Guardian Alpha Patchnotes

[Arielle]

Thorns Aura, 1 min CD 10 second duration, deals x nature damage to all targets enganging in melee combat within 15 yards?

What's its purpose though? To make our mobility (which is actually really good) pointless because you'll just grab everything anyway?

Is Thrash spam bland? Yes. Could our snap aggro be better? Yes. Is the solution to these adding another button instead of fixing the existing ones? I'm not convinced.

[Callsignecho]

What's its purpose though? To make our mobility (which is actually really good) pointless because you'll just grab everything anyway?

I think it's because we are the only tank without a reliable or decent ranged AoE ability to grab mobs. All we have is Thrash and the aggro on it is decent at the moment, but not anything special. Sure, FF can be glyphed to be used 45 yds, but I believe we need something else, something to grab a group of mobs at range without having to shift out of bear form to do so, even if it is 30 second plus CD.

I also wouldn't say our mobility is anything special. We fall right in the middle of the pack of tanks with Monks and Warriors above us and Paladins and DKs below us.

[Arielle]

I think it's because we are the only tank without a reliable or decent ranged AoE ability to grab mobs. All we have is Thrash and the aggro on it is decent at the moment, but not anything special. Sure, FF can be glyphed to be used 45 yds, but I believe we need something else, something to grab a group of mobs at range without having to shift out of bear form to do so, even if it is 30 second plus CD.

Why? Can you describe a real world scenario where you need to do this and have no Hunter to do it for you?

The only thing I can come up with is P2 Thok if you're solo-tanking. But that's easily fixed by just grabbing the bats yourself.

[Dreyen]

Thorns is a bad idea, it would end in the same spot as enrage as a seldom-used abilitiy, and the simple fact that it requires mobs to hit you to be efficient means your aoe dps is gimped compared to every other tank in AOE if youre not getting hit, or overpowered when you get hit.

I do agree that i'd like another abilitiy to spice up our aoe, not that swipe trash swipe mangle was particularly exciting either. Maybe a short-cooldown aoe move similar to shockwave? Referring mostly to the cooldown, doesn't have to be an aoe cone stun.

[Kitmajere]

Is Thrash spam bland? Yes. Could our snap aggro be better? Yes. Is the solution to these adding another button instead of fixing the existing ones? I'm not convinced.

How does buffing thrash solve the problem of the incredibly boringness/blandness of our aoe?

Edit: At this point, they could just buff swipe so it does more damage and return it with a bit longer cd -- 8 sec range. No silly "does more dmg if the target has a bleed". You can even get more interesting with swipe, like having it spread lacerate or speed up thrash ticks on everything it hits.

[Callsignecho]

Why? Can you describe a real world scenario where you need to do this and have no Hunter to do it for you?

The only thing I can come up with is P2 Thok if you're solo-tanking. But that's easily fixed by just grabbing the bats yourself.

The point isn't to have a hunter do it for you. Why does only one of the tanks need to have help from another class? Who says you are always going to have a hunter present, ready, and in position in the raid to help you out? Druids should not be the only tanked gimped of doing something everyone else can do easily with multiple abilities.

Your problem is that you are thinking in terms of current MoP encounters with current MoP mechanics and not about what has changed in WoD. Flipping through the dungeon journal at the raid encounters, I can already see a handful of raid boss fights that have multiple adds at multiple points in the fights.

[Nekusar]

I kill a baby kitten every time someone mentions Thorns for Guardians.

"Lets make an AoE ability that actually has only 55.5555% effectiveness with one of our T100 talents and actually gets worse as our gear improves!"

No.

I do think that some of the DoT damage could be transferred to the impact of Thrash though.

What about if they made Berserk remove the Mangle target limit, doesn't add an extra ability and lets you plan when best to use it? I'm guessing the only real downside is the big CD on it but just a thought.

[Arielle]

Why does only one of the tanks need to have help from another class?

Because every spec needs to have some kind of weakness. Other than ranged AoE threat (which has historically not been a problem) Guardians don't really have one in Beta.

Who says you are always going to have a hunter present, ready, and in position in the raid to help you out?

You will in Mythic, because you will plan it that way. Otherwise you did it wrong.

In lower difficulties I'm unconvinced that simply moving to pick up the offending mobs (or luring them in some other manner) won't work.

Druids should not be the only tanked gimped of doing something everyone else can do easily with multiple abilities.

Hyperbole doesn't help you. Stop doing it. Warriors and Monks both only have 1, Paladins have 2, and DKs have 1, 2 if you count Grasp.

Flipping through the dungeon journal at the raid encounters, I can already see a handful of raid boss fights that have multiple adds at multiple points in the fights.

And? So does Immerseus, Norushen, Sha, Galakras, Shamans, Nazgrim, Thok, and Garrosh. We don't have problems on any of those except maybe Thok. There's nothing that dictates we can't simply move to grab them.

How does buffing thrash solve the problem of the incredibly boringness/blandness of our aoe?

Edit: At this point, they could just buff swipe so it does more damage and return it with a bit longer cd -- 8 sec range. No silly "does more dmg if the target has a bleed". You can even get more interesting with swipe, like having it spread lacerate or speed up thrash ticks on everything it hits.

Is it bland because everyone currently spams Thrash because it's broken and going to be changed, or is it bland because you don't want to use ST abilities to generate resources for AoE?

What about if they made Berserk remove the Mangle target limit, doesn't add an extra ability and lets you plan when best to use it? I'm guessing the only real downside is the big CD on it but just a thought.

That's actually quite interesting. The extra Mangles wouldn't be able to generate Rage of course, but that's definitely an interesting idea. Might be too broken for PvP :|

[-Doko-]

Anyone else scared we are losing our only way to mitigate "sonic" physical damage?

Can't link url's but its in the july 22th patch notes

For Guardian Druids, Bear Form now also reduces magical damage taken by 25%, *removed*reduces physical damage taken by 12%*removed*, reduces chance to be critically hit by 6%, and reduces chance for attacks to be parried by 3%.

Given proper encounter design this should not be a problem, but personally I think some boss ala Thok, Kaz'tik is going to destroy us compared to the other tanks with passive physical mitigation.

[Callsignecho]

Because every spec needs to have some kind of weakness. Other than ranged AoE threat (which has historically not been a problem) Guardians don't really have one in Beta.

And what weaknesses do other tanks have? I don't see any.

You will in Mythic, because you will plan it that way. Otherwise you did it wrong.

I will state it again. Why does another player/class have to go out of their way to help one particular tanking class while every other tank does not have to worry about that outside assistance? Why would a Mythic raid group bring a Guardian tank then?

Warriors and Monks both only have 1, Paladins have 2, and DKs have 1, 2 if you count Grasp.

List of all possible ranged AoE threat producing abilities:
Warriors: Mocking Banner, Heroic Leap
Monks: Dizzying Haze, Statue of the Black Ox (on top of Statue interaction abilities)
Paladins: Avenger's Shield, Light's Hammer, glyphed Consecration
Death Knights: Death and Decay
Druids: Hurricane (which has to be cast out of form)

And? So does Immerseus, Norushen, Sha, Galakras, Shamans, Nazgrim, Thok, and Garrosh. We don't have problems on any of those except maybe Thok. There's nothing that dictates we can't simply move to grab them.

You don't have any problem on those because most of those fights the adds are either not tankable/tanks don't have to worry about them (Immerseus, Sha, Shamans, Nazgrim, Norushen), come directly to you (Galakras/Garrosh P1), or come in one at a time (Norushen). Other things like Thok adds and Garrosh adds (P3) are easily handled by the other tanking classes without the need for outside assistance. Siege is also a horrible example of a raid instance of fights with meaningful adds.

It completely depends on the fight if you have the ability to move and get adds or if you need to somehow grab them when standing in a particular spot/position. However, I, for one, would heavily enjoy a ranged AoE threat ability. I don't even care if there is a 3 minute CD on it. I want to be semi-on-par with the other tanks in that department.

[Dreyen]

bear form armor bonus goes from 330% to 600%.. lol

We lost 12% from thick hide however. But i'm still happy because the warrior in my guild had more armor than me for gruul yesterday

List of all possible ranged AoE threat producing abilities:
Warriors: Mocking Banner, Heroic Leap
Monks: Dizzying Haze, Statue of the Black Ox (on top of Statue interaction abilities)
Paladins: Avenger's Shield, Light's Hammer, glyphed Consecration
Death Knights: Death and Decay
Druids: Hurricane (which has to be cast out of form)

Warrior: Mocking banner is a painfully long CD, heroic leap means you move. You can easily feral charge and thrash while youre at it
Paladins: Avenger's shield is only 3 target if they are nearby, you cna easily triple faerie fire at that point.
Monk: totally op ranged aoe threat, not gonna lie.
DK: Good aoe ranged threat for sure. long cooldown and is detrimental to their survival though.

Honestly, there are very few situations, if any, that i felt like druids lacked a ranged aoe threat move.. you can always do something. Unlike most tanks, we can aoe every GCD so that evens out the odds.

[Callsignecho]

bear form armor bonus goes from 330% to 600%.. lol

We lost 12% from thick hide however. But i'm still happy because the warrior in my guild had more armor than me for gruul yesterday

Warriors have more armor because they got a 15% increase through a perk, however, this change will put is in second place for the most armor across all tanks and shorten the tooltip to accomplish the same thing.

Warrior: Mocking banner is a painfully long CD, heroic leap means you move. You can easily feral charge and thrash while youre at it
Paladins: Avenger's shield is only 3 target if they are nearby, you cna easily triple faerie fire at that point.
Monk: totally op ranged aoe threat, not gonna lie.
DK: Good aoe ranged threat for sure. long cooldown and is detrimental to their survival though.

Honestly, there are very few situations, if any, that i felt like druids lacked a ranged aoe threat move.. you can always do something. Unlike most tanks, we can aoe every GCD so that evens out the odds.

As I stated, I would be perfectly fine with a painfully long CD on a ranged AoE threat ability as long as we get one.

Warrior: It is quite laughable to compare Wild Charge to a Warrior's charge now. A Warrior's charge is 35 yds baseline now with the option to glyph for 5 more yds if necessary compared to our 25 yds. It generates 20 rage; ours does not. It can be talented to either be on a 12 second CD or be used twice in 20 seconds; ours is a talent. The only thing that is better in comparison is that Wild Charge roots a single target for 2.5 seconds longer than Warrior's charge
Paladins: Avenger's Shield hits 5 targets now with a perk.
Monks: I'm still waiting for the Statue of the Black Ox to be nerfed to the ground. So OP.
Death Knights: Death and Decay is actually pretty good for a 30 second CD, specifically, that it has an initial tick of damage unlike some other abilities. They also can take Defile as a talent and gain a 10% damage reduction from it.

[Braindwen]

bear form armor bonus goes from 330% to 600%.. lol

We lost 12% from thick hide however. But i'm still happy because the warrior in my guild had more armor than me for gruul yesterday

We were actually 2nd lowest in armor, ahead of only monks (and that's not really an accomplishment, they have as much armor as we do in caster...)

For the 660 premades, we're now barely highest, 6139 armor vs. warrior's 6112. It's a little bit of a buff, that extra armor is ~20% DR on the premades as opposed to thick hide's 12%, and that's only going to get better as we get more armor on gear. It also makes bonus armor weaker, solidifying it as "god-stat only because it's insane DPS per point" for tanks other than monks.

[exochaft]

Honestly, there are very few situations, if any, that i felt like druids lacked a ranged aoe threat move.. you can always do something. Unlike most tanks, we can aoe every GCD so that evens out the odds.

Depends on how people view it. Averaged out, the odds are evened, but is the assumption that bears will need to Thrash -> single-target rotation until Thrash bleed drops or new adds come out, or is it meant to be Thrash for life until everything is dead? I believe the damage of Thrash is shifted to the DoT to promote the Thrash -> ST rotation, but it currently feels better to just Thrash non-stop anyways. Might just be a balancing issue with Thrash as it's currently implemented, but if more damage was pushed to the impact for better snap threat, using Thrash non-stop in AoE situations would just get worse. It's sort of a catch 22 in it's own right.

With respect to Pulverize, I really don't like the current synergy with our AoE rotation. Perhaps AoE situations are intended to be its weakness, so to speak, since you'll likely be trading off damage at the very least to keep up Pulverize. I honestly don't know what would make it feel better, other than moving Thrash towards more of a DoT than impact to reduce spamming Thrash in AoE situations, but we end up right back where snap threat could suffer if we do that. Been toying around with the potential of adding a CD to Pulverize to prevent 100% uptime while it doesn't consume Lacerate stacks, allowing the ability to be strategically used as a cooldown. I imagine there would be some resistance with respect to the feel of the rotation with how Pulverize is currently implemented, but I still believe one talent shouldn't be what makes the rotation feel "right."

...and I still want Rebirth castable while in Bear Form baseline, especially if the wording from the beta update indicates the survival benefits are tied to Bear Form only. I've had plenty of occurrences during heroic dungeon testing where I've really wanted to resurrect someone but have been relegated to going caster to do it while actively tanking.

[Kitmajere]

Single target spells being mixed in with aoe is fine. I particularly like the monk method of aoe (neglecting RJW for now) where you have a cd-based ability that hits hard for snap threat and provides resources for active mitigation (keg smash), a spammable aoe for securing that aggro that also generates resources but at a lower income (SCK), and you weave in your single target abilities to keep your AM up (blackout kick). I'm not arguing that we need to be monk clones by any means, but that the mix of ST/aoe abilities is fine, as long as you have both a snap aoe threat move and a spammable aoe threat move if the situation demands it. One button to do both snap and spammable aoe just feels awful and is both boring and relatively difficult to tune. Just give us swipe back as a longer-cd aoe snap threat move as mentioned previously, or make mangle hit all targets in range, a la keg smash.

I can't tell yet how much we need a ranged aoe aggro generator. Would I appreciate it? Of course. Is it highly desired? Not sure. We are clearly lacking in that department, and saying "it's ok, we can just go to the mobs" or "have a hunter md" isn't really always an option. Probably wild mushroom could be crafted into a ranged aoe threat move if that was deemed really important.
Also, comparing our mobility to a warrior's is laughable :-p. I *really* wish we had charge baseline and/or that displacer beast didn't make you go cat form.

Rebirth 100% needs to be castable in forms. I strongly feel soothe, mark of the wild, and our dispel should be too, but rebirth is the clear priority.

[Gemini Soul]

Sadly Thrash will never give us snap aggro cause so much of its damage is built into the DoT effect, if they made swipe a 3-5 sec CD and gave it a damage boost i would be ok if in order to balance that it wouldn't generate rage.

If they made the Thrash perk effect all of Thrash damage instead of just the DoT effect would be a minor step in the direction it needs to go.

[Arielle]

For the 660 premades, we're now barely highest, 6139 armor vs. warrior's 6112. It's a little bit of a buff, that extra armor is ~20% DR on the premades as opposed to thick hide's 12%, and that's only going to get better as we get more armor on gear. It also makes bonus armor weaker, solidifying it as "god-stat only because it's insane DPS per point" for tanks other than monks.

Weaker relative to actual Armor, sure. It should still be better TDR than any other secondary stat though. Point for Point.

Single target spells being mixed in with aoe is fine. I particularly like the monk method of aoe (neglecting RJW for now) where you have a cd-based ability that hits hard for snap threat and provides resources for active mitigation (keg smash), a spammable aoe for securing that aggro that also generates resources but at a lower income (SCK), and you weave in your single target abilities to keep your AM up (blackout kick).

This is a pretty good argument for bringing Swipe back. Thrash is currently trying to fill too many roles. What if Swipe came back with a reasonable CD (6 sec reduced by Haste?) and hit significantly harder than Thrash on the initial hit with the same amount of Rage generated. Thrash would stay the same, although I'm not certain I want it to generate Rage on hit, just the DoT. The idea being you immediately Swipe followed by a Thrash, then use ST abilities while waiting for Swipe to come off CD.

Thrash also retains its place in the ST rotation which is important, and Swipe would have to be tuned lower than Lacerate so that it would not enter the ST rotation which is also important. Doesn't have to be a lot lower (100% AP or the WD equivalent would suffice), but still lower.

I'm definitely not sold on cleansing or MotW in form. MotW is not necessary and cleansing in-form would be ridiculously broken in PvP. Heck I don't think tanks should have cleanses at all.

Rebirth and Soothe I agree with though.

[Braindwen]

Weaker relative to actual Armor, sure. It should still be better TDR than any other secondary stat though. Point for Point.

And that's still almost entirely because of the AP making it the best for boosting heals in addition to DPS. It's less than 1% DR per 110 (6139->6249 = .958% DR), which is admittedly still decent, though far from a "must-have" stat. Heck, ignoring the AP, mastery is just flat out better, and would still eventually outscale it even if mastery were nerfed to 1.5%/110.

For comparison, a monk with the same armor from gear sees about 1.77% DR from that same 110 bonus armor. Curious whether they're going to bother balancing the stat between classes, or just fudge it and say there's not going to be enough of it to care.

[Raugnaut]

Anyone else scared we are losing our only way to mitigate "sonic" physical damage?

Can't link url's but its in the july 22th patch notes

For Guardian Druids, Bear Form now also reduces magical damage taken by 25%, *removed*reduces physical damage taken by 12%*removed*, reduces chance to be critically hit by 6%, and reduces chance for attacks to be parried by 3%.

Given proper encounter design this should not be a problem, but personally I think some boss ala Thok, Kaz'tik is going to destroy us compared to the other tanks with passive physical mitigation.

We will have significantly more health then other tanks, and our armor contributation being buffed all the way to 600% more then makes up for the loss on damage that gets reduced by armor.

I am pretty tired, though, of all the fights where most "physical" damage just ignores armor.

Ah, and our Mastery. Pretty sure that it will reduce all those "sonic" type moves.

- - - Updated - - -

Thinking about it, a glyph that reduces Thrash periodic damage by 50%, but increases initial damage by 150% would be nice for that "snap AoE threat" issue.

[Arielle]

And that's still almost entirely because of the AP making it the best for boosting heals in addition to DPS. It's less than 1% DR per 110 (6139->6249 = .958% DR), which is admittedly still decent, though far from a "must-have" stat. Heck, ignoring the AP, mastery is just flat out better, and would still eventually outscale it even if mastery were nerfed to 1.5%/110.

Oh, totally. AP is the only reason it's still so good. But it's there, so we have to count it :P