Guardian Druid Tank Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (11.0.5)

Welcome to our Rotation page for Guardian Druids. On this page, you will be able to find everything that you need to know about playing the spec in Raiding and Mythic+ content.

While it is highly recommended to go over this entire page to understand better how the class plays, you can also quickly browse the Beginner guide below for a brief rundown of the important basic information.

This page will cover the Rotation in general content, but if you are looking for a more in-depth Mythic+-oriented guide, you may want to head over to our Mythic+ page linked below.

Guardian has very few talent choices that actually affect your Rotation. Of the few that do, Raze, Galactic Guardian and Tooth and Claw are the biggest ones. Raze gives you an AoE rage spender that you want to use anytime there is more than 1 target as your highest priority spell for damage. Galactic Guardian gives you a chance to proc a buff that boosts the damage of your next Moonfire by 300% and causes it to generate an extra 8 rage. Tooth and Claw gives you a chance to proc a buff that causes your next Maul or Raze to cost 0 rage and deal extra damage. These 2 procs are important to track with a Weakaura, ideally to ensure you won't miss any of these important procs.

• Ensure that you have eaten appropriate Food according to our Consumables page.
• Ensure you have your appropriate Flask buff from our our Consumables page.
• Ensure your Weapon has its temporary enchant from our our Consumables page.
• Activate your Crystallized Augment Rune, if you can spare the Gold!

As a Guardian Druid, you have one ability that acts as active mitigation: Ironfur. In addition to this, you have a self-heal Frenzied Regeneration. While Frenzied Regeneration is not strictly considered "active mitigation," it is nevertheless a core part of your rotational toolkit, and you will use it frequently.

Ironfur increases your Armor by 112% of your Agility for 7 seconds. Multiple applications of Ironfur may overlap and stack their Armor increases, but their durations will not stack. For example, if you use Ironfur and then use it again 3 seconds later, you will have 2 applications of Ironfur for 4 seconds, granting you 224% of your Agility as Armor. After 4 seconds, the first application will have expired, leaving you with 112% of your Agility as Armor for 3 more seconds. Agility buffs and procs increase the amount of Armor you gain from Ironfur.

Armor is extremely effective at reducing Physical damage intake, so having at least 1 stack of Ironfur up as often as possible is recommended. Additionally, you will occasionally want to pool your Rage to put up multiple stacks of Ironfur for a short period to deal with a spike in damage. There is a hard limit to how much Armor can reduce your incoming damage by, at 85%. This is around 7-8 (3-4 with an Aug voker) stacks of Ironfur and can generally be achieved on 5-10 targets or inside of Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc.

Armor does not normally reduce Bleed damage (typically, this is presented in-game as a "Physical DoT") or Magic damage. However, there are exceptions to these rules, which appear on a case-by-case basis. When faced with Bleed or Magic damage, you will find Ironfur ineffective and should instead use your defensive cooldowns to reduce the damage or a well-timed Frenzied Regeneration to heal yourself. Remember that if you are tanking a boss, you are almost always taking auto-attacks and other damage sources. Auto-attacks are Physical, so it is still worth maintaining Ironfur on most encounters.

Finally, consider your situation carefully before using Ironfur. Since it is proactive, no matter how low on health you have been brought, using it if there is no new incoming damage is pointless.

Frenzied Regeneration heals you for 20% of your maximum health in the form of a 3-second HoT. It costs 10 Rage and has a maximum of 2 charges with a 36-second recharge time (reduced by Haste). Frenzied Regeneration can be used both proactively and reactively, either to top yourself off in anticipation of incoming damage or in response to being brought to low health after a big hit.

A key element of using Frenzied Regeneration effectively is ensuring that you do not inadvertently cause overhealing, both for you and your healers. To do this, you will need to anticipate how much damage you will likely take in the next 3 seconds and compare it to how much healing you will likely receive. Since self-healing is very limited, using each charge is critical.

Another consideration when using Frenzied Regeneration is the recharge timer. It may be tempting to Frenzied Regeneration whenever you are brought moderately low, but doing this could leave you without charges for a scary moment later. Try and save at least one charge of Frenzied Regeneration for periods where you may not receive the assistance of your healers (if they are busy healing the rest of the raid, for example).

Growl is your taunting ability. Growl forces the target to attack you for 3 seconds. During those 3 seconds, you generate additional Threat against that target. Growl has an 8-second cooldown but can be reduced to 1.5 seconds during Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc.

Guardians have no additional taunting mechanisms.

As a Guardian Druid, you have two important defensive cooldowns.

• Barkskin reduces all damage you take by 20% for 12 seconds on a 60-second cooldown. Barkskin is usable when stunned, incapacitated, or asleep. This will be your first line of defense against dangerous spike damage and your primary way of reducing magic damage or simply as risk mitigation to smooth your damage intake for your healers. It has a short cooldown, so use it liberally!
• Survival Instincts reduces all damage you take by 50% for 6 seconds. Survival Instincts has 2 charges and a 3-minute recharge time. This is your major defensive reduction, to be used against lethal spike damage or "tankbuster" mechanics. Its short duration and long cooldown mean it should be used sparingly.

More details about how to best use your cooldowns and about the cooldowns you can gain from your talents can be found in our detailed cooldown section.

Tanking as a Guardian Druid is pretty straightforward; the information provided above is sufficient to perform reasonably proficiently. However, there are several more advanced topics that you should understand to master your character fully. Some of these are explained in our Spell Summary linked below.

Guardian Druid's primary resource is Rage.

The Rage bar has a maximum capacity of 100 and is empty by default. Rage decays quickly out of combat. In combat, Rage does not decay.

Rage is generated in the following ways:

• Activating Bear Form grants you 25 Rage (leaving Bear Form empties the Rage bar).
• Auto-attacks generate 4 Rage.
• Being auto-attacked generates 3 Rage (can only occur once every second).
• Mangle generates 10 Rage (+4 with a Gore proc and +5 with Soul of the Forest).
• Thrash generates 5 Rage.
• Moonfire with a Galactic Guardian proc generates 8 Rage.
• Bristling Fur generates 1 Rage per % of max health taken in damage while active.
• Blood Frenzy generates 2 Rage every time a Thrash bleed ticks on any target (Thrash ticks once every 3 seconds, reduced by Haste).

Your Mastery is Mastery: Nature's Guardian. It increases your maximum health and healing received and your Attack Power. The exact increase amount depends on how much Mastery you have. For every 1% Mastery, you gain 1% increased health and healing, and 1.33% increased Attack Power. Guardians start with 4% Mastery baseline.

Notably, the increased healing component of Mastery: Nature's Guardian does not increase the healing from Frenzied Regeneration or Restoration Affinity, although it does affect the two spells in that both heal scale with maximum health, which is increased by Mastery.

Your Thrash, Swipe, Maul, and Moonfire have a 15% chance to trigger Gore, which resets the cooldown of Mangle, and causes it to generate an additional 4 Rage. Making quick use of Gore procs is essential to ensuring they are not overwritten by new procs and the Rage is not wasted.

Guardian Druid is a primarily proactive tank. You must be prepared with active mitigation and defensive cooldowns before you take damage. This is in contrast to reactive tanks, which first take the damage and then react to it by healing themselves up.

As such, preparation plays a large part in tanking effectively. Wise use of cooldowns and coordination with your healers is critical and can be the difference between a boss kill and a wipe. The best way to prepare for an encounter is to look at the damage profile of the fight (either from a log or by reading the Dungeon Journal) and plan out what cooldowns you will use, when you will use them, and whether any gaps need to be covered by healer external defensives.

You have two baseline defensive cooldowns and a few more that you can talent into. Unless you are sure you will die otherwise, it is not advised to overlap your defensive cooldowns, as spending them that way is often overkill and wasteful.

Barkskin is the go-to cooldown when the damage starts ramping up or when there is magic damage that you cannot otherwise mitigate, or just as a general damage reducer to take some of the burden off of your healers. A 20% damage reduction may sound small, but it lasts for quite a while and is on a fairly short cooldown, so be sure to use it frequently. Guardians have a lot of health and passive mitigation. The amount of damage you can prevent with the liberal use of Barkskin may surprise you. Remember that Barkskin can be used in most forms of crowd control and shapeshift forms in case you find yourself caught out of Bear Form or unable to move out of a mechanic.

Survival Instincts is best used pre-emptively. You should use Survival Instincts before taking a large amount of damage (generally a boss mechanic). Additionally, you can use it to prolong your survival if your healers are dead or incapacitated. Unless your strategy requires you to use both charges at specific times, you can get away with making frequent use of at least 1 charge.

Except for emergencies, do not wait until you are already low on health to use Survival Instincts, as it is usually too late to save you.

As of Patch 11.0.2, Druid of the Claw has revived Catweaving in the new form called Ripweaving. This is currently a 20-25% DPS increase over not weaving.

Ripweaving is where you gain a buff once you cast Mangle 6 times with the Wildpower Surge talent that massively empowers your next Rip and Ferocious Bite and generates max combo points upon entering Cat Form. You shift into Cat Form by using Rake in Bear Form, due to the Fluid Form talent, you will instantly be shifted into Cat. You are then able to apply this empowered Rip and shift straight back into Bear Form by casting Mangle whilst in Cat Form. This is an extremely safe version of Catweaving and has very little impact on your survivability. You are even able to utilize this while tanking a boss actively due to the Wildshape Mastery talent that retains Ironfur and 80% of your health and Armor temporarily in Cat. As you are inclined to shapeshift regularly, it also leans naturally into talenting into Thorns of Iron and spending most of your Rage on the Ironfur due to it's off GCD nature.

Make sure that you do not shift to Cat too soon after casting Mangle as it can be on cooldown, delaying your ability to shift back to bear quickly.

Catweaving is an advanced topic and significantly complicates the Rotation. It is not recommended for those who are just picking up Guardian Druid or when you are learning a new fight. That being said, when done correctly, it is a significant DPS increase over staying in Bear Form single-target, and, with caution, it can be done with a low-risk factor.