Mists of Pandaria Classic Guardian Druid Talent Builds

With Mists of Pandaria the talent system was heavily reworked to focus on a small amount of highly impactful choices and Guardian Druid has multiple talent options for different encounters and gameplay profiles, ranging from high survivability to high DPS.

In Mists of Pandaria you will be able to unlock a new row of talent selections every 15 levels, starting at level 15. Each row has a specific theme in order to keep the choices balanced with each other, and thus the choice will mostly rest on what type of defensives you want, or mobility, or utility, for the situation.

This tier of talents is dedicated to mobility increases and alternative options for quickly moving your character around.

• Feline Swiftness is a straightforward 15% movement speed increase and is ideal for world, leveling, or dungeon content.
• Displacer Beast teleports you 20 yards forward like Blink and puts you into Cat Form, which can be dangerous if you are actively tanking making it unreliable.
• Wild Charge grants the Wild Charge ability while in Bear Form, which is usually more than enough for quickly moving around, with the added benefit of rooting your target for 4 seconds, allowing you to gain aggro, and is the favored option for raiding.

This tier of talents focuses on ways to self-heal and recover sustained damage.

• Ysera's Gift heals you for 5% of your health every 5 seconds, or a nearby injured ally if you are at full health. This is a good passive choice, especially for Guardian as your health pool is naturally high.
• Renewal heals you for 30% of your maximum health every 2 minutes. While this can be a decent extra defensive, the heal amount is very low for its high cooldown.
• Cenarion Ward allows you to place a ward on a friend target which activates when the target is directly attacked and does very high healing for 6 seconds on a short 30-second cooldown. This is a very good talent as long as you remember to use it frequently.

This tier of talents has multiple crowd control abilities. These are very situational, and you will need to frequently change them to suit the encounter you are doing.

• Faerie Swarm allows your Faerie Fire to slow affected targets by 50% for 15 seconds. While this can occasionally be useful in solo situations, you will generally be able to easily apply the baseline Infected Wounds instead.
• Mass Entanglement roots every enemy around its target for 20 seconds on a 30-second cooldown. This is one of the most unique Druid talents overall, and while situational, it is a must-have for encounters that require extended crowd control of enemies vulnerable to roots.
• Typhoon pushes away enemies in front of you and slows them for 6 seconds on a 30-second cooldown. Pushing enemies away generally interrupts their casts which makes this a very powerful talent, just be wary of spreading enemies out as that will lower your group's DPS potential.

This tier of talents grants you extra DPS throughput and more defensive capabilities through increased Rage generation.

• Soul of the Forest is a strong passive talent which increases the Rage generation of Mangle by 30% and causes it to deal 15% more damage. Due to synergy with other effects that increase the availability of Mangle, this talent increases Rage generation significantly, making it a strong defensive talent.
• Incarnation reduces the cooldown of your melee damage abilities and Growl to 1.5 seconds while active and thus makes your damage and Rage generation skyrocket while active. Due to its 3-minute cooldown and 30 second duration, is is the preferred talent in situations where damage intake is uneven or encounters where you have high tanking downtime.
• Force of Nature has 3 charges on a 20-second recharge timer and creates a Treant ally which deals minor DPS and taunts enemies. While it can be occasionally useful for extra DPS and distracting enemies, it is generally forgettable.

This tier of talents has another set of situational crowd control abilities.

• Disorienting Roar disorients nearby enemies for 3 seconds on a 30-second cooldown. Since it has an extremely short cooldown and no downsides, this is one of the best tools for countering masses of caster enemies, provided you have managed to stack them close to yourself first.
• Ursol's Vortex is an especially interesting Druid talent which creates a ground zone that slows enemies and pulls them to its center whenever they try to leave it for the first time. It lasts 10 seconds on a short 60-second cooldown, and combos very well with Typhoon to avoid spreading enemies after you push them away or even have them stack more tightly than before the Typhoon!
• Mighty Bash stuns one target for 5 seconds every 50 seconds. This can be occasionally useful in a solo setting but if you need stuns in a group, there will likely be better baseline options from other classes.

The final tier of talents provides small throughput increases to your role and large potential throughput increases to your ability to fill other roles temporarily.

• Heart of the Wild increases Stamina, Agility, and Intellect by 6% at all times. It can also be activated to massively increase your performance at off-roles for 45 seconds. For Guardian this will generally entail going into Cat Form and DPSing while not tanking, but you could also throw some strong heals if needed.
• Dream of Cenarius increases Healing Touch healing by 20%, Critical Strike chance of Mangle by 10%, and allows its crits to have a 50% chance to make your next Healing Touch or Rebirth instant, free, and castable in all forms, and benefit from Attack Power instead of Spell Power. This enables you to safely combat ress at 100% health (with Glyph of Rebirth) while tanking and also some powerful Healing Touch off-healing.
• Nature's Vigil increases your damage and healing by 12% for 30 seconds and during its effect your healing effects damage a nearby enemy for 25% of the healing done and damage effects heal nearby allies for 25% of the damage done. With a 30-second duration on a 90-second cooldown, this is an additional cooldown you can use to help keep yourself and your raid healthy during incoming raid damage.

There are only two categories of Glyphs in Mists of Pandaria: Major and Minor Glyphs. Major Glyphs tend to improve or change how major abilities work and thus have direct impact on your performance, while Minor Glyphs are mostly cosmetic or small quality of life improvements for niche spells.

While not all recommended glyphs affect your throughput, we still recommend using the glyphs listed below for their high quality of life improvements.

• Glyph of Maul — causes Maul to also hit one nearby target for 50% damage. While niche, it is one of the only direct throughput increases available through glyphs.
• Glyph of Stampeding Roar — this glyph triples the radius at which Stampeding Roar will affect nearby allies, making it much more usable in all situations.
• Glyph of Rebirth — causes players resurrected by Rebirth to return at 100% health. As area damage and ground effects are very common in raid encounters, it is very likely that a player returned at low health will instantly die again, wasting the combat ress. This glyphs makes the player much more likely to survive, making it one of our recommended picks.
• Glyph of Dash — reduces the cooldown of your Dash ability by 60 sec, making you more mobile in the process but only when you are not actively tanking as using Dash puts you in Cat Form.

Guardian Druids only have quality of life Minor Glyphs, but there are a few useful ones listed below.

• Glyph of Aquatic Form — increases your swim speed by 50% in Aquatic Form, which is a great quality of life benefit while doing world content.
• Glyph of Grace — decreases the damage you take from falling even while not in Cat Form which has this bonus baked in. This makes it much harder to die or get heavily injured from fall damage, which is occasionally useful.
• Glyph of the Stag — allows your Travel Form to carry party members, which can be occasionally useful if all of you need to move somewhere quickly.