I don’t get the fascination with having an offensive cooldown. I mean, sure, I can see why DPS will want a burst window, but as a tank I like being as close to 100% power 100% of the time as possible. As soon as you add a cooldown you have to reduce baseline power.
Personally it bothers me more that we have zero offensive benefit in our defensive abilities, and vice versa. SotR deals damage and reduces incoming; Death Strike deals damage, absorbs incoming and heals; Shield Block increases the damage of an ability while reducing incoming; etc. As soon as we choose between Maul and Ironfur we lose out on one or the other, meaning we either have to have better offense or defense to make up for the one we’re choosing to augment, and the other will become too powerful if we switch (which is likely why we’re weaker at both baseline presently).
This is why most Bears would love to see a return of the Rage of the Sleeper. A combination defensive/offensive CD. Will it happen? Doubtful. But would be amazing if it happened.
Please bring back infected wounds to Thrash damage as a slow and will go a long way to helping guardian druids.
And the old leader of the pack group buff would give us some usefull ness again in dungeons.
Rage of the sleeper is just pie in the sky stuff we wont get but would be great.
Quadrupled, not tripled. Well, up to quadrupled. Which would be nice if the healing was also quadrupled, but it’s only doubled. At least the extra healing is all front-loaded, but that’s still a pretty nasty hit to rage efficacy.
And then we get trucked a few seconds later when our Ironfur falls off and the game blew our banked rage so we can’t case a new one.
(BTW I say “tripled” because no way will I ever use this when I’m at 40+ rage. It’s not worth losing an ironfur. Just gotta trust the healer at that point.)
Mekkatorque, 76 parses:
Earthwarden: 37
Guardian of Elune: 23
Survival: 16
(As somebody who uses Earthwarden on this fight myself, a big factor there is all the shapeshifting we have to do, which wipes our rage bar, while Earthwarden charges persist through shapeshifting.)
Wouldn’t it be better in those situations to just be more powerful as a baseline? If you have a cooldown that boosts your power by a meaningful amount, say 50%, for 12 of every 180 seconds, you’ll get the same (or better, since it probably won’t be chained perfectly) sustained benefit by being 3.33% stronger at all times - and you never have to worry about it still being on cooldown. Less impressive on a per-use measurement, but far more useful overall.
Is the FR change a joke? I thought Blizz wanted us to have more rage for Ironfur, not less. What a horrible, horrible idea. Lower the cooldown by 12 seconds and take it off the GCD. Done.
Gonna hold out on my opinion on the new FR changes till I can play with it on the PTR but the little testing I’ve done, led me to grabbing more haste instead of vers (I wanted to see how much of an advantage I could take of the rage reductions and mangle changes) and found it was really easy to keep atleast 2 IF on me constantly. (and this in ST, in aoe it was pretty easy to have almost 4 at all times)
Leads me to think that maybe(?) that it’s possible to use the rage dump part of FR effectively without letting IF fall out?
In any case, the haste builds of bear definitely help in the dreadfully boring rotations of bear.
That’s really nothing new as that’s been the suggested build, especially for M+. The added haste is important for lowering the cooldown times of Mangle, Thrash, and FR which meant more active healing and easier threat management.
Vers > Haste > Crit > Mastery is the current suggested stat tree, for survival oriented with good dps mix.
Now, before all the folks who run other builds and trees jump in, of course you should do your own research and verify for yourself what you want to run. This is an understood that some folks seem to be missing.
Not really because some of the best high versatility stat weighed items are rings, so you’re likely going to want to have a set of rings specifically for Guardian and another for Balance, each with their own respective enchants.
As for gems, they’re super cheap these days. I’d likely say your best ROI is to swap them out based on the specialization’s stat weights you’re currently playing just like you would for azerite traits.
I’ve asked in a few alpha’s, and beta’s if Bears could at least get a talent that would allow us to maintain our Rage when shifting like Cats have for their resource bar. Imagine if Cats lost their entire Energy bar or went from 100 to 20 because they had to use some spell that took them out of form.
Warriors no longer have stance dance (resulted in a loss of Rage), I’m not sure why Bears can’t get it even with a talent? What has irked me the most for many many expansions is having to mount up or get out of form for short time to keep up with group/raid and all the Rage built up for next pack gets lost (get a 1/5th bar of Rage when shifting).
I’m not saying Bears are Warriors but since they force Druids to play more specialization. Bears should be able to keep Rage when shifting, even if for a costly talent (though I think it should be the default).
Actually even less than doubled considering the first portion of the heal is effected by mastery, for instance frenzied on my bear gives 24% health not 18, but the additional 30 rage is only going to give 18% not effected by mastery (however still effected by Guardian of Elune).