanking. (If solo tanking certain fights, it can easily put out a few million healing per use, and is much more powerful then Tranq at this point). Next expansion, with the removal of vengeance, the extremely small amount of damage output compared to player health, ect, NV becomes significantly weaker then current.

So yea, our T90 is in severe need of tuning.

[Arielle]

Still, Valkon's main point is that his favorite use of DoC currently is a spot-on LoH for dps/healers. I have used it quite often to that effect to get ppl in imminent danger out of danger in a single GCD, and it won't have that potential anymore. Essentially, DoC becomes an on-the-GCD Frenzied Regen for the bear.

Well yeah, nothing a non-healer does should be that powerful anymore (except maybe actual LoH). But saying it's not valuable because of how strong the HT is just doesn't make any sense. It's not a longshot to use it on a minorly injured target so that healers can focus on actual injured targets.

However this ignores the problem that (1) it's not viably usable with Pulverize since you're already having to drop Thrash from your rotation in that situation anyway, and (2) the proc rate is pretty damn pathetic.

[Gemini Soul]

Just got into beta and on the premades, looks like pulverize isn't working. Had 3 stacks up and it was darkened out like no resources for it.

Hate the new travel form setup, but copying over on my 90 rage generation seems to be better than on live in a sense that its more active that passive.

Was thinking if they made a change to incarnation so that while its active pulverize doesn't consume out lacerate stacks.

For all the bears, would you like pulverize in its current form or would you prefer if it had a 9-10sec cd so it wouldn't eat up lacerate stacks.

[Dreyen]

I think pulverize gaming a bit the rotation is great, but i really dont like how it theorically removes thrash from the rotation unless you want to suffer buff uptime loss.

If it was a 12sec duration to keep it thight and give you some decision-making on when to skip a thrash/mangle proc or not, it would be better.

[Teye]

Is Pulverize not working on Beta right now? Grayed out even if I have 3 stacks of Lacerate on target.

[Deleted]

Is Pulverize not working on Beta right now? Grayed out even if I have 3 stacks of Lacerate on target.

Correct, it's currently not working since the latest beta update (around last weds I want to say).

[Callsignecho]

For all the bears, would you like pulverize in its current form or would you prefer if it had a 9-10sec cd so it wouldn't eat up lacerate stacks.

I think it's fine as it is. It gives you the ability to choose whether you want to consume the stacks of Lacerate right away or fit in another Mangle, depending on what situation you encounter. I'm fine not having Thrash in the rotation when you take Pulverize, however, I think you will be able to fit it in quite quickly, if necessary, with the amount of haste we have available to us.

[Knough]

Do we have any knowledge about why Bear Hug is going?
I love having at least one big hit I can use, even if it doesn't affect some mobs, otherwise soling and levelling is just lots of short cooldowns.
I want to give bad orcs a big hug and squish them to death.

[Callsignecho]

Do we have any knowledge about why Bear Hug is going?
I love having at least one big hit I can use, even if it doesn't affect some mobs, otherwise soling and levelling is just lots of short cooldowns.
I want to give bad orcs a big hug and squish them to death.

It's clunky and could only be used in certain situations, it's a stun, something they want to cut down on (CC), and they want the CC that comes from the talent tree to matter/be more important than a baseline CC.

[Raugnaut]

Do we have any knowledge about why Bear Hug is going?
I love having at least one big hit I can use, even if it doesn't affect some mobs, otherwise soling and levelling is just lots of short cooldowns.
I want to give bad orcs a big hug and squish them to death.

Guardian Druids will end up having a ton more health compared to dps/healers, ect. Bear Hug would have to have the damage removed in order to stay, as a MS stacking druid would be able to nearly one-shot players in PvP with Bear Hug. With the damage removed, it just becomes a clunky stun. So, it was removed- Damage was too high without adjustments, and blizzard wants to cut down on the number of stuns.

[Gemini Soul]

Anyone else thinking that with the new gearing model, WF, extra gem slots, and tertiary stats that now set bonus need to be stronger than they have been in the past. Going to be doing Mythic in WoD, and wondering if its going to be like it is now, HWF is better than 4pc and 2pc.

[Arielle]

Anyone else thinking that with the new gearing model, WF, extra gem slots, and tertiary stats that now set bonus need to be stronger than they have been in the past. Going to be doing Mythic in WoD, and wondering if its going to be like it is now, HWF is better than 4pc and 2pc.

Not sure why people keep including Tertiary stats in this discussion.

Edit: To answer the actual question, not really. The chance of getting one of getting either a socket or WF on one piece is only ~19% per drop. Getting that on all 4 set pieces is just over 0.1% chance of having them all drop once, let alone you getting all of the pieces on one toon.

[Raugnaut]

So, Bear Hug replacement perk is pretty nice. FF has doubled damage and no CD, making it an excellent pulling tool now.