question is did the buff make it worth picking??
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/guardian-boring/715266/40?u=aliâna-kirin-tor
I love being a bear, but I do wish we could get the werebear.
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I’m not seeing it buffed anywhere…and outside of Raids, I still find it useless, especially with the 45 second cool down attached to it.
And I wish I had played this guy more in Legion and gotten the hulk bear mode myself. It’s schemexy
I’ll at least be able to get my blue bear which is the one I’m really after but… yeah. The werebears are smexy sauce.
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No, what are you talking about? I was talking about Blood in the bit you quoted. Reading comprehension is hard.
Guardian is very strong when played well. Never said otherwise. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s quite bland.
There are several beta-testers that are saying that it is quite strong. Simultaneously, there are several beta-testers that are saying other tanks are stronger. I think the main drawback (especially in m+) is that the damage output for bear is rather low currently. That is a big reason why VDH and Prot Pal are considered to be the more viable tanks in m+ for the time being.
Personally, bear looks to be an extremely tanky choice, great for higher m+ and raids. The barkskin legendary looks to be an incredible choice for m+, and the recent buff to pulverize looks to be a solid choice for raids.
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I like how your talking. Of course. I do like prot tanking, blood and monk, But… I do loves mah bear.
1,1,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3
I think a nice damage buff would help. I love playing my bear but I do feel the damage is slightly low.
Bear damage is low, but to be honest I think it’s built into the design. On big enough pulls, bear can sit at the 85% reduction armor cap forever. No other tank can do that. The damage also gets quite decent with triple bleeds on everything.
They just mitigate so much physical damage I think they’ve accounted for that. You gotta go big, which pumps up the groups overall dps. At the armor cap and even with only 20% dodge, you’re mitigating nearly 90% of physical damage.
Sure, there’s nothing for magic, but I often think too much is made of this. We have reasonable self heals and our mastery makes healing more effective on us. I don’t think it’s anywhere as bad as people make out by not having stuff like AMS or tatoos.
The hardest part of bear tanking is just the pull. Gathering everything up on those big pulls and holding aggro and not dying when you’ve only got those 1-2 stacks of ironfur. That’s when you should use barkskin or other defensives.
Once you stabilize, you’re basically invulnerable to phys.
I post while I’m at work, so it’s generally a lot of speed reading. I’m actually glad I reread the original comment and what you wrote about before replying because at first I was going to comment about the conversation being all over the place and no need for condescension, but after having the time to actually read it, all I can say is yup, you’re right 
I’ve always found if you pool rage between pulls and you play around the group well, bear feels borderline indestructible. Everyone likes to complain that it doesn’t really have any good tools against magic damage, but tanks are weak to magic damage by design.
Yeah I agree.
Warrior is weak against magic damage except for reflect.
Pally is weak against it in dungeons as they don’t spec into the spell block.
Monk gets chunked by spell damage too, although it gets somewhat smoothed by stagger.
Everyone raves about DK and DH magic tankiness. I’ve played both much more than I have bear. DH mitigates 10% or whatever from tattoos, and DK can AMS and now AMZ. All of that provides pretty minimal sustain really. However - they both have insane self healing. Which when you’re only dealing with magic damage, is crazy strong. E.g shadow of zul is absolute cake on both of those specs. That’s a weird edge case though. What people forget, is that in m+ you’re often taking either mostly physical, or magic and STILL a lot of physical. And DK is squishy as hell and so is DH outside of meta or bone spikes.
So far in pre-patch, Guardian feels much tankier than both when we’re talking just extended periods of face tanking a bunch of stuff.
You’re right about how much the pooling rage helps btw.
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Are you referring to the blessing of Spellwarding talent for Paladins, or Holy shield?
Spellwarding replaces BoP and is on a 3 minute CD
Holy Shield increases your block chance and allows you to block spells.
I run Holy Shield which smooths out magic damage over the course of the whole dungeon as compared to Spellwarding which will be used for a specific mechanic more or less.
So I went back some last night and played around with my DH, DK, Pally, and Druid and paid more attention to how it felt to tank relative to one another.
Know what I was most bored with actually? DH, when it came down to the number of buttons I routinely pressed. But did I enjoy it? Yes. Why? Jumping around, sigils, and being #1 healer. But outside that…no different than Bear.
ANd I think that’s the issue with bear. No visuals. Even with werebear, its left paw swipe, right paw swipe, over and over, moonfire some. Charge some. There is a tiny visual for barkskin.
But I still like bear. Maybe its because I didn’t have all that to manage, and I got to enjoy the tanking. I just wish I had a ranged silence of some type. but oh well.
I think Nevok is right. Bears need to pull a lot. The amount of damage they can soak up is amazing. I can’t wait for the legendary that gives me IF and FR each time I pop barkskin and each time it ends. That’s just nuts to have that every 40s with the talents?
I honestly think Bear is going to surprise a lot of people 3-4 months from now.
I think I finally decided last night that I’ll be going Bear/Resto as my main, and Shadow Priest for DPS main with a Holy healing alt. I’m trying to decide if I should do anything with my 2nd druid, like Feral/Resto just for fun.
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Was meaning holy shield. A talent that was basically never taken for pally in m+ tanking. They needed the melee dmg reduction from hammers as they were super squishy. Hammers also allowed ranged kite tanking, again to deal with squishiness issues.
I haven’t played pally in pre-patch, I played it a lot in S3. You’re right though, just looked at the guide and they take holy shield now. That’s cool. Will help a bit with magic damage.
I must have been out of the loop, I had taken Holy Shield from the get go >.< but that’s also from playing Bear all of BfA, so the chance to block spells was a big deal for me 
Hammers reminded me too much of Diablo Paladin and I just didn’t like the feel, so Holy Shield was the default for me. Look at me, being ahead of the times haha
Yeah that’s what I mean.
DH is a very basic and very spammy rotation. There’s a little nuance to it, such as weaving sigils and leaps in even when stationary, for dot uptime. And ssoooo many DH get the pull wrong and just immediately lose threat (before pre-patch changes anyway). Don’t know what’s so hard about placing a sigil and timing your leap to both hit at same time, then hitting immo aura for more aoe dmg. But so many just leap in and expected a couple of cleaves to hold aggro. I dunno…DH players. 4 button rotations on both specs attract only the best, lol.
You’re right though - leaping around is FUN. As is all the self healing and visuals of both vengeance and blood.
I enjoy bear for the tankiness, but there’s absolutely something missing in terms of the feel, compared to every single other tank. You just don’t feel like you’re doing anything except being a meat shield. The most satisfying thing is hitting thrash on the pull for some aoe snap threat and getting everything on you.
Our sound effects are weak or not satisfying and visually it’s very plain.
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So last night on my DH, I was having that issue. I don’t play DH enough, but last night I was particularly bad. On one pull, I went to leap, my hand slipped a little right as I released the leap and landed between 2 packs, with a useless AoE, no agro, and tons of mobs running around.
But I think the 2nd part is the reason bear ‘seems’ boring. Visuals just plan suck. We don’t get to see flashy armor. Our ability visuals are barely distinguishable from auto attacks.
Been playing my Guardian a ton lately and it doesn’t feel anymore boring that other tanks I play. It feels the same as prot warrior in terms of spells and stuff.
I’m lovin mah bear atm.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/guardian-boring/715266/57?u=aliâna-kirin-tor
So, what’s your fav tank atm?