[Guardian] - Patch 5.4 Survival Guide

[Deleted]

I dont see the point of taking a talent thats lowers our dps with a proc you dont even use for yourself but to "help" the healers. HotW will be alot stronger anyway but Id say the amount of people you save with DoC and NV is about the same and thats the biggest issue with DoC doing the same as NV but instead of gaining dmg you loose it

DoC and NV are hardly the same, also NV healing for 100k? that means you hit for 400k, which unless you are whoring vengeance or have a dmg increase on the boss isn't going to happen. DoC will more consistantly save others, AND yourself if you use it correctly, but it requires you pay attention to your unit frames as well as doing all your regular tanking activities. I agree though that it is still kind of annoying without a dps increase OR being off the gcd. Additionally because the buff's duration is so short it's not 100% reliable for it to be up, i.e. you can't save the buff for too long, else it's wasted.

When comparing the talents in that tier we have:

HoTW: passive dmg increase with HUGE healing but on a long cooldown and duration, also an EH gain
NV: short cooldown burst dmg increase and healing for medium duration
DoC: Very short cooldown heal that Reduces the damage you output and is clunky to use. Either it needs to go the whole way and just be the go-to healing talent and have a longer duration buff and be off gcd, OR it needs to increase your dmg slightly to keep it in line with the other 2 specs. If the HT stays on the gcd, this dmg increase will have to be quite significant for it to overcome the dps loss sustained by casting the HTs, on the other hand that would then make it the best dmg talent by far if you were to not bother casting HTs (unless the dmg buff was somehow tied to the HT, similar to how DoC used to work, i.e. HT makes your next 2 mangles deal x% more dmg or something, or has 100% chance to reset cd of mangle, or makes your next lacerate extend thrash...or HT gives you a "savage roar" type buff...etc etc etc).

Essentially, atm NV and HoTW match and are along a similar theme for us and there is a proper choice. DoC just isn't in the right niche, doesn't line up with the theme of the tier entirely yet and is still clunky.

[Viromand]

NV: short cooldown burst dmg increase and healing for medium duration

I wouldnt call 45 seconds medium duration.

also NV healing for 100k? that means you hit for 400k

Not saying with one ability but mangle plus melee plus lacerate dot plus maul is about 100k with around 140k vengeance. Not saying you heal 100k hps the entire duration.

DoC will more consistantly save others,

Im not saying it will not, but:

Lets assume you have perfect reaction grid with moueover and so on. You are doing a fightwith 2healers(disc druid) 1 tank(to guarantee high vengeance) and you have 1 warlock in your raid.

your SP drops to 15% and he will need atleast 50% hp after 5 seconds to survive the next hit. Now alot of things can happen

A: he uses his healtalent (if specced) with healthstone.
B: he gets healed disc smartheal and random druid hots and both healers start casting their flashheals on him.
C: he uses his dispersion and survives the next attack anyway
D: You have your DoC proc up and assuming really good reactions you will at least need to wait a gcd to cast HT on him. and with both healers reacting he have 100% before next hit.


And this has to be an non predictable dmg cause during aoe phase there are mostly cooldowns in use. Sure not saying DoC heals are not good, but NV would have done the exact same (not in amount) plus it lasts much longer. The actual "saving someone" that wouldnt have been saved or could have saved himself is very rare.
And this is with perfect reaction, and I doubt that one gcd is not likely to happen in a raid, where you need to also focus on rage usage, dps rotation, bosscooldowns and tankswapmechanics. So even if the second you realize that the SP took dmg while you hit mangle and you hav a proc up, you need to react, if you already pressed your lacerate button you would have to wait another 1.5 seconds, so i would say you will need atleast 3 seconds to heal the SP. I guess you will not only loose dmg from the gcd but keeping track of everything looking at raidframes the whole time you will loose some dps aswell.

[Deleted]

NV is 30 seconds...

Even with several small heals over a short ish space of time you're NV won't "save" someone, it just helps with aoe heals the healers have to do the actual saving.

DoC however in theory fills a role I currently use NS for (along with CR), which is topping/help to top someone who is low, could be the guy with the debuff, could be the guy who stood in fire w/e if is, and I promise you, even with a 1 min cd, NS has saved a life many times during progression. Also, idk about you but if someone needs a heal, I can always press HT the next gcd, 3secs is very much slooow reaction time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying NV is bad, or that it doesn't help healing or anything like that, I'm just saying, they're completely not comparable abilities, they have different roles and purposes, require different levels of attention to your situation. DoC *could* be an extremely powerful tool if it is fixed, and be by far and away the best way to spot heal either yourself or others in the raid, particularly in 10man, in a way that NV just is never going to do outside of some select situations normally based around increased dmg taken mechanics or high vengeance mechanics or maybe some convenient berserk spam things. NV is also way less "on demand" unless there is a particular part where you know for certain you need additional healing, say the megeara rampages for example. Additionally, the chances of you holding off on NV "in case someone drops low" are minute.

AGAIN: I'm NOT saying DoC is a "go-to" talent at the moment, or even really a viable alternative to HoTW or NV, certainly its dmg would be truely terrible, it's still clunky, and many people would probably find it a bit too complicated/annoying/stressful/useless to bother with it. All I'm saying is don't discount the potential utility of the talent IF it gets fixed to be a little smoother and maybe do more dmg.


P.S. I have a great example from the other day, we had an undergeared shaman in our raid, and he is almost 1 shot by the interrupting jolt on hc animus, so right before it goes off, he needed topping, or a shield or something else. Problem is, from a healer's perspective, the whole raid is taking damage before then, and needs healing up and NV isn't going to help because in terms of HP %, he's not the lowest, or even close to the lowest, so I toss him a HT, he lives, we kill boss. It's not a perfect example, 'cause tbh, he wasn't super vital to the kill, but I did similar with the people with the debuff on hc blade lord right before the strike when we progressed there, the dot on garalon on the kiter when a healer died, or was out of range, or right before a stomp.... a good, well used, strong direct heal can be very powerful, far more so than NV would have been.

[Viromand]

NV is 30 seconds...

Yeah dont know why I thought it was 45s

DoC *could* be an extremely powerful tool if it is fixed,

And this is the problem, getting rid of the GCD will be way to powerfull, I doubt with all the changes they already did to tanks raihealing cooldown/glyphs I doubt they will give us that. talking about NV thrash nerf, battlehealer, and monk statueguard.

A dmg buff maybe that would be great.

DoC HT is great and I would love it on heroic council/primordius and some other bosses. Still 3 seconds is not that off if assuming you use every GCD aynways, so if someone takes dmg and you react to it within 1gcd thats very good but 2 is also not that bad.

Your example is a great example why DoC with a longer duration or off the gcd will be to op. It would be like a LoH that can be used about 4 times a minute

[Deleted]

Yeah dont know why I thought it was 45s

And this is the problem, getting rid of the GCD will be way to powerfull, I doubt with all the changes they already did to tanks raihealing cooldown/glyphs I doubt they will give us that. talking about NV thrash nerf, battlehealer, and monk statueguard.

A dmg buff maybe that would be great.

DoC HT is great and I would love it on heroic council/primordius and some other bosses. Still 3 seconds is not that off if assuming you use every GCD aynways, so if someone takes dmg and you react to it within 1gcd thats very good but 2 is also not that bad.

Your example is a great example why DoC with a longer duration or off the gcd will be to op. It would be like a LoH that can be used about 4 times a minute

Indeed, it would be powerful...if it will be too op...idk, can't really tell if it will be until/if they change it. As it stands it is not compelling. In fact, they could make it similar to how WoG works for palas, where it's strong if used on ourselves, but not as strong on others, but we shall see what they do...oh and DoC, even in its current form could be sik for proving grounds. Also FoN needs fixing.

[Arielle]

I hope everyone realizes that mechanics are the hard part. Moving numbers up and down is dead easy.

[Deleted]

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b

I hope everyone realizes that mechanics are the hard part. Moving numbers up and down is dead easy.

As a software developer this is obvious. However the ease of adding mechanics depends on how generic and flexible the code is that is written originally. Given that mechanic addition and alteration is a common use case in wow I would hope that they have reasonably well designed code for this. On the other hand...Wow is oold, and legacy code is a pain.

[exochaft]

There has been some discussion concerning how viable a DoC would be in actual raid combat. Now, maybe my healing experience gives me an advantage, but I find that knowing your healers and how they react to situations makes a huge difference... also having raid frames out and pre-heal indicators while tanking helps. Even on the PTR, I found ample situations where the HT heal was very beneficial, and it generally revolves around one or several people taking constant/spike damage... or if there's constant raid damage that never ends. For example, the second encounter in SoO has some potential for the DoC heal. When quite a few members of your raid have Garrote or are targeted with one of the add's abilities that make them go boom... literally a bunch of random damage that isn't always predictable, but it's easy to have someone get quite low on HP because there are so many other things to worry about. However, there can be a case made for NV since not all of the damage is instant versus periodic, and there are small add phases where things need to die with pulsing aoe going out... in reality, it depends on the needs of your raid.

Regardless, here's what I'd like to throw out: if there was a damage output component to DoC that was comparable to NV/HotW, would that make it more viable to people?

[Arielle]

Regardless, here's what I'd like to throw out: if there was a damage output component to DoC that was comparable to NV/HotW, would that make it more viable to people?

You'd have to like double the buff duration and add a damage component, or keep it as pure healing and take it off the GCD.

As it stands now you have < 7 seconds (which in reality is only 4 GCDs) to use it since you lose a full GCD on the proc itself (or more depending on latency) which is really dumb. That's not even close to enough time.

The idea behind it is great. Just needs a little more mechanical polish.

[jimmy valmer]

Just a quick question on bear dps, how is it with / without vengeance?

[exochaft]

Just a quick question on bear dps, how is it with / without vengeance?

From my experience with other tanks, I'd say Guardians are likely the best no/low Vengeance tanks with respect to damage output. However, I think paladins and monks begin to scale better than Guardians at very high levels of Vengeance (we're in the middle of the pack with respect to all tanks at high Vengeance, though).



Straying away from that, sort of off-topic, is there a thread on the WoW PTR forums dedicated to DoC for Guardians yet? I've seen some people who frequent these forums on other PTR forum threads, at least, figured I'd ask now.

[Arielle]

Straying away from that, sort of off-topic, is there a thread on the WoW PTR forums dedicated to DoC for Guardians yet? I've seen some people who frequent these forums on other PTR forum threads, at least, figured I'd ask now.

I don't think so, no. Feel free to make one if you like.

[Deleted]

Arielle's Ancient Legwraps

Damn why don't we all get iteams named after us.

[Andaja]

And it still has blue sockets and mastery even thou Arielle is a bear.

[Deleted]

And it still has blue sockets and mastery even thou Arielle is a bear.

Indeed, it should be yellow sockets with a crit socket bonus and haste instead of mastery.

Maybe raise it as an issue on PTR :P

[Arielle]

I would kinda feel like a douche at that point.

I'm going to wear them as my OS piece anyway just because.

[Elunedra]

well maybe the intended model for bears was to use mastery & stamina even tho it doenst work out like that in reality

[rated]

well maybe the intended model for bears was to use mastery & stamina even tho it doenst work out like that in reality

I don't think Bliz knows what they intend. IE: Last expansion we all wanted dodge and they never gave it to us. This expansion we hate dodge and they give us dodge on gear...

[Arielle]

I think the intention was to provide options rather than sort of forcing us down one path. It just turns out that RPS gearing is much more fun.

[Deleted]

I think the intention was to provide options rather than sort of forcing us down one path. It just turns out that RPS gearing is much more fun.

even more fun if you shout RAWR at your computer screen when you press your buttonz...either that or om nom nom nom nom nom nom