Guardian Druid GuideMidnight Overview
Major Changes to Guardian Druid in Midnight Alpha
Guardian has received some rather significant Guardian specific talent tree changes, alongside the sweeping talent/ability removal that all specs have been affected by. The talent tree rework enables new pathing, different combos, a few new talents to mess around with and overall a more flexible and enjoyable tree.
The tree throughout The War Within has remained rather stagnant, with our builds barely varying more than a single talent point here and there for minor optimizations in different scenarios eg: Aoe vs Single target. Both our M+ and Raid builds never changed, and we were without a doubt one of the specs with the least changes overall across the entire expansion. We generally only received minor aura tuning and nothing significant to note, so these sweeping changes are heartily welcomed by the Guardian community.
Removed Talents & Abilities
The Midnight Alpha shocked many people to see plenty of age old talents removed and some specs are struggling to see how their spec remains similar to what they know. But Guardian has been quite lucky, the talents and abilities that have been pruned are excellent choices. These talents plagued our rotation for minor gains or were largely useless entirely.
Tooth and Claw - While it was a strong and useful talent, it allowed us to essentially only spend rage offensively if it was free. Also, one less thing to track with the removal of many Addons/Weakauras.
Thorns of Iron - The main cause of excessive APM, finally removed.
Improved Survival Instincts - 2 Charges made baseline.
Berserk: Persistence - Built into Berserk by default.
Berserk: Unchecked Aggression - Built into Berserk by default.
Earthwarden - Possibly too strong defensively? Unsure why this was removed.
New Talents
Persistence - This was removed from Wildshape Mastery and made into a talent. It's in a reasonable position and is a bit more flexible than the old iteration.
Memory of Ysera - Health payout for rage spent. Will heavily depend on tuning but currently quite weak.
Ward of the Forest - Could be a good niche pickup but I do not think this will see a lot of use.
Gift of an Ancient Guardian - Rewarded for maintaining your single stack of Ironfur. Should probably refresh on each cast of Ironfur instead of once every 6 seconds.
Red Moon - New single target option. Feels a bit funky to play not having Moonfire and I think overall makes the rotation feel much slower and worse. Utilizing procs of Galactic Guardian is what keeps the Guardian rotation flowing smoothly on single target and this talent removes that interaction completely.
Harnessed Rage - Great for consistent rage generation, allows the rotation to flow back to Mangle a bit more frequently, which is now quite a hard hitting ability.
Waking Nightmare - Could be interesting as a passive AoE tool but currently quite bugged on the Alpha.
Sundering Roar - Potentially useful AoE threat tool on a relatively short cooldown. The issue with this talent is that you only get 2-3 casts of Thrash off in it's window and unless you get a Flashing Claws proc, most of the value from this is lost. When it's competing with the final tier talents/apex talents that makes it really hard to choose taking this over something else.
Complexity/APM Reduction
The removal of Thorns of Iron is one of the most contentious topics across the Guardian community, with many being happy that it is gone and many missing the simplicity of mindless spam. Thorns of Iron was the main source of the massive APM (Actions Per Minute) requirement for Guardian for the last few expansions. This often meant spamming off-gcd Ironfur regardless of physical damage intake, purely as a way to spend our quickly refilling rage pool rapidly and dealing minor damage. This meant doubling our APM for roughly a 5-10% damage increase. Not a great gameplay loop and not great for your hands either.
Removing this allows our rotation to go back to Maul/Raze offensively and any Ironfur stacks above 1 are purely used for defense. Personally, I think this a fantastic change and allows for the Guardian rotation to flow in different directions.
On the topic of complexity, recently Wildpower Surge was nerfed significantly. This greatly reduces the likelihood of cat/ripweaving being a common playstyle. Catweaving has been a significant dps increase and the primary raid build for Guardian since the introduction of Druid of the Claw. Reducing the DPS gap between weaving and not weaving will reduce overall spec complexity by a lot, allowing people who were largely against the thought of shifting out of bear form and into cat while tanking to maintain their bear only rotations.
Apex Talents
Guardian recently gained access to the new Apex talents. Firstly Wild Guardian, followed by a 2 pointer and a final talent Wild Guardian. Yes, they are all confusingly named the same thing but have separate effects. This is tied to our Berserk/Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc and buffs our next 2 casts of Ironfur, Frenzied Regeneration and Maul/Raze when Berserk/Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc has ended.
The initial concept of Apex talents read as though they were supposed to have an impact on our gameplay and feel exciting. This is not the case for the Guardian Apex talents. They are incredibly weak and if it wasn't for the flat 6% mastery gained from the middle two points, I do not think you would waste crucial talent points on them at all. The buffed spells don't feel buffed, a 12 second dot after you cast Maul/Raze? but that's an ability you want to spam. If you go 12 seconds you will be rage capped for a long time and LOSE damage from not casting it. Frenzied Regeneration already overheals massively and the absorb on Ironfur is nice but too small and too short a duration to feel noticeable.
I am really hoping our Apex talents get a complete overhaul or another look at very soon. Conceptually, it does not make sense and functionally they are very likely going to be completely ignored as talents. 3 talent points for what equates to a single extra Maul every 2 minutes is not very "Apex". If this was a buff that was always active while Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc was on cooldown, it would make a lot more sense and be much more inline with the thought of Apex talents for example.
The Future of Guardian Druid in Midnight
There is a lot of positives coming the way of Guardian Druid in Midnight. A lot of questionable talents and implementations too. I think we are somewhere in the middle, happy with most changes but hopeful for a bit more thought put into certain talents, especially the Apex talents, these were a huge let-down.
The implementation and reintroduction of the group healing tools is a huge plus. This will really help us in both Mythic+ and Raids alike, giving us back some unique niche utility.
Overall, I'm looking forward to playing my Guardian druid a lot in Midnight and I am eager to see where they head in the future.
