Guardian Druid Tank Guide — Midnight (12.0.1)

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Guardian Druid is a sturdy tank that manages damage intake with strong passive reductions, a large health pool, increased healing from Mastery, and a stackable active mitigation with Ironfur. They are an excellent sponge tank. Once you have acquired enough gear, they are mostly self-sufficient with a unique playstyle, unlike any other class. They bring some utility to raid and Mythic+ groups as a tank and very high DPS.

Guardian Druid tends to excel against encounters where most incoming damage is Physical or Melee damage.

This guide focuses specifically on Guardian Druid. As such, the more general aspects of tanking will not be covered here. If you would like to learn more about tanking in general, we recommend you read our tanking guide.

Damage Raid Performance Mythic+ Performance Utility Survivability Mobility

Powerful in all scenarios

Guardian Druid has a very flexible damage profile, with a powerful 2-3 minute cooldown that is great on both AoE and single-target and overall quite high sustained damage output. It does have to decide whether it goes for AoE or single target based on Hero Talents, with Druid of the Claw being primarily ST and Elune's Chosen being the far better AoE choice.

Performs Fantastically

Guardian Druid is a solid pick for any raid environment, thanks to its incredible survivability, raid buff in Mark of the Wild and overall raid utility. It is one of the most flexible tanks, capable of handling most mechanics with ease. Guardian does suffer from a lack of burst damage if it has no time to ramp up our DoT's beforehand which can be relevant on some encounters but rare.

Consistently Strong

Guardian is fantastic in Midnight Mythic+, having consistently high AoE damage and extremely strong self-sustain in addition to some of the best group healing tools any tank can offer their group.

Feels Useful

Guardian has access to a few different utility spells, like Mark of the Wild, Stampeding Roar, After the Wildfire, Incapacitating Roar and Dream of Cenarius to name a couple. A Guardian makes use of all their utility feels like a real asset to the team, always impactful and helpful.

Extremely Durable

Guardian is a tank and quite a tanky tank at that. We are flexible, able to mitigate all damage types effectively and consistently. Short cooldowns such as Barkskin and Frenzied Regeneration allow us to comfortably mitigate damage and maintain our health pool without the need for a healer in most scenarios.

Fast and Flexible

Guardian has solid mobility, however it generally requires a target to Wild Charge to, whereas things like Heroic Leap or Roll can be aimed anywhere. On the plus side, while you are not actively tanking you can comfortably shift forms and make up great distances quickly in Travel Form or Cat Form.

Before you begin leveling, you may want to take a quick look at our Addons page, as setting up your UI before you begin will allow you to get more comfortable with where things are and improve your gameplay significantly. Levelling as a tank has several advantages, including the number of mobs you can comfortably pull and survive, thanks to your powerful defensive capabilities. Levelling as a tank is also great in a group. All your party members will appreciate your ability to tag and collect mobs quickly. It can also be a fantastic way to learn your rotational abilities and get more comfortable with the spec. Playing a tank may be daunting initially, but you can see our leveling guide below if you seek a better understanding of leveling as a Guardian Druid.

Being one of the tank specializations, your main goal, first and foremost, is to stay alive and to ensure that you have aggro on all of the enemies so that they are not on your weaker party/raid members. To tank efficiently as a Guardian Druid, your goal is to spread as many Moonfires as possible, then generate as much Rage with spells like Mangle and Thrash. This Rage can be spent defensively, with Ironfur and Frenzied Regeneration, or offensively, with Maul. You can learn about all the various Guardian spells that will be at your disposal by reading the Spell Summary page.

To get a quick rundown of how the class works in practice, look into the Easy Mode guide below. This page will go over everything you need to know to play the class.

If you are already slightly familiar with what Guardian Druids can do, you may benefit from our more in-depth breakdown of Talents and the Rotation linked below. This will cover everything you need to play Guardian Druid optimally.

As a Guardian Druid you have access to have Elune's Chosen and Druid of the Claw as your two Hero Talent Trees.

• Elune's Chosen is an Arcane focused tree revolving around Lunar Beam and Moonfires.
• Druid of the Claw is more a Bleed focused tree, where you balance Feral bleeds such as Rip and Rake, in addition to reacting to frequent Ravage procs.

There are quite a few different things to consider when looking at how to gear, and it can be overwhelming at the beginning. To start with, you can take a look at our Best in Slot guide, which is linked below. This will go over the best gear available from Mythic+ and Raid content.

Understanding what stats to go for on your gear is integral to knowing which gear will be good for you or not. The same goes for other gear improvements like enchants, consumables, and gems. Fortunately, we have pages dedicated to all of that information to assist in finding what is the best for you.

Once you have made it to the maximum possible level, you can begin your journey into the main end-game activities, Raiding, Mythic+, and PvP. Starting with Mythic+ is a good choice, as you only need 5 players, and it can be done anytime. Progressing into raids, you will likely need to find a guild, especially if you want to do Mythic raid content. It can be daunting starting to play a tank as it is a pivotal role with lots of societal pressure applied, but the best way to learn is to read up as much as possible and then just start playing.