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Damien

[Archived] Guardian Druid 5.4

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This is from your best in slot page... I'm kinda confused. Reforing to mastery of dodge from haste or crit is going away from rage generation... did this just get overlooked?

Oh wow, this.. I didn't know that was said in the guide. I want to bump that and say this poster is correct. Mastery is a very bad stat. Bears want to go for more rage generation so crit, hit, exp, (and even haste to some extent) is better then mastery.

Mastery would only be good in a very physical heavy fight, but even then healing yourself with rage is more beneficial.

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Guest minos

guys you shoud update the stats priority, currently the 15% expertise rating is easy reachable, with some gems and reforges, and bis items with expertise on them, this 15% increase the threat generation, survival, and dps a lot, in our 10man core, in some fights i do more dps that the dps classes, its crazy. In 25man guardian tanks probably dont care this, but check the armorys of top players, all of them are going for 15% expertise

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Guest Druimeister

In regard to professions, it's not huge but it should be noted that skinning grants a crit bonus and thus is not completely useless.

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guys you shoud update the stats priority, currently the 15% expertise rating is easy reachable, with some gems and reforges, and bis items with expertise on them, this 15% increase the threat generation, survival, and dps a lot, in our 10man core, in some fights i do more dps that the dps classes, its crazy. In 25man guardian tanks probably dont care this, but check the armorys of top players, all of them are going for 15% expertise

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Yes, it is generally both a DPS and an RPS loss to trade Hit and Expertise for any other secondary stat, including Critical Strike, if you are tanking raid bosses. But I did some math today and found out that the sweet spot is around 12% to 13% Expertise, with the rest budgeted to Crit; it results in slightly higher DPS and almost identical Rage generation, compared to going right to the hard cap.

However, when I do stack Crit instead and just hit Expertise soft cap, I'm an absolute monster on trash pulls and also on any mobs with a level below 93. So if your job is tanking the bats on the Tortos fight or if you have lengthy adds phases like Grand Empress Shek'zeer, it's worth considering a different approach than you would when tanking the boss alone.

Edited by Tarazet

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Guest Rami

How odd. Stats list, agility doesn't even appear now! lol its the top stat for sure

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Guest Arielle

How odd. Stats list, agility doesn't even appear now! lol its the top stat for sure

You never want to socket Agility at all, thanks to getting twice as much secondary stats per gem. For RPS Agility is only worth ~40% (give or take) of either Crit or Haste on a point-per-point basis. Not only that but it only provides a 10% contribution to our AM mechanics (and only if you have the 10% AP buff), and the Dodge diminishing returns on it is incredibly steep.

Basically Agility is no longer the god-stat it once was. It's acceptable to gem/enchant it if you have to share gear with Feral, but otherwise you should focus primarily on either RPS stats or Stamina if required.

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You never want to socket Agility at all, thanks to getting twice as much secondary stats per gem. For RPS Agility is only worth ~40% (give or take) of either Crit or Haste on a point-per-point basis. Not only that but it only provides a 10% contribution to our AM mechanics (and only if you have the 10% AP buff), and the Dodge diminishing returns on it is incredibly steep.

Basically Agility is no longer the god-stat it once was. It's acceptable to gem/enchant it if you have to share gear with Feral, but otherwise you should focus primarily on either RPS stats or Stamina if required.

Agreed. When it comes to consumables, it's going to depend on the encounter. On a standard raid boss that does most of its damage to the tank with melee strikes, Crit and Dodge elixirs are the best way to improve your survivability. If there's a lot of magic damage that can't be mitigated by armor, use a Stam flask. If you outgeared the content, it doesn't matter.

Edited by Tarazet

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Guest Shazzy (Kaitiaa)

Just wondering if anyone is using or knows of a Stance change macro. i cannot find one that is relevant to this expansion/patch.

I just want something that cycles through my stances, easily... say from Bear to Cat, to travel Form and to Swift Flight form. Would also use Aquatic Form if I was in the water etc....

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A macro can't read your mind to tell when you want to go to bear/cat. But the rest can be done with conditionals.

I use F1 and F2 for bear/cat. Pretty easy to access

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I don't think that SP effects FR at all. Nurturing Instinct "Increases your nature spell power by 100% of your Agility." and FR "Instantly converts up to 60 Rage into up to (max((AP - 200% of AGI) * 200 / 100,25000% of STA / 100) * 1) health." meaning that it is only effected by your AP and agility, not your SP.

NI will buff your Healing Touches if you go for the talent Nature's Swiftness and use it to heal yourself with HT, but personally I feel that Renewal is way stronger as it is a set 30% and, just tried this (without raid buffs) HT heals me for 15%.

As I've pointed out before, spell_nature_natureblessing.jpgRenewal can also benefit from additional health gained during spell_druid_mightofursoc.jpgMight of Ursoc, from trinkets, or from any other source. I've topped 1M HP briefly in raid situations, so had I used Renewal in that situation, it would have healed me for over 300k. It's not quite Lay on Hands, but it also doesn't give you a Forbearance debuff.

As for the AP to FR relationship, here's how it works. It takes the higher of two calculations: (Attack power - Agility) x 2, OR Stamina x 2.5. In my current gear, the first calculation based on attack power will result in a value of 34,080, and the second one will result in a value of 83,752, so it will always choose the second calculation since it results in a higher figure. However, Vengeance stacks boost attack power, so on fights like Wind-Lord Mel'jarak where the tank is taking intense damage, these heals can become quite potent based on the increase in attack power. Last I checked, they are also further buffed by having ability_druid_dreamstate.jpgDream of Cenarius's healing boost up. Also, you can use a inv_potion_08.jpgDarkmoon Firewater as your Battle Elixir if you want to boost only AP on fights where Frenzied Regeneration heals will be strong.

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Why would you use firewater when agility flask will give much more attack power.

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Why would you use firewater when agility flask will give much more attack power.

Because the formula subtracts your Agility from your Attack Power. If you really wanted to min-max Frenzied Regeneration (which I doubt is necessary, but we're talking theory), then you would want to maximize your Attack Power without increasing Agility so that the difference between them was as high as possible. However, that doesn't mean you should ignore Agility, since it is still a great stat. It simply won't do anything to FR.

Another interesting use of this mechanic might be the inv_misc_thread_01.jpgSwordguard Embroidery, the Tailoring cloak enchant which provides an attack power proc.

Edited by Tarazet

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I should reiterate that the bonus from Skinning is competitive with other professions. +480 Crit with no extra mats required from inv_misc_organ_01.jpgMaster of Anatomy is better than the +320 Crit bonus from JC, and it's a convenient economical pairing with Leatherworking as well. I think it's a nearly perfect choice for a Guardian on a budget.

Edited by Tarazet
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Guest Shadowfang

I've been using this macro for Nature's Switfness + Healing Touch to avoid loosing bearform

#showtooltip/run SetCVar("autoUnshift",0)/cast Nature's Swiftness/cast Healing Touch/run SetCVar("autoUnshift",1)

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Uncommon Patron

I should reiterate that the bonus from Skinning is competitive with other professions. +480 Crit with no extra mats required from inv_misc_organ_01.jpgMaster of Anatomy is better than the +320 Crit bonus from JC, and it's a convenient economical pairing with Leatherworking as well. I think it's a nearly perfect choice for a Guardian on a budget.

I've just read through the forum, and the guide. In regards to my baby bear, who happens to be Worgen with Viciousness and a skinner, would those together push Skinning above the other possible profession bonuses? The 1% crit throws me off (and since I am an idiot when it comes to theorycrafting the numbers...)

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I've just read through the forum, and the guide. In regards to my baby bear, who happens to be Worgen with Viciousness and a skinner, would those together push Skinning above the other possible profession bonuses? The 1% crit throws me off (and since I am an idiot when it comes to theorycrafting the numbers...)

There's no tiered scaling to Critical Strike. At 90, it takes 600 Crit to gain 1% (400 in Bear Form), and there are no hard breakpoints or diminishing returns. So the Worgen racial has no interaction with the benefit from Skinning.

In any case, the Night Elf's base extra 2% chance to dodge is better than the Worgen's extra Crit.

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In any case, the Night Elf's base extra 2% chance to dodge is better than the Worgen's extra Crit.

What are you basing that off of Taz?

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What are you basing that off of Taz?

It's very simple. In Bear Form, it takes only 400 Critical Strike rating to increase the chance to crit by 1% and match the Worgen's racial. You can do that with a single reforge. To match the Night Elf's extra chance to dodge, it takes a whopping 885 Dodge rating per 1%, or a total of 1770 Dodge rating, which would require reforging half your gear.

Edited by Tarazet
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The short answer is that it depends. If you're doing serious progression content, there's no one answer. You need to know what kind of damage you will be taking and what kind of damage you need to dish out.

I've been doing ToT progression and I'm finding that different stat priorities are better in certain situations. When I was tanking Malakk and Sul, I hard capped on Hit and Expertise and used DPS enchants. That fight was all about just generating Rage steadily and saving SD charges so I could chain them together once he empowered his weapons, and interrupting Sul. Once I got that down, the actual damage intake was extremely low, so Stamina was a nonissue.

On Tortos, which is the boss we're on now, we found the best use for me is on the bats. These are only level 92 mobs, so I reduced my level of Hit and Expertise and instead stacked Crit. The bats will heal if your health falls below a certain threshhold, though (450K IIRC), so I've been running with all Stam enchants on my gear to help keep that from happening when we get a Quake Stomp.

Edited by Tarazet
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Our guild's top healer said something very interesting to me today. He said that he hates healing tanks that emphasize extra Stamina over other, more important secondary stats, and calls them "mana sponges." On some level, it's hard to argue with that. The extra hit points compensate for extra damage by giving the healers more of a chance to heal it, rather than trying to prevent any damage.

Extending this idea to Guardian Druids, assuming you've got the gear, you could tune everything towards Rage generation.

To see if I could find an answer to the question of how far I could go with this, I re-enchanted and regemmed my gear around DPS stats - cutting every extra point of Stamina and replacing it with Agility, Critical Strike, Hit, and Expertise according to the best available theorycrafting priority. Here's the total outlay:

+324 Stam and 2% armor value from meta gem replaced by +432 Crit and 1% spell reflect

+Crit/Hit green gems instead of Crit/Stam, 5 total for a swap of 600 Stam for 800 Hit

+200 Agi and 100 Crit instead of +300 Stam and 100 Dodge on shoulder

+180 Crit instead of 200 Stam on cloak

+300 Stam on chest stays, I opted out of Glorious Stats

+500 Agi on bracers instead of +750 Stam (LW enchant)

+170 Expertise on hands instead of +150 Stam

+285 Agi and +165 Crit on legs instead of +430 Stam and +165 Dodge

+140 Agi on boots stays the same

Total:

-2754 Stam

-265 Dodge

-2% Armor

+985 Agility

+877 Critical Strike

+800 Hit

+170 Exp

+1% spell reflect

The results were eye-opening. I had 55% chance to crit in bear form, unbuffed. I'm not exaggerating when I say the Rage generation was nearly overwhelming. I keep my three rage dumps in different places so I don't mix them up, and my hand was like a spider trying to attack the appropriate one before I capped. I had more Rage than I could use in so many situations and was just throwing it away on unempowered Mauls for extra DPS. It was glorious.

And you know what? I was still usually the last one alive, and could self-heal myself out of any pickle, except when I made a mistake on Dark Animus and didn't get out of my Anima Ring..

Armory for reference: http://us.battle.net.../Tarazet/simple

Edited by Tarazet
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You raiding 10 or 25 man Tarazet and have you ever read Theck's posts on Stamina for Prot Paly's? I'm not disagreeing with you but I do think stats vary based on what you are raiding against (10's/25's - Normal/Heroic) and how your healers like to heal. For my group (10N) I agree with your gearing completely. It seems to be the best and most helpful for my healers. That extra rage generation is sick!

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I'm running 10 Normal as well. Both my gear and my healers' have kept up with our progression (6/12 now), so I will still have 630K health fully buffed - but that's down from around 680K from when I was running Stam-heavy enchants.

One thing that Theck says is that against magical damage, Stamina is the best way to smooth out the intake. I don't think I agree. Self-healing is the best way to counter it. The healers might sense the intake doesn't seem as smooth, even if it's the same in absolute number terms.. but with such an astronomical critical chance, that's a lot of guaranteed healing from Leader of the Pack as well as a ton of Rage to heal with that scales with increasing Vengeance (incoming damage). I tested out my DoC build on Oondasta, and I was healing myself for 200k with a non-crit FR and 400k with a crit. It's pretty easy to help keep yourself up with that kind of capability.

Edited by Tarazet
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The guide recommends the Indomitable Primal Diamond as the top meta gem. I have an issue with this recommendation; if you run the standard Rage build, your approach to fights with lots of melee and physical damage is to keep SD up and dodge it. If an attack is dodged, then any additional damage reduction is wasted. It's the same reason why you don't use Barkskin and Savage Defense at the same time; each one wastes the potential of the other. I think the Capacitive Primal Diamond will be a better choice in most situations to provide extra DPS which scales with Vengeance.

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