In this article, we present you the viable talent and glyph choices for your Guardian Druid (WoW MoP 5.3). We detail what each of the talents and glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.

The other articles of our Guardian Druid guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Arielle, (@riftmaker), a prominent Guardian Druid theorycrafter and the main author of The Inconspicuous Bear (a very respected Guardian Druid resource).

1. Talent Choices↑top

• Performance-enhancing
• Survival
• Crowd Control
• Movement
• Utility
• Situational

There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are now viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to Dust of Disappearance (and Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90). You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics. Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and how they affect your play style.

2. Tier 1 Talents↑top

Tier 1 talents offer a choice between 3 means of increasing your movement abilities.

• Feline Swiftness is a passive ability that increases your movement speed by 15% at all times.
• Displacer Beast is an active ability that teleports you 20 yards forward, activates Cat Form, and grants you a 50% increase in movement speed for 4 seconds.
• Wild Charge is an active ability that differs based on the shapeshift form you are in, as follows:
  • No shapeshift form: you fly to an ally's location.
  • Bear Form: you charge an enemy, immobilizing them for 4 seconds.
  • Cat Form: you leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 seconds.
  • Travel Form: you leap forward 20 yards.
  • Aquatic Form: your swim speed is increased by 150% for 5 seconds.

The choice here will come down to either Feline Swiftness or Wild Charge. If the benefits of Wild Charge will be needed during the encounter (charging to mobs and/or immobilizing them), then Wild Charge will be a great choice. Otherwise, Feline Swiftness will probably be the go-to choice.

Displacer Beast has some situational uses in some encounters, but keep mind that you will lose all your Vengeance when you are automatically shifted into Cat Form.

3. Tier 2 Talents↑top

Tier 2 talents offer a choice between 3 healing spells.

• Nature's Swiftness is an active cooldown that makes your next Cyclone, Entangling Roots, Healing Touch, Hibernate, and Rebirth instant cast, free of mana cost and usable in Bear Form. Moreover, it increases the potency of the spell by 50%.
• Renewal is a self-heal for 30% of your maximum health with a 2-minute cooldown.
• Cenarion Ward is a buff that you can place on a friendly player, lasting up to 30 seconds. When the player takes damage, Cenarion Ward activates a 6-second HoT on the player, consuming Cenarion Ward in the process.

Cenarion Ward is currently the best option for this tier in terms of survival. We recommend choosing it, and using it before you receive a big burst of damage, so that the resulting HoT helps you recover from that damage.

Renewal provides an excellent self-healing cooldown, essentially a minor defensive cooldown. It scales with your health, which makes it even better. We feel that it is not better than Cenarion Ward, although it is easier to use, so if you want to have an on-demand large heal, you can try this talent out.

Nature's Swiftness is good, allowing you to heal yourself through Healing Touch. We recommend this macro for pairing Nature's Swiftness with Healing Touch, for easier use. However, in terms of healing, Cenarion Ward remains superior. You should only take Nature's Swiftness if you will be relied-upon to use Rebirth, since you really cannot afford to channel for 2 seconds while out of Bear Form otherwise.

4. Tier 3 Talents↑top

Tier 3 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.

• Faerie Swarm is a spell that replaces Faerie Fire, upgrading the latter spell to also slow the target's movement speed by 50% for 15 seconds.
• Mass Entanglement is an AoE root, that roots up to 5 targets.
• Typhoon is a spell that affects enemies in a cone in front of you, knocking them back and dazing them for 6 seconds.

The choice between these talents is entirely situational and, in any case, it is unlikely to play any part in your performance.

5. Tier 4 Talents↑top

Tier 4 offers a choice between 3 performance-enhancing talents.

• Soul of the Forest passively causes your Mangle to always generate an additional 2 rage.
• Incarnation: Son of Ursoc reduces the cooldown of your offensive abilities and of Growl to 1.5 seconds, for 30 seconds. This ability has a 3-minute cooldown.
• Force of Nature is an active ability that summons a treant which taunts your current target and attacks it for 15 seconds. Force of Nature has a maximum of 3 charges, and a new a charge is added every 20 seconds. Otherwise, it has no cooldown. The treants do not taunt raid bosses.

Currently, we feel that Incarnation: Son of Ursoc is the best choice. It will provide you with a burst of DPS/threat, and also with some increased rage generation on-demand, which translates into more self-healing.

Soul of the Forest and Force of Nature are quite lackluster in their current incarnations, and not worth taking.

6. Tier 5 Talents↑top

Tier 5 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.

• Disorienting Roar is an AoE disorient that lasts for 3 seconds and affects all enemies in a 10 yard radius.
• Ursol's Vortex is a targeted AoE slow. When enemies first try to leave the slowing area, they are pulled back in.
• Mighty Bash is a single target 5-second stun.

The choice between these talents is entirely situational and, in any case, it is unlikely to play any part in your performance.

7. Tier 6 Talents↑top

Tier 6 talents offer a choice between 3 talents that affect your gameplay.

• Heart of the Wild increases your Stamina, Agility, and Intellect by 6% at all times. Additionally, with a 6-minute cooldown, it allows you to viably perform roles outside of your specialisation, for 45 seconds.
  • allows you to DPS in Cat Form, by increasing your Agility, Expertise, and Hit Chance;
  • allows you to DPS as a caster, by increasing your Spell Damage and Hit Chance, and reducing the mana cost of all your damaging spells by 100%;
  • allows you to heal efficiently, by increasing the healing of your spells by 100% and reducing the mana cost of your healing spells by 100%;
• Dream of Cenarius is a passive ability that grants you a healing bonus each time you deal damage, and a damaging bonus each time you heal.
  • Wrath and melee abilities increase the healing done by your next healing spell (except for Tranquility) by 30%.
  • Healing Touch increases the damage done by your next 2 melee abilities by 25%.
• Nature's Vigil is a 90-second cooldown that increases all healing and damage done by 10% for 30 seconds. While Nature's Vigil is active, all single target healing spells also damage a nearby enemy for 25% of the healing done, and all damaging spells heal nearby allies for 25% of the damage done.

We find that Heart of the Wild and Nature's Vigil are currently the best choices.

Heart of the Wild is great because it boosts your Stamina and Agility. It can also be used to help heal the raid, either by using it together with Tranquility, or by using it, shifting into Cat Form, and using Rejuvenation on other raid members (your healing is boosted by your Agility while you are in Cat Form).

Nature's Vigil also acts as a survival cooldown, boosting the self-healing from Frenzied Regeneration greatly. It also boosts your DPS. It is also worth noting that the passive heals from dealing damage with Nature's Vigil up are smart heals, which will heal the lowest health raid members around.

8. Major Glyphs↑top

Only Major Glyphs play a relevant role in the gameplay of a Guardian Druid. Minor Glyphs are either cosmetic, or they provide meaningless, out-of-combat benefits.

In this section we discuss the relevant Major Glyphs for Guardian Druids. Note that, while useful, these glyphs do not play too great a part in your performance and you can perform quite well without them.

Glyph of Might of Ursoc makes your Might of Ursoc 20% more powerful, but it increases its cooldown by 2 minutes. If the encounter you are progressing on requires that you need an extra "edge" to survive a particularly difficult moment, this glyph can be excellent.

Glyph of Survival Instincts reduces the cooldown of Survival Instincts by 60 seconds, but also reduces its duration by 50%. In normal circumstances, this glyph will probably have limited use (which is not to say that it couldn't still be useful sometimes). However, if some boss abilities that need serious mitigation come at fixed intervals of time of less than 3 minutes, then this glyph can prove very useful.

Glyph of Stampeding Roar increases the range of Stampeding Roar by 30 yards. If using this ability is vital to your raid's strategy, this glyph is excellent.

Glyph of Rebirth is very useful if you intend to use your Rebirth, since it allows the target of your Rebirth to come back to life with full health, meaning that they do not risk instantly dying again to environmental damage.

Glyph of Faerie Fire increases the range of your Faerie Fire by 10 yards. This could occasionally be useful when you want to reach an add that recently spawned far away from you.

Glyph of Fae Silence causes your Faerie Fire to silence the target for 3 seconds, when used in Bear Form, but gives Faerie Fire a 15 second cooldown. In situations where you need to pull ranged mobs to melee range frequently (such as in Challenge Mode dungeons), this can be useful.

9. Minor Glyphs↑top

The only minor glyph worth mentioning is Glyph of Grace, which reduces the damage you take from fall damage even when you are not in Cat Form. While this is not likely to be of use often during PvE progression, it can sometimes help.

10. Changelog↑top

• 20 May 2013: Added a mention that Displacer Beast can have some situational uses. Updated the Force of Nature description to match the 5.3 change. Also added Glyph of Fae Silence.
• 05 Apr. 2013: Made several updates.
  • Reworded the discussion of Tier 2 talents to account for the increased value of Cenarion Ward.
  • Reworded the discussions of Tier 4 and 6 talents. Nothing substantial has changed, but things should now be more clear and accurate.
  • Removed Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration, since it is sub-optimal and should never be used.
  • Added Glyph of Grace.
• 07 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
  • Updated Displacer Beast explanation to mention the movement speed buff that it provides.
  • Updated Soul of the Forest explanation to reflect that the bonus rage granted by Mangle is now 3, instead of 2.
  • Updated Nature's Vigil explanation to reflect the new cooldown and the fact that the damage and healing bonus is now 10% instead of 20%.