New to guardian druid. Any advice?

[gumble85 2]

Hi all,

Long story short. I was healing on my druid but we are desperate for a tank so i had to level up my tank weapon. The funny thing was. I was tanking fantastic in a Time Walking BC dungeon earlier today with a guildie who was healing. Surprising enough my first time tanking with no talents and zero AP in my weapon yet, him and myself did very well. Hardly any deaths....... Despite this.

I am after advice on what i should gear should i "prowl" for, preferred stats, etc. I have looked at the guardian guide and aligned my talents towards the choices it gave, but i am unsure as to what else to do other than practice my tanking/aggro holding.

My character on bnet wow page is below.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/khazgoroth/Catertonic/advanced

Excuse my healer boots and mostly healer mythic+ gear. Trying to figure out what i should replace them with.

Now with the guardian druid guide. It says i should be socketting vers over mastery for gems.... Can i get a reason as to why? I always thought the mastery bonus would be more beneficial.

Any other advice on the guardian druid side of things would be welcomed as well. :)

Thanks in advance.

[bobifle 14]

I tank only occasionally, so I'm no expert, here's some feedback/suggestion

1/ bears are awesome tanks (overpowered ?)

2/ easy to play, meaning you can focus on what actually matters (strat)

3/ regarding mastery vs vers, I have no idea, but balancing stats is never completely wrong, measuring effect of vers gems against mastery gems seems difficult, so my conclusion is whatever floats your boat. (As a druid healer, mastery seems betters because I have a constant stream of hots running on the tank, other healer specs may have different opinion)

4/ you may want to install an addon that tells you the type of damage you get, this is important to know which def. skill you'll use. This is one way to improve your tanking

5/ you may also figure out how to increase your dps, when you know you're strong and the healer is up to the task, the  tank dps is a huge bonus in Mythic M+

6/ have the party /raid HP interface available to know when shit happens, you want to use defensive CD when the healers are busy healing those stupid DPS :D. Usually such interfaces gives you important boss debuff that stack on tanks.

7/ in the defensive CD category, make sure to use them a lot, almost on CD, especially when it's easy. It must be a reflex. This will train your CD rotation. When you know things will get really hot (MM+10+),  keep those CDs for when it matters. I personally tend to get lazy with the CDs, which make me fail when it actually matters.

8/ you need to be number one at cutting casts (and stun)

[Curinir 4]

Hello Gumble!

I'm glad you chose Guardian as your first tank. It's pretty easy to learn. The rotation is very easy to master, so no worries there. It's more about having the right talents for the right job and knowing when to Mark of Ursol vs Ironfur. 

As far as talents go, Icy-Veins recommends some weird stuff. I prefer brambles in the first row. There's no real call for the other two talents. The affinity row is all personal preference, but keep in mind Balance Affinity increases the range of most of your abilities, allowing you to pick up adds with Thrash and Swipe with greater ease. And for when you get into really advanced play, Feral Affinity is fun because you can catweave and do all kinds of crazy dps things. On a lot of fights if I'm not Catweaving I'll run Incarnation for a little more snap aggro, the only bad part is you have to micromanage moonfire a lot more. Finally, in your last talent row I'd recommend Pulverize until you get Elize's. With the new golden trait it makes it even easier to use, too. 

When gearing up, I initially preferred stacking mastery just to keep a high health pool. But once you have enough Stamina, you can back off and start going for Versatility. Haste is a good stat to get, as it indirectly increases Rage generation and does amazing things for your damage, but until you are used to being able to survive most boss fights, I'd recommend blending Mastery/Vers.

When it comes to ironfur vs MoU, you just have to do your research and know what is damaging you. A lot of fights in Nighthold are very heavy on the Magic damage, so MoU is super valuable. but Ironfur is still need for a lot of bosses.

A note on cooldowns: Survival Instincts is your "oh shit" button. Rage and Barkskin can be used almost on cooldown unless you have big survivability issues in certain fights. 

If you have any more questions, let me know! I can go more in depth, but I'm pretty sure you don't want a book :)

[Tarazet 144]

I've played Feral tank/Guardian since Cataclysm, which is the first expansion it was really viable. Speaking of Catweaving.. in Pandaria we had Heart of the Wild. Many a pull in Throne of Thunder I would be stealthed in cat form, prepot, Berserk + Berserking and go completely bananas. None of the DPS could match my burst opener. It was glorious. I inspired the shamans and mages to polish their openers because they didn't want to be beaten on a single-target fight by the tank.

However, Guardian is in a better place now than it was then. Previously because of the over-reliance on Dodge, it was great as a trash tank but problematic in raiding. Now we are all about high armor and health, which in my opinion is more bear-like. The spec is getting some adjustments to its kit, but all indications are that it will remain a very strong tank going forward. And as Curinir says, it is easy to execute the rotation and generally be effective at your job. The 360 degree cleave of Thrash and Swipe provides outstanding ease of snap threat, and Moonfire is a much superior replacement for the old Faerie Fire for ranged pulls. Guardian is not perfect: the current incarnation of Frenzied Regeneration is a bit too slow and situational, and can often end up being rather weak for the Rage spent. I also liked when Maul had an actual survival component to it. The 7.2.5 version of Maul is going to be purely a DPS increase.