Guardian Alpha Patchnotes

[Aseyhe]

I think what they mean is the recharge time is still 2 min, but there's an ICD of 12 seconds so you can't stack or overwrite SI. Pretty bad description of the spell yeah.

You're likely right, but it's just a datamining/spell data thing. In game the tooltip says "2 min recharge" and doesn't mention a cooldown at all.

[Orloth]

I have a question for the math inclined individuals in this thread (if it hasn't already been answered). Will Primal Tenacity have Break Points or Diminishing Returns? It seems to simply affect every other damage source, but if it scales past 100% it could easily start fully mitigating one hit, partially mitigating the second, and then being refreshed by a third; which would actually be a significant drop in mitigation until you get up to 150% (This assumes an absolutely constant source of damage, which I know never happens.) Would Primal Tenacity scale high enough for this to be a problem? and if it does do I have my napkin math right?

Edit: Had the name of the Mastery wrong.

[Arielle]

Will Primal Tenacity have Break Points or Diminishing Returns?

Not anything you could reach. You'd need around 5600 Mastery Rating for that to be a thing.

[Raugnaut]

Not anything you could reach. You'd need around 5600 Mastery Rating for that to be a thing.

It could also vary fight by fight, such as Nazgrim's Execute.

[Orloth]

It could also vary fight by fight, such as Nazgrim's Execute.

I don't think that that would be as much of a problem, as it would be nearly impossible to predict and properly place the Primal Tenacity Shield. Either it get's partially mitigated, which is good; or it lands in full, and gives a huge Primal Tenacity Shield so that you don't take any damage for a short while. Either way, it seems pretty well put together to make the damage taken a bit less random, without fundamentally rewriting how Guardian Druids work. I was just concerned about it scaling into that break point, but if that's not likely then so be it (though it raises a different concern of Just how valuable a stat is it if it scales that poorly, but I'm hardly an expert on tank scaling).

[Dreyen]

I don't think that that would be as much of a problem, as it would be nearly impossible to predict and properly place the Primal Tenacity Shield. Either it get's partially mitigated, which is good; or it lands in full, and gives a huge Primal Tenacity Shield so that you don't take any damage for a short while. Either way, it seems pretty well put together to make the damage taken a bit less random, without fundamentally rewriting how Guardian Druids work. I was just concerned about it scaling into that break point, but if that's not likely then so be it (though it raises a different concern of Just how valuable a stat is it if it scales that poorly, but I'm hardly an expert on tank scaling).

The fact it won't reach 100% Mastery wouldn't exactly be poor.. it would mean you have a permanent 50% damage reduction.. sounds really freaking good to me, it doesn't need to be that strong!

I'm kinda sad if that new ability that increases mastery by 5% means it'll be our best/second best stat.. i really hoped for haste/multistrike to be the best combo just for ridiculous hp reasons, but it seems like it's going to be haste>mastery with a small amount of multistrike to at least get a permanent 5% hp boost or maybe the opposite, which would be.. ugh

[Kraineth]

The fact it won't reach 100% Mastery wouldn't exactly be poor.. it would mean you have a permanent 50% damage reduction.. sounds really freaking good to me, it doesn't need to be that strong!

I'm kinda sad if that new ability that increases mastery by 5% means it'll be our best/second best stat.. i really hoped for haste/multistrike to be the best combo just for ridiculous hp reasons, but it seems like it's going to be haste>mastery with a small amount of multistrike to at least get a permanent 5% hp boost or maybe the opposite, which would be.. ugh

In all likeliness these 5% stat bonus are intended to help balance secondary stat values for specs. I very much doubt they are intended to promote specs to stack specific secondaries since they stated that they want all secondaries to be relatively equal.

We should know by tomorrow, since we are supposed to be getting updated Alpha notes, and hopefully a new Alpha build as well since the current one will be missing a lot of major changes.

[Dreyen]

Don't think so, since they could simply change the scaling of the stats. It might be just an easy way for blizzard to show what the "best stats" is for every class.

[Callsignecho]

I can confirm that Guardian Druids will have 1 page of abilities in WoD. RIP everything. (Not really)

[Kraineth]

Well looks like I was wrong, I don't agree with it though. Seems kind of mindless to me if those stats truly are going to be what people want to stack.

[Gemini Soul]

Wonder why they take skills away from specs but don't update the talents they worked with. Granted its Alpha but whats the plan, prune as much as they can then see what they can do with talents with what little is left of skills.

Rejuvenation is no longer available to Guardian Druids. 8'(

Druid: Mark of the Wild now also provides 3% Versatility.
Nice little buff for bears, iirc it would be +3% dmg/healing done and 3% dmg reduction.



Still no replacement for the bear hug perk, lets hope its replaced with a perk for SD we can hope for 1 more charge.

[Callsignecho]

The patch notes did cross out Swipe has been removed from Bears. Does that mean we get it back, or are they getting rid of the extra wording that wasn't needed?

[Raugnaut]

So, bears can no longer rejuve. What's the point of HotW again?

[Gemini Soul]

So, bears can no longer rejuve. What's the point of HotW again?

And no more tranq, taking away tranq and now rejuv from bears more or less makes it a dps only talent.


JUST WISH they would let bears/ferals BR in form with out having to spec for it.

- - - Updated - - -

The patch notes did cross out Swipe has been removed from Bears. Does that mean we get it back, or are they getting rid of the extra wording that wasn't needed?

Extra wording, cause they baked swipe into thrash for us.



Travel Form now automatically transitions between Aquatic, Land, and Flight versions, as is appropriate to the Druid’s location.

That blows, what if we want to use land in a flight area for w/e reason.

[Callsignecho]

They turned HotW into a very niche talent, and since it doesn't increase Stam/Agi/Int anymore, it is worst than garbage on a 6 min CD.

I believe DoC also has become a very niche talent, because 10% crit on Mangle and a chance to get an instant Healing Touch or Rebirth do not cut it with the changes.

NV is really just a bad 1.5 min CD that is going to increase our damage and healing slightly, while giving bad off-heals to someone.

I'm really not excited about tier 90 talents anymore.

P.S. Celes tweeted that they are not done with ability purging yet and Warriors, Warlocks, and Monks are still left.

[Gemini Soul]

They turned HotW into a very niche talent, and since it doesn't increase Stam/Agi/Int anymore, it is worst than garbage on a 6 min CD.

I believe DoC also has become a very niche talent, because 10% crit on Mangle and a chance to get an instant Healing Touch or Rebirth do not cut it with the changes.

NV is really just a bad 1.5 min CD that is going to increase our damage and healing slightly, while giving bad off-heals to someone.

I'm really not excited about tier 90 talents anymore.

P.S. Celes tweeted that they are not done with ability purging yet and Warriors, Warlocks, and Monks are still left.

I run HoTW now for the 6% boost to Agi/Stam letting me gear more haste and for tossing out tranq on raid and to blanket rejuv's.

[stormgust]

They turned HotW into a very niche talent, and since it doesn't increase Stam/Agi/Int anymore, it is worst than garbage on a 6 min CD.

Well, it's the same for all specs. Though I wonder why they even opted for another try at HotW. It barely worked out for MoP (bordeline overpowered numbers required to make the talent even remotely useful), how do they plan it to work out for WoD, not that we have access to not only even less abilities, but also lack 10-30% strength on those we have (via perks or in case of balance, solar/lunar empowerment)?.

I'm really not excited about tier 90 talents anymore.

Best thing right now is to hope that they realize that T90 can hardly work out anymore given their intended design goals for WoD, and instead provide us with some real options.

[Callsignecho]

I run HoTW now for the 6% boost to Agi/Stam letting me gear more haste and for tossing out tranq on raid and to blanket rejuv's.

Those are definitely other reasons to take the talent, but I think it becomes even worse when the only healing spell we have now is Healing Touch, and the fact that they want tanks to tank more, and not dps/off heal the raid.

[Gemini Soul]

Best thing right now is to hope that they realize that T90 can hardly work out anymore given their intended design goals for WoD, and instead provide us with some real options.

Lets hope they re-work the whole Teir, cause not its meant for us to do something out of spec like bear raid heal, but that is something they don't want any more. They only want healers healing the raid, so lets hope our whole 90 Teir gets some love.

[Callsignecho]

Best thing right now is to hope that they realize that T90 can hardly work out anymore given their intended design goals for WoD, and instead provide us with some real options.

I don't think it is going to get any better. They have stated that they wanted the lvl 90 tier to be hybrid/niche related, and that doesn't work out with their design philosophy of how they want tanks to operate.