Hiya Alerzhus,
Firstly myself personally don’t do high keys but I know guildies that do and reasoning below:
The reason tanks are ranked because of how much they can do. High keys all the parties should not only have a decent damage + the tanks should be pulling pretty aggressively. Comparing Bear to say Monk, Monk can stagger and keep mobility while tanking. Bear cannot.
If you’re wanting to be meta go monk or warrior.
Every tank is viable to tank mythic EP and M+ up to at least +20 though.
So if you like bear… play bear. They have some neat tricks they can do.
As others have said, unless your pushing high levels of content (going for CE/M+ 20’s and above)… Both will be fine.
If you are going for that content, then 100% Monk for the current meta. They have 100% active mitigation uptime, stagger naturally smooths damage spikes, they do more damage, they provide the 5% physical damage debuff, ring of peace is fantastic to give yourself breathing room as well as in helping out with skips (RoP doesn’t actually pull mobs it knocks back), they provide and AoE stun, a long duration CC, and finally keg smash applies a natural slow making kiting easier.
Long story short, they have a better toolkit, smooth out damage spikes, and are relatively easy to play.
Here’s the representation breakdown for +20 keys: https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-bfa-3/all/world/leaderboards#role=tank:mode=unique:minMythicLevel=20:maxMythicLevel=99
Having said all this… This ONLY applies… if you’re interested in doing that level of content. Ignore people telling you that a bear sucks for a +10-15 dungeon… Sure they’re not the best of the best, but they’re MORE than viable for the vast majority of content.
As for raids, brewmaster is the way to go for Mythic progression atm. Why? Stagger. Even so though… It’s not like it’s impossible to do it with something else. We personally run a brewmaster and a prot pally, and are working on Za’qul.
This is a great post. I wish we could give credit for posts like this on the forums which would result in game time or gold.
I actively play both though not at high level. Monk is faster paced, has good tool kit as outlined above, fun drunken warrior lore. Monk dps is better, key stat is crit so you get some fun numbers. Bear has slower pace, fewer buttons and is more forgiving mistakes in rotation. Druid in general: dont underestimate insta-flight form and cat sprint, their mobility is just as good as monk. I always ask healer which tank they want and its really pretty equal. Play whatever is most fun to you personally.