Introduction
Welcome to the Guardian druid guide! My name is Tactyks, and I’ve been playing bear on and off since Wrath of the Lich King. I currently raid with Spike Flail on Mal’Ganis NA, and have achieved multiple CEs and M+ titles in Shadowlands on Guardian Druid. I’ve also competed in The Great Push as a tank player, and create Tank, M+, and Raid guide content on my YouTube and Twitch channels, so make sure to stop by and say hi!
Strengths:
- High AoE and ST damage
- Strong physical damage mitigation and self-sustain
- Strong off-healing capabilities
- Provides useful general druid utility (Stampeding Roar, Ursol’s Vortex, Mass Entangle, Innervate, Mark of the Wild, etc)
Weaknesses:
- Some druid utility and off-healing requires them to leave bear form which isn’t always feasible (innervate/cyclone, caster form convoke to offheal)
- Talent bloat, particularly in the capstone talent area, leaving little flexibility when it comes to competitive talent builds
- Lack of unique raid utility
Guardian Druid Video Guide
Socials:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/tactyks
- Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tactyks
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/tactyks
- Druid Discord: https://discord.gg/dreamgrove
What has changed
Moving into Dragonflight, the much-loved Moonfire or “disco bear” playstyle from legion is making a return, alongside some other returning favorites such as the Mark of the Wild raid buff, Rage of the Sleeper (Legion artifact ability), and Convoke the Spirits (Shadowlands covenant ability).
Some returning abilities were also brought back in a reworked form, such as Ursoc’s Fury, which is now an absorb for 50% of the damage done down from 75% but applies from both thrash and maul damage, and Tooth and Claw, which now also makes Maul cost no rage when proc’d.
We also saw some interesting new talents in Dream of Cenarius and After the Wildfire, which reinforce the “off-healer” niche, as well as Ursoc’s Guidance which can help you get Incarnation down to a 2min CD instead of it’s baseline 3 min CD, very powerful in both raid and M+ environments.
Despite the addition and return of some interesting abilities, Guardian druid has felt a bit lacking throughout the Alpha and Beta, with minimal adjustments to their revamped talent trees and zero communication regarding the direction of the spec and potential community concerns.
Patch 10.0.5 Changes
With patch 10.0.5 we saw a rework to the Druid class and spec trees, and while many of the changes in the class tree were quite good, a lot of the changes in the Guardian tree either didn’t address current issues the spec faces, or created new ones with their placement in the tree.
In particular, there’s a significant discrepancy in the number of capstone talent nodes between tanks, with Guardian having 20 points to choose from, and other specs like Blood and Protection Warrior only having 14, allowing them to be much more flexible with their most powerful talents.
That being said, tuning wise Guardian is in an okay spot right now when it comes to both damage and durability. They did gain some powerful defensive tools and passives, as well as the ability to pump out solid off-healing while staying in bear form, which is quite nice. Many aspects of the spec also feel much better, such as an increase to self-sustain, the buffs to Maul, and just in general more power outside your Incarnation windows. Still, the spec lacks flexibility when it comes to competitive talent builds due to pathing restrictions and just the quantity of nodes in their talent tree, which makes traversing the tree feel quite bad.