Guardian Druid Review of Elune’s Chosen Hero Talents – Strong Fantasy But A Lot of Filler

Our Guardian Druid guide writer, Pumps, offers an early review of the Elune’s Chosen Druid Hero Talents for Guardian detailing the strong lunar fantasy that builds well into the Guardian kit but also contains a fair amount of filler talents which don’t feel incredibly heroic.

Chosen of Elune Guardian Druid Review

Blizzard has recently released a preview of the The Elune’s Chosen talent tree, which for Guardian, revolves very heavily around Arcane damage and spells.

Upcoming Talent Tree Changes?

With a strong emphasis on both the Lunar Beam and Fury of Elune spells for Elune’s Chosen, this leads to an interesting line of questioning, Will Lunar Beam be moved to a baseline spell for Guardian in the future? As it is integral to this Hero tree functioning and currently is placed in a very far bottom corner of our spec tree which often leads to it being extremely inaccessible.

Fury of Elune is another query, as we currently have no access to this balance spell at all as Guardian and it is another major part of the Elune’s Chosen Hero talent tree. Both could mean potential talent tree adjustments in The War Within to enable easier use of one of our important Hero talent trees which could be fun.

Moon Bear a-risin’

The Core concept of this tree is fairly simple, which is both a positive and a negative. Without looking at every talent, basically, your arcane spells do a bit more damage and can proc some bonus effects like Fury of Elune. The big ones being in combination with , which could mean extremely high Lunar Beam uptime, potentially 100%+ on AoE depending on how it works exactly.

While this is only one of the two Hero Talent Trees that will be available to Guardian, it is nice that they have leaned on the Lunar Bear as a playstyle as personally, I find it to be the most enjoyable iteration of Guardian.

Node by Node Analysis

Starting from the strongest nodes to the weakest nodes, we will dive a little deeper into what these effects really do and why some of them could use a little tweaking. Many of these talents I feel, should not be Hero talents, there is far too many very odd niche filler talents that I hope do not make it to live, as the concept of Hero talents should be cool, interesting talents that have some fun/positive effect on gameplay and rotation. So I will separate these into Thumbs Up for good and Thumbs Down for bad.

Thumbs Up

• – Leeching 10% of ALL damage dealt to enemies in the Lunar Beam could be quite strong, especially with Rage of the Sleeper already granting so much leech. Also the potential reduced CD on beam could give this great uptime on a solid amount of leech which is great for bear as Frenzied Regeneration healing is more sparse.
• – Another very cool talent. Making Thrash deal arcane damage, what a great concept in this Arcane themed tree! Elune’s Favored is the first talent that comes to mind, we could potentially have an incredible amount of self-healing incoming at a consistent rate which would make Guardian feel very strong, as gaps in our healing is one of the biggest downfalls of Guardian.
• – This could be great, depends on the proc chance and whether or not it is solely from activation of an arcane ability. In combination with this could easily mean massive uptime on Lunar Beam which with would mean a monstrous mastery boost and a huge amount of leech to boot.
• – The mastery boost on this is pretty significant, Lunar Beam would become a very significant offensive and defensive cooldown on a very short cooldown. Short, strong cooldowns are the best.
• – This could be a really fun talent, similar to the Torghast power that summoned Moons on moonfire ticks. Will it be able to summon multiple Fury of Elune beams? That would be very fun.
• – Hopefully this doubles with Twin Moonfire. Good talent though, rage gen is always appreciated.
• – Good, adds a bit more flavor to the playstyle in a non-invasive way.
• – This is also good, adding to the gameplay is a great addition, especially in a few small ways like this, nothing astronomical changes, just pool a bit of rage before you press Lunar Beam so you have more to utilize in the damage window.

Thumbs Down

• – Damage of Lunar Beam is pretty low, so increasing it doesn’t make a huge difference. We also can’t really gauge how hard Fury of Elune will hit as we won’t know what the coefficients will look like and whether it will be affected by the massive 50% Bear aura yet. It’s also on a choice node with one of the better talents .
• – Only 10% Arcane damage while Incarn is active, that seems very weak? Convoke is awfully tuned for bear currently and this doesn’t make up for it but that doesn’t mean it can’t receive a huge buff in TWW and be viable for us again. Think is a thumbs down because it’s weaker than most single points in our regular spec tree. It’s also on a choice node with potentially one of the strongest talents .
• – 3% arcane damage? this is an incredibly weak and boring talent. Ain’t nothing heroic about this node. Also competes with one of the potentially best talents .
• – This seems incredibly underwhelming for a “HERO” talent. This is worse than most talents in our regular tree. I don’t think hero talents should have these kind of weak filler nodes.
• – Another very weak filler node, unless a fight has specifically dangerous arcane damage.
• – A strange middle ground between this and Infected Wounds. Probably don’t need both. In mass aoe you aren’t guaranteed to have moonfire on all targets which would make this very niche. I think it could be replaced and made into something a little better and more interesting.
• – This is extremely niche and i think has no real place in a Hero talent setting. Who is using wild charge off cooldown? When will this 3 seconds be useful in PVE?

Final Thoughts

The first iteration of the Elunes Chosen Hero talents for bear are a success I think. It’s very 50/50, quite a balanced tree. However, I do think it could use some work. Some of those boring filler talents could be changed to simple positive gameplay loops, something that feels a bit more worthy to be called a Hero talent rather than static minor increases.

Overall, it’s a comfy tree, very simplistic, won’t change gameplay dramatically and doesn’t add any negative rotational maintenance buffs or floor effects you are forced to stand in.

While Lunar Beam might be a floor effect (that could honestly use a new visual if we are to be using it all expansion), the Mastery buff is tied to your character so you can freely move out of the beam and lose very little. I’m looking forward to seeing what the other Hero tree has to offer.

About the Author

This guide was written by Pumps! I raid in the guild Honestly on US – Frostmourne.
I am active in the Dreamgrove discord and always happy to answer questions i can.
I came 2nd place in the First World of Warcraft Mythic Dungeon International event. You can catch me streaming on Twitch during progression.

Boundless Moonlight
Lunar Beam now causes you to leech life equal to 10% of all damage dealt to enemies within the beam. Fury of Elune now ends with a flash of energy, blasting nearby enemies for Astral Damage.Moon Guardian
Free Automatic Moonfires from Galactic Guardian generate 5 rage.Glistening Fur
Bear Form and Moonkin Form reduce Arcane damage taken by 6% and all other magic damage taken by 3%.Lunar Insight
Moonfire deals 10% additional damageLunar Amplification
Each non-Arcane damaging ability you use increases the damage of your next Arcane damaging ability by 3%, stacking up to 3 times.Atmospheric Exposure
Enemies damage by Full Moon, Fury of Elune, or Lunar Beam take 4% increased damage from you for 6 seconds.Moon Dust
Enemies affected by Moonfire are slowed by 30%.Elunes Grace
Using Wild Charge in Bear or Moonkin form incurs a 3 second shorter cooldown.Stellar Command
Increases damage of Lunar Beam by 30%. Increases damage of Fury of Elune by 15%. Lunar Calling
Thrash now deals Arcane damage, and it’s damage is increased by 12%.The Light of Elune
Moonfire damage has a chance to call down Fury of Elune to follow your target for 3 seconds and generates 18 Rage over its duration.Astral Insight: Incarnation
Incarnation increases Arcane damage from spells and abilities by 10% while active. Convoke duration and number of spells cast increased by 25%.Arcane Affinity
All arcane damage from your spells and abilities is increased by 3%.Lunation
Your Arcane abilities reduce the cooldown of Lunar Beam by 3 seconds.The Eternal Moon
Lunar Beam increases Mastery by an additional 8%, deals 30% increased damage, and lasts 3 seconds longer.
Fury of Elune: The flash of energy now generates 6 rage and damage is increased by 50%.