5x guardian druids

[valkie1]

hello,

i need some advice.

atm i play 5x guardian druids. They are around ilvl 850 now and i dont got my 3rd relic open yet.

I try HC dungeons with them, but they get easily killed, i did DHT hc without wipes. But its really hard to do.
i see alot of other multiboxers with other combo's doing mythics or even mythic +.

i am doing something wrong? or i just need better gear first? when u guys started doing HC? And at wich ilvl its getting easy?

greets

[Lyonheart]

i dont got my 3rd relic open yet.

That third relic slot is, as DT would say, " YUGE!!" You need to get that for sure..will see a big DPS jump

[Kicksome]

I have 5 druids - I think around ilevel 845 or so. I HAD to make one resto - since guardian tanks just get no heals like pallys or dk tanks. I can at least clear mythic DHT without much bother - and you can even stealth past a ton of stuff.

So basically I play on one of the tanks, with VuhDu up on all 5 guys. The healing clicks pass through to the resto who pops out of bear form to heal - then goes right back into bear form and attacks or continues healing depending how often I click to heal my team. I also can pop them all out and put HOTs on everyone - when you have a few seconds to spare, it comes in handy.

[ebony]

av just unlocked my 3rd slot on my druids a very easy one to be fair i did not do any of the dungeon quests and all the events my hole team could do at the same time all 8. the longest part is the missions.

[JohnGabriel]

Bears are unbelievably difficult to kill in WPvP. I 5vs1 a bear once with my Prot palis and after what seemed like 10 minutes of getting nowhere we just decided to ignore each other.

[Andreauk]

Well with Frenzied Regeneration the more you damage the bear the more it heals for.

[Asterix]

Well with Frenzied Regeneration the more you damage the bear the more it heals for.

so less PEW PEW is more PEW PEW ?

[rapstar]

I was planning a 5xGuardian comp thinking that Blood Frenzy would keep all of their rage topped, free swipes for DPS, and Typhoon + Restoration Affinity + Swift Mend could be used in a pinch. I thought they might be the best 5 comp because of these talents combined with the artifact trait + leech it just seems so strong on paper. Guess I'm wrong?

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=203962/blood-frenzy
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=132469/typhoon
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=197492/restoration-affinity

[Ellay]

It seems they have decent survivability - just not sure if it's "enough" healing. I don't know enough about them to know if it will work. It's great to try these types of things though.
I would think ilvl 850 would be enough for HC though as a marker to know if it works. 810 is the minimum to get into it, and it hands out 825+ items, so being 850 you should be geared enough to handle them.

[rapstar]

My experience with a druid team so far compared to a Pally and DK team:

Pros:
----
1. Stampeding roar is awesome. Nothing comparable in the pally or DK toolkit. Should be invaluable in Mythic+ chest runs.
2. Swipe is free *massive* AoE damage and very forgiving of targeting, which is a nice bonus when boxing.
3. Superior magic damage protection.
4. Incapacitating Roar has great range (talented) when you multi-pull large packs.
5. All one class (for class halls etc.) like pallies. DKs need a pally healer which makes it a bit more work.
6. Having one as resto gives you very mobile heals. Again, very nice for boxing.

Cons:
-----
1. Their heals are pitiful compared to the pally Light / Hand of the Protector so you need a dedicated healer. Hand of the Protector is simply OP and I don't think any other class can match it.
2. They seem to take more damage, but I suspect this is just a gear thing because they are apparently one of the better mitigators w/ larger health pools once geared up.
3. Managing their mitigation takes more finesse than pallies or DKs, which is extra hard if you're running 5.
4. Blinding Light not breaking on holy damage makes it superior to Incapacitating Roar.
5. No Blood Elf racial silence. War Stomp seems decent, but the windup time makes it annoying.
6. Having one resto kind of sucks. It impacts your trash damage (single target resto can perform OK damage though), and the biggest problem is their squishiness. It's also my resto that's in trouble. I may want to run with a prot pally healer instead of a resto druid for ease of placement.


TLDR; They have a harder rotation / mitigation strategy to manage, can't touch prot pally heals, but have an awesome mobility cooldown x 5 with stampeding roar.

Unless prot pally healing gets a big nerf, I can't see any other comps beating them. Druids certainly seem viable though.

[johny_mnemonic]

If you are playing on pvp realm, then the prowl ability for entire team is priceless. although my druid with +-845 ilvl receives pretty beating compared to my DK or alock with lower ilvl gear. Feral healing sux after the nerfs. I played the team in WOD and it was very good, but was not in legion. So I have canceled my subscription and will see, if it change in future patches

[rapstar]

Yeah, I bet feral gets some much needed love soon. No one's playing it at all because they've been bottom of the pack since launch.

[rapstar]

Finally getting around to leveling my druids again. So far in legion they really can't die. They feel a lot less spiky than my pallies and the amount of healing they have is actually pretty insane, potentially better than pallies. I just pulled 1/3 of DHT around the bend by the house and mowed them all down without even needing a brez. This is all bear too (no resto).

I think they might be as strong or maybe even stronger than pallies w/ good use of swiftmend and artifact. That being said... man are they boring. I'm already getting bored with my pallies, but druid animations are so much worse, with the same thing over and over and over and...

[rapstar]

My druids are around 830 now (just capped) and a lot of fun so far. Running Memekin builds x 5 is hilarious *blow up all the things*. Only really works once you outgear an instance though. Their armour is high enough that you can tank a boss just fine. Movement's not as good as hunters, but I think the AoE / trash damage will be higher. +2 farming might be phenomenal... or might not be, we'll see.

As 5 x bears I'm pretty much indestructable. I went all trolls and their regen racial + fighter chow WORKS IN COMBAT!! Because of how big the bear health pool is, it ends up contributing about 15k hps in my current gear in combat. About the same as the resto talent heal (but it doesn't transfer to others). If you go with the resto talent and use fighter chow, you're passing up some pretty decent heals to whichever toon is currently tanking and you have access to emergency swiftmends x 5. Their AoE damage w/ swipe is amazing, because you multi-pull. Their single target damage however is really horrible (like falling asleep bad). I'm holding out hope that it gets decent at 860, or that I no longer need the resto talent on them and can try to cat weave on single target fights.

It's nice being able to use RDFs (like Pallies / Monks), and I just started running Raid Finder as resto / boomy for faster Qs.

Travel form is awesome. Herbing w/ them is awesome.

[Ellay]

I was just thinking of how this team is performing in the past couple of days. I did watch the video on here of the druids doing DHT, and 3 chesting a +2, but the single target dps looked extremely low, the meters on the side were 100-150k dps on single target. If there is a way to beef that up somehow, it can be an amazing team.

[Mamut]

Fighter chow and troll.....makes my shadowmeld feel a little weak.

Thats a lot of healing.

[rapstar]

@Elly theoretically yes, it's called Catweaving. You take Feral Affinity (http://www.wowdb.com/spells/202155-feral-affinity), when your rage is low you go cat, dump your energy & lay on your dots, then switch back to bear to spend your rage. I have no idea how practical this will be for a 5 boxer but I will attempt it once I get them geared.

Taking Feral affinity will gimp their healing, so they need to outgear the content. You also wouldn't get the numbers that a true catweave would as a multiboxer but I still think it would work. Cat -> Rip -> Rake - Shred -> Bear -> Moonfire -> Thrash -> mangle -> Swipe / Maul -> Cat -> [repeat]. You're active tank would probably stay bear though.

Although if you outgear it by enough I suspect you can just go 5 x Boomy and blow everything up (Boomy trash AoE is close to Havoc levels atm).

[Ellay]

The other side benefits of Druids is the amazing travel form, especially dealing with water. The speed boosts, you're just always running very fast.
Being ale to do Timewalking, and then being able to switch to LFR and not have to be melee, which makes raiding much easier.

If that catweave combo actually works and the dps looks good, it could potentially be the class combo. It's a great thing to think about since you have 4 talents - so many options.

[smk]

I am curious how 5 druids is for aoe damage and isn't the single target abit weak?

[smk]

I am just following up to my previous question, since your druids are close to that point, have you done any mythic's yet, again im mostly curious how the AOE is for the druids. I am guessing from what I have seen and other posts the dps for ST is abit low, but can they handle cleearing trash at a decent rate.

[rapstar]

@smk They are amazing for AoE. I pull 2 packs unless there's a mechanic that will screw me (like Fear in Maw) because their mitigation is so good (makes my Pally team look like sissies). Their single target still seems weak. If you look at Ursoc logs for tank DPS it's dominated by pallies running seraphim. Catweave bears aren't too shabby though, but I don't know how easy it will be to manage that rotation across 5 toons (might be OK, but I haven't tried yet). The slow from thrash comes in handy too if you're low and need to get some distance for a swiftmend. I one-shot Mythic DHT and Mythic Maw in their first week at 830-840 ilvl.

BTW, my fighter chow + troll in combat regen is @ 19k HPS now w/ 3.3m max health. There's no logs to check for it so I wrote a bit of LUA to log it. I tested this thoroughly without YSera's Gift (untalented), and no skill usage, just getting hit a couple times by the order hall raid boss and then standing back while still in combat. Without the chow buff it's 1.9k HPS, which makes perfect sense considering chow's 1000% is the same as 10x.

Here's the code if you want to check it yourself. It basically tracks the change in your health and divides it by the time that passed (2 seconds) and prints it to your chat window:

healthRegen = CreateFrame("Frame", nil, UIParent)
healthRegen:RegisterEvent("UNIT_HEALTH")

local oldHealth = UnitHealth("player")
local oldTime = time()
function regenHandler(frame, event, ...)
local newHealth = UnitHealth("player")
local newTime = time()
local deltaHealth = newHealth - oldHealth
local deltaTime = newTime - oldTime
if delta ~= 0 then
print("HPS: "..(deltaHealth / deltaTime))
end
oldHealth = newHealth
oldTime = newTime
end
healthRegen:SetScript("OnEvent", regenHandler)


YSera's Gift ticks every 5 seconds instead of every 2 seconds, but basically gave me similar HPS (101k per 5s). So you're basically doubling gift, except that Gift will heal others once your full (which is great when you have 5 bears).

All this being said, I really don't think they will ever be as good as a pally or hunter team. I made these guys for gathering and to see if 5 x boomies will make a good super fast (and fun) farm team for shit I outgear due to their massive AoE, armor, brez. For progression I'm sticking with my pallies and hunter + shammy team.