Guardian Alpha Patchnotes

[blackblade]

I took the time to look over all of the tanks and adjust the abilities on bars to reflect the changes. The average tank is going to have ~2 bars worth of "useful" abilities and Druids will be on the low side of that average at ~1.5 bars. Not surprising considering how simple Druids have always been. If you want a tank with 2+ bars worth of abilities, I would be looking in the Warrior/Monk direction.

By ~2 bars, you're referring to ~24 keybinds?

I mean today, I've got what, 3 bars including some non-class stuff like mounts/healthstones/potions on my DK, warrior, paladin, and monk tanks, with some some seldom used stuff bound to a 3-6 slice opie ring keybind. (Elusive brew, Dark Simul, stuff that's handy to have but not needed in every or even most encounters.)

[Rioo]

While some may find it crazy, I've run into many max level Guardians that didn't know to use SD (either using FR exclusively or didn't know about the ability). Not using or improperly using active mitigation in such a manner isn't exclusive to just Guardians, I should add.

The problem with tanking, especially when it comes to random dungeons and LFR, is that you cannot avoid being the center of attention. I've seen countless complaints about bad DPSers over the years, and that role typically has less responsibility than tanks have on the most boring and uneventful fights. Perhaps the assumption is that being able to tank should be slightly easier than being able to DPS, since the responsibility/focus is much higher? I'd view this as the end justifying the means (which I personally don't like), but it may be where we're headed. I'd rather the solution be akin to Proving Grounds, allowing the player to rise up to the occasion rather than lowering the bar. Wow, I'm mixing so many phrases I should stop now...

I do think they have set the bar really low when in comes to tanking. We got all these new tools in MoP that made us really powerful and harder to kill, but the boss fights haven't scaled up enough. Sure we have some more responsibility when in comes to our own survival, but overall I'd say tanking these days is a joke compared to previous expansions. And like you guessed I think it's because we have the most important role and hold back the raid more than others if we are bad. I hope WoD brings some more fights like Siegecrafter HC for us, testing our DPS, CD usage, AM, positioning and CC.

[Tower]

I have to say that tanking was a lot more boring in the past. I was always the off tank though so that certainly plays a part in it. At least there are things for me to do now instead of just be a meat shield so soak a cleave or something of that nature. I think they will get it tuned right, especially if they follow what they've done well this xpac I think tanking will be just fine. It has always been an easier role imo so that is not really anything new or surprising.

[Callsignecho]

By ~2 bars, you're referring to ~24 keybinds?

I mean today, I've got what, 3 bars including some non-class stuff like mounts/healthstones/potions on my DK, warrior, paladin, and monk tanks, with some some seldom used stuff bound to a 3-6 slice opie ring keybind. (Elusive brew, Dark Simul, stuff that's handy to have but not needed in every or even most encounters.)

Yes, I'm going by the standard 12 slot bars. I was comparing the useful in combat abilities across all of the tanks. This excludes things like buffs, mounts, etc., but includes potions, healthstone, and the utility your class has that may be useful during a fight, even if it is not needed for all fights. The exact amount of abilities you will have will be based on what talents you choose and what you deem useful enough to put on your bars in the first place.

Looking at a Druid tank, in particular, it is possible to have as little as 1.5 bars worth of abilities or as much as 2.25 bars worth of abilities depending on what talents you choose and what abilities you deem worthy or necessary to have. Some abilities, like Nature's Grasp or Dark Simul, are definitely once in a blue moon and super situational abilities and it is completely up to the tank if they want to have that ability on their bar/keybound or just move it out of the spellbook/keybind it when they can actually get some use out of it.

[exochaft]

I have to say that tanking was a lot more boring in the past. I was always the off tank though so that certainly plays a part in it. At least there are things for me to do now instead of just be a meat shield so soak a cleave or something of that nature. I think they will get it tuned right, especially if they follow what they've done well this xpac I think tanking will be just fine. It has always been an easier role imo so that is not really anything new or surprising.

While it may have been boring in the past, adding depth and complexity to an already high-responsibility role just makes the tank an even bigger focus. We've gone from being mostly passive in terms of our survival as Guardians to needing to use abilities on a constant basis to live. That being said, encounter design has progressed quite a bit since tank design has shifted. Granted, some old tanking mechanics still apply even today, but they're more diverse now that they can throw the occasional monkey wrench at a tank and expect them to live. All this extra stuff, however, does increase the amount of awareness and skill a tank needs, because the tanks being responsible for positioning, movement, threat, etc. have never changed. Cutting down on the amount of buttons a tank needs for baseline survival/threat is probably the easiest way to lower the amount of things a tank needs to focus upon.

I will say, though, that the job of the "OT" has been pretty boring in past content, and Vengeance at least gave us the notion that we were still doing something... or perhaps tank DPS mattering is the correct way to put it. Blizz has stated they want to make the encounters more engaging for all the tanks in an encounter, so I expect some old mechanics (Saberlash!) and new mechanics to appear in WoD. Despite how much griping may occur over SoO, many of the encounters were pretty engaging for tanks. Alright, perhaps some of that is due to abusing Vengeance, but we definitely had more things to do in terms of fight mechanics and strategies.

Looking at a Druid tank, in particular, it is possible to have as little as 1.5 bars worth of abilities or as much as 2.25 bars worth of abilities depending on what talents you choose and what abilities you deem worthy or necessary to have. Some abilities, like Nature's Grasp or Dark Simul, are definitely once in a blue moon and super situational abilities and it is completely up to the tank if they want to have that ability on their bar/keybound or just move it out of the spellbook/keybind it when they can actually get some use out of it.

I actually have a few binds that I specifically switch out based on the encounters, however it's usually for fight-specific macros. While this concept can be expanded to those extra abilities that may or may not be useful on encounters, the question becomes whether that's good design or not.

I'm sure most players try to leave their bars and bind setup exactly the same as often as possible, otherwise they may end up searching for that one ability once they have to use it or muscle memory becomes a horrid enemy. Every expansion, I have to retrain myself when our abilities change, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing to do once in a while, having to do it on a fight-per-fight basis would be painful. While I've said I do change out a couple binds depending upon the encounter, there are still quite a few I leave in place that I may not use in raids, because I may use it for world/organized PvP.

I honestly don't PvP as much as I used to, and the driving factor is that the binds between PvE and PvP are so different that it's just a hassle to deal with anymore. If you just do PvE or PvP, it's not bad... but my experience doing both concurrently is that it's not really fun at all, especially if you carry a perfectionist attitude.

[Tower]

While it may have been boring in the past, adding depth and complexity to an already high-responsibility role just makes the tank an even bigger focus. We've gone from being mostly passive in terms of our survival as Guardians to needing to use abilities on a constant basis to live. That being said, encounter design has progressed quite a bit since tank design has shifted. Granted, some old tanking mechanics still apply even today, but they're more diverse now that they can throw the occasional monkey wrench at a tank and expect them to live. All this extra stuff, however, does increase the amount of awareness and skill a tank needs, because the tanks being responsible for positioning, movement, threat, etc. have never changed. Cutting down on the amount of buttons a tank needs for baseline survival/threat is probably the easiest way to lower the amount of things a tank needs to focus upon.

I will say, though, that the job of the "OT" has been pretty boring in past content, and Vengeance at least gave us the notion that we were still doing something... or perhaps tank DPS mattering is the correct way to put it. Blizz has stated they want to make the encounters more engaging for all the tanks in an encounter, so I expect some old mechanics (Saberlash!) and new mechanics to appear in WoD. Despite how much griping may occur over SoO, many of the encounters were pretty engaging for tanks. Alright, perhaps some of that is due to abusing Vengeance, but we definitely had more things to do in terms of fight mechanics and strategies.

Hmm I guess that is fair since tanks are basically expected to lead lfr and 5 mans it seems. I still think that for the people who love to tank now, making things simpler will not be welcomed, but it will definitely open up the role to more people. I think it could almost be a little more complex. Right now you have your tank rotation and active mitigation to keep track of in addition to encounter timers. Most tank rotations are pretty simple from my experience of playing all but monk at 90 (currently leveling the brewmaster lol). Then again though I did the smallest bit of research for my alts instead of just guessing what abilities to use, which is what I think people who wish for easier tanking do.

However tanks usually are the leaders of a raid so maybe they should have a little less rotational work involved since they need to be calling out various timers or mechanics. I have never done raid leading but our raid leader has been absent for the past few weeks and it's a lot different trying to throw out markers and call something out if I see it. I can definitely see both sides of the coin here. Luckily I think blizz will get it right. I'm sure that tanking will be a bit easier than it is now, but there will still be things that mythic tanks can do additionally to add that skill back into tanking at the higher level. Something that wont cripple inexperienced tanks for not doing, like AM currently does.

[Ampere]

While some may find it crazy, I've run into many max level Guardians that didn't know to use SD (either using FR exclusively or didn't know about the ability). Not using or improperly using active mitigation in such a manner isn't exclusive to just Guardians, I should add.

Sadly... I don't find it crazy at all since I've see a lot of that myself. At the start of MoP one of my guildies would just spend all his rage on maul. A healer was asking me why he took so much damage and I asked him what he spent rage on, he said maul, and he had 0 SD uptime or FR healing. Tried explaining it, but he didn't seem to care.

I think Warrior/Bear mitigation just is not as intuitive as Paladin/DK for less aware new players or returning players. Think about it, Paladins use SotR for mitigation and that's an attack that does damage that they've had for years. I'm not sure I have ever seen a Prot Pally who wasn't using SotR. I've seen one Blood DK who didn't Death Strike... and I remember him well because it was so unusual. Monks are still relatively new and the AM is activated by a damaging attack so I'd think more players would get it, but I have encountered a large number of Monks who don't routinely use Blackout Kick. The Warriors and Bears I've encountered on average are just as bad, very little Savage Defense/Shield Block uptime and very little use of Barrier/Regen. Keep in mind this is just from my observations of players in random matchmaking. I will occasionally try to give words of wisdom to players I meet in randoms, and it's really awesome when I feel like I helped. But usually they ignore it ;P

[exochaft]

I think Warrior/Bear mitigation just is not as intuitive as Paladin/DK for less aware new players or returning players. Think about it, Paladins use SotR for mitigation and that's an attack that does damage that they've had for years. I'm not sure I have ever seen a Prot Pally who wasn't using SotR. I've seen one Blood DK who didn't Death Strike... and I remember him well because it was so unusual. Monks are still relatively new and the AM is activated by a damaging attack so I'd think more players would get it, but I have encountered a large number of Monks who don't routinely use Blackout Kick. The Warriors and Bears I've encountered on average are just as bad, very little Savage Defense/Shield Block uptime and very little use of Barrier/Regen. Keep in mind this is just from my observations of players in random matchmaking. I will occasionally try to give words of wisdom to players I meet in randoms, and it's really awesome when I feel like I helped. But usually they ignore it ;P

Perhaps a better way of viewing it is that transitioning from a DPS to a tank is easier if their tank class active mitigation is a damaging ability. I wouldn't be surprised if almost everyone starts out as a DPS character and transitions to tanking later, but the mentality shows (Vengeance probably doesn't help). While you can get away with this line of thinking, or in some respects it's actually encouraged at a high raiding level, Prot Warriors and Guardians generally don't gain direct survival benefits from using damaging abilities unlike the other tank classes. By no means am I trivializing the ability of other tank classes, I just feel it's easier to hide ineptitude compared to being a warrior/druid tank.

You did hit on a key point we tend to forget: the vast majority of the WoW population is the people you meet in random matchmaking. Organized, highly-skilled raiding/pvp guilds are the vast minority, so many changes that we see are not necessarily aimed at the high-end crowd. Pruning of abilities is aimed at the majority of the WoW population, as I think many of us in these forums make it work regardless of how many/few abilities we have. Most of the Guardian changes are also aimed at the same group. However, I don't think we are without a say or opinion in such matters, because Blizz does make adjustments for the high-end population (especially since minor details can make a world of difference). Be that as it may, the baseline structure is likely aimed at the majority of the WoW population, and the fine details will be adjusted so that it works for the high-end individuals.

As a final note, I sincerely hope the Proving Grounds turn out to be an awesome method for getting people to have a baseline understanding of their class/spec, especially Guardians. If Proving Grounds can raise the assumed baseline skill for a Guardian tank, Blizz can likely make some concessions in terms of complexity that we'd prefer Guardians have.

[Ampere]

Perhaps a better way of viewing it is that transitioning from a DPS to a tank is easier if their tank class active mitigation is a damaging ability. I wouldn't be surprised if almost everyone starts out as a DPS character and transitions to tanking later, but the mentality shows (Vengeance probably doesn't help). While you can get away with this line of thinking, or in some respects it's actually encouraged at a high raiding level, Prot Warriors and Guardians generally don't gain direct survival benefits from using damaging abilities unlike the other tank classes. By no means am I trivializing the ability of other tank classes, I just feel it's easier to hide ineptitude compared to being a warrior/druid tank.

Yeah, really good way to look at it. Just about everyone has to start as a 'dps' pretty much, at least while leveling, so classes with the smoothest transition seem to have a higher floor for really inexperienced tanks. Hell, the first time I tried tanking, had no idea what the defense cap was, how to keep threat on multiple mobs, yeah I was one of 'those' DKs in dungeons at the start of Wrath. Looked into the defense stuff and went with Bear to avoid dealing with it... .

You did hit on a key point we tend to forget: the vast majority of the WoW population is the people you meet in random matchmaking. Organized, highly-skilled raiding/pvp guilds are the vast minority, so many changes that we see are not necessarily aimed at the high-end crowd. Pruning of abilities is aimed at the majority of the WoW population, as I think many of us in these forums make it work regardless of how many/few abilities we have. Most of the Guardian changes are also aimed at the same group. However, I don't think we are without a say or opinion in such matters, because Blizz does make adjustments for the high-end population (especially since minor details can make a world of difference). Be that as it may, the baseline structure is likely aimed at the majority of the WoW population, and the fine details will be adjusted so that it works for the high-end individuals.

As a final note, I sincerely hope the Proving Grounds turn out to be an awesome method for getting people to have a baseline understanding of their class/spec, especially Guardians. If Proving Grounds can raise the assumed baseline skill for a Guardian tank, Blizz can likely make some concessions in terms of complexity that we'd prefer Guardians have.

Exactly. It doesn't matter how complicated a tank is, Paragon and Blood Legion will figure it out. And so will many of us, to the extent of our personal abilities. But the more casual player who doesn't do any out of game research might be left dazed and confused. I too hope proving ground can be tweaked to help with this. It can be intimidating for a player new to tanking to pick it up and join a random matchmaking instance. Odds are they will get yelled at for messing up a bit and might get discouraged. It'd help a lot to have an effective 'single player' tutorial.

6.0 will help a bit, making Maul free with TnC procs so players who aren't sure what they're doing will 'waste' less rage on Maul. Maybe the Pulverize rotation will be easier for people to understand, but there still remains the job of spending all that rage they generate on SD and FR.

[Gemini Soul]

The cool kids ignores Savage Defense on lower gear lvls so they don't lose big deeps.

I saw on WoWhead that the SI glyph for now is still in the game, and now reduces the CD by 40 sec instead of 1 min. Same 6 sec duration still. That brings the CD to 1m20s before any CDR rating. I think it will still be good for a lot of bosses, but with the level 100 CDs, Barkskin being buffed and SI having a by default shorter CD and 2 charges it might not be the best choice on every boss anymore.

I only use SD if what I'm tanking could actually kill me lol. Other wise i just keep maul on CD and use FR to burn off excess rage into my 4pc HoT.

[Tower]

That is ok depending on what you are tanking and how good your healers are. SD is very easy to keep up though and there is not really a reason to save it until you think you might die... using SD will also trigger ursoc's vigor so its not like you would lose out on the bonus healing...

[Dreyen]

So, Celestalon said they are looking into potentially changing/altering Ursa Major... they might not touch it as well. I just think it needs something to bump pour hp right off the bat to not make the ramp-up period dangerous to us if we ever gear haste/multistrike.

[exochaft]

So, Celestalon said they are looking into potentially changing/altering Ursa Major... they might not touch it as well. I just think it needs something to bump pour hp right off the bat to not make the ramp-up period dangerous to us if we ever gear haste/multistrike.

As it appears to be designed currently, it's not really something that can be relied upon and/or is useful. As Guardians, I doubt we'd rely on Multistrike to reach a certain effective health level to survive something... therefore, we'd already be gearing so that we don't need the extra HP. Considering all the other tanks get some form of healing benefit, we may end up getting the same thing. Overall, I can see why it might be the target of a change.

[Rioo]

Do we get to keep the extra health gained from the proc if we're below full hp?

[Dreyen]

As it appears to be designed currently, it's not really something that can be relied upon and/or is useful. As Guardians, I doubt we'd rely on Multistrike to reach a certain effective health level to survive something... therefore, we'd already be gearing so that we don't need the extra HP. Considering all the other tanks get some form of healing benefit, we may end up getting the same thing. Overall, I can see why it might be the target of a change.

I sure dislike that it's not bringing any mitigation, but i think its better than you give it credit for, having tons of multsitrike and haste could increase our health by really absurd levels, and if we do have a lot of rage gen to start with.. it will be the only stat that works reliably to reduce special ability damage.

Pretty sure that if they are designing druids to self-heal a lot more, more hp will be worth it to overheal less, and survive better for big hits we need to take and heal back.

And Rioo, Ursa major increases your max HP, so if you have 100k hp and you get a multistrike, your hp will be 105k

[Rioo]

And Rioo, Ursa major increases your max HP, so if you have 100k hp and you get a multistrike, your hp will be 105k

Yeah that part is clear, but my question is if you have for example 100k max HP, you're at 50k current HP currently and gain 5k going up to 55/105k, what happens when the buff runs out? Do you go back to 50/100k, or do you get to keep the health and be at 55/100k?

[Dreyen]

Good question! Guessing your health goes down, or stays the same but won't go above your max hp...

[Arielle]

Yeah that part is clear, but my question is if you have for example 100k max HP, you're at 50k current HP currently and gain 5k going up to 55/105k, what happens when the buff runs out? Do you go back to 50/100k, or do you get to keep the health and be at 55/100k?

My guess is that it would operate in the same manner as any other temoporary HP increase - you stay at the same HP, but just your max goes down.

Not that it matters much, since Celery hinted they're going to change it anyway.

[Raugnaut]

I personally hope that they do NOT change the multistrike. It stands out from the other tanks- rather then decreasing the strain on the healers, it gives them significantly more breathing room. Might be a tad OP though.

[Dreyen]

Well it's possible they wont, the tweet said "potential change", not definite change.