About the Author
This guide was written by Pumps! I raid in the guild Honestly on US – Frostmourne.
I am active in the Dreamgrove discord and always happy to answer questions i can.
I came 2nd place in the First World of Warcraft Mythic Dungeon International event. You can catch me streaming on Twitch during progression.
Thoughts on Guardian Druid in Dragonflight 10.0.5
Guardian has recently received a string of talent tree changes, hotfixes and bug fixes that have brought the spec up significantly in power. In this article I would like to deep dive further into some of the issues plaguing Guardian in both raids and mythic+ alike.
Firstly, I would like to start by saying that I appreciate all the bug fixes/talent tree changes that we have been receiving lately, it is clear that tuning is actively happening and that we have not been forgotten. Blizzard has done an awesome job reviving a really enjoyable playstyle of bear with new additions such as Tooth and Claw, After the Wildfire and Raze which have all made the spec more fun and interesting as a whole. However, we still have a multitude of issues that could be addressed for a better quality of life for not only Guardian players but Druids in general. This feedback is aimed at trying to dispel any feelings of “I should have swapped class, I’m letting my group down” because another tank is just too far ahead like Warrior and DK currently are. Bear has consistently been one the bottom 2 played tanks every tier since Legion and the social stigma against them has only become stronger over time. The last tier a Guardian was considered in the World First race was Kil’jaeden in Legion, 6 whole years ago. With that being said, let’s jump into current issues and potential ways to solve them.
The Bear Necessities
Guardian primarily suffers from 4 big issues currently;
- Magic damage taken
- Initial damage taken on pulls
- A unique niche/value in raid
- Too many weak talents in both trees
The recent talent tree changes aren’t large enough to fix any of these so far, mainly because they are targeting the wrong issues. Buffs to spells like Ironfur and Lunar Beam are really missing the mark. Physical damage is at the bottom of the list when it comes to threatening damage taken, especially in a Dragonflight world where massive magic damage runs rampant in both raids and mythic+.
1. Magic Damage Taken
The magic damage taken I believe could easily be fixed by a significant health buff (30-50%). This would enable us to become the sponge tank we used to be once again, whilst also giving us some more wiggle room in both initial damage taken and magic damage. Potentially bringing back something like Mark of Ursol (which was a 30% magic damage reduction for 6 seconds at the cost of 45 rage) with a short 10-20 second cooldown like Spell Reflection could be another useful magic tool. Bonus points if it reflected some of the damage done.
In addition to magic damage there is also countless abilities that ignore armor completely, like bleed effects. With Ironfur being our only real active mitigation we can often feel helpless to these.
I also think that there is room for our mastery to be reworked into something that aids with this issue, as currently our mastery is completely lackluster, only granting a very negligible amount of health. A stat that was once hailed as fantastic for us has become largely ignored due to multiple nerfs that have left it feeling extremely weak.
2. Initial Damage Taken
It’s not uncommon to walk into a pack and die in 2 seconds from all the initial damage before you can get any Ironfurs and Moonfires rolling to stabilize.
A tool that better helps us mitigate initial damage taken for a few seconds would be amazing, something similar to the Sepulcher 2P bonus (Architect’s Design) or The Natural Order’s Will. These were fantastic for smoothing that initial damage taken and would both make for great talent additions.
Another threat tool would be fantastic as well. Our initial aggro on groups of adds can be a real struggle for the first few GCDs, which leads to less attention that can be spared on our own personal survival. We had AoE taunt (Challenging Roar) in the past, that returning could be very beneficial. A hard hitting AoE ability on a relatively short cooldown (30-60 seconds) similar to Brewmaster’s Exploding Keg would also suffice.Potentially some short cooldown charge similar to Wild Charge that causes us to generate extra threat for a few seconds could be a good option, this would add mobility and help with threat. No matter how well you play currently you will have a hard time with initial aggro and that has made things like tanking Broodkeeper/Rasz adds, which spawn and immediately start attacking people, quite frustrating at times.
3. Unique Niche
Niche is a much tougher challenge to fix but there are multiple things that could be added that make us grant our raid an additional competitive edge. Why would a raid currently bring a bear over warrior when they bring Rallying Cry whilst taking less damage and dealing similar damage?. We just don’t offer our raid enough, especially considering all druid specs have easy access to 1 minute Stampeding Roar now, with that being our main value last expansion.
We don’t even fill a defensive niche, as even though Ironfur only mitigates physical damage, the block tanks still reign supreme in physical mitigation. A single critical block from Shield Block for example, mitigates roughly the same physical damage as 8-10 stacks of Ironfur (which is where we armor cap).
After the Wildfire had serious niche potential before the target cap, potentially raising that to 10 and increasing the range could be enough but it seems odd to add more power into an already powerful talent.
Something new and unique would be amazing or something old like Symbiosis could be interesting. The potential choices here are endless but we do need something more to offer our raid. The goal of a unique niche is the ability to enable our group/raid to do something more effectively. Spells like Gorefiend’s Grasp/Blessing of Spellwarding/Demonic Gateway/Rallying Cry all make you feel like you are actively aiding in your groups success and can quickly change you from feeling like an AFK meat sponge that just taunts when your debuff expires to an extremely valuable member of your raid.
4. Weak Talent Points
Dysfunctional Class Tree
Far too many talent points in both the Guardian and the Druid tree in general are completely underwhelming or even useless, this is where the difference between tanks really starts to pull ahead. Comparing something like the Warrior general tree to the Druid general tree for example shows an absolute world of difference.
- Renewal vs Impending Victory – 25s CD that resets on kill vs 1.5min cd.
- Skull Bash vs Baseline Interrupt.
- Moonkin Form? vs Spell Reflection – There is nothing remotely close in our tree to how strong spell reflect currently is. But we can turn into a chicken.
- Stampeding Roar vs Rallying Cry – Generally in a raid with shamans/druids/evokers there is excessive mobility tools. You can never have too many rallys and it is a significantly stronger cooldown.
- Mighty Bash vs Storm Bolt – A single target CC, which we are severely lacking for m+ as Mighty Bash shares a choice node with our only AoE CC (Incapacitating Roar). The return of Bear Hug (A single target stun with a damage effect) or an AoE stun would be great CC utility.
- Heart of the Wild vs Avatar – A cooldown better than capstones in our spec tree. Avatar is 20% damage on a 1.5min CD whilst Heart of the Wild is 30% Moonfire and auto attack damage only on a 5 minute cooldown. The disparity in strength is absurd.
- Sunfire vs Thunderous Roar – Massive AoE damage nuke. We have nothing remotely close to this but we can shift out of bear form (potentially die), to cast a DoT that does very little damage if we want to. 2 talent points if you want that DoT to hit multiple targets.
- Lycara’s Teachings vs One-Handed Weapon Specialization – 5% Damage and leech for a single point vs one of the only 3 point talents left in the game.
- ? vs Seismic Reverberation – This was a strong Shadowlands legendary that is now a talent in the warrior base class tree. Hard to even think of a comparison as none of our legendaries made it into the tree but in similar talent positions in our tree we have Improved Rejuvenation, Tireless Pursuit, Primal Fury and Cyclone.
The list goes on, and that is only the class tree we are talking about here. Now it’s quite easy to see how the power differential between these two specs has become so out of control and starts to explain why there is currently 7 times more Prot warriors than Guardian druids doing mythic raid content.
Our class tree is filled with multiple useless spells for Guardian, as we simply cannot cast them in bear form. Druids having 4 vastly different specs (Melee/Ranged/Healer/Tank) all having to share the same class tree has severely impacted the potential strength of the tree currently and is something that desperately needs changing. Talents can simply do different things for different specs. Improved Rejuvenation could increase Ironfur duration as Guardian for example, Primal Fury could increase rage generated from crits and so on.
Below is a standard raid build for visual reference.
Descending the Spec Tree
Top Section
This section really needs another good talent or two to be moved up here:
- Dream of Cenarius/Blood Frenzy/Thorns of Iron/Soul of the Forest would be some good choices.
The goal here would be to remove bloat from the bottom/middle sections of the tree and spread out valuable choice more effectively. - Front of the Pack is still incredibly weak and should never be taken, 5% speed and the small radius/duration increase just are not worth the point in almost any scenario currently. This could be changed to a different mobility spell entirely like Displacer Beast or more recently Soulshape.
- Likewise Ursoc’s Endurance is completely negligible realistically, most of the time we have a ton of rage and the 2 seconds of Barkskin/Ironfur just aren’t appealing enough. More ≠better with a lot of these similar talents that give more Ironfur, 1-2 stacks is more than enough for most content.
- Improved Survival Instincts would be really nice to be baseline again and the talent could be changed to some sort of cooldown reduction for SI.
- Infected Wounds with the addition of Raze has become slightly more useful but having to spend a talent point on this feels bad in general and this is something that could easily just be baseline.
- Similarly with improved Mangle and Innate Resolve. These were already baseline perks for us that got removed and made into talents, none of these deserve to be talents.
- Brambles is a rather mediocre talent, not really adding any depth to play but often just picked because it adds a small amount of damage which is better than nothing.
- Bristling Fur definitely needs to be off the GCD again.
Mid Section
This also could use another talent or two in here, the 20 point gateway feels like you are always taking multiple weak talents you don’t even want just to get to the next section, which isn’t a good feeling.
Bottom Section & Capstones
So this is where all the good talents went. There is definitely too many good options here and with only 10 points to spend in this section we are extremely limited, especially with current pathing.
- Galactic Guardian being gated behind 2 point Scintillating Moonlight and positioned so far right in the tree when it is absolutely integral for rage generation and damage makes it very difficult to grab anything on the left side of the tree without sacrificing massively. Swapping the positions of Scintillating Moonlight and Twin Moonfire, making Scintillating Moonlight an opt in choice node for more damage reduction would be a great start at increasing flexibility within the tree.
- Dream of Cenarius is a fantastic talent, just not the current version we have. The 20 second ICD (Internal Cooldown) combined with the chance to proc based off your Crit chance on only non periodic damage makes it too rare for what it does. I think one of either the crit, non periodic or ICD need to be changed. Also a great QoL to that would be being able to stack up to 2 so you don’t feel forced to use the first charge on potentially nothing.
- Convoke the Spirits just isn’t good for bear. Most of the power came from Niya mastery which no longer exists. It’s value was largely raid healing/burst CD while not actively tanking but current version doesn’t do anywhere near enough damage/healing to justify being called a cooldown.
This is in part due to the massive aura buff (Guardian Druid) that Guardian has in Dragonflight where none of the spells outside of bear form are affected. This in turn has completely killed off the playstyle of Weaving, which involved swapping into either Cat Form or Moonkin Form to deal more damage than you normally would in bear. This was a playstyle that many people, myself included, enjoyed thoroughly. Being able to do damage in bear is absolutely a plus in Dragonflight but I believe weaving should have it’s place and benefits. - Raze is a cool new talent but I don’t think it should be a loss on single target. The cost of spending a very late and valuable talent point should be enough to make it at least net neutral single target, ideally even an increase. Potentially adding some sqrt type change, this would make it much more viable in raids. Another potential suggestion would be making it a choice node with Maul as it replaces it.
- Lunar Beam has the potential to become some real CC utility if the damage is to remain lacking. If it added the Solar Beam effect while mobs were inside, similar to DH Sigil of Silence. Currently the damage it deals is extremely under-tuned, especially for a capstone, it does roughly the same damage as a single unbuffed Maul on a 1 minute cooldown.
- Thorns of Iron is an absolutely cursed talent. It is currently in the highest single target damage Guardian build and you purely generate rage and spam Ironfur as much as possible for damage. So much so that people are having to bind Ironfur to mouse wheel up and down to save their poor hands. The concept of this talent is one that I think is good (adding a damage aspect to Ironfur) but the implementation is horrible. Lower the damage of this, remove the split but add sqrt on 5 or so targets, making it a bit better on AoE and far less on single target. Or just delete it. Spamming Ironfur for the highest damage possible is just bad gameplay.
Wishlist
Some additional changes I am hopeful for in the future.
- Weaving – This was a fun playstyle that was at it’s peak in Shadowlands but Guardian has a long history of Catweaving for higher damage and Dragonflight has ignored an extremely thematic aspect of Druid. This could easily become a fun and unique niche if reworked well.
- Auto Swipe – Maul/Mangle feel like they are in a great place and both feel good to press, Swipe is the opposite. We try to avoid that ability like the plague currently and press it as infrequently as possible. I think having a talent similar to Devastator where Swipe becomes a passive that procs from auto attacks or something similar would be an awesome addition and solve that problem. Moonfire supplements fantastically as a rotational filler spell so that we never have empty gcds.
- Berserks – I’ve always been a critic of Berserk being split into 3 points and with the change to Berserk: Unchecked Aggression it has only become worse. I really think these need to be merged at some point or at the very least not gate off so much of the tree. Berserk: Persistence being the worst offender by far as not only is it generally the weakest of the 3, it also gates off Galactic Guardian, even though they have no relation at all to each other.
The NoCarn playstyle (Skipping as many Berserk talents as possible and moving that power elsewhere in the tree) is rising in popularity as Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc gets consistently worse.
Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc being central in the tree instead of Galactic Guardian/Twin Moonfire when the the pathing down the center is all DoT/Arcane damage based doesn’t really make sense. The massive divide between the Physical (Left) and Arcane (Right) side of our tree causes massive inflexibility because trying to take something on the opposing side like Pulverize for example means you have to completely change your entire build for a small niche talent. Pathing improvements here would go a long way. - Mastery: Nature’s Guardian Change – Our mastery just doesn’t really do anything. It has received countless nerfs in the past and is now a shell of it’s former self. It isn’t impactful, you won’t notice the difference between 5000 mastery and 0. Easy solution would be to buff how much health it gives us again, the fun solution would be to revamp it into something more interesting.
- Frenzied Regeneration off GCD – This has to be one of the most requested changes I’ve consistently heard echoed throughout the bear community. Frenzied Regeneration is such a mediocre self heal, being on the GCD is far too punishing for no reason.
Conclusion
Bear with me a little longer, Guardian is actually starting to get there, we must stay pawsitive!
The bug fixes to Raze and Tooth and Claw have greatly improved our viability in all content. Our damage output is fantastic, it might even be the highest of all the tanks overall if you look at statistics. But we still struggle to survive in the hardest of content, we still don’t bring enough to our groups and the spec still needs more work.
The rate at which we’ve been receiving positive changes has been fantastic and if we see a few more of those in the near future, Guardian can be a top tank once again in Dragonflight. We are already the coolest and most fun tank, we just need some minor improvements to become more comfortably competitive.
