Beta Guardian Druid feels

[naeblis495]

i didn't really saw any dedicated thread for feedback of the beta bear and i wanted to have the opinions of the one who tested it

as for me disregarding numbers , i found that even with low haste , it play still relativly well , espacially for the moon bear but i'm definitively not an expert of the bear as i tank only as a replacement in my guild

what about you guys and gals ?

[Rhaxus]

it works, i'd even say the new rage mechanic is an improvement over legion, but it's even more boring to play, so i am hoping for some stuff like berserk, ursol's vortex or the ability to cast every single utility spell from bear form to counter the boredom

[naeblis495]

it works, i'd even say the new rage mechanic is an improvement over legion, but it's even more boring to play, so i am hoping for some stuff like berserk, ursol's vortex or the ability to cast every single utility spell from bear form to counter the boredom

yeah , my only complaint is that we didn't get any shinies while we lost quite a bit with legiondaries and artifact
no new talents too , but i have hope that we will get something in 8.1

[Arlee]

Yea I miss RotS a lot and I really wish they'd make it a talent option if they don't want to make it baseline (it should be baseline). I'm also still super annoyed about FR being on the GCD... aside from that I'm mostly fine with stuff. Wish it more entertaining though.

[naeblis495]

Yea I miss RotS a lot and I really wish they'd make it a talent option if they don't want to make it baseline (it should be baseline). I'm also still super annoyed about FR being on the GCD... aside from that I'm mostly fine with stuff. Wish it more entertaining though.

the problem is that even if they give us RotS it would be the baseline one so not THAT good even if they put it in place of Lunar Beam

[Arlee]

the problem is that even if they give us RotS it would be the baseline one so not THAT good even if they put it in place of Lunar Beam

I mean having some dps cooldown and a way to occasionally avoid knockbacks is better than none of these things.

[naeblis495]

I mean having some dps cooldown and a way to occasionally avoid knockbacks is better than none of these things.

if you dps then yes , that would be a good option , but the better solution is to give back baseline berserk for bear

[Rhaxus]

FRbeing on the bgc is in line with other tanks and their secondary survivability-tools like self heals etc

[Arlee]

if you dps then yes , that would be a good option , but the better solution is to give back baseline berserk for bear

Yes I said dps so I meant that. Giving back Bezerk would do that, but RotS also gave us a way to avoid various cc affects. Knockback is the one most commonly of benefit in raiding so that's what I focus on mostly. Having a way to occasionally avoid those is hugely helpful.

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FRbeing on the bgc is in line with other tanks and their secondary survivability-tools like self heals etc

Yea, but I also think all tanks that have a self heal which does not deal damage at all should also be removed from the GDC.

[jkw]

I miss Rage of the Sleeper and the Thrash-procs. That actually makes the class in BFA feel boring to me. I've mained Guardian most of Legion.

[CenariusTheForestLord]

As a guardian/bear main since TBC I have some problems with beta bear. But most of them are summed up pretty well in the post on the beta forums.

1. The GG nerf is horrible. Yes, it's now more in line with the rest. But it doesn't give you 100% uptime on moonfire anymore. I average about 1 proc every 20 seconds on ST. Which means once every 2-3 full durations of moonfire, I have to manually refresh it just to get a proc a little while later. Not having the 100% uptime removes a lot of GCD's per minute on non-rage generating spells. They should buff it back to current value, or even 1% higher, maybe nerf the rage on proc slightly. And buff the other talents to keep them in line.

2. FR doesn't heal nearly enough to be worth the GCD. By the time I can press it in raid encounters (high Mythic) I will either be dead, or healed back to full. When I can press it when I need to, it only starts healing 0.5s after press (even more time to be dead) and even then it heals a measly 5% per .5s. This will never save you in a raid ever. The odds are better to keep generating rage for the ironfur, and hope your healers get you.

3. The rotation feels bad/awkward/empty without either GG or Pulverize. One of both makes it ok. It only becomes interesting with both. I don't actually like pulverize. But without itthe rotation is even more boring. If they don't make it baseline at least give us something else besides ironfur to actively reduce our damage.

4. We desperately need a DPS cooldown. ROTS was fun because it could be used either way. Getting berserk back will devalue Incarnation. So they'd have to buff incarn badly to keep it viable. But with the aggro changes, we'll have serious aggro issues on pull against burst classes (hello frost DK) in both M+ and Raids. Overall aggro gain seems fine, i'm just worried about burst without a CD.

5. I don't really mind the removal of AOE roar. But I don't like the replacement. Cat form is just almost never an option for us, which is why they removed cat blink in the first place. And now they're giving a useless talent back in the place of one of the best utility talents we've ever had (I miss you HOTW Tranq and HOTW cat burst). In 2 expansions we went from great utility offtank (MOP HOTW Tranq) to great dps offtank (WOD HOTW Cat burst) to great sustain maintank to meh overall tank.

That's about it for my 2 cents. Feel free to comment on my ideas, but these points are the reason I am considering rerolling this expac for the first time ever. I even endured cataclysm on my bear, but I might not endure BFA.
I still like the bear. But it feels like a skeleton. The bare (bear) bones of a tank spec. Some little bells and whistles are needed to make it enjoyable to play high end, and useful to play high end.

TL;DR: I have some serious doubts about the current state of bear, mostly rotation/utility. And I fear they might be left out this time around when the tank spots get assigned for semi-hardcore and hardcore guilds.

[exochaft]

Definitely feel the GG proc reduction on beta, it's super annoying when you have to check to see if you're spec'd into GG because it hasn't proc'd in a long time to where you're manually refreshing Moonfire often. Even in AoE situation, you can have dry spells. I would take a rage reduction for a higher proc rate. Wish we could get the LatC back as Guardian, as I enjoyed using it thoroughly.

There is irony concerning FR, as it seems like another case of forgotten "lessons learned." Legion was a pretty good balance between instant heal and long HoT, as both extremes were considered non-optimal by Blizz in the past. Now we're returning to long HoT. On the plus side, it's much more effective in PvP since the baseline heal is better. There is an established dichotomy between physical and magic damage for Guardian, as I'm sure Blizz intends for magic damage to be "tank killer" damage... but it might be a little too extreme with FR as is. Even during questing, you can tank 10 melee mobs no problem, but 2-3 casters can be deadly once FR is on CD. At least there's a bunch of Azerite leveling traits that provide heals, they're a godsend. That being said, I'm feeling that Blizz is trying the artifact model for BfA when it comes to giving a spec powers: provide the player with spells/abilities that make them more whole that will disappear when the next xpac hits for easier future balancing. The question is whether the Azerite powers will be desirable, or even worse, mandatory.

[kran1um]

All bear needs is more dps. I mean how many people really use another button. not one high end person uses pulverize, lets not put in a talent and say we need pulverize. All bears do now and in BfA is swipe, thrash, mangle and ironfur. when shit gets real, push rage of the sleeper, barksin, SI, and rarely pushed Rejuv as we had to see what % of heal it would do, we just couldn't push it to push it to be optimal, lets not be silly.

Rage Sleeper and guttural roars is the only thing gone. rest feels the same and wont even notice except the dps, unless you're one of those that counted every time moonfire randomly hit, which i highly doubt. Most of the bear kit was passives. Notice the noticeable and not the unnoticeables. sky is falling, reroll just like every class in these forums.

[Daan]

All what Guardian make fun or interesting in Legion will get a nerf or completely removed.

[CenariusTheForestLord]

Seeing as this thread is dead after 13 posts, it's sad to see there's only about 6 guardian druids left on this forum.
I wonder how many will be left in BFA.

OT:

All bear needs is more dps. I mean how many people really use another button. not one high end person uses pulverize, lets not put in a talent and say we need pulverize. All bears do now and in BfA is swipe, thrash, mangle and ironfur. when shit gets real, push rage of the sleeper, barksin, SI, and rarely pushed Rejuv as we had to see what % of heal it would do, we just couldn't push it to push it to be optimal, lets not be silly.

Rage Sleeper and guttural roars is the only thing gone. rest feels the same and wont even notice except the dps, unless you're one of those that counted every time moonfire randomly hit, which i highly doubt. Most of the bear kit was passives. Notice the noticeable and not the unnoticeables. sky is falling, reroll just like every class in these forums.

Dps is never one of my methods to test a spec. Especially a tank one.
More dps will not fix the obvious issues with the spec's rotation if we won't retain our current traits/legendaries.
The only 2 "fun" playstyles currently available to us are meme bear and thrash bear. The first only available through GG and boomkin shoulders with cloak (current argus guardian). The last with bracers and legs and later with double thrash procs (the Nighthold/TOS guardian).
Both will be gone through the nerf of GG and loss of traits + legendaries.
Which means we have a base rotation left that is a skeleton of what it could be, dps does't even factor into it.

On the frenzied regen point: You need a WA to use it optimally, showing you the number it would heal for when pressed. I've had it since the start. But I can see how that woulld be annoying to optimize. The answer is then to fix it so it is more transparent. Not make it more transparent but make it useless in the process. Which is what this 25% 5second HOT on the GCD is, useless.

On the removal of our utility/dps cooldowns: I know they don't ake the rotation/spec more interesting. Which is why I won't be upset if they remain gone. The problem is with our rotation as barebones as it is. We don't have anything left, no good utility, no good cooldowns, no good solid rotation. Which happen to be my 3 top priorities for a fun spec. Even 1 or 2 out of the 3 would have been fine with me. But now we don't have any.

[Jaewalk]

Seeing as this thread is dead after 13 posts, it's sad to see there's only about 6 guardian druids left on this forum.
I wonder how many will be left in BFA.

OT:


Dps is never one of my methods to test a spec. Especially a tank one.
More dps will not fix the obvious issues with the spec's rotation if we won't retain our current traits/legendaries.
The only 2 "fun" playstyles currently available to us are meme bear and thrash bear. The first only available through GG and boomkin shoulders with cloak (current argus guardian). The last with bracers and legs and later with double thrash procs (the Nighthold/TOS guardian).
Both will be gone through the nerf of GG and loss of traits + legendaries.
Which means we have a base rotation left that is a skeleton of what it could be, dps does't even factor into it.

On the frenzied regen point: You need a WA to use it optimally, showing you the number it would heal for when pressed. I've had it since the start. But I can see how that woulld be annoying to optimize. The answer is then to fix it so it is more transparent. Not make it more transparent but make it useless in the process. Which is what this 25% 5second HOT on the GCD is, useless.

On the removal of our utility/dps cooldowns: I know they don't ake the rotation/spec more interesting. Which is why I won't be upset if they remain gone. The problem is with our rotation as barebones as it is. We don't have anything left, no good utility, no good cooldowns, no good solid rotation. Which happen to be my 3 top priorities for a fun spec. Even 1 or 2 out of the 3 would have been fine with me. But now we don't have any.

I disagree and think DPS is more important than ever for tanks going forward considering the BFA threat changes. IN BFA threat generation has been massively nerfed for all tanks and less dps = less threat.

I agree with the rest of your points. I think bears will be very "Tanky" but not offer much else or be as viable as the other tanks for M+... just great physical mitigation tanks for raids- not much else.

[exochaft]

On the frenzied regen point: You need a WA to use it optimally, showing you the number it would heal for when pressed. I've had it since the start. But I can see how that woulld be annoying to optimize. The answer is then to fix it so it is more transparent. Not make it more transparent but make it useless in the process. Which is what this 25% 5second HOT on the GCD is, useless.

Again, there's irony if that's the reason Blizz is changing how FR works, since a "heal based upon damage taken in the last X seconds" will still exist in the game for Death Strike (on top of the entire blood DK tree basically turning into 1001 ways to heal more or increase HP/reduce damage). The arguments of the Legion FR mechanic being difficult to comprehend/use optimally or that FR makes druids not rely on heals is a farce when compared to blood DK's. I know it's a different class and different tank style, but having played both on the beta, it's pretty obvious that FR could be buffed immensely and still not catch up. Maybe there's some Azerite traits down the line that buff FR that we don't know about, but I don't consider that an ideal method of making the Guardian package feel fulfilling. And I certainly hope Blizz isn't balancing around Guardians shifting out to manually heal, that'd be ridiculous.

[naeblis495]

I disagree and think DPS is more important than ever for tanks going forward considering the BFA threat changes. IN BFA threat generation has been massively nerfed for all tanks and less dps = less threat.

I agree with the rest of your points. I think bears will be very "Tanky" but not offer much else or be as viable as the other tanks for M+... just great physical mitigation tanks for raids- not much else.

that come from a casual bear but imo , if you take GG and pulverize , the rotation is pretty involved , and we still have group dash, roar and rez as utility baseline and a knock back + slow or mass root in the talents

brambles help a lot in the dmg department and help to triger GG , moonfire is also a bigger portion of our dmg for what i can see , that could explain the nerf to GG as a free , moonfire is more valuable now

we lost a lot of things ( so did every one) but i still see us being viable but not the best and i hope that blizz will do more interresting things with us in 8.1

[CenariusTheForestLord]

I disagree and think DPS is more important than ever for tanks going forward considering the BFA threat changes. IN BFA threat generation has been massively nerfed for all tanks and less dps = less threat.

I agree with the rest of your points. I think bears will be very "Tanky" but not offer much else or be as viable as the other tanks for M+... just great physical mitigation tanks for raids- not much else.

I see where you're coming from, but I don't find it that big of a deal. The big deal on the threat front is DPS cooldowns. Burst threat is going to be very powerful for us in BFA especially with classes like frost DK.
I don't find the numbers important because that is something that blizz frequently updates. Number tuning is in every single patch. Major and Minor.

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Again, there's irony if that's the reason Blizz is changing how FR works, since a "heal based upon damage taken in the last X seconds" will still exist in the game for Death Strike (on top of the entire blood DK tree basically turning into 1001 ways to heal more or increase HP/reduce damage). The arguments of the Legion FR mechanic being difficult to comprehend/use optimally or that FR makes druids not rely on heals is a farce when compared to blood DK's. I know it's a different class and different tank style, but having played both on the beta, it's pretty obvious that FR could be buffed immensely and still not catch up. Maybe there's some Azerite traits down the line that buff FR that we don't know about, but I don't consider that an ideal method of making the Guardian package feel fulfilling. And I certainly hope Blizz isn't balancing around Guardians shifting out to manually heal, that'd be ridiculous.

I stopped caring about Azerite Traits. I still haven't seen any that even come close to set bonuses, let alone artifact traits. I doubt they will become what Blizz promised.

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that come from a casual bear but imo , if you take GG and pulverize , the rotation is pretty involved , and we still have group dash, roar and rez as utility baseline and a knock back + slow or mass root in the talents

brambles help a lot in the dmg department and help to triger GG , moonfire is also a bigger portion of our dmg for what i can see , that could explain the nerf to GG as a free , moonfire is more valuable now

we lost a lot of things ( so did every one) but i still see us being viable but not the best and i hope that blizz will do more interresting things with us in 8.1

This is exactly my problem. We need 2 specific talents (that are currently underperforming) to have a rotation that feels involved.
Moonfire is a bigger chunck of our damage because we lost the 70% increased damage of thrash and double thrash trait. Doesn't mean moonfire does more damage.

[Kaolin]

CR costs rage now. They nerfed brambles into the 9th circle of hell. We don't do anything interesting bar aoe roar. Like cenarius said if they gave us back berserk they would have to give us something completely diff for incarn or somehow buff the shit out of it. A week or two ago on the beta my moonfire tick was doing more dmg than 3 stack thrash. obv those things can be tuned up or down but also they have been nerfing our health over the course of the beta. Some of the other tanks are even competing with us health wise which is whatever but now that FR just does flat health % and not on dmg taken just makes it feel bad. Also like cenarius said most of the azerite traits are wholly underwhelming coming no where near what a tier bonus would be. There is that cheesy FR increasing one that no doubt will get also get nerfed. Having a 30 to 40 sec long FR what the fuck were they thinking. Anyways not many other classes recieved less changes to talents than bear did id say. We just got shit removed and thats it.

I caught part of a Sco stream where he ranked us #1 tank because of our uptime on AM. Obv he's more knowledgeable or maybe he was trolling. They just did buff IF too.