Guardian Druid Guide for The War Within

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Guardian Druid. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Guardian Druid spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the War Within beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Guardian Druid, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

Guardian Druid has received very minor changes to the Druid Class tree but no changes to the spec tree. The class tree changes allow us to more easily acquire Remove Corruption and Feline Swiftness which is a nice bonus. There is also the new addition of Fluid Form which can potentially enable Catweaving in the future. The downsides of the new tree is Astral Influence has had its bonus range on melee and abilities removed completely making it now a useless talent for bear. Also Stampeding Roar is a bit more awkward to acquire with now sacrificing power elsewhere.

The War Within has major implications for all specs thanks to the Hero Talent Tree system, new tier sets, and the natural reduction in secondary stats when entering a new expansion.

Guardian Druid gets to choose between the Elune's Chosen and Druid of the Claw Hero Talent Trees. In sections below, we will talk more deeply about the implications of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec, and some thoughts on what looks strong and weak ahead of launch.

The Elune's Chosen Hero Tree Talents are primarily based on arcane damage interactions such as Lunar Beam and Moonfire.

Gameplay-wise, expect a mostly passive kit that can lower the cooldown of Lunar Beam significantly or turn your Thrash into an arcane ability. This tree can also generate quite a significant amount of rage for us and also brings a small 30% slow to targets affected by Moonfire.

Power-wise, expect a solid all-rounder that amplifies our arcane kit slightly. Elune's Chosen looks especially strong in AoE/M+ scenarios, thanks to the massive mastery boost currently granted by Lunar Beam.

Defensively, Elune's Chosen is fairly average. Between Moon Guardian and The Light of Elune you generate a significant amount of bonus rage compared to usual. This can translate well into more spenders overall.

The Druid of the Claw Hero Tree Talents are primarily based on its core proc ability, Ravage.

Gameplay-wise, expect a mostly passive kit from Druid of the Claw that occasionally gives you procs of Ravage alongside small boosts to our Maul/ Raze and Frenzied Regeneration. There is some shared Cat perks that lean into the old Catweaving playstyle where you temporarily shift into Cat Form to apply bleeds/ Ferocious Bite for a bit of bonus damage but the impact of this will largely be dependant on whether or not the +50% Bear Aura gets changed to include cat spells. If not, it will likely only have minimal to no value and potentially be ignored completely.

Power-wise, Druid of the Claw does not look very exciting on its surface. It entirely revolves around Ravage which is essentially just Tooth and Claw. A random proc that changes your damage-dealing spender to a slightly better one. You were already going to press that spender regardless, now it just does a little more, so rotationally and talent wise exactly the same as Dragonflight sadly.

Defensively, it is minorly worse than the Elune's Chosen counterpart as many of the defensive aspects require shifting from Cat to Bear which in a way has it's own significant downsides. As anyone who has played Guardian knows, shifting into cat is relatively dangerous, lessened by some of the new talents that let you retain 80% of armor and health now, but still at risk of crits.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Guardian Druid in The War Within. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentary that is italicized.

• Druid Guardian Season 1 2pc — Thrash and Moonfire increase your damage done and reduce damage you take by 1% for 8 seconds stacking 3 times. The 3% damage increase on this is deceptive as it does not work on many things like cantrip effects/trinkets, spells not on the aura etc. Roughly equates to about a 2% damage increase depending on build. The damage reduction is also so small it is completely negligible.
• Druid Guardian Season 1 4pc — Arcane damage you deal is increased by 5% and bleed damage you deal is increased by 5%. Basically translates to another passive 2-2.5% damage increase depending on build.

Both set bonuses are completely passive and are not expected to have any gameplay impact.

The set bonus is numerically very weak, completely passive and extremely boring. Less than 5% damage increase for both bonuses combined with a minor damage reduction bonus on top. You would truly never notice whether you actually had this tier set equipped or just got different RNG pull to pull on a boss.

Strengths

• Decently high damage.
• Capable self-sustain.
• Looks cool.

Weaknesses

• Lacking any significant/unqiue Raid/M+ utility.
• Ironfur extremely inflexible damage mitigation, solely working on physical damage.
• Insufficient mob control and snap aggro tools.
• Gameplay/rotation has not changed proportionally to what you would expect from a new expansion.
• Class tree extremely weak with half of the talents having 0 impact on your spec.