Did a Deadmines and couldn’t hold agro to save my life. Rage starved most the time, using taunt on cool down just trying to get agro on something, real struggle.
Now, admittedly I do not have the survival tactics rune yet so I was rolling the Windfury Rune which certainly didn’t help with my group decimating me in agro and I was running mangle instead of lacerate (which I have since changed out) but man… it felt like there was no tank as the warrior and rogue in the group pulled off so easily.
Also using the 1min rage cool down on cool down but it was a struggle whenever there was more than one enemy to deal with.
I don’t want to write the situation off as “Just people with the retail mindset who expect tanks to immediately and always have massive AoE threat” but still.
Kinda hope to figure something out, a way to generate more threat and hold agro better in pack situations.
Unfortunately a lot of it does come down to dps going all out too quickly and ripping aggro… bears dont have a great aoe threat move to start a pull with like a paladin for example
Unless Thrash (no Rage, 6 second CD, No enemies hit cap) is on the menu soon, Bear will be in trouble.
Swipe doesn’t scale. It’ll get a bit better later. If BFD has anything to show for it, +AP Weapons in forms looks like it’s going to stick around which will be helpful.
Wishful thinking honestly. They left the original tanks to rot while giving DPS flashy abilities. Hope for a less chaotic P2.
Bear tanking seems kind of sucky at the moment. My limited experience with SoD druid tanking left me feeling like I didn’t have enough rage. Also, swipe has always been a bit of a joke. Only advice I can give, which probably isn’t anything you haven’t already thought of:
(1) I’d still run WF rune
(2) wear more DPS gear
(3) pretty much just taunt what you can, when you can, and forget the rest. If they spank it, they can tank it
(4) I actually preferred mangle over lacerate, but as I said I’ve tanked very little in SoD, and I could be very wrong
(5) RECOMMENDED: just go cat and let someone else deal with the headache
While I’ve only tanked a bit as bear, I think the thing that feels broken is neither lacerate nor mangle benefit from talents, whereas maul does.
If you’re speccing into feral particularly, it seems to require not really using mangle/lacerate except the rare time you have rage to dump and relying on the age-old tab and auto/maul strat.
Unless you outlevel the mobs a bit, it also feels a lot squishier than sham appears to be, and with fewer useful tools available once you’re in form (e.g. tremor)
IDK, it feels simultaneously fine for classic and slightly better but not really juiced up in the way other specs are.
Agree with Maully, I would keep the WF rune up, yes in a melee heavy group it will wash out somewhat, but esp. with a slow attack speed and a high chance to get parried/block/miss every extra attack helps, esp at the start of the fight.
I’ve been using sunfire in dungeons and if I don’t have rage I’ll start in cat and pull with that then shift to bear, then try to keep rage pooled between packs as much as possible.
Furor is ok.
I will say it’s rough, but also in normal dungeons you can just let someone that takes agro take the hits for a second unless it’s the healer at this level.