Guardian in 8.1

[exochaft]

I don’t understand why Thrash lost its snare, seemed pretty integral in Legion.
Also without Rage of the Sleeper, and with Berserk being baked into Incarnation sometime ago, Guardians now have no baseline offensive cooldown. Surely every other tank has one?

Had a friend who wanted to tank through Timewalking dungeons on his bear alt that he hasn't played since Legion, so he had me walk through his spells and such. One of the first questions was "Alright, which ability is my damage cooldown as bear?" I cried a little on the inside.

[dcc626]

Had a friend who wanted to tank through Timewalking dungeons on his bear alt that he hasn't played since Legion, so he had me walk through his spells and such. One of the first questions was "Alright, which ability is my damage cooldown as bear?" I cried a little on the inside.

tell them its the same as the brewmaster one

[Chuckadoodle]

Did I read the latest build right, We are getting our roar reduced by 60 seconds via a talent and Ursols Vortex as a talent?

[dcc626]

Did I read the latest build right, We are getting our roar reduced by 60 seconds via a talent and Ursols Vortex as a talent?

intimidating roar removed, looks like maybe vortex in that spot.

[Chuckadoodle]

intimidating roar removed, looks like maybe vortex in that spot.

Re-reading looks like Stampeding is baseline 60 seconds for Bear and yes, Vortex vice Int Roar

[Kyux]

The problem isn't guardian's lack of utility. We have a great toolkit. It's our inability to use it without dying. Blood DKs for example can use everything at the cost of a GCD, not their HP.

As people have suggested something like "retain your HP and armour for X seconds after dropping bear form" would work well. IIRC kitties had this in Legion? Alternatively, let us use stuff like regrowth, swiftmend etc in bear form with some sort of cost.

Edit:
I actually take my first statement back... compared to Blood we have like no utility spells.

Dash really needs to work better for guardian imo

Yes ^^ I have an idea: like a warlock's burning rush or whatever it's called, you gain 50% movement at the cost of say, 5 or 10 rage per second. Once you run out it switches off.

[Kaeth]

Re-reading looks like Stampeding is baseline 60 seconds for Bear and yes, Vortex vice Int Roar

It's a good start. I really hope this isn't all they're doing.

[ydraw]

Guardian getting vortex is a great change. Now let us dispel in bear form.

[Shiftzor]

Mark of Ursol is returning. 30% Magic DR 45 Rage / 0.5sec CD

[dcc626]

Mark of Ursol is returning. 30% Magic DR 45 Rage / 0.5sec CD

dont see that anywhere in the notes,guessing just wishful thinking?

[Shiftzor]

Nah, says in the PTR talent stuff, might be just a case of "forgot to remove it?" but might not be

[dcc626]

Nah, says in the PTR talent stuff, might be just a case of "forgot to remove it?" but might not be

ah. because i dont see it on either sets of datamined stuff. id be really surprised if they added it back considering how much of the other tanks ability to deal with magic damage was removed.

[Rioo]

Would rather have the thrash slow back but vortex is a really fun spell which I used quite a lot in MoP. Now if we would just get like dispel, root and/or hibernate in bear form we would really good. Give the CC abilities a CD if cast in bear form to balance it.

[Kaeth]

These changes have me really torn. Have to give up charge for Ursol's Vortex?

Still missing a utility buff.

[Chuckadoodle]

These changes have me really torn. Have to give up charge for Ursol's Vortex?

Still missing a utility buff.

It actually makes more sense at row 30 than row 60. We can have Vortex and Typhoon which does provide great utility in M+, It will be situational in raids as to which you want but for Uldir Vortex would be my choice over charge.

[Kaeth]

It actually makes more sense at row 30 than row 60. We can have Vortex and Typhoon which does provide great utility in M+, It will be situational in raids as to which you want but for Uldir Vortex would be my choice over charge.

I agree it makes sense in that row, if it's added as a talent. I don't really believe it makes sense to make it a talent, though. Guardian utility is trash tier as it is. We don't just need more build choices; we need more baseline abilities we can use in bear form. Sixty-second stampeding roar is an unexpected boon, but even with the 11.5% damage aura buff, 8.1 is so far looking to be the lazy band-aid patch I'd feared it would be.

Prot warrior buffs so far look underwhelming as well.

[Jekada]

I typically run with a Mistweaver for mythic+'s. If we do get Vortex back in interested to see how that'll interact with Ring of Peace...

[kran1um]

It actually makes more sense at row 30 than row 60. We can have Vortex and Typhoon which does provide great utility in M+, It will be situational in raids as to which you want but for Uldir Vortex would be my choice over charge.

Charge is too valuable in M+, unless you want to be the slowest tank ever while sprint/roar is on CD.

[exochaft]

Charge is too valuable in M+, unless you want to be the slowest tank ever while sprint/roar is on CD.

I kind of wish Blizz went with what they did on a PTR in WoD, where Displacer Beast worked for bears and kept you in bear form when you used it. Was immensely fun and useful, then a build later it forced bears to go into kitty. It would be nice to have Tiger Dash keep us in bear (or whatever for you choose), as a start.

In general, that's the problem I have with druids right now, as there are extremely rigid walls between our abilities that thematically may belong to a specific spec but are baseline for all specs, especially on the utility side of life for many abilities. As an example of something good, let's take Might Bash: the tooltip even says you invoke the spirit of Ursoc (a bear, duh) to stun your target, and we can invoke that spirit without having to turn into a bear to use it, aka we can use the stun ability in any form. Now for an example of something bad, Entangling Roots: not only can we cast Mass Entanglement, a much stronger version of the spell, in any form, there's even a PvP talent that lets you magically cast Entangling Roots as a bear, yet outside of PvP we are somehow only able to cast these roots as a caster or boomy or even kitty under certain circumstances.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm completely fine restricting spells to certain specs, but the baseline abilities of druids and talents should be at least usable in the form of specific specs. When it comes to utility abilities like Entangling Roots, it makes little sense to me how 3 specs can use it in their respective forms but the 4th cannot. It gets worse when you start talking about all the other baseline abilities/talents and heals that are independent of spec (I'm fine with resto affinity making you go caster form for non-Regrowth spells). If Blizz needs to make adjustments for PvP, they have separate spell effect system that activates in PvP as well as a whole talent system for PvP to balance bears out. However, I constantly feel like we are at odds with being balanced around a system that expects us to shift out of forms in a game where most of the time we cannot under the guise of thematic restriction.

[Puupi]

My wishlist for guardian 8.1:

1. a dps cooldown
2. more selfhealing - drastically reduced cooldown on FR or Regrowth castable in bear form or something completely new.
3. dispelling in bear form
4. roots in bear form
5. snare? legion thrash snare was awesome, but 50% nowadays would be a bit too op... so maybe 20-30% snare on thrash?