I started doing M0 and M2 with my Guardian Druid last week and felt extremly squishy. I might be undergeared (was around 620-627) bur then I tried the same dungueons with the same difficulty in my BDK, that has the same ilvl (even a little bit lower) and it was way easier, doing way more damange and could survive bigger pulls.
Whats the reason to play Guardian Druid in M+ content then? Looks like the worst tank for that alongs side with Brew. Sad state of affairs. Bear need more buffs.
What hero talents were you running?
I mean the fact you’re undergeared for mythics doesnt help you here, without the tankiness gear would give you you need to rely heavily on your healer, especially nowadays since we don’t have fast CD cycling on frenzied regen anymore, whereas a BDK always has access to their healing with no cooldown. Another thing to keep in mind is if you dont have good uptime on Ironfur then you will always be squishy
I literally spend all my rage on Ironfur, keeping all the stacks I can. I am running Elunes Chosen hero talent. But still the difference with BDK is night and day. I see no reason to play bear, sadly, since I like the fantasy of it.
Don’t take the bait bro.
What level content were you engaging in? BDK is notorious for being weaker in higher keys since the Shadowlands Season they were busted via Tier Set.
Bears can handle most of the incoming damage just fine with a coordinated group. It is the damage output that holds them back from being “the best tank”. A bear played correctly with support is just a brick wall with shag carpeting.
The one pull that scares me the most on Bear is the pack before the second boss in ML. That bleed is no joke and if you don’t have an evoker or coordinate a bop, your team has to assist you in kiting to allow the bleed to drop off.
There isn’t a bad tank out there currently. If you are more comfortable on your BDK then roll with it. Everyone has their preferences and comfort level. 99.9% of tank problems in content below Heroic Raiding or +12 Keys is pilot error. Learn, adjust, improve.
You need to become more proficient with a spec youre not familiar with
what do you tell me about every guy that knows how to play tanks like Tactyks or Quazzi that say bears are in the bottom of the tank tier list?
Im not saying I could handle the keys, I timed everything. Its just that when comparing versus BDK the difference was huge. Bdk could hold way bigger pulls than bear, doing more dps and with less effort.
Lists don’t matter. Bears and Brewmasters are in title level play, so they’re not struggling.
Lists don’t matter because it could be a 4% difference from 1st spot to 6th spot. “Bottom of the list” really is meaningless.
Simply a familiarity thing.
VDH > Druid
But you put me on a DH and i’ll be doing about half the damage/pulls of my Druid simply because i’m not as familiar with DH tanking.
i likeh ow squish vegan is still number 5 tank in the world in keys
but please tell us how bear is bad cause some people make tierlists
Bear is not bad right now.
Idk if he’s a good example to measure with. The dude is a Guardian God. I think even if the spec was total trash he’d still be at the top with it lol
i will absolutely use the person who can push the spec to its limits as a solid measurement of the specs capabilities. why wouldnt i use the person who can show the true limits of the spec as a example, what? especially the the majority of the druid playerbase macros ironfur to stuff then wonder where all their rage went
Because he’s an outlier. When you’re designing a game to appeal to the most people and generate the most money, you don’t want to design it in a way where only 1 in 1000 can actually make it work
I’m not saying bear is bad mind you, I’m simply saying using him as an example is basically cherry picking the best possible result which is definitely not the success rate most guardian players will experience or be able to achieve
Statistically there’s always going to be outliers. People who are well and above others for whatever reason, however they’re usually standing in that position alone. And while it does show those result can be achieved under certain conditions, it also shows those results are not the norm, and not what most players will experience.
your acting like bear isnt the easiest tank to play
if you want me to not cherry pick then okay
regards, stkk forest mouse are all doign the same level of keys like squish vegan then we see the bears who are only 1-2 keys behind.
if blizzard did that then every spec would be 2-3 buttons and people willt still mess up and blame something like “i dont have magic defeeense” you design the spec based on the top performance in raids and pepper in qol for the average player.
I am going to go out on a limb here so bear 
with me. Good Players play classes and spec’s well.
You have to take any outlier with a grain of salt. Ellesmere timing 18’s on a HPal in the middle of a Disc Priest Meta does not mean HPal is a top tier healer. What you have to into consideration is the average player. Can the average player play X spec at X level of content. If the answer is No then that spec has a problem that needs to be addressed.
Currently every tank can and is preforming well at the average level of content.
I never said it wasn’t, idk why you think I did.
All I’m saying is when you are trying to assess performance of a spec you cannot simply look at the top end. You have to consider a wider range than that if you want an accurate idea of performance
He’s the “potential” of the spec.
If not everyone re-rolled the FoTM every single season, you’d see a lot more Bears than just him near the top. (Same goes with every other tank spec too).
Could very well be if more people played it. The only thing that’s concerning a “top tier” is it’s popularity.
Bear tanks are only 1 key behind “meta”
H Pal is only 1 key behind “meta”
etc etc etc
These classes are playable at the very top. The only thing that separates them from the rest? Hive mind. Someone made a list and now I have to play whats at the top of the list.
If more people stuck to their preferred classes instead of giving in to the hive mind, you’d see a lot wider spread of representation of classes in the top 100
But that’s exactly where you go to look.
Its why with logs, people take Mythic and 95% for their reference point.
You pick the top to see what the class is fully capable of.
95% of what makes meta, meta, is damage output (check S1 tanks going from Warrior to Paladin for this reason)
yes that goews without saying thats why we dont need to focus on the average player to much, cause lets face it, the average tank player has giga skill issues (thats putting it nicely) people dont think they have to press buttons to be defensively sound or generate threat. ive seen plenty of fotm vdh thats do 500k overal and have auto attack as their second best damaging abnility before osul cleave.
designing around the average player is just inviting alot of things that would scale out of control in higher tier unloess they neutor specs
end of the day, meta means nothing unless your in a key level where it matters. blizzard cant fix community perception, only the community at large can. sadly they have no interest in fixing it.
i can as well and come to the same conclusion that bear is fine, its just again a very loud minority thinks the only reason theyre not invited to weekly keys is due to the “meta” when in reality its probably them playing like garbage and yoyoing hp as bear (which is lmaaao)
if you really really want to look at the metric blizzard balances in raid. mythic 70% percentile. when you look at that, then alot of tunign choices starts making sense.