Guardian Druid Bottom tier for both M+ and Raids

Classes Druid
61

So I still had my free 110 boost just sitting there. I Trialed a Death Knight. Went Blood and pressed the button to boost. I am in ilvl 176 Greens and I feel just so more dangerous as a tank than when I leveled my Legendary Geared Druid. I blew through 2 levels in about an hour. If I continue to get stronger 113-120 and gear him up pretty fast I might have a major decision to make.

14 years played vs 14 days played.

1 Like
62

can this meme die? bear was good for such a small percent of legion that by the end of the xpac every tank was good that bears being good became voided out

2 Likes
63

Correct we were meta for half mortal guilds progression toward CE in NH. We were ok in ToS and in Antorous but by the time Antorous released the meta was Monk/DK which it remains to this day.

As far as Mekkatorque… That fight does suck for bears as all of his special attacks are nature damage. We killed it when it was decided to taunt on 2 stacks when possible in phase 3.

As far as the rest of BoD, I am not sure if I can stay on my Bear through the whole tier. Time to dust off my DK.

I was hoping with the release of Mythic this week and seeing the utter BS that reaping does to bears in M+ with the Reap Soul DoT that Blizzard would see just how far Bears have fallen. While I still believe that we will scale well come 8.2 our glaring lack of utility and tanking tool kit to actually tank every boss regardless of damage profile; Blizzard pretty much confirmed that wholesale changes are no happening.

Sigh… :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

64

I would like to think I am not too poorly geared, but I shouldn’t be struggling at all to complete a mythic+ 2. The only thing really waying me down is my weapon, but still a plus two should not be impossible to do

65

I plan on sticking with Feral/Bear for M+.

The plus side is when I do hop onto my Monk it feels like EZ mode.

And bear is so dead in M+ that I’m sitting in top500 in the world for M+ score so I can brag. :stuck_out_tongue:

The specs feels extremely underwhelming. But I’ve been a Feral Druid since Classic so I’m not changing now.

66

Guardian druid damage needs to be buffed by 50%. damage taken needs to buffed in someway.

67

Notice that myself, my co-tank is a monk, on Jaina HC he was taking 20+ stacks like a boss, while me as a bear, was strugling for my life at 12 stacks.

2 Likes
68

If bear damage got buffed by 30% and they too 10% less damage would they be viable? Even with those buffs?

69

Lol I don’t know where you are getting this 30% number, it’s more like 5%.

We could use FR off the gcd and thrash to apply a stacking slow, but things feel a lot better this season as gear has scaled up.

For mythic+ it’s getting to the point where I’m starting to outdps mediocre players again like I did in legion (doing about 17k DPS on skada overall). Don’t have any swipe azerite but I’m seriously considering it for ROFL value

1 Like
70

So I recently decided to try out Guardian Druid in a PvP setting - nothing serious just a few random/casual bgs just to see how it plays.

It seems this thing can’t PvP either :roll_eyes: , I got like 0 kills in every match and I was constantly being kited left and right (lack of a baseline gap-closer or charge sucks). I generally felt useless to the rest of my team, and it was an unpleasant experience. I won’t be playing Guardian in PvP again lol

I switched over to my Protection Warrior alt to compare notes… my god it was night and day! Ran a few random bgs and I did respectable damage, on top of bringing great utility to my team with Dragon Charge, Demo Shout, multiple stuns, roots, Fears, you name it. I could actually “take a hit” too, I was in an Arathi Basin where I was guarding Farm by myself and I got jumped by a Hunter and a Rogue. Long story short I destroyed the Rogue and the Hunter ended up running away with his tail between his legs :rofl: I later got ambushed by a GPyro Mage with similar results :rofl:

Protection Warrior is also excellent versus casters with all the baseline gap-closers it has and of course Spell Reflect (for those dangerous Greater Pyros / Chaos Bolts). I’ve done so much damage to Warlocks and Mages with a well-timed Spell Reflect… but on Guardian Druid whenever I ran into say, a Fire Mage I would just drop like a sack of bricks :persevere:

TL;DR

Not only is Guardian Druid lackluster in PvE, but it’s also hot trash in PvP (whereas other tank specs can actually hold their own, for example Prot Warrior)

71

Try Bear/hpally/arms 3s
Take demo shout, den mother and the one where you absorb damage allies take, spec into brambles/resto affinity

72

The only thing Blood is good at is tanking and it’s tool kit. DK in general is above average as an unholy for pvp, frost is very reliant on Breath of Sindragosa for mythic and only brings aoe to the table. It’s a hero class, and as a main I am happy to actually be useful in pve to others. We don’t need a nerf but bears need a buff.

My friend plays a druid and we usually sign up to pug as duo tanks. He keeps the ironfur’s rolling, and does good. He says however that his thrash and swipe don’t generate enough aggro/lose aggro too often on mob packs. Do you think increasing threat generation, a third charge of frenzy reg, or adding mark of ursol would help? I actually want to bear tank in the future.

73

The answer to your question is yes. And there are a few other things that need to be addressed.

74

Look at the damage done by any bear at the end of the dungeon, and then look at a prot warrior. A 30% damage buff is needed for guardian druid to fix the low damage.

75

That’s a warrior’s niche though. Why groups bring a warrior is the damage they bring to the table and the ability to block physical damage.

I do agree though bears need some love. Why I turned mine into a resto. Just isn’t competitive with other tanks.

76

Our guild loves our tank Druid for some reason it’s what they wanted.

77

I like to play druid tank, but it’s obvious that Blizzard must buff this spec.

78

They like the thiccness. Legit the deciding factor of what made me choose between a pally and a druid. Just gonna thrash until they give us love!

79

I play both warrior and druid tanks, and one thing that bothers me is that I can get extra effectiveness from secondaries as warrior (Crit increasing parry) While for druids there’s not a similar effect from sec stats.
Agility is a primary stat, but I think since many azerite traits for guardian druids are focused on increasing our agility, maybe increasing our armor by a flat amount based on Agi like it used to be, or increase ironfur scaling by a few %s.

Anyway, I think guardian druids aren’t that far from viable as people make it seem, for raids you can stack mastery and azerite mastery procs, you are still a healing sponge, but a effective heal friendly one. With 394 Ilvl on my druid with a few procs I’m pretty much always around 20% mastery, sometimes sitting on the 30% mark, that combined with some versatility, pulverize and ironfur makes one incredibly resillient.

IMO the main issue is threath generation on M+, we should be able to hold more than 1 trash’s attention when our Icarnation (3min cd) isn’t available, and that’s easily fixed. The FR on GCD is annoying as well.

80

Crit gives bears dodge.

They lowered our dodge to build in room for it, though. So it’s forgivable if you didn’t even notice. :rofl: