WoW The War Within Guardian Druid Spec Guide

Introduction

Druid is one of the most versatile classes in the game, being able to access all roles in the game and provide significantly good performance on all, making it viable in most of the content. Guardian Druid is a really interesting and unique approach to the tanking spec, allowing you to become a bear! Once in a bear form, you become a way tankier than your actual character, so you can freely tank on a lot of enemies at once and get a bunch of new abilities that make you into a beefy and strong tank! Here’s all you need to know regarding the Guardian druid in TWW Season 2.

Guardian Druid Spec Overview

Guardian is a strong spec, providing a lot of utility and sustain abilities that you can use on yourself and sometimes even on your allies. It has a lot of buttons to press, but the general tanking rotation is quite simple. You have to manage your combo points, similarly to the feral druid or rogue, and you mostly have lots of AoE abilities and dots, so it’s fairly easy to hold the aggro. The ability you need to press all the time once it’s up is Ironfur, as it provides you significant armor increase and makes you receive far less damage, so it’s easier to manage the HP bar that’s already pretty decently sized. From combat abilities, using Maul is key to your success as it is an ability that gives you AoE and has no cost, so you can mostly use it to get as many combo points, and once you have 5, you can freely use Trash. You can also apply Moonfire on other targets, providing another ability that gives you DoTs as Trash, and others can also give you more DoTs on enemies. In season 2, the stronger Hero Talent tree is the Druid of the Claw, providing far stronger performance across the majority of the content.

Strengths

• In the raid environment or more so single target situations, it provides a solid single target damage for a tanking spec, meaning that it can add additional damage to your roster, and more damage is never bad!
• This also applies to M+ and any AoE-related activity, providing solid damage on multiple targets.
• There’s a lot of HP available for you, so you can survive lots of encounters on top of having fairly short cooldowns on your defensive abilities, providing a very comfortable experience in the tanking department.
• Ironfur, as mentioned above, is a big ability; it’s stackable and using it is key to your success, since it has no cooldown, it’s very easy to maintain.
• Since you can take some Resto abilities, you should have access to a lot of healing abilities, giving you a far easier way to get on-demand heals.
• Good Raiding/Group/M+ utility, giving a strong buff Mark of the Wild, giving 5 % versatility increase, Stampeding Roar increasing your and your party's movement speed, as well as the strongest and most valuable ability in lots of groups, Rebirth, a combat resurrection.

Weaknesses

• It’s easy to maintain the aggro, once you get it, but due to most of the abilities being DoTs, the initial aggroing is a bit harder to achieve.
• There are barely any CC abilities available at your disposal.
• The build specs are all pretty straightforward, providing almost no flexibility in building your custom tree.
• Even if there’s lots of utility, there’s not something that sticks out, that gives you the tank utility, or more so, something that you can only get on the tank; the majority of the utility is also available with the other specs.
• It can have a high skill ceiling; it is easy to learn on low-end content, but with the latter and harder content with more and bigger pulls, you need to get some experience, as managing DoTs can be harder.

Guardian Druid Rotation

The rotation for this spec is fairly easy to understand, as there are not a lot of buttons, but as mentioned previously can be harder in the harder end content once you need to manage your rotations and should go a bit faster. Ironfur should be used constantly, so you can stay as tanky as other tanks, using abilities that cleave and provide AoE, such as Trash on 5 Combo Points and Maul to get as many of the Combo points as you can. You can also apply lots of sustain abilities if needed in the larger packs, so you don’t get one shot once pulling, preparing them, and being ready to drop as many heals on yourself as possible to provide a stable transition into the pack. These abilities are Frenzied Regeneration, Barkskin, and Survival Instincts; these are your key defensive CDs, providing a significant increase in sustain and damage you can take, so managing them once pulling big is quite important.

• Applying as many abilities to generate combo points and using Trash on 5 is a key component to the strongest output you can put. Using Maul and Mangle to generate them as fast as possible > You can also tap target to all the mobs, getting to apply Moonfire on as many targets, and maintaining another DoT will help
• On the single target, you get to use Raze instead of Trash, so it provides you a stronger damage on targets that are not more than 2 enemies. This also applies the 5 Combo Points logic to them, so using it properly will pay off with the best results.
• Making sure that you know you can survive each pulls is important, so using your sustain abilities according to what you’re pulling is important, as you’re a leather class, despite a big HP bar it can hurt a bit more, as unlike DK, Paladin and Warrior, your base armor doesn’t provide you as much resistance, so Ironfur and other sustain abilities that we mentioned are very important to put to your constant rotation, to make sure you maximaze your performance.

Best in Slot Gear for Guardian Druid

Understanding what’s giving you the most from the gear and the stats is a big factor in your performance, as it can change from class to class. Here’s what the most useful for our tanky bears in any given situation.

Best stats for Guardian Druid (Stat Prio)

The most and strongest stat-wise thing for Guardian druid is Stamina and then Agility, but they’re both quite strong, so pretty much they’re equivalent, but Stamina is always a bit more useful on tanks. This also applies to Armor, but sometimes it’s a bit harder to get, but due to some Citrines and maybe trinkets, you can get some additional ones to help you get more sustain added to your stat bar.

• Haste (This one is quite strong as it’s useful for both sustain and damage output, as it provides a faster and more efficient use of your abilities, giving you a faster and stronger rotations to maintain high threat and damage output.)
• Versatility (Another very useful stat, usually more efficient on tanks or healers, and our bear friends are not any different. Provides a higher raw damage output, as well as your received healing is higher, applying to both your ones and the ones you receive from your party members, proving to be a significant and useful stat you need to focus on getting as much as you can)
• Mastery (This one is a bit better for your overall tankiness and sustain, not as much for damage, as it doesn’t give you much in that department; however, it can help you be tankier and assist you in providing a truly strong tanking experience)
• Critical Strike (Not as strong for sustain, as it doesn’t do much to overall HP or Defensive output, but can increase your damage, a bit, as even your DoTs can crit, so this can be helpful to have, if you do need some higher DPS.)

Best Gear for Guardian Druid

There’s a lot of useful gear for every spec and class, but some always prevail and end up being BIS (Best-in-Slot) for your given specialization. We’re going to run through all the best gear from all sources in PvE content you can get, to maximize your “Wild Bear tanking everything and being a ferocious monster” fantasy!

Best Trinkets

Even though the aforementioned trinkets are indeed your best in slot items, some apply as more situational ones or good replacements in case you can’t get the ones listed in the table for your most useful items. Here’s the list of trinkets most useful for AoE/Mythic+ environments:

• Eye of Kezan (Drop: Chrome King Gallywix - Liberation of Undermine)
• Scrapfield 9001 (Drop: Stix Bunkjunker - Liberation of Undermine)
• Tome of the Light’s Devotion (Drop: Priory of the Sacred Flame)
• Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker (Drop: Keeza Quickfuse - Floodgate)
• Reverb Radio (Drop: Rik Reverb - Liberation of Undermine)
• Chromebustible Bomb (Drop: Chrome King Gallywix - Liberation of Undermine)

Here’s the list of the trinkets that apply far higher usage in the Mythic+ and provide solid performance in the given bracket; however, some of the single targets can also work in this specific bracket, so you don’t have to worry too much. For example, the Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker and Tome of Light’s Devotion are BIS for Mythic+ and AoE content. 

• Geargrinder’s Spare Keys (Drop: The Geargrinders)
• Ringing Ritual Mud (Drop: Operation: Floodgate

Best Cyrce's Circlet Gems for Guardian Druid

Even though this is not a BIS ring, it is quite useful and provides a solid replacement in case you can’t get the BIS, and since it is easy to get, you don’t have to worry too much about one ring till you find the best one to replace this with. It’s still quite more useful than other rings at this Item Level. Only if you can get 678 rings in the BIS table can you replace this one with one of the rings in the BIS Table list. These are the gems you can use from Siren Isles, Cyrce’s Circlet arsenal:

• Thunderlord’s Crackling Citrine (Raiding/Mythic+)
• Fathomdweller’s Runed Citrine (Raiding)
• Legendary’s Skipper Citrine (Raiding)
• Windsinger’s Runed Citrine (Mythic+)
• Undersea Overseer’s Citrine (Mythic+)

Best Enchants for Guardian Druid

• Helmet - Greater Rune of the Void Ritual
• Necklace - Magnificent Jeweler's Setting (adds up to 2 sockets to a Ring or Neck)
• Weapon - Enchant Weapon - Authority of the Depths Icon Enchant / Authority of the Depths (single target)
• Cloak - Enchant Cloak - Chant of Leeching Fangs
• Chest - Enchant Chest - Crystalline Radiance / Stormrider's Agility (Less DPS, more movement speed)
• Bracers - Enchant Bracer Chant of Armored Leech
• Legs - Defender's Armor Kit (More DPS with Thorns of Iron Icon Thorns of Iron) / Stormbound Armor Kit
• Boots - Enchant Boots Scout's March (Movement Speed) / Defender's March (Stamina)
• Rings - Enchant Ring - Radiant Haste / Radiant Versatility
• Magnificent Jeweler's Setting (adds up to 2 sockets to a Ring or Neck)
   

Final Thoughts

This concludes the Guardian Druid tank guide. We’ve analyzed all the best gear and rotations you can use for this spec. It’s still a fairly strong tank, providing a consistent output of AoE damage, and has solid survivability. Providing a strong contender in the Mythic+, it can handle lots of different packs, and once you master it, you can pull a lot of stronger and bigger packs. If you wish to improve even more on this specific specialization, we do offer some coaching plans that can help you reach the master level you want for this class and become a bear that everyone fears. Solving all sorts of hardships a group might have, and tank packs that even have a double-digit number of mobs. You can check all our guides on our site and see if you find anything interesting!