General Information
On this page, we present the viable talent and glyph choices for
Guardian Druids in World of Warcraft MoP 5.4. We detail what each of the talents and
glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.
The other pages of our Guardian Druid guide can be accessed
from the table of contents on the right.
1. Talent Choices↑top
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- Performance-enhancing
- Survival
- Crowd Control
- Movement
- Utility
- Situational
There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are
now viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to 
Dust of Disappearance
(and 
Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90).
You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between
encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics.
Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and
how they affect your play style.
2. Tier 1 Talents↑top
Tier 1 talents offer a choice between 3 means of increasing your movement
abilities.
Feline Swiftness is a passive ability that increases your movement
speed by 15% at all times.
Displacer Beast is an active ability that teleports you 20 yards
forward, activates 
Cat Form, and grants you a 50% increase in movement
speed for 4 seconds.
Wild Charge is an active ability that differs based on the
shapeshift form you are in, as follows:
- No shapeshift form: you fly to an ally's location.
Bear Form: you charge an enemy, immobilizing them for 4
seconds.- Cat Form: you leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 seconds.
Travel Form: you leap forward 20 yards.
Aquatic Form: your swim speed is increased by 150% for 5
seconds.
The choice here will come down to either Feline Swiftness or
Wild Charge. If the benefits of Wild Charge will be needed during the
encounter (charging to mobs and/or immobilizing them), then Wild Charge will
be a great choice. Otherwise, Feline Swiftness will probably be the go-to
choice.
Displacer Beast has some situational uses in some encounters, but
keep mind that you will lose all your Vengeance when you are automatically
shifted into Cat Form.
3. Tier 2 Talents↑top
Tier 2 talents offer a choice between 3 healing spells.
Ysera's Gift is a passive spell that heals you for 5% of your maximum
health every 5 seconds. If you are at maximum health, then it heals the most
injured party or raid member within 100 yards.
Renewal is a self-heal for 30% of your maximum health with a
2-minute cooldown.
Cenarion Ward is a buff that you can place on a friendly player,
lasting up to 30 seconds. When the player takes damage, Cenarion Ward
activates a 6-second HoT on the player, consuming Cenarion Ward in the
process.
Your choice of talent here is based on your personal preference and on
what your situation calls for.
Cenarion Ward is currently the best option for this tier in terms
of survival, since it has the highest healing throughput.
Ysera's Gift is entirely passive and it does not require
any management.
Renewal provides an excellent self-healing cooldown, essentially a
minor defensive cooldown. It scales with your health, which makes it even
better, and it is off the global cooldown. It is not better than Cenarion
Ward, although it is easier to use, so if you want to have an on-demand
large heal, you can try this talent out.
4. Tier 3 Talents↑top
Tier 3 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.
Faerie Swarm is a spell that replaces 
Faerie Fire,
upgrading the latter spell to also slow the target's movement speed by 50% for
15 seconds.
Mass Entanglement roots all enemies in an area around the target
for up to 20 seconds.
Typhoon is a spell that affects enemies in a cone in front of you,
knocking them back and dazing them for 6 seconds.
The choice between these talents is entirely situational and, in any case,
it is unlikely to play any part in your performance.
5. Tier 4 Talents↑top
Tier 4 offers a choice between 3 performance-enhancing talents.
Soul of the Forest passively causes your 
Mangle to
always generate 30% more rage, and to deal 15% more damage.
Incarnation: Son of Ursoc reduces the cooldown of your offensive
abilities and of 
Growl to 1.5 seconds, for 30 seconds. This
ability has a 3-minute cooldown.
Force of Nature is an active ability that summons a treant which
taunts your current target and attacks it for 15 seconds. The treants have
40% of the Guardian Druid's maximum health, and 4 times their amount of armor.
Force of Nature has a maximum of 3 charges, and a new a charge is added every
20 seconds. Otherwise, it has no cooldown. The treants do not taunt raid
bosses.
Currently, Incarnation: Son of Ursoc is the best choice in terms of
damage done and burst rage generation, but simply for rage generation,
Soul of the Forest is better. Soul of the Forest has the added benefit
of being entirely passive, making it easy to manage.
Force of Nature can be a useful talent in situations where there are
adds that deal high amounts of damage and are generally problematic. It is
also worth noting that the treants' stats update dynamically, so using
Savage Defense while treants are active will increase their chance to
dodge. All that said, this talent is quite lackluster when compared to the
other two.
6. Tier 5 Talents↑top
Tier 5 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.
Disorienting Roar is an AoE disorient that lasts for 3 seconds and
affects all enemies in a 10 yard radius.
Ursol's Vortex is a targeted AoE slow. When enemies first try to
leave the slowing area, they are pulled back in.
Mighty Bash is a single target 5-second stun.
The choice between these talents is entirely situational and, in any case,
it is unlikely to play any part in your performance.
7. Tier 6 Talents↑top
Tier 6 talents offer a choice between 3 talents that affect your
gameplay.
Heart of the Wild increases your Stamina, Agility, and Intellect by
6% at all times. Additionally, with a 6-minute cooldown, it allows you to
viably perform roles outside of your specialisation, for 45 seconds.
- allows you to DPS in Cat Form, by increasing your Agility,
Expertise, and Hit Chance;
- allows you to DPS as a caster, by increasing your Spell Damage and Hit
Chance, and reducing the mana cost of all your damaging spells by 100%;
- allows you to heal efficiently, by increasing the healing of your spells
by 100% and reducing the mana cost of your healing spells by 100%;
Dream of Cenarius is a passive ability that increase the healing from
Healing Touch by 20%, the Critical Strike chance of
Mangle by 10%, and causes your Mangle critical strikes to have a 40%
chance of making your next Healing Touch or 
Rebirth instant-cast, free
of cost, and castable in all forms. When Healing Touch is used with this
proc, it benefits from your Attack Power instead of from your Spell Power.
Nature's Vigil is a 90-second cooldown that increases all healing
and damage done by 12% for 30 seconds. While Nature's Vigil is active, all
single target healing spells also damage a nearby enemy for 25% of the healing
done, and all damaging spells heal nearby allies for 25% of the damage
done.
Dream of Cenarius is the best choice in this tier, provided that you can
efficiently cast Healing Touch.
Heart of the Wild provides the greatest DPS boost (assuming that you do
not need to be tanking and you can use it).
Nature's Vigil is easiest to use, but it is not as powerful as the
other two.
8. Major Glyphs↑top
Only Major Glyphs play a relevant role in the gameplay of a Guardian Druid.
Minor Glyphs are either cosmetic, or they provide meaningless, out-of-combat
benefits.
In this section we discuss the relevant Major Glyphs for Guardian Druids.
Note that, while useful, these glyphs do not play too great a part in your
performance and you can perform quite well without them.
Glyph of Might of Ursoc makes your 
Might of Ursoc 20% more
powerful, but it increases its cooldown by 2 minutes. If the encounter you are
progressing on requires that you need an extra "edge" to survive a particularly
difficult moment, this glyph can be excellent.
Glyph of Survival Instincts reduces the cooldown of
Survival Instincts by 60 seconds, but also reduces its duration by
50%. In normal circumstances, this glyph will probably have limited use (which
is not to say that it couldn't still be useful sometimes). However, if some
boss abilities that need serious mitigation come at fixed intervals of time of
less than 3 minutes, then this glyph can prove very useful.
Glyph of Stampeding Roar increases the range of
Stampeding Roar by 30 yards. If using this ability is vital to
your raid's strategy, this glyph is excellent.
Glyph of Rebirth is very useful if you intend to use your
Rebirth, since it allows the target of your Rebirth to come back to
life with full health, meaning that they do not risk instantly dying again to
environmental damage.
Glyph of Faerie Fire increases the range of your Faerie Fire
by 10 yards. This could occasionally be useful when you want to reach an add
that recently spawned far away from you.
Glyph of Fae Silence causes your Faerie Fire to silence the target
for 3 seconds, when used in Bear Form, but gives Faerie Fire a 15
second cooldown. In situations where you need to pull ranged mobs to melee
range frequently (such as in Challenge Mode dungeons), this can be useful.
9. Minor Glyphs↑top
The only minor glyph worth mentioning is 
Glyph of Grace, which reduces
the damage you take from fall damage even when you are not in Cat Form.
While this is not likely to be of use often during PvE progression, it can
sometimes help.
10. Changelog↑top
- 12 Sep. 2013: Patch 5.4 update.
- 23 May 2013: Added a few more pieces of information regarding
the treants spawned by Force of Nature.
- 20 May 2013: Added a mention that Displacer Beast can have
some situational uses. Updated the Force of Nature description to match
the 5.3 change. Also added Glyph of Fae Silence.
- 05 Apr. 2013: Made several updates.
- Reworded the discussion of Tier 2 talents to account for the increased
value of Cenarion Ward.
- Reworded the discussions of Tier 4 and 6 talents. Nothing substantial has
changed, but things should now be more clear and accurate.
- Removed Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration, since it is sub-optimal and
should never be used.
- Added Glyph of Grace.
- 07 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
- Updated Displacer Beast explanation to mention the movement speed buff
that it provides.
- Updated Soul of the Forest explanation to reflect that the bonus
rage granted by Mangle is now 3, instead of 2.
- Updated Nature's Vigil explanation to reflect the new cooldown and the
fact that the damage and healing bonus is now 10% instead of 20%.
