Guardian Alpha Patchnotes

[Miko]

I'd be happy if they just made Bristling Fur give back the passive armor we lost. I may be the only druid tank that liked the high armor and the amount of passive defenses, just something about not worrying too much if a mob hit you in the back. Anyway, if they gave the high armor a druid has back "Bristling Fur" I would take it over anything else. As it stands now Pulverize it is and a really clunky button to have to worry with, but whatever I guess.

[Dreyen]

You're combining two problems into one, when there's really 2 problems.

Problem 1: Thrash does too much damage period (also the PF bug is still in which is probably skewing everyone's feedback).
Problem 2: Pulverize is too good.

Re-adding Swipe solves problem 1. Nerfing Pulverize solves problem 2. Changing AoE to 2 buttons that cannot be spammed (Swipe) or give you no benefit from spamming (Thrash) solves your "AoE Problem" (which is one that I don't believe exists quite frankly).

I don't see how re-adding swipe makes it any more different? You simply -can't- maintain your aoe rotation while maintaining pulverize up, adding swipe would make it even worse. While using pulverize, your aoe becomes either inexistant or you're simply not using pulverize, both which puts you at great disavantage compared to other tanks. I've tested several beta fights to realize that maintaining pulverize is a dps loss, i don't feel like it's great design to remove the entire aoe rotation of a tank because he choose a talent... in a supposedly dps-neutral tier.

Also, i don't think swipe really needs to come back, i guess it does spice it up, but spamming thrash seems fine to me, alternating swipe thrash swipe wasn't much anyways.

I'm really hoping they are going to fix pulverize's interaction with aoe or nerf it to the ground while making other talents competitive so i wouldn't need to worry about it...

[Arielle]

I've tested several beta fights to realize that maintaining pulverize is a dps loss, i don't feel like it's great design to remove the entire aoe rotation of a tank because he choose a talent... in a supposedly dps-neutral tier.

1. Swipe comes back and shares a CD with Mangle. Deals as much damage as Lacerate.
2. Thrash's impact damage nerfed to the ground. Add damage to the DoT if required.
3. Increase Pulverize's duration to 12 (or even 15) seconds.

Now you can easily maintain Pulverize without losing AoE damage. Problem solved.

[Karnudge]

OO OO OO I think I have a solution.

Instead of thrash putting the thrash bleed on things, just have it put a lacerate in an AOE. Therefore, in an AOE situation, you can just spam thrash (which can stack to 3 like lacerate now) and then you can keep pulverize where it is.

[Arielle]

OO OO OO I think I have a solution.

Instead of thrash putting the thrash bleed on things, just have it put a lacerate in an AOE. Therefore, in an AOE situation, you can just spam thrash (which can stack to 3 like lacerate now) and then you can keep pulverize where it is.

Never happen as long as Ursa Major is a thing.

[Gemini Soul]

OO OO OO I think I have a solution.

Instead of thrash putting the thrash bleed on things, just have it put a lacerate in an AOE. Therefore, in an AOE situation, you can just spam thrash (which can stack to 3 like lacerate now) and then you can keep pulverize where it is.

Your post makes way to much sense and your fix would solve every ones concern with AoE tanking and pulverize.

Single target we spam Lacerate as a filler AoE its Thrash instead both apply the same stacking bleed. Druid version of pallys CS/HoTR and Censure. Would require some number tunning but that would be ez mode, both do physical damage and as long as Thrash on 2 does more than Lacerate on 1 it would work out nicely. As for rage, hitting 2 or more targets generate the same rage as lacerate. Then they can remove the rage from the thrash bleed and add it back to our other builders.

- - - Updated - - -

Never happen as long as Ursa Major is a thing.

Can put an ICD on the proc it self

[Arielle]

Your post makes way to much sense and your fix would solve every ones concern with AoE tanking and pulverize.

It makes absolutely no sense and completely guts the single target rotation to fix a (dubious at best) AoE problem.

[Karnudge]

It makes absolutely no sense and completely guts the single target rotation to fix a (dubious at best) AoE problem.

Well you would need a way to ensure that on a single target fight, lacerate in some way is more beneficial.

But let's take Ursa Major. Instead of thrash becoming just a Lacerate AOE, then change Pulverize so it consumes 3 lacerates or a thrash bleed, or possibly 3 thrash bleed stacks if they made thrash stack for funzies. Then Ursa Major remains unchanged, because thrash doesn't proc it, and on a single target fight, it's more beneficial to use Lacerate since that DOES proc it.

[Grubjuice]

i thought the whole point of Pulverize was that it's not useful for AoE tanking, Guardian of Elune would be much better if AoE is a priority....

[Arielle]

Well you would need a way to ensure that on a single target fight, lacerate in some way is more beneficial.

But let's take Ursa Major. Instead of thrash becoming just a Lacerate AOE, then change Pulverize so it consumes 3 lacerates or a thrash bleed, or possibly 3 thrash bleed stacks if they made thrash stack for funzies. Then Ursa Major remains unchanged, because thrash doesn't proc it, and on a single target fight, it's more beneficial to use Lacerate since that DOES proc it.

I don't think what I meant got across correctly.

Thrash being too beneficial to spam is a Thrash problem, not a Pulverize problem. Not being able to keep Pulverize up in an AoE situation is easily fixed by not making you able (or want) to spam AoE abilities, and giving you enough time to refresh Pulverize.

Doing the kinds of crazy mechanics changes you're suggesting when there are far more simple solutions just doesn't make any sense.

[Mandibleclaw]

i thought the whole point of Pulverize was that it's not useful for AoE tanking, Guardian of Elune would be much better if AoE is a priority....

It's not abt pulverize being useful for AOE tanking, it's about pulverize having a bad synergy with aoe tanking by making it very hard to maintain pulverize while aoe tanking, or sacrificing the aoe dps to keep pulverize up.

I do like Karnudge's idea though.

[Gemini Soul]

Well you would need a way to ensure that on a single target fight, lacerate in some way is more beneficial.

But let's take Ursa Major. Instead of thrash becoming just a Lacerate AOE, then change Pulverize so it consumes 3 lacerates or a thrash bleed, or possibly 3 thrash bleed stacks if they made thrash stack for funzies. Then Ursa Major remains unchanged, because thrash doesn't proc it, and on a single target fight, it's more beneficial to use Lacerate since that DOES proc it.

That would work too, let Thrash stack up to 3 times and pulverize can consume either a 3 count of thrash or pulverize. They would obliviously have to make it so it would prioritize one of them and adjust Thrash bleed dmg.

[Karnudge]

I don't think what I meant got across correctly.

Thrash being too beneficial to spam is a Thrash problem, not a Pulverize problem. Not being able to keep Pulverize up in an AoE situation is easily fixed by not making you able (or want) to spam AoE abilities, and giving you enough time to refresh Pulverize.

Doing the kinds of crazy mechanics changes you're suggesting when there are far more simple solutions just doesn't make any sense.

So you're saying we should be able to cast thrash once, then that's it, aoe threat has been established, and then we just go about lacerating and pulverizing as though it's a single target fight, only hitting thrash when we need to re-apply the bleed?

Which is totally fine, and it would fix things, but I think we can all admit that spamming thrash and having all those yellow numbers pop up is somehow satisfying.

[Teye]

(dubious at best) AoE problem.

I'm not going to expect you to agree with me, because I find you incapable of admitting when you're wrong. I'll explain anyway though.

The AoE problem is not AoE damage. Damage doesn't matter nearly as much as it does on live Tanks. What does matter, is threat. With Vengeance gone, and Trash as Bear's only 4+ target AoE option, DPS are going to be ripping threat off of Bears with their eyes closed. Yes, Thrash does good damage when you look at the overall damage done for the ability, or the DPET. However, if you look at the threat caused by spamming the ability 5 or 6 times, you'll see that every other tank and several DPS classes can out-burst the threat it generates very easily.

Let's look at the other Tanking classes...
Monks have Keg Toss for burst threat; SCK/RJW, Chi Explosion and Breath of Fire for sustained.
Paladins have Hammer of Right and Holy Prism (when needed) for burst threat; Consecration and Light's Hammer (when needed) for sustained.
DKs have Blood Boil for burst threat; Diseases, DnD/Defile or Breath of Sindragosa for sustained.
Warriors have Thunderclap (Optional Glyph for more front loaded threat) and Dragon's Roar for burst threat; Ravager, Deep Wounds and Bladestorm for sustained.

Bears have... Thrash and its DoT. Note that every other class has at least 4 abilities listed, and even DK (which has a community full of people complaining that its been gutted) still has better options for threat than Bears do. All of the other classes also have OPTIONS. Playing Bear in an AoE situation for 5 straight minutes is incredibly boring right now.

Remember when Arcane was doing the best DPS in the game in Dragon Soul, but every Mage still played Fire despite it being 2-3% lower DPS? People don't like 1 button rotations. They're boring. Other than Active Mitigation (Arcane still had to manage CDs and Mana), Bear is a 1 button rotation for AoE.

Oh, and inb4 "Berserk and Mangle is an AoE!", please note that I didn't list any of the other classes 3 target cleave abilities. Revenge, Avenger's Shield and Keg Smash say hi. This is why DKs are pissed about Heart Strike being gone, it took away a tool that all 4 other Tanks have. Yes, Bears can compete on 3 targets (for 15 seconds every 3 minutes!) but that isn't the point of this post. 3 targets per GCD means nothing when 5 adds are about to kill your DPS, and Thrash simply isn't enough.

[Mandibleclaw]

I don't know if anyone has suggested this but what if pulverize gave us DR based on the stacks number it consumes. Many people are suggesting nerfs to the DR number, what if we could consume 1 charge or 2 for a lesser version of the pulverize DR and try to maintain at least some of that DR up? It wouldnt need to have the whole 3 stacks to be able to use pulv..

[Teye]

I don't know if anyone has suggested this but what if pulverize gave us DR based on the stacks number it consumes. Many people are suggesting nerfs to the DR number, what if we could consume 1 charge or 2 for a lesser version of the pulverize DR and try to maintain at least some of that DR up? It wouldnt need to have the whole 3 stacks to be able to use pulv..

All that does is give us the option of very slightly more damage in favor of less DR. That solves nothing, since most tanks will pick the current playstyle when given that option, unless the situation calls for more damage. If anything, that just makes the ability a touch stronger, which is the opposite of what it needs.

[Totaltotemic]

As a general rule, talents shouldn't dictate spec design. There is no reason Thrash shouldn't basically do the direct damage of Swipe, if it interferes with Pulverize then Pulverize should be what changes. The most obvious solution would be to make Pulverize a 20-30 second duration that only reduces damage taken by 5-10%, and then make it do enough single target damage to incentivize using it rotationally at 3 stacks when you can. That way you don't have to use it all of the time to stay alive (particularly in AoE situations) and there's a reason to use it before it would normally fall off again.

[Arielle]

Which is totally fine, and it would fix things, but I think we can all admit that spamming thrash and having all those yellow numbers pop up is somehow satisfying.

Is it just "lots of yellow numbers", or the size of them that's alluring? Swipe on live right now isn't very satisfying to press even though it's a 360 AoE. Why? Because its damage is terrible. Thrash just does too much damage on impact right now, which means it's too good to spam for a button that's supposed to be a DoT (at least from a DPS perspective). This happened when they tried to make Thrash do too many things, although in fairness no tuning has been attempted yet (at least until today). So separating out the roles between buttons a little - in particular AoE over time and snap AoE - seems to be the right choice.

Note that this in no way means that Pulverize's duration doesn't need to be increased. There are other talent synergy problems (namely CW and DoC) which necessitate a duration increase in order to even use those talents at all and not force every single Guardian to take Ysera's, SoTF, NV, and Pulverize most of the time.

I'm not going to expect you to agree with me, because I find you incapable of admitting when you're wrong. I'll explain anyway though.

On the contrary, I 100% agree with you. That's why I suggested returning Swipe as a burst AoE threat button.

[Karnudge]

The AoE problem is not AoE damage. Damage doesn't matter nearly as much as it does on live Tanks. What does matter, is threat. With Vengeance gone, and Trash as Bear's only 4+ target AoE option, DPS are going to be ripping threat off of Bears with their eyes closed. Yes, Thrash does good damage when you look at the overall damage done for the ability, or the DPET. However, if you look at the threat caused by spamming the ability 5 or 6 times, you'll see that every other tank and several DPS classes can out-burst the threat it generates very easily.

I thought we were discussing how little DR bears have in regards to other tanks, and how it's exasturbated in an aoe situation since we can't lacerate, and therefore can't pulverize, and it sort of looks like that bears' DR is being balanced around pulverize.

If you're talking in regards to aoe threat/dmg, well I'm going to pretty much reiterate what someone suggested in another forum, but our lvl 45 talents should have been "what kind of burst aoe do druids want" type of tier. Also, you could give Ursol's Vortex some nifty dmg modified by bear threat multiplier, and that would solve it too, though it would dictate a talent for a spec, but that pretty much always happens anyway.

[Arielle]

and how it's exasturbated in an aoe situation since we can't lacerate

What. You can totally Lacerate. You're just choosing not to because you feel Damage is more attractive (also PF is bugged). There's a distinct difference there.

Also giving UV damage at all makes no sense.