Guardian Druid Tank Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

• Casting as many Maul's as possible. It is important to realize that you are a tank first and foremost, so you should cast as many Ironfur's as you think you need to survive, but in terms of dealing the highest damage possible, you want to spend as much of your available Rage on Maul as possible.
• Managing your Rage — Never capping it but also ensuring you have enough Rage to cast either Maul or Ironfur if required.
• Maintaining 5 stacks of Thrash by using Thrash frequently. For maximum damage, you do not always want to cast Thrash off cooldown.
• Maintain Moonfire on the target at all times. Usually, this is covered by Galactic Guardian, but sometimes, you can get bad RNG and have to manually cast a few. Moonless Night does enormous damage for us, so ensuring Moonfire is active at all times is essential.
• Mangle and Thrash should be cast as much as possible to keep a steady flow of Rage incoming.

• Similar goals to the single-target Rotation, except we replace Maul with Raze.
• Raze is your highest-priority Spell and should be used as much as possible on 2 or more targets. You should still try to maintain 1-3 Ironfur stacks depending on how much damage you are taking.
• Moonfire is much less of a priority as we rarely take any of the Moonfire related talents in AoE build and should only really be used to pull and on single target encounters.

In the Single-Target and AoE sections, you will find a highly detailed priority list breakdown of the Rotation, as well as optimal openers.

1. Cast Growl
2. Cast Moonfire
3. Cast Thrash
4. Cast Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc
5. Cast Thrash
6. Cast Mangle
7. Cast Thrash
8. Cast Maul
9. Cast Mangle
10. Cast Thrash
11. Cast Maul
12. Cast Mangle
13. Proceed with your normal Rotation according to the priority list below.

This priority list describes the optimal offensive single-target Rotation for Guardian Druid.

1. Maintain Moonfire
2. Maintain 5 stacks of Thrash
3. Cast Barkskin off cooldown
4. Cast Maul when possible
5. Cast Mangle
6. Cast Thrash
7. Cast Moonfire with Galactic Guardian proc
8. Cast Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc
9. Cast Swipe absolutely lowest priority if you have nothing else to press.

1. Pull mobs from ranged together with Moonfire
2. Cast Barkskin
3. Cast Thrash
4. Cast Mangle to generate rage
5. Dump all rage into Raze while maintaining 1-3 stacks of Ironfur depending on damage taken.
6. Cast Thrash
7. Cast Mangle to generate rage
8. Dump all rage into Raze while maintaining 1-3 stacks of Ironfur depending on damage taken.
9. Proceed with your normal Rotation according to the priority list below.

This priority list describes the optimal offensive AoE rotation for Guardian Druid.

1. Maintain 5 stacks of Thrash
2. Cast Barkskin off cooldown unless saving for something specifically dangerous.
3. Cast Raze when possible
4. Cast Thrash
5. Cast Mangle
6. Cast Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc
7. Cast Moonfire
8. Cast Swipe absolutely lowest priority if you have nothing else to press.

Ironfur increases your Armor by 112% of your Agility for 7 seconds. Multiple applications of Ironfur may overlap and stack their Armor increases, but their durations will not stack. For example, if you use Ironfur and then use it again 3 seconds later, you will have two applications of Ironfur for 4 seconds, granting you 224% of your Agility as Armor. After 4 seconds, the first application will have expired, leaving you with 112% of your Agility as Armor for 3 more seconds. Agility buffs and procs increase the amount of Armor you gain from Ironfur.

Armor is extremely effective at reducing Physical damage intake, so having at least one stack of Ironfur up as often as possible is recommended. Additionally, you will occasionally want to pool your Rage to put up multiple stacks of Ironfur for a short period to deal with a spike in damage. There is a hard limit to how much Armor can reduce your incoming damage by, at 85%. This is around 7-8 (3-4 with an Aug voker) stacks of Ironfur and can generally be achieved on 5-10 targets or inside of Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc.

Armor does not normally reduce Bleed damage (typically, this is presented in-game as a "Physical DoT") or Magic damage. However, there are exceptions to these rules, which appear on a case-by-case basis. When faced with Bleed or Magic damage, you will find Ironfur ineffective and should instead use your defensive cooldowns to reduce the damage or a well-timed Frenzied Regeneration to heal yourself. Remember that if you are tanking a boss, you are almost always taking auto-attacks and other damage sources. Auto-attacks are Physical, so it is still worth maintaining Ironfur on most encounters.

Finally, consider your situation carefully before using Ironfur. Since it is proactive, no matter how low on health you have been brought, using it if there is no new incoming damage is pointless.

Guardian Druid's primary resource is Rage.

The Rage bar has a maximum capacity of 100 and is empty by default. Rage decays quickly out of combat. In combat, Rage does not decay.

Rage is generated in the following ways:

• Activating Bear Form grants you 25 Rage (leaving Bear Form empties the Rage bar).
• Auto-attacks generate 4 Rage.
• Being auto-attacked generates 3 Rage (can only occur once every second).
• Mangle generates 10 Rage (+4 with a Gore proc and +5 with Soul of the Forest).
• Thrash generates 5 Rage.
• Moonfire with a Galactic Guardian proc generates 8 Rage.
• Bristling Fur generates 1 Rage per % of max health taken in damage while active.
• Blood Frenzy generates 2 Rage every time a Thrash bleed ticks on any target (Thrash ticks once every 3 seconds, reduced by Haste).

As of Midnight Pre-Patch, Druid of the Claw Catweaving is currently a very marginal DPS increase over not weaving.

Ripweaving is where you gain a buff once you cast Mangle six times with the Wildpower Surge talent that empowers your next Rip and Ferocious Bite and generates max combo points upon entering Cat Form. You shift into Cat Form by using Rake in Bear Form, due to the Fluid Form talent, you will instantly be shifted into Cat. You are then able to apply this empowered Rip and shift straight back into Bear Form by casting Mangle whilst in Cat Form. This is an extremely safe version of Catweaving and has very little impact on your survivability. You are even able to utilize this while tanking a boss actively due to the Wildshape Mastery talent that retains Ironfur and 80% of your health and Armor temporarily in Cat.

Make sure that you do not shift to Cat too soon after casting Mangle as it can be on cooldown, delaying your ability to shift back to bear quickly.

Catweaving is an advanced topic and significantly complicates the Rotation. It is not recommended for those who are just picking up Guardian Druid or when you are learning a new fight. That being said, when done correctly, it can be a significant DPS increase over staying in Bear Form single-target (depending on tuning).

Guardian Druid is a primarily proactive tank. You must be prepared with active mitigation and defensive cooldowns before you take damage. This is in contrast to reactive tanks, which first take the damage and then react to it by healing themselves up.

As such, preparation plays a large part in tanking effectively. Wise use of cooldowns and coordination with your healers is critical and can be the difference between a boss kill and a wipe. The best way to prepare for an encounter is to look at the damage profile of the fight (either from a log or by reading the Dungeon Journal) and plan out what cooldowns you will use, when you will use them, and whether any gaps need to be covered by healer external defensives.

You have two baseline defensive cooldowns and a few more that you can talent into. Unless you are sure you will die otherwise, it is not advised to overlap your defensive cooldowns, as spending them that way is often overkill and wasteful.

Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc is our main cooldown, available every 2-3 minutes (depending on rage spent and talents). It grants increased health and reduced cooldown on Thrash and Mangle. It also makes Mangle hit 3 targets.

You can opt to save this as a defensive cooldown in some situations if you are expecting significant danger upcoming but generally is best used off cooldown as an offensive CD.

Barkskin is a 40-60s cooldown that we want to use on CD as much as possible. It deals damage with the Brambles talent and reduces our damage significantly. This helps smooth our damage intake in general and survive big hits.

Survival Instincts is our biggest defensive. Midnight gave us 2 charges baseline so planning these is even easier. Generally saved for very dangerous damage intake or huge hits.