Faide is a Guardian theorycrafter, moderator and expert in the Dreamgrove, guide writer, SimC dev, and raider in Synergy on Bleeding Hollow-US. Follow him on Twitter.

Panphage is a regular in the Dreamgrove, and raider in Pure on Turalyon-EU.

Ironfur remains one of the strongest active mitigations of all tanks, through sheer consistency in uptime and damage reduction. Rage generation has improved in most situations, which helps us maintain more stacks at higher averages. Guardian looks to be a very stable and consistent raid tank, in terms of raw damage smoothing.

The talent rows have opened up with the removal of legendaries. Notably, Galactic Guardian on the 75 row (and to a lesser extent, Rend and Tear on the 100 row) is no longer a must-take talent due to its interactions with legendaries, which will introduce some decision making back into the talent tree.

The addition of Hibernate and Soothe were welcome improvements to our utility in small group content. Hibernate affords us more options to skip packs or control mobs, and Soothe looks to be very strong against the numerous enrage effects that are present in BfA dungeons, in particular the Raging affix in Mythic+.

The return of Catweaving is good news for anyone who enjoyed the playstyle in early Legion, and to those who are looking for a challenging rotation to reward them with a small DPS gain. Some may argue that catweaving being a gain is not a good thing, since it promotes selfish, non-defensive play for a DPS gain, but it’s nice to at least have the option to play it.

Frenzied Regeneration has been aggressively nerfed. What used to be a tool used to consistently and quickly rebound from high burst damage is now a slow, long-cooldown heal over time, and turned us into a tank with near total reliance on healers at any moderately dangerous level of damage.

The loss of Rage of the Sleeper, and lack of compensation for it, has left us without an offensive cooldown in our base kit. As a result, Guardian gameplay is very slow with no points of excitement like you would find on a tank with an offensive cooldown. You can talent into Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc to fix this, but the cost of losing the consistent Rage generation of Soul of the Forest or Galactic Guardian is very high and has a significant impact on your survivability.

Another side effect of losing the artifact is the removal of many quality-of-life improvements found in artifact traits. The most noticeable is the loss of the Bloody Paws trait, which gave us the ability to keep mobs at a distance while giving yourself and your healer time to catch up in healing or drop stacks of Necrotic. Now that it’s gone, Guardian has almost zero kite potential; their only movement option that doesn’t drop Bear Form is Stampeding Roar (which was also nerfed with the removal of Guttural Roars).

Despite the addition of Hibernate and Soothe, Guardian utility in dungeons continues to be on the weaker side when compared to other tanks. We have very poor mass crowd control, poor self-healing, and poor kiting potential as outlined above.

The base Guardian rotation is extremely simple, by design. We have a single proc mechanic Gore, and 4 core rotational buttons (one of which is a maintenance DoT). Our spenders Ironfur and Maul do not interact with each other and present a very binary choice of either mitigation or damage, which makes for a non-engaging experience. This is somewhat addressed by talents that spice things up (Pulverize and Galactic Guardian, for example), but in cases where these talents are worse than their alternatives, what we’re left with is a core rotation that does not feel very rewarding to play.

Give Guardian an offensive cooldown. This would go a long way toward increasing the enjoyment of the spec, as you have something to look forward to pressing every so often.

Restore our group utility by giving us either improved mass crowd control (e.g. Ursol's Vortex), improved self-sustain (e.g. Dream of Cenarius), improved kiting potential (e.g. Bloody Paws), or some combination of the three.

Take Frenzied Regeneration off the global cooldown. It’s already far weaker than its Legion version, but having to spend a global to cast just feels bad.

Comment by GendouGood stuff. These pre-expansion overviews by the experienced members of the class communities are a real boon.Comment by JaigarYeah, Guardian is struggling quite a bit on the playstyle side of things. Probably the worst out of all the tanks. Though I don't really hate it. I think it functions nicely as an offspec tank and will do fine in raids, but its missing tools for dungeons.Comment by BlahblahwhateverGuardian was ridiculously overpowered in Legion to the point of absurdity. I couldn't care less that it's gone from best to worst tank. Hopefully they do not overcompensate it later down the line. I love tanking and druid is literally the last option I would want to have in any ideal situation, I feel like most tanks are agreed on that.Comment by darkelemental1Guardian was ridiculously overpowered in Legion to the point of absurdity. I couldn't care less that it's gone from best to worst tank. Hopefully they do not overcompensate it later down the line. I love tanking and druid is literally the last option I would want to have in any ideal situation, I feel like most tanks are agreed on that.Comment by Ignatios1518I agree, Druid tanks do feel clunky and they really need to be buffed. It absolutely baffles me that they do this to any class, they make it almost not even a choice if you want to progress.Comment by dmarquezGood stuff. These pre-expansion overviews by the experienced members of the class communities are a real boon.Comment by TntdruidI will stay bear tank forever 🐻😄Comment by NazthoriI agree with all of the points made, but I still enjoy playing mine, as weird as it is to say. I still want them to make suggested changes though, especially the lack of berserk coming back (the thing they removed for RotS, oof)... but that's not enough to make me hate my bear. Maybe it's the swole skin. Dunno.Guardian was ridiculously overpowered in Legion to the point of absurdity. I couldn't care less that it's gone from best to worst tank. Hopefully they do not overcompensate it later down the line. I love tanking and druid is literally the last option I would want to have in any ideal situation, I feel like most tanks are agreed on that.
Lots of salt you got there. Show us on the doll where the Bear mauled you for you to be so bitter.Comment by AlakeiThancanGuardian was ridiculously overpowered in Legion to the point of absurdity. I couldn't care less that it's gone from best to worst tank. Hopefully they do not overcompensate it later down the line. I love tanking and druid is literally the last option I would want to have in any ideal situation, I feel like most tanks are agreed on that.Comment by AnubishamanIt feels like they didn't even put any effort on the Guardian Druid going from Legion to BfA, all I see is the utilities added because they were added for every spec, and the loss of artifact traits that didn't got compensated at all, not even the talents changed, nothing... I was hoping for them to do some work on the Druid but as time passed it was apparent that no effort went into it at all...
It is a very sad day for me to not being able to play bear since BC, that's 10 years of bear tanking! Please improve the bear tank and make it interesting again...Comment by MaXiiczekI think I'm a bit too old already, because this cat weaving seems like an automatic thing to me :D shapeshifting for specific situations is kind of the point of being a druid, right? at least it used to be back in my day :D maybe due to feral/guardian being different specs, cat was no longer a straight forward dps gain in some situations? anyway good it's back :)Comment by AkubroBear in mind we bears have thick skin. iron fur.
The forest is ours and many of the trees within it still carry the marks of our swipes and thrashes.
We shall return stronger then ever after this short summer 'hibernation' of early BFA!Comment by wedgeskiI'm re-committing to bear tanking in the hope that cat-weaving makes it interesting, even as it makes my palms sweat.Comment by madar222Thank you for the review. I wish we would get some kiting tool, thats what I missing most. Also missing a lot the side-effect of the Rage of the Sleeper: the movement impairing immunity. Would be nice to get a similar ability what I can use to prevent fear \ disorient.Comment by BjerkieGood read!
I'd like to mention Typhoon in the "Guardian has almost zero kite potential; their only movement option that doesn’t drop Bear Form is Stampeding Roar" debate. Based on my testing on the Beta, Typhoon paired nicely with Restoration Affinity to both kite and help your healer out at the same time. How well this works in high m+ dungeons is yet to be seen however.Comment by lovelywazGuardian was ridiculously overpowered in Legion to the point of absurdity. I couldn't care less that it's gone from best to worst tank. Hopefully they do not overcompensate it later down the line. I love tanking and druid is literally the last option I would want to have in any ideal situation, I feel like most tanks are agreed on that.MaulComment by MwarWhy did they update bear form and make the front legs look so terrible?Comment by Cetex1337Shortest Spec-Review so far.Comment by VetochkaMoreover artifact ability was a way to counter some knock-back effects what some bosses required to do.

With so many legendary effects and traits gone blizz should have added 1 new row of tallents what wasnt done for 2 expansions already. Legion had ways to get abilities via artifacts, but azerit traits from BfA look more like bonuses, they dont change playstyle and mostly u cannt adjust them for situations you are in (it's possible to reforge but u cannt rly do that freely). All Legion effects are more than enough to make a new row of talents and still replace/rework some useless legion talents. + they also removed honor talents, instead of 7 talents we can only pick 4 :/Comment by AlarialasGuardian was ridiculously overpowered in Legion to the point of absurdity. I couldn't care less that it's gone from best to worst tank. Hopefully they do not overcompensate it later down the line. I love tanking and druid is literally the last option I would want to have in any ideal situation, I feel like most tanks are agreed on that.