I’ve only healed on this guy and haven’t tried tanking. Main reason I haven’t given it a shot is I’ve read how boring Guardian is.
How is it, though? It seems cat weaving and other utility outside of bear form would be pretty cool.
Before you tell me to give it a shot, I will once I get home. At work, though, and bored…
Boring is subjective…it’s a lot slower paced than the other tanks though, I’ll give it that much.
I still enjoy it, but I would be lying if I said I haven’t moved to gearing up my Paladin to tank in SL
I’ve tanked on my blood dk for a long time, and a lot on my warrior before that… and maybe I’m the weird one but I don’t find Druid tanking any more boring or stale than the other two. It’s different, and I feel like it has different sub roles that it performs, but I don’t feel like I’m on autopilot or anything when I play it.
Is the rotation straight forward? Sure. But, simple doesnt always equal boring, especially on harder content, imo.
The Guardian rotation is pretty uninspired, but tanking itself is engaging (at least in M+). If you’re thinking about becoming a career tank, I’d pick something else. If you’re just looking to mess around, maybe tank some dungeons for guildies/friends, Guardian is fine.
Okay, thanks for the info. I do plan on career tanking. Any suggestions for a tank that will be engaging for the long haul?
If you like fantastic passive mitigation (ie will almost never get spiked) go monk. Added bonuses: Paralysis, AoE Stun, AoE Snare, Ring of Peace, Transcendence, Roll, Clash, Disease dispel
If you like controlling your healing and using a plethora of defensives pre-emptively to avoid spikes go DK. Added bonuses: Death Grip, Mass Grip, ST stun, DnD snare, Brez, control undead (don’t scoff at this… some of those NPCs hit really really hard and it’s a free CC that’s literally a net DPS gain).
If you like having passive healing and kiting as needed to avoid spikes go DH. Added bonuses: AoE grip, AoE Silence, AoE CC, Imprison (doesn’t put you in combat if you walk past the mob!!!), Double Jump, Fel Jump
If you want to be a god of group utility and interrupts, with some healing and a bit of spikiness go Paladin. Added Bonuses: LoH, BoP, Bubble Taunt, ST Stun, Freedom, Sac, Conc Snare, AoE disorient, Disease dispel, AVENGERS FLIPPING SHIELD (I’ve carried groups hard on any boss that requires interrupts)…
I’ve never tanked difficult content with my warrior, so can’t comment on them, but from what I’ve seen… they don’t look like they’re going to be in a good place come SL.
Anywho, those are my general feels for each of the other tanks. Which you prefer is really down to you. I like each of them for different reasons, and depending on the content each have their own spot.
While it is generally less interactive than most other tanking specs, it also allows you to focus on your environment more, especially when learning new material. It is a pretty solid tank all around and has some solid utility.
In raids, kitty affinity with heart of the wild has some amazing potential for doing competitive dps (during the cooldown) while another tank is actively tanking.
Warrior feels pretty good at least on live right now. All the tanks are pretty closely balanaced atm and I have yet to have a problem with any of them in keys, in terms of damage or survivability, even with suboptimal group play.
It’s pretty bland, but it’s fine and quite strong right now.
I actually think the blandness comes less from the rotation and more from the sounds/animations and “feel”.
I hadn’t bear tanked since BC where I was a MT, and have just been trying it again the last few days. I certainly remember mangle and stuff being a bit more satisfying.
Feral was just awesome then though, being both a tank and dps with one spec.
Leaving bear form to catweave (and by extension, heal or do ranged dps) isn’t really possible in most M+ situations, unfortunately.
To be an acceptable Bear tank has a pretty low bar. Understand your mitigation, cooldowns, etc. It’s pretty simple.
I think the fun of Bear tanking comes from two things for me. Its a little more relaxed than on my DK. And can get fun when things go bad, like trying to kite away a little to get a BREZ off on the healer who died.
Its also a bit less visually pleasing than say my paladin. Paladin has some of the best visuals for tanking IMO. I guess for me that makes it a little boring (druid that is).
I wish they would bring back the ability to decide to mitigate physical or magic damage with my rage. They’ve done some rework on SL to make Maul at least a fleeting consideration for rage with some of the items available. But it isn’t a lot.
What I’d love to see is some kind of 2-5 second buff for weaving in and out of forms as druid. Like if I move from bear to another form, I get to keep the armor and HP buff for 5s. That way I can weave in either heals or Brez on my group. Then make it where if I shift back to bear within that time period, I get some benefit in bear from what I did when I was out of bear. Like if I cast heals, I can cast self heals in bear form for 5s. If I was in cat form, when I go back to bear, I get a 10% damage buff. But this on some type of cooldown, like 30s, but give me a reason to be a hybrid as a bear.
I love resto druid because I can play as a hybrid, and I love it. Bear, I feel like I am paying the hybrid tax, but getting nothing in return.
I enjoy guardian. It IS easy to pick up and repetitive, but you get to make choices that other tanks don’t get to make such as when to risk dropping form or not, which is strictly speaking a terrible thing, but adds gameplay and flavor. We get lots of QoL to consider as well. We are not the best tank, but we are still a tank, which guarantees a spot in most groups you might apply to.
To be perfectly honest - Picking all passive talents, Ignoring all non-bear abilities,
and Macroing Ironfur to swipe, mangle, thrash and moonfire and just using them with cooldowns sprinkled in will get you through all content into low mythic keys and probably normal raiding as well. It is VERY easy to pick-up and VERY forgiving of mistakes. I would NOT recommend this lol, just trying to make a point: That bear is pretty laid back and easy. If you wanted to play a healer or dps, and only keep the option of tanking for when you need a group to progress, to gear faster, or to fill out a dungeon roster with your friends then Bear is an excellent choice.
You will never say, for example “Oh man, i missed that gore proc, now my damage is [a word meaning excrement which apparently blizzard finds offensive that starts with an sh and ends in it] and the group wiped” You just shrug and don’t do it next time because our rotation isn’t really spikey or impactful. You probably used another ability in that GCD, and it probably did slightly less damage/rage, and that’s ok. 1.5 seconds later your back to where you were and you can make a better choice.
This is VERY different than, for example, feral gameplay where a mistake can have massive impact on your damage. Bear is super laid back and chill.
You’re right about the look and feel. It’s pretty bland. We’re a bear swatting at stuff with our paws.
A well played guardian druid is very much a hybrid though. Vortex, get some space, heal yourself or another group member to full in 2 globals (regrowth -> swiftmend).
There was a +16 done in beta with no healer, just a guardian healing, with i think a ret offhealing a bit too. Or maybe it was a protpally and a guardian, I forget. Either way, guardian can put out a lot of healing, and ridiculous burst healing when swiftmend is up.
I do think there will always be some form of hybrid tax though - especially for druids. We’re the only class that can play all 4 roles.
Resto druid is very difficult to make strong for raiding without making it even more broken in m+. So we seem to have just settled on it being great in m+ and poor to average in raids.
I think the tank community would revolt if guardian was ever the “go-to” for raiding. It can be fun in m+ due to how its mitigation scales with pull size, and the off-healing etc. But on one target it’s like watching paint dry.
And the entire dps community would be in fits if balance or feral were top dog. Hard to blame them too, since we can also tank and heal.
I don’t buy the logic of hybrids never being top dps just due to it being less likely, as they don’t have 3 dps specs like pure dps classes. There’s more to it than that, and there probably has to be or who would play pure classes.
Uhh… did they take ability to cast rebirth instant in bear form away?
Nope, was puzzled by that comment too.
I know they didn’t lol. Just making sure he knows.
I prefer the simplicity of a bear swatting at stuff. The simplicity allows for greater awareness elsewhere. I also like the bear moans and grunts. Guardian is fine. The thing is, people feel like they can’t compete if they’re not playing the absolute best class. The “fotm” if you will. The question is, are you going for world first? Are you going to be in such a highly competitive raid that every little advantage means the difference between victory or defeat? Are you running keys so high that the former question applies? For the average user, the answer is simply…no. That being the case guardian is a perfectly fine tank. It’s fairly sturdy, has a good bit of cool downs, unique raid utility, and you get to be a bear with a huge butt mauling something you might find a bit edible later once it’s dead.
Just sayin… lol.
Guardian is fine, never said it wasn’t. For m+ it’s actually looking quite strong, i’ve been playing it a bit the last few days.
I don’t think it can be argued that it’s not quite bland though. This doesn’t mean it’s not fun. Some people love bland.
I actually find brewmaster easier and more boring than guardian. Keep your mitigation up 100% and keep RJW up 100%. Apart from that, you can afk or mash your face on the keyboard for all it matters. Haven’t tried it since the re-work though.
Every spec is “viable” usually up to about +20 keys if played well. That doesn’t change the fact than an average player will notice a huge difference if they play the meta tank spec at any point in time.
Not only due to the surviveability that usually goes with that - the size of pulls that you can do. But also just due to being able to get invites to better groups. Tanks usually don’t lack for invites, but to get into that really good group that’s about to pug a high key? They’ll usually be going with a meta comp, to give themselves the best chance.
Invites simply dry up to pugs on a lot of specs around the 2k mark.
It’s got a cast time if your OUT of bear form, I think 3 secs? IDK why you would do it that way, for obvious reasons, but maybe this is what he meant?
most people find it easy. Easy doesn’t always = bland. However, classes rise and fall in the grand scheme of things. The average player doesn’t always go into 20+ mythic keys. Will an average player notice differences? Sure. Doesn’t mean you should drop what you find fun for something you don’t necessarily like. In the end it’s all mashing buttons. Blood has downtime on occasions, to me bear is a lot more active than blood and on occasions more fun. But, I still love blood because of the theme. Bland is subjective. And yes, tanks don’t really lack in invites until you get into the higher keys. But… Most players don’t get into the higher keys.
So, in the end. play what you like.