Paroag
Veteran
Here is a guide no one ever asked for. Let's dive in.
Introduction
Guardian druid is a very strong spec at 20, combining very good damage output, very good damage mitigation, and good self healing capabilities. How to best optimize your stats to make the most out of your druid ?
If you made it this far, congratulation. You are about to read some excessively complex math to understand how to optimize a bunch of pixels for a content that you are going to steamroll anyway.
What is a build, and why I do no care about it
There are several ways to optimize your toon, depending on the situation in which you want to excel. These are often referred to by players as "builds". For instance if you want to exclusively focus on your damage output and completely ignore damage mitigation, then haste is superior to versatility for guardian druid. I would not advise to do so as there is a small increase in damage output for a huge loss in damage mitigation, but it is nevertheless a build that is optimized for a specific purpose. On the other hand, a crit build is just hot garbage and is completely sub par. You can play one if you want, but the only thing it does optimize is your fun (which is great).
In this guide I will present stats for a well rounded guardian druid. Think of it as of a druid that will be optimized to solo hard content. It should be the default option for almost every player, and if you want to pursue another build you should have good reasons.
Quick Stats overview
Debunking common stats myths
Myth#1: It is less worth to stack a stat past 30% due to diminishing return
As most of you know, every secondary is subject to diminishing return starting 30%. https://fr.wowhead.com/guides/diminishing-returns-on-secondary-stats-in-world-of-warcraft
It does not mean that a secondary is less worth stacking past 30%. Due to the mechanics of the secondary itself, it could be even better past 30%. Let me explain.
Myth#2: Dodge is a bad stat
Dodge provides 0.92% physical damage reduction per 4 ratings. In small quantities (I tested up to 5 dodge rating), it is not affected by diminishing returns. It is almost on par with bad secondaries stats like crit and should not be ignored.
Myth#3: Mastery is always better than versatility for guardian druid
Mastery and versatility can be compared for guardian druids. By increasing both health pool and healing received, mastery behaves mechanically exactly as damage reduction.
We can in fact calculate how much damage reduction can be expected from 1 extra point of versatility, and how much damage reduction can be expected from one point of mastery. The math is pretty ugly, but here are the formula
The question we are trying to answer is in fact more simple: when is mastery better than versatility for damage reduction ? It can be deduced from the above formulas with some extra computations, and the answer is both very surprising and straightforward: versatility is better than mastery for damage reduction as long as the sum of your mastery rating and versatility rating is higher than 84 (should always happen for a twink).
Regarding damage output, the math is actually a lot more simple. Mastery is better for damage output until it reaches 50 rating more than versatility.
For instance if you currently have 75 mastery and 25 vers, vers is strictly better both offensively and defensively and should be the preferred option.
Myth#4: Leech is a tertiary stat
Guardian druid combines really high damage mitigation and really high damage output. Having some leech makes self sustaining the incoming damage incredibly easy. I’m not very familiar with how much the leech scales at higher rating, but as long as it does not hit diminishing returns, it is almost as strong as AGILITY.
Think about it differently: usually it’s harder to heal yourself than to deal damage to enemies while playing guardian druid, as you need to come off bear form to do so efficiently. Healing yourself for X is more valuable than dealing X extra damage. 4 agility on a 200 agility base is basically ~2% damage increase. 4 leech is 1.7% lifesteal, i.e. almost the same amout but in healing, which is, as I said, more valuable.
Why crit is hot garbage
Crit is the only secondary that does not provide any extra benefit outside of sheer damage.
Why your stuff should come with a lot of crit
A good f2p stuff should be around ~25% crit. It is not that crit is good: It's because the best available options for f2p have a lot of crit on them.
Conclusion
I hope you learnt something reading this guide. Even if unconventional, this priority list has been done using math and data, I care about your constructive criticism. Thanks for reading !
Introduction
Guardian druid is a very strong spec at 20, combining very good damage output, very good damage mitigation, and good self healing capabilities. How to best optimize your stats to make the most out of your druid ?
agility > leech >= attack power > armor > versa >= mastery > haste > crit > dodge
If you made it this far, congratulation. You are about to read some excessively complex math to understand how to optimize a bunch of pixels for a content that you are going to steamroll anyway.
What is a build, and why I do no care about it
There are several ways to optimize your toon, depending on the situation in which you want to excel. These are often referred to by players as "builds". For instance if you want to exclusively focus on your damage output and completely ignore damage mitigation, then haste is superior to versatility for guardian druid. I would not advise to do so as there is a small increase in damage output for a huge loss in damage mitigation, but it is nevertheless a build that is optimized for a specific purpose. On the other hand, a crit build is just hot garbage and is completely sub par. You can play one if you want, but the only thing it does optimize is your fun (which is great).
In this guide I will present stats for a well rounded guardian druid. Think of it as of a druid that will be optimized to solo hard content. It should be the default option for almost every player, and if you want to pursue another build you should have good reasons.
Quick Stats overview
Agility is without doubt the most important stat for guardian druids. It provides increase in attack power at 1:1 ratio, it provides dodge, it increases the amount of armor from ironfur at 1:1 ratio and provides spell power
Attack power provides most of the benefits from agility except for the extra dodge chance and the armor from ironfur
Stamina increases health by 44 every 4 rating (before mastery/bear form multiplier)
Critical strike increases our critical chance by 1.02% every 4 rating
Haste decreases your spell CD, the GCD and increases attack speed by 1.08% every 4 rating.
Versatility increases damage and healing done by 0.89% and reduces damage taken by 0.45% every 4 rating
Mastery increases attack power by 1%, health and healing received by 0.5% every 4 rating
Armor reduces physical damage taken. It is subject to diminishing returns but you should except approximatively 1.6% of physical reduction per 4 armor in bear form
Dodge increases dodge chance by 0.92% every 4 rating
Leech increases lifesteal by 1.7% every 4 rating
Debunking common stats myths
Myth#1: It is less worth to stack a stat past 30% due to diminishing return
As most of you know, every secondary is subject to diminishing return starting 30%. https://fr.wowhead.com/guides/diminishing-returns-on-secondary-stats-in-world-of-warcraft
It does not mean that a secondary is less worth stacking past 30%. Due to the mechanics of the secondary itself, it could be even better past 30%. Let me explain.
- Going from 0% to 10% versatility provides exactly a 10% increase in damage and a 5% reduction of damage.
- Going from 20 to 30% versatility (same rating, before diminishing returns) provides a 8.3% (=130/120) increase in damage and 5.6% (=1-(85/90)) reduction of damage.
- Going from 30% to 39% versatility (i.e. the same versatility rating but with the diminishing return) provides a 6.9% (=139/130) increase in damage and a 5.3% (=1-(80.5/85)) damage reduction.
Myth#2: Dodge is a bad stat
Dodge provides 0.92% physical damage reduction per 4 ratings. In small quantities (I tested up to 5 dodge rating), it is not affected by diminishing returns. It is almost on par with bad secondaries stats like crit and should not be ignored.
Myth#3: Mastery is always better than versatility for guardian druid
Mastery and versatility can be compared for guardian druids. By increasing both health pool and healing received, mastery behaves mechanically exactly as damage reduction.
We can in fact calculate how much damage reduction can be expected from 1 extra point of versatility, and how much damage reduction can be expected from one point of mastery. The math is pretty ugly, but here are the formula
- X is your current mastery rating
- Y is your current vers rating
-(0.871*Y-781.25)/(X+812.5)**2
0.871/(X+812.5)
Overall damage mitigation is a product of mitigation from vers, mitigation from mastery, and a mitigation factor from other stats that is independent of vers and mastery. Writing down the formula and computing the math derivate regarding mastery (resp. versatility) rating should yield the above results
The question we are trying to answer is in fact more simple: when is mastery better than versatility for damage reduction ? It can be deduced from the above formulas with some extra computations, and the answer is both very surprising and straightforward: versatility is better than mastery for damage reduction as long as the sum of your mastery rating and versatility rating is higher than 84 (should always happen for a twink).
Regarding damage output, the math is actually a lot more simple. Mastery is better for damage output until it reaches 50 rating more than versatility.
For instance if you currently have 75 mastery and 25 vers, vers is strictly better both offensively and defensively and should be the preferred option.
Myth#4: Leech is a tertiary stat
Guardian druid combines really high damage mitigation and really high damage output. Having some leech makes self sustaining the incoming damage incredibly easy. I’m not very familiar with how much the leech scales at higher rating, but as long as it does not hit diminishing returns, it is almost as strong as AGILITY.
Think about it differently: usually it’s harder to heal yourself than to deal damage to enemies while playing guardian druid, as you need to come off bear form to do so efficiently. Healing yourself for X is more valuable than dealing X extra damage. 4 agility on a 200 agility base is basically ~2% damage increase. 4 leech is 1.7% lifesteal, i.e. almost the same amout but in healing, which is, as I said, more valuable.
Why crit is hot garbage
Crit is the only secondary that does not provide any extra benefit outside of sheer damage.
- Mastery provides damage mitigation
- Versatility provides damage mitigation
- Haste provide higher rage gain and faster damage ramping
Why your stuff should come with a lot of crit
A good f2p stuff should be around ~25% crit. It is not that crit is good: It's because the best available options for f2p have a lot of crit on them.
- https://www.wowhead.com/item=27809/jagged-deep-peridot Is a very good gem with 4 crit on it
- https://www.wowhead.com/item=28224/wastewalker-helm?bonus=6710&ilvl=25 and https://www.wowhead.com/item=27531/wastewalker-gloves?bonus=6710&ilvl=25 are the best option due to the absurd sheer amount of stats with https://www.wowhead.com/item=32640/tense-unstable-diamond and the set bonus.
- https://www.wowhead.com/item=27492/moonchild-leggings?bonus=6710&ilvl=25 and https://www.wowhead.com/item=28202/moonglade-robe?bonus=6710&ilvl=25 are just too strong
Conclusion
agility > leech >= attack power > armor > versa >= mastery > haste > crit > dodge
Stamina has almost no impact in long sustained fight, and for this reason it's hard to directly compare it to other stats. It's a strong stats nonetheless.
I hope you learnt something reading this guide. Even if unconventional, this priority list has been done using math and data, I care about your constructive criticism. Thanks for reading !
Last edited:
