Guardian Druid Raid Guide

Welcome to the Guardian Druid raid guide for the World of Warcraft patch 11.0! This guide covers everything you need to know to understand your character! Are you starting out and leveling up from 70? Check out the leveling guide!

Guardian DruidRaid

Single-Target

Strong

AoE

Strong

Utility

Average

Survivability

Strong

Mobility

Strong

• Druid of the Claw and Elune's Chosen offer 2 different ways on how to play Guardian Druid.
• Elune's Chosen is making use of Lunar Beam as a cooldown buffing your arcane damage while having a higher rage generation and cooldown flexibility.
• Druid of the Claw makes use of the bleed Dreadful Wound as a defensive with lower rage generation while providing the option to pursue 2 different talent and gameplay builds.
  • High ST damage option of playing Wildpower Surge together with Fluid Form, Rake and Rip makes cat-weave a smoother experience.
  • Overall balanced option without any cat-weave focusing on just utilizing the passives offered and Dreadful Wound.
• In Raid Elune's Chosen is easier to play and offers more cooldown usage while Druid of the Claw is more ST damage and reliant on the bleed damage for maximum output.

Tier Set

• 2-Set: Thrash and Moonfire increase your damage done and reduce damage you take by 1% for 8 sec, stacking 3 times.
• 4-Set: Arcane damage you deal is increased by 5% and bleed damage you deal is increased by 8%.

Defensive Cooldowns

• Barkskin
  • This is your go-to defensive with a short cooldown. Activating it when walking into the boss, trash or anything that does damage is never super bad and due to the short cooldown, it is the first defensive you press if you need a cooldown.
• Rage of the Sleeper
  • Generally you should keep this on cooldown as much as possible since it also increases your damage. Remember to hold it for the defensive value on encounters where you need the additional cooldown.
• Survival Instincts
  • Your strongest (granting 50% damage reduction) and also the shortest defensive due to having a duration of 6 seconds. Choose wisely when to use this defensive but also don't sit on 2 charges when playing Improved Survival Instincts. Having 1 charge ready for an emergency is always nice but sitting on 2 is a big waste.
• Frenzied Regeneration
  • Your big self-healing button. You can either use it proactively or reactively, the only important part is that you want to use its full potential to the best of your ability. Don't use it when taking some damage only just because it's ready. The Spell has a short cooldown, yes, but if you tend to use it all the time when taking any damage you might run into the situation of not having any charges after taking a big tank hit. Overall using this after any tank mechanic or when gathering mobs is the way to go just because it helps you get your HP up before your other defensives and Ironfur gets rolling.
• Ironfur
  • Your active mitigation and your Rage spender. For more details check out the Deep Dive.

Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc

• Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc or Berserk can have a lot of applications as either be a DPS cooldown or a defensive cooldown. Therefore, you normally use it on cooldown. Holding it is only needed in special cases since it loses you a lot of value.
  1. It is a strong defensive and can carry you through a burst of damage.
  2. Holding it causes the CDR from Ursoc's Guidance to be wasted even more, so make sure to press the button.
  3. The offensive portion of it should not be underestimated.

Offensive Cooldowns

• Heart of the Wild increases the damage of Moonfire and your auto attacks. So press it on cooldown and gain bonus damage.
• Rage of the Sleeper, generally you should keep this on cooldown as much as possible since it increases your damage done, but in certain scenarios, it should be held for the defensive value.
• Lunar Beam increases your mastery and does damage. Make sure to use it on cooldown.

This Deep Dive explains special mechanics that are important to a Guardian Druid it also goes more in detail when it comes to certain cooldown-windows that you want to min max.

Optimizing Ironfur

Ironfur is your Rage spender and active mitigation. It increases your armor based on your Agility for 7 seconds when pressed. Important to note is that multiple applications of Ironfur overlap and stack together while the duration does not increase, get refreshed or extend.

• 1. Ironfur is pressed at 0 seconds
• 2. Ironfur at 3 seconds
• 3. Ironfur at 5 seconds
  • Now you have 3 Stacks of Ironfur up all 3 with different durations and they expire at different times as shown on the timeline with the icons below.
• After 12 Seconds you are left without any stacks of Ironfur even though you pressed it 3x in the first 5 seconds of the fight.
• It is crucial to understand how Guardian Druid's active mitigation works since your armor value and your associated damage reduction changes all the time with the amount of Ironfur stacks you have active.
• On top of that Ironfur does not heal you or anything. It needs to be used 100% proactively so knowing when you take damage and using it before the damage is crucial.

Here is a picture showing how Ironfur works.

Ironfur Armor

• Ironfur's armor is reducing your physical damage intake which in most cases is only melee swings. Bleeds and magical DoTs are not affected by armor.
• There is a hard cap of 85% on physical damage reduction. This would equal to around 7-8 stacks of Ironfur at a time (around 4 with Blistering Scales) which makes it useless to spam Ironfur after reaching this amount.
• But due to a lot of other factors such as Ursoc's Guidance and Thorns of Iron you do not stop pressing it in huge AoE pulls just because you reached 4 Stacks.
• However, due to how armor scaling works it is more overall defensive value to keep 1 stack of Ironfur rolling all the time than using 3 stacks instantly and then not having any at all after. The more armor you stack, the less effective each new layer becomes.
• Because you have high physical damage reduction, you struggle a lot more with magical damage, bleeds, and other DoTs. For those, it's important to use Frenzied Regeneration correctly.

Frenzied Regeneration

• Frenzied Regeneration is your only self-heal as a Guardian Druid and is very important to stay alive.
• Generally, the cooldown of Frenzied Regeneration with 36 seconds (reduced by haste) which makes it very tempting to press any time you take damage. This often leads to problems when you take damage later on that is too big for your healer to cover or you need a fast way to heal up. Keeping an eye on future scenarios is important when using it.
• On top of that, you also need to decide how you use Frenzied Regeneration either proactively to stay topped for any mechanic or reactively after the mechanic to top yourself back up to stay stable. Oftentimes this fully comes down to the amount of damage you take from anything. Knowing what to do comes with playing the game and knowledge of the situation.
• When playing Innate Resolve you have 2 charges of Frenzied Regeneration and it's generally really nice to always keep one ready for the emergency and use the other charge when you need to just so you don't waste the cooldown recovery.
• Noteworthy things with Frenzied Regeneration:
  • Well-Honed Instincts does not consume a charge of your Frenzied Regeneration but it overwrites your current one if you press it right before it procced + If you use Frenzied Regeneration and it procs after your proc overwrites the one you pressed before basically wasting a lot of value.
  • Berserk: Persistence reduces the cooldown of Frenzied Regeneration by 100% making it just have no cooldown at all. When this is talented pressing Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc refunds you both charges of Frenzied Regeneration and makes it useable instantly. Keep this in mind since it can be a lifesaver.

Understanding Mechanics

Rotational min-maxing is just one aspect of mastering a specialization, but there are numerous other key mechanics that influence your performance. Use the following guides to improve them.

• Pandemic
• Spell Queue Window
• Stat Diminishing Returns

The following tips are mainly applicable to Heroic Bosses. Mythic tips are going to be released after our progression concludes.

← Scroll for more Bosses →

Understand your secondary stat priority and the tertiary stats needed for optimal performance during Raid boss fights as a Guardian Druid. For more detailed information, visit the Stats and Attributes guide.

All secondary stats are affected by diminishing returns. Click here to learn more!

Tertiary

• Avoidance - Great stat to reduce the damage intake of "Area of Effect" abilities.
• Leech - Provides additional healing through damage dealing.
• Speed - Niche tertiary that can be very useful and has been proven useful in the past. This makes managing certain mechanics a lot easier.

In general, Leech is really strong for tanks, especially in AoE scenarios it can be by far the best stat you can have.
Avoidance is great but most of the time tanks are not struggling to survive the typical Area of Effect abilities.

Trinkets

Below you can find active and passive alternatives to our recommended trinkets. Do note that some trinkets are better than others depending on the raid boss.

Active Trinket alternatives

• Foul Behemoth's Chelicera
  • Strong trinket for both defensive and offensive value.
• Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg
  • A trinket that grants mainstat while standing still and highest secondary when moving.
  • 2minute on use with which you can walk around without losing the mainstat.
• Swarmlord's Authority
  • Haste statstick, that gives a good all-around absorb on use every 1 min.
  • Due to having only haste as a stat, only recommended if the absorb is needed.

Passive Trinket alternatives

• Empowering Crystal of Anub'ikkaj
  • RNG stat proc trinket.
• Dead-Eye Spyglass
  • Great passive crit stat stick, important to hit the marked target.
• Void Reaper's Contract
  • Damage proc trinket that performs pretty decent.
• Ceaseless Swarmgland
  • Another passive trinket that does damage and provides little damage reduction.

Embellishments

• Adrenal Surge Clasp
  • Provides good passive Agility for the loss of some mastery.
• Writhing Armor Banding
  • Empowering your Adrenal Surge Clasp.
  • On Wrists, Boots, Waist, or Cloak depending on your available gear.

Remaining Sparks

• Crafted items are 636 item level and regular items are 639 on max item level, therefore, it's a small loss to equip crafted items outside of your 2x Embellishments unless you don't have access to other high item level gear on that slot.

Simcraft

To find the best combination of gear available to you or identify the best possible upgrades, visit our Simcraft guide to learn how to utilize Simcraft easily and effectively.

• Phials
  • Flask of Tempered Swiftness -- maximum DPS.
  • Flask of Tempered Versatility -- less DPS but more survivability.
• Food
  • Feast of the Divine Day
  • Feast of the Midnight Masquerade
• Combat Potion
  • Tempered Potion
  • Potion Bomb of Power -- group potion, this is a DPS loss for you.
• Health Potion
  • Algari Healing Potion
• Weapon Stones
  • Ironclaw Whetstone -- usable on Polearm.
  • Ironclaw Weightstone -- usable on Mace, Staff.
• Augment Rune
  • Crystallized Augment Rune
• Sockets
  • Versatile Emerald
  • Culminating Blasphemite -- Unique, use one of each gem colour to enhance your Blasphemite.
    • Quick Ruby
    • Quick Onyx
    • Quick Sapphire

Enchantments

For min-maxing a Guardian Druid in Raids, different racial traits can provide a tremendous benefit to your characters. If this is not your top goal, picking a race that fits your style works just as well.

• Bull Rush -- Highmountain Tauren
  • Bull Rush can be used to stun a pack, even when on stun DR since it counts as a knockdown making it very useful for those cases.
  • Strong passives for survival with Rugged Tenacity and Mountaineer.
• Haymaker -- Kul Tirans
  • Haymaker can be moved to knock enemies out of bad positions but has limited uses.
  • Very good defensive passives with Brush It Off and Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
• War Stomp -- Tauren
  • War Stomp can be strong since you don't have any other source to stun enemies. Sadly it only hits up to 5 targets though so keep that in mind.
  • On top of that you also get decent passive effects Endurance, Brawn and Nature Resistance.
• Berserking -- Troll
  • Troll is by far the best for burst damage since you can just use Berserking during incarnation for the extra haste, if you want to survive this is the worst option compared to the others.

Recommendation

• Highmountain Tauren and Kul Tiran aren't the overall best racials in terms of DPS but their survivability abilities are decent in Raiding as a Guardian Druid.
• Night Elf is very good for DPS but doesn't have any other useful benefits in Raid as Guardian Druid.

Discover recommended macros for Guardian Druid for Raids and watch a quick video guide on creating simple macros for your character.

Macro Import Guide Video

Taunt Macros

Taunt Macro --- This macro either casts Growl at your target or your mouseover (very handy to pick up mobs)

#showtooltip Growl
/cast [@mouseover,exists,harm][@target,exists,harm] Growl

Boss 1 Taunt --- Casts Growl on Boss1

/cast [@boss1] Growl

Boss 2 Taunt --- Casts Growl on Boss2

/cast [@boss2] Growl

Mouseover Macros

Mouseover Ursol's Vortex/Mass Entanglement --- Casts Ursol's Vortex at your cursor if talented and Mass Entanglement at your mouseover, if no mouseover is available it instead casts it on your target.

/cast [@cursor] Ursol's Vortex
/cast [@mouseover,exists] [] Mass Entanglement

Mouseover Remove Corruption --- Cast it on target if no mouseover is available, casts it on yourself if no target is available.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,help,nodead][] Remove Corruption

Mouseover Regrowth --- Casts Regrowth on mouseover or yourself.

#showtooltip Regrowth
/cast [@mouseover,exists][] Regrowth

Mouseover Innervate

/cast  [@mouseover] Innervate

Mouseover Wild Charge --- Casts Wild Charge on mouseover or target.

#showtooltip Wild Charge
/cast [@Mouseover][] Wild Charge

Mouseover Soothe --- Casts Soothe on mouseover or target.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead][] Soothe

Mouseover Battle Res --- This makes it so you can use Rebirth as mouseover on your frames

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,help,dead][] Rebirth

Focus Macros

Focus Kick --- Casts Skull Bash at your focus target

/cast [@focus] Skull Bash

Mouseover Focus --- This macro sets your mouseover as your focus

/focus [@mouseover]

Utility Macros

Cancelaura BoP --- This cancelaura's Blessing of Protection on you very useful to have when playing with a paladin ever

/cancelaura Blessing of Protection

Below, you see a screenshot of the author's User Interface for their Guardian Druid, outlining which addons are used and how they are utilized in Raids to make your life easier.

Addons

• Shadowed Unit Frames (SUF) -- Full User Interface replacement
  • Addon to replace your Unitframes and other UI Elements with a more clean look. Takes quite some time to configure but there are plenty of pre-done profiles that you can easily import and check out.
• BigWigs -- Generic Boss Mod
  • BigWigs is a boss encounter add-on. It consists of many individual encounter scripts, or boss modules; mini add-ons that are designed to trigger alert messages, timer bars, sounds, and so forth, for one specific raid encounter.
• Weakauras -- Jack of all trades
  • WeakAuras is a powerful and flexible framework that allows the display of highly customizable graphics on World of Warcraft's user interface to indicate buffs, debuffs, and other relevant information. This addon was created to be a lightweight replacement for Power Auras but has since introduced more functionalities while remaining efficient and easy to use.
• Plater -- Advanced Nameplates
  • Plater is a nameplate addon with an extraordinary amount of settings, out of the box debuff tracking, threat coloring, and support for scripting similar to WeakAuras and wago.io + the WeakAuras-Companion for Mod/Script/Profile updates.
• Details -- In-depth Damage Meter
  • Most powerful, reliable, handsome, damage meter for World of Warcraft.
• MRT -- Notes, Raid cooldowns, and more
  • Helpful addon for raiders, especially for raid leaders and officers.
• Echo Raid Tools -- Notes, Raid cooldowns, and more
  • Echo Raid Tools is a World of Warcraft addon designed by Echo Esports to enhance raiding efficiency. It offers "Echo Approved" WeakAuras for each raid boss accessible through an in-game Dungeon Journal interface, allowing easy import and customization.
• Bartender -- Action Bar Changer
  • Bartender4 is a comprehensive action bar replacement addon for World of Warcraft. It allows full customization of action bars, including scaling, alpha settings, and visibility based on macro conditions.

Weakauras

Ironfur Bar

This aura shows the amount of stacks of Ironfur you plus how they are overlapping with each other.

Patch 11.0.2

Druid

• Regrowth initial heal increased by 27% and its healing over time decreased by 3%.
• Swiftmend healing increased by 38%.
• Ironfur increases Armor by 112% of Agility (was 120%).

Guardian

• Melee auto-attack and all bear ability damage increased by 20%.
• Moonfire damage reduced by 15%.
• Twin Moonfire increases Moonfire damage by 8% (was 10%).
• Reinvigoration reduces Frenzied Regeneration’s cooldown by 10/20% (was 20/40%).
• Earthwarden reduces damage taken by 25% (was 30%).
• Survival of the Fittest reduces cooldowns by 12/24% (was 15/30%).
• Tooth and Claw reduces damage taken by 12% (was 15%).
• After the Wildfire triggers after spending 300 Rage (was 200).
• Ursoc’s Fury grants a shield equal to 25% of Thrash and Maul damage (was 45%).
• Elune’s Favored heals you for 25% of Arcane damage dealt (was 40%).
• Rage of the Sleeper duration reduced to 8 seconds (was 10 seconds).
• Rage of the Sleeper damage taken reduction reduced to 20% (was 25%).
• Rage of the Sleeper Leech decreases to 20% (was 25%).
• Pulverize duration reduced to 8 seconds (was 10 seconds).
• Ursoc’s Guidance reduces the cooldown of Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc by 1 second for each 25 Rage spent (was 20).
• Frenzied Regeneration heals you for 20% of your maximum health (was 32%).
• Dream of Cenarius increases the healing of the affected Regrowth by 130% (was 200%).
• Fixed an issue with the increase to the amount of Rage required to trigger After the Wildfire.

Patch 11.0.1

DRUID

• All talent trees have had many talents move locations or have had their pathing updated. 
• New Talent: Oakskin – Survival Instincts and Barkskin reduce damage taken by an additional 10%.
• New Talent: Fluid Form – Shred and Rake can be used in any form and shifts you into Cat Form. Mangle can be used in any form and shifts you into Bear Form. Wrath and Starfire shifts you into Moonkin Form, if known.
• New Talent: Ursoc's Spirit – Stamina in Bear Form is increased by 10%.
• New Talent: Instincts of the Claw – Shred, Swipe, Rake, Mangle, and Thrash damage increased by 5/10%.
• New Talent: Lore of the Grove – Moonfire and Sunfire damage increased by 5/10%. Rejuvenation and Wild Growth healing increased by 3/5%.
• New Talent: Starlight Conduit – Wrath, Starsurge, and Starfire damage increased by 5%. For non-Balance, Starsurge's cooldown is reduced by 4 seconds and its mana cost is reduced by 50%.
• Improved Swipe has been removed from the talent tree and its benefit added to Swipe by default.
• Moonkin Form has been removed from the talent tree and is now learned at level 10 for Balance Druids.
• Swiftmend has been removed from the talent tree and is now learned at level 11 for Restoration Druids.
• Heart of the Wild now reduces the global cooldown of affected Balance cast-time spells.
• Feline Swiftness now increases movement speed by 15%. Now a 1-point talent.
• Thick Hide now reduces damage taken by 4%. Now a 1-point talent.
• Natural Recovery now increases healing received by 4% and no longer increases healing done. Now a 1-point talent.
• Astral Influence now increases the range of all your spells by 5 yards and no longer increases auto attack or melee ability range. Now a 1-point talent.
• Primal Fury now also increases critical strike damage of Mangle by 20%.
• Ursine Vigor now increases Stamina and armor in Bear Form by 15% for 4 seconds. Now a 1-point talent.
• Guardian Druid improved Bear Form Stamina bonus decreased to 10% (was 20%).
• Lycara's Teachings is now a 2-point talent that grants 3/6% of various secondary stats.
• Forestwalk now increases your movement speed and healing received by 8% for 6 seconds. Now a 1-point talent.
• Well-Honed Instincts' effect now occurs once every 120 seconds. Now a 1-point talent.
• Mass Entanglement now roots targets for 10 seconds (was 30 seconds).
• Tireless Pursuit has been removed.

Q: Why do I randomly get one-shot?

A: You most likely left Bear Form by pressing a button that brings you out of form, most common mistakes are pressing Entangling Roots and Regrowth without a Dream of Cenarius proc.

Credits

Written By: Meeres

Reviewed By: Canexx