I think it’s still too early to really decide and there’s still plenty of time for change but bear isn’t looking too hot for SL. I’ve been playing this character since 2005, I think patch 1.3 (the one before kitty got it’s speed boost), and I hate to swap away but I also don’t want to end up making things harder for the raid team.
I remember back in early WoD I swapped away from bear to monk for the first time and it did make a pretty big difference. I’m planning to at least level both classes just in case.
Are any other bears thinking of swapping too? Why or why not?
Oh I’m definitely swapping, been working on it for a couple months now, guild has been supporting me 100%, we’ve been working the Brewmaster into reclears, he’s 10/12 already (the guild has been cutting edge for a while).
I started off with the bear on alpha Shadowlands but I’ve been playing just the BrM for a while on alpha/beta and it’s just reaffirmed my decision.
If things had remained status quo, it would have been a difficult choice. But the fact that bears are getting NERFED in Shadowlands, while Brewmaster is getting large buffs… that made it easy.
I’ve been playing Tewa since Day One so it’s bittersweet, especially with 15 years of mementos, stuff like my Challenge Mode teleports, and other things that aren’t account-wide. I’ll miss those things.
But it was stupid not to switch to Brewmaster at the start of BfA. I’m not putting the guild through that again.
Another bonus is that this solves our Mystic Touch problem. Windwalker has been trash most of BfA so we haven’t wanted to bring one, and having our Mistweaver tag everything during fights was a silly burden to put on him for EVERY raid fight. It also meant we had to bring the Mistweaver as one of our 3 healers on 3-heal bosses, even at times when Mistweaver has been… not great… as a healer, this expansion.
Now I’ll bring Mystic Touch and we don’t NEED a WW/MW on the roster, unless they’re really good. Problem solved.
Lorlis technically isn’t my day one character because I leveled several classes to 15ish before making him, but he’s been my main since he was created so I get how you feel about changing.
I didn’t even think of Mystic Touch, we’ve been using a Mistweaver too.
My RL has said she’d support me staying bear, but I don’t want to put the guild/raid team through it either. Unless there are some changes for the better.
I might have to get a name change, though lol. I dunno if I want my main to have a joke name.
It’s unfortunate really, bear tanking was always pretty cool to me, especially with the balance of power and glade guardian appearances. I’ll still be playing every tank but it’s unfortunate that monk will still be top choice for raid after spending a whole expansion being #1.
Im looking at dropping druid completely in sl and playing dk (tank) priest (heals) hunter(dps) normally just had my druid for all 3 roles but its looking so bad in every aspect right now its not fun or worth playing
I have all 6 tanks at max level and right now I have it down to 3 choices for SL. Druid will most likely be benched after 15 years.I am sure that I will level him and I am sure they will give another borrowed fix to Bears in 9.2.5.
I’m still planning to wait closer to launch to make a definite decision but it’ll probably be the monk, maybe a pally, and I’ll probably level Lorlis just in case buffs come.
Here’s hoping stuff changes before launch, though, y’all.
What would it take for y’all to NOT swap, too? Just some numbers (and hopefully conduits…) tuning? One or two talent changes, like baking in Wild Charge or doing something to allow Typhoon + Ursol’s again? Or would it take something much more substantial?
I think I’d at least try it out with some numbers tuning, which we probably will see (and hopefully it’ll be positive) but I’ll have my monk or pally ready and waiting if that’s all we see. That’s about the best thing I see coming our way, too, but maybe Blizzard will surprise me.
If they just undo the Shadowlands nerfs, we’d still be behind current Brewmasters, let alone buffed Brewmaster that’s coming in Shadowlands.
Again, it’s not JUST that bear is the worst tank in the game, it’s not JUST that bear is getting nerfed in Shadowlands, it’s not JUST that Brewmaster is getting buffs. It’s all of it put together.
It most certainly was not, what? In neither expansion was brm a dominant tank. By any stretch of the imagination. It was strong, but it was never the best.
DK was not the best in Antorus. Druid and monk were effectively tied, bdk was only exceptionally strong for one fight, and it had nothing to do with it’s capabilities as a tank. Technically the best for that was warrior.
I still can’t believe how much whiplash I got from how hard they nerfed guardian for the sin of being the best tank for not even a whole expansion. Meanwhile, Brewmaster representation has just been ridiculous for almost every expansion after MOP. At least in raiding. Warrior seems to have been given the mantle of best M+ tank.
I wonder how many expansions bear will be punished for being good in nighthold.
It was a real circus at the time, practically a mob atmosphere of people demanding druid nerfs.
I remember talking to one of the “MVPs” (yes, the quotes are intentional) on the PTR forum at the time, and he kept saying “bears take less damage than warrior tanks” and I kept showing him log after log after log after log pointing out that, actually, bears took MORE damage than warriors, but had a much larger health pool so it was less stressful on the healers, and what was needed was to increase warrior health.
And I remember pointing out to him that on logs, the greyed-out part is absorbed damage, so damage not taken.
And the “MVP” response was, I kid you not, “Damage not taken is still damage taken.”
I mean… what do you say to someone at that point? When they’ve descended so far into the toilet of madness?
That was the extra slap in the face. Even as far back as Vanilla, that was a Druid tank’s “thing”. They took more damage as an overall number, but they had ENORMOUS effective health, that was their unique tank style. Very smooth damage intake, an almost inability to be one shot, but at the cost of increased healing throughput needs.
Warrior’s thing was always their ability to more efficiently take damage, but at the cost of it being potentially spiky.
Post legion nerfs, they gave all of the tanks giant health pools, so we don’t even really have that anymore. Meanwhile, warriors have just gradually been given everything we used to have. I feel like glass playing my 476 guardian, even after shifting to full vers corruptions, in contrast to my garbage warrior hovering around 440.
I’m not abandoning my druid, that’s still going to be my main, and I’m still going to be primarily guardian, but it’s going to feel awful and I know it. Unless Blizzard hits us with some last minute “Hey guys, we actually did a full guardian rework, just didn’t want to show you until the last second, for some reason.”.
Outside of that fairy tale rework happening, there’s still a lot of low hanging things they COULD do, but probably won’t.
Making ironfur a charge based ability, instead of relying on rage to get that first stack (since they seem to want us to be glass without any stacks of ironfur up). Have maul also charge ironfur stacks to give maul more reason to be used.
Give us a slow in the form of a rage cost, no cooldown roar ability. The rage cost should be reasonable, but high enough that it is a “choice”.
Give us bearhug back, so we have a stun. Make it a true rage dump, with variable damage/stun time based on say 20-100 rage spent. Keep the old cooldown on it.
Add a magic defense element to ironfur. Or just give us mark of ursol back, and make it literally the same mechanic as ironfur.
Take frenzied regen off the GCD, this one shouldn’t have stayed a problem for more than a week. It is probably the worse feeling ever to have effectively a mitigation ability gated behind the GCD. You just took a big hit, you’re about to die, and you just get to watch yourself die because you used mangle a split second before.
Man, I feel like I’ve just not paid attention to how bad bear has got, but reading Tewa’s posts in the beta forum definitely made it sink in more. I guess I’ve just gotten used to having our stuff slowly pruned away. Just a few of those suggestions, in this or Tewa’s post, would be pretty huge for us.
I wonder why Druids, or at least Feral and Guardian, seem to always be forgotten about.
Reading about the Monk and Pally conduits and covenant abilities after seeing ours is insane, too. It almost seems like a joke.
If I had to guess, they’ve probably got someone who understands resto/balance more than they understand feral/guardian. I don’t have any statistics to prove it, but I’ve always felt like guardian/feral is much closer in playstyle, while resto/balance is closer. People who play one, will probably at least dabble in the other.
They’ve probably got someone who plays balance or resto, and has a decent grasp on them, but doesn’t apparently have a clue about the shifting specs. You’d almost need to provide druids with two lead designers, one focusing on balance/resto, and one on feral/guardian. Or some unicorn who plays all four at pretty competent levels.
You mean when it was tied with warrior for best in the start of EN, then was dominant for the rest of EN after warrior was severely nerfed, then proceeded to be the dominant tank in every raid up to Antorus, where it was finally toppled from it’s #1 spot, to instead sharing said #1 spot with brm? Yeah, I can’t believe they nerfed it either. Not like guardian was at times a little strong in Legion.
Replace druid with any class or spec, put in for the appropriate raid, tier, season, content, etc, and the statement will literally never not be true.
I mean, not even close, no. Druid’s often occupied the health sponge spot, which is very much not effective for healing. Simply having a large health pool, does not make you easy to heal. That’s why current mastery at least makes sense, as it doesn’t pointlessly increase your health alone.
Druid’s actually often been a somewhat spiky tank, depending on the tier and expansion, due to the old Savage Defense. You know, good old RNG tanking.
…what?
The highest hp tank right now, and for pretty much the whole expansion, is vdh. Followed by a “high” mastery guardian druid, then bdk, then “low” mastery guardian druid, then warrior/paladin are tied, with monk at a pretty far bottom.
Then two possibilities exist.
A; you’re heavily exaggerating.
B; you really, really are not that good at guardian.