Guardian Druid Tanking Guide

This page focuses on Guardians as tanks in a PvE (raiding) environment.

For Druid leveling, info on other specs,  or Druid PvP see the links just below.

This Guardian Druid guide is primarily intended for use in tanking PvE instances and Raids at max level. However, the principals will still apply during the leveling process.

If you’re looking for advice on leveling your Druid, check out our Druid Leveling Guide.

Contents Guardian Abilities Guardian Talents Glyphs Stats Guardian tanking rotations Gems and Enchants Consumables Races Professions Leveling Faster

If you want the same in-game step by step leveling guide that we use to get to max level as fast as possible, take a look at our favorite in-game leveling guide.     Other Druid Guides:  PvE: Balance, Feral, Restoration PvP: Blaance, Feral, Restoration Other: Druid leveling

Overview

Your job is an easy one, one the surface. Round up the enemies in the area and keep them paying attention to you while your team burns them down. Easy Peasy, right? Well, maybe not so much.

Not sure of your abilities? Practice. Hit the training targets and go clean out lower level dungeons, solo. Round up the biggest groups you can and destroy them. Proceed to higher level dungeons, closer to your level, and repeat.

Experiment with different talents and techniques.

Druids can be any of a variety of races. You’re probably pretty high level and already know that, but if you want to pay for a race-change, then go for it. You can see all the races, including the Allied Races, detailed on our Druid Leveling page, here.

 

Your Guardian Druid Abilities

Shadowlands, of course, smashed all levels and item levels, in addition to pushing abilities and talents around. The general feel remains the same, it’s just the details that are a bit different.

Rage machine that you are, you will generate Rage and use it on your more powerful abilities.

These are the abilities specific to the Guardian Druid. You can find all of the abilities that are common to all Druids on the Druid leveling page.

CD = Cooldown, P = Passive effect.

1. 1. Critical Strikes, level 10, adds +5 to your Guardian’s crit chance.
   2. Mastery: Nature’s Guardian, 10, increases any healing received, and also your maximum health, by 4%. Your Attack Power is increased by 8%.
   3. Maul, 10, is your basic strike.
   4. Ursine Adept, 10, allows you to use Moonfire, Soothe, Remove Corruption, and Rebirth while in Bear form.
   5. Thrash, 11, strikes all nearby (within 8 yards) enemies and bleeds them over 15 seconds. Generates 5 Rage.
   6. Bear Form, Rank 2, 12, ads 20% to your Stamina.
   7. Remove Corruption, 19, removes all curses and poison effects from your friendly target (would you ever want to do that to an unfriendly one?)
   8. Frenzied Regeneration, 21, has one charge and heals you for 24% of your max health over 3 seconds. Has a 36 second CD.
      • Frenzied Regeneration, Rank 2, 39, now has 2 charges.
      • Frenzied Regeneration, Rank 3, 54, increases all healing received, by 20%, while it is active.
   9. Swipe, 23,  hits up to 5 enemies within 8 yards.
   10. Skull Bash, 26, charge the opponent (13 yards) and interrupt its spellcast. Also locks out that school of magic (EG: Arcane) for 4 seconds. 15 second CD.
   11. Leather Specialization, 27, provides +5% stamina if you are wearing leather armor in all appropriate slots.
   12. Thick Hide, 27, reduces all damage by 6%.
   13. Incapacitating Roar, 28, pops you (back) into Bear Form and your roar incapacitates all enemies within 10 yards for 3 seconds. Any damage will cancel the effect.
   14. Survival Instincts, 32, gives you 6 seconds of 50% damage reduction. 1 charge and a 3 minute recharge.
       • Survival Instincts, Rank 2, 47, now has 2 charges.
   15. Ironfur, Rank 2, 33, allows multiple Ironfurs to overlap.
   16. Berserk, 34, lasts 15 seconds and reduces the CDs of various abilities by 50% and also the cost of  your Ironfur by 50%. The abilities with the reduced CD are: Mangle, Thrash, Growl, and Frenzied Regeneration.
       • Berserk, Rank 2, 58, reduces the CDs of those abilities by an additional 25%.
   17. Gore, 37, P, causes your Thrash, Swipe, Moonfire, and Mail to each have a 15% chance to reset the CD on your Mangle, and to cause it generate +4 Rage.
   18. Infected Wounds, 37, P, causes reduced movement speed (by 50%) for 12 seconds from your Mangle and Maul strikes.
   19. Mangle, Rank 2, 42, does +20 % damage against bleeding targets.
   20. Lightning Reflexes, 47, P, gives you +Dodge rating equal to 100% of the crit rating on your gear.
   21. Stampeding Roar, Rank 2, 49, CD is reduced by 60 seconds.

 

 

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Guardian Bear Talents

Our choices are checked, . 

There are situations where you might want a different talent. They’re easy to change and you will need one Tome of the Quiet Mind for each change you make.

 

Stat Priorities

Get your Stam and Ag from gear only, then go for:

Stamina: Make sure you have enough that your healers have to to take care of you. You should be able to survive at least two hits.

Crit  –

Haste lets you make more attacks in any unit of time which results in that much more threat and rage.

Mastery helps to smooth out incoming damage and makes life easier for your healers (and you.) This and your health pool should keep you up long enough for your healers to take care of you.

Dodge: The opponent’s missed strikes do no damage to you, but smoothing out the damage that you are taking (by stacking the other stats) is more important.

 

 

Guardian Gems for Tanking

If you need the gold to buy gems, then you should check out this slick gold making addon.

 

 

Guardian Druid Tanking Enchantments

While most of these are defensive enchants, there are a few to add some firepower. Some Hit enchants are shown if you still, somehow, need that stat.

Head enchants do not exist, all shoulder enchants come from the Inscription profession.

Click Here and make a lot more gold

 

Consumables

All food buffs last one hour and provide only one stat.

 

 

Professions for Guardian Druids

All of the professions provide some benefit for any class/spec, though clearly some are better than others. Even the gathering professions have some value, though you might be better served by using those to build a larger gold stash.

Guardian Professions
Blacksmithing
Jewelcrafting	Make nicer gems for your own use.
Enchanting
Inscription
Alchemy
Engineering	has lots of interesting toys, some of which have situational use, and Synapse Springs, which increases Ag by 71 for a short time. If you take this use a macro to activate it along with other short term buffs.
Leatherworking
Tailoring
Skinning
Herbalism
Mining

 

The Fast Druid Leveling Guide

Guardians are fine tanks and while you can level all the way to the cap in the dungeon system sometimes it’s nice to step out into the world and do some questing. Or maybe you’re leveling another alt who doesn’t get your tank’s instant-queues into the dungeons.

Either way, you’re looking at a lot of quests and a pretty fair amount of time. Wouldn’t it be great if you could do that a lot faster?

You can. You will save you many days of in-game time and also save a good deal of frustration, even if you already know many or most of the quests.

How? By using Zygor’s Guide. Zygor’s automates the whole leveling path, showing you exectly where to go and what to do every step of the way to the level cap, automatically updating as you complete tasks and quests, and is like having an expert helping you every step of the way.

Pick your starting point, regardless of your level, and the guide automatically updates and advances as you complete quests, sets a waypoint arrow automatically, and includes all the important quest info.

Want to step away from questing to dungeon level or PvP? No problem. Zygor’s is smart enough to detect your level and update appropriately. It’ll even clean up your obsolete quests.

You will probably never need to look at your quest log again!
Grab your copy of Zygor’s Leveling Guide, here

 

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