Guardian Druid Tank Guide — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1

1. Guardian Druid Overview

Guardian Druid is a sturdy tank that manages damage intake through having strong passive reductions, a large health pool, increased healing received from Mastery, and a stackable active mitigation. While Guardians may take more damage than other tanks, this is offset by their increased healing received. They bring good utility to raid groups and are an excellent raid tank.

Guardian Druids excel against encounters where a large majority of 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'd like to learn more about tanking in general, we recommend you read our tanking guide.

2. Patch 8.1.0 Changes for Guardian Druid

2.1. Added/Removed Spells

• Intimidating Roar has been replaced with Ursol's Vortex.
• The Craggy Bark Azerite trait has been replaced with Burst of Savagery.

2.2. Changed Spells

• Stampeding Roar's cooldown has been reduced from 2 minutes to 1 minute.
• Wild Charge is no longer on the global cooldown.
• The damage of all Guardian abilities has been increased by ~12%.

3. Patch 8.0.1 Changes for Guardian Druid

3.1. Added/Removed Spells

• Rage of the Sleeper has been removed.
• All artifact traits associated with the artifact weapon have been removed.
• Guttural Roars has been replaced with Tiger Dash.
• Hibernate has been added.
• Soothe has been added.

3.2. Changed Spells

• Frenzied Regeneration has been changed to heal for a fixed amount rather than scaling with incoming damage, and has had its cooldown increased from 24 seconds to 36 seconds.
• Ironfur now grants a portion of Agility, rather than base Armor, as Armor. Additionally, Ironfur's base duration has been increased to 7 seconds (up from 6 seconds).
• Bear Form now grants 220% more Armor (up from 200%) and 45% more Stamina (down from 55%).
• Galactic Guardian has had its chance to proc reduced to 5% (down from 7%.)
• Balance Affinity now increases spell range by 3 yards (down from 5 yards).
• Stampeding Roar has had its range increased to 15 yards (up from 10 yards).
• Rebirth now costs 30 Rage (up from 10 Rage).
• Bristling Fur, Dash, Wild Charge, Frenzied Regeneration, Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc, are now subject to the global cooldown.
• Many abilities have had their underlying damage formula changed to scale with both Weapon Damage and Attack Power.

4. Guardian Druid's Strengths

• Strong passive damage reductions
• Stackable, no-cooldown active mitigation in Ironfur
• Good raid utility in Rebirth and Stampeding Roar
• Able to perform flexible hybrid duties through the affinity talents

5. Guardian Druid's Weaknesses

• Low damage and threat output, has to sacrifice significant amounts of survivability to be competitive
• Weak self-sustain leads to a heavy reliance on healers
• Lacking in small group/dungeon utility such as crowd control and stuns, compared to other tanks
• Poor magic damage mitigation

6. Guardian Druid Viability in the Current Patch

Guardian Druid currently struggles to find a place among the other tanks in terms of filling a niche. They perform reasonably well in raid environments due to their ability to mitigate a large amount of Physical damage and to scale up their mitigation with damage intake through Bristling Fur, however they struggle significantly with magic damage intake outside of their defensive cooldowns. Stampeding Roar continues to be a strong raid cooldown, however its value is strongly tied to how an encounter is designed; in the current tier, encounters do not demand a heavy movement cooldown and as such Stampeding Roar has reduced value.

In dungeons, the focus on self-reliance and utility puts Guardians near the bottom in terms of viability. Often, due to limited healer globals and attention, Guardians simply cannot sustain themselves enough to execute the large trash pulls that are required to do higher Mythic+ keys. The addition of Ursol's Vortex in patch 8.1 improves our crowd control and utility potential significantly, which will make Guardian a more attractive dungeon tank than in the previous patch.

7. Changelog