How To Improve As Guardian Druid - Dragonflight 10.2.7 (2024)

Last updated on May 07, 2024 at 11:20by Pumps36 comments

There is a lot to focus on while tanking a boss. It is very easy to fall intothe trap of neglecting your rotation in favor of watching boss timers andmanaging your defensive cooldowns. Most commonly, this takes the form of spamcasting Swipe instead of using your more powerful Rage generatingabilities Mangle and Thrash.

This is the most common cause of losing threat on an enemy to a co-tank.Using these abilities as often as possible not only improves your damage outputand helps you to keep threat, but it also significantly increases yoursurvivability by giving you the Rage to use Ironfur more often.

Your goal should be to always keep Mangle and Thrash on cooldown by casting them as soon as they areavailable. Rarely, if ever, should you have the opportunity to cast more than 2 Swipes in a row, unless you are in an AoE situation, and even thenthe most you can ever cast before Thrash is available againis 3.

Another mistake that can arise from being too focused on boss timers anddefensive cooldowns is delaying casts. Guardian is a "global cooldown-locked"tank, meaning that you should always either be casting something, or waitingfor the global cooldown to recharge. This is very important, as small delaysbetween spells can add up over the course of a fight and can cause you to losea large number of additional casts, and therefore damage and Ragegeneration.

You should be proactive and aggressive in your casts. The game allows for asmall window right before the global cooldown has finished recharging for youto "queue" your next spell to be cast with no delay as soon as it is possibleto do so.

Often when tanking a boss or a pack of enemies in a dungeon, you will needto reposition yourself or your attackers to deal with some mechanic, give yourDPS a better position from which to attack, or to avoid pulling additionalpacks.

If you need to run directly away from your attackers, you should neverturn around and run straight forward. You are unable to dodge attacks frombehind, increasing your damage intake and your risk of death.

Instead, you should turn 90 degrees and strafe away from your enemies. Thisallows you to move in the same direction as you would have if you had turnedall the way around, while not exposing your back to attacks. As long as theenemy attacks come from "in front" of you (defined as an arc of 180 degreescentered at the direction your character is facing), they are dodgeable.

Using defensive cooldowns effectively means planning ahead, before you takea big hit. Being proactive with your cooldowns means the most dangerous part ofthe spike is being reduced, thereby giving yourself and your healers plenty oftime to react to the damage in a controlled manner. If you are just reacting todamage as it comes in, not only are you taking the full force of the originalhit (and probably being brought very low in health), but once your defensivecooldown is running, often it is only reducing the smaller, non-threateningdamage and you are getting far less value out of it.

Occasionally there are periods in encounters where there are no obviouspoints at which to use your defensive cooldowns. In these cases, you should beusing your cooldowns liberally to reduce your overall damage taken and saveprecious healer mana. As long as your cooldowns are available for when you trulyneed them, you should be trying to fit in as many casts into a fight aspossible.

Guardian Druids have quite limited self-healing capacity, so it is importantto make the most of the one spell we do have, Frenzied Regeneration.The most common mistake when using Frenzied Regeneration is to use it when youare already at or being healed to full health by healers. Any healing youreceive when already at full health is called "overhealing", and is consideredwasteful. In order to use Frenzied Regeneration efficiently, you should try andcast it when you know your healers are otherwise preoccupied with healingthemselves or the raid, or out of range, or at other coordinated times.

Additionally, you should try not to "double-tap" Frenzied Regeneration. That is, you should not cast two FrenziedRegenerations back to back, as you will overwrite the first heal with the secondand lose a tick or two of healing. If you absolutely need to spend both chargesin order to live, make sure the first heal has completed before you cast itagain.

A mentality that is very common among all tanks (not just Guardians) is thatyour damage output is irrelevant, and that only your tankiness is important.You will likely find yourself starting a new encounter in mostly a defensivefocused gearset and then work your way up to doing more damage as your comfortlevel increases over time the more you do the content.While it is true that survivability is your number one priority, the idea that"tank damage does not matter" is a misconception for a few reasons.

The first and most relevant reason is that damage is threat. Yougenerate threat by dealing damage, and the more damage you deal, the more threatyou generate. If your co-tank is pulling off of you, it is because they aredealing more damage than you are. If you are ignoring your damage output to thepoint where your co-tank is pulling threat from you, you are also hinderingtheir play by forcing them to lower their damage.

The second reason is that damage is damage. Whether it comes from thetank, a DPS, or a healer, all damage contributes equally towards killing theboss. If you are neglecting your damage, you are hindering your raid's chancesat a kill by lowering the overall damage output. Often by prioritising offensivestats and a damage-oriented rotation, the amount of survivability you sacrificepales in comparison to the amount of damage you gain.