Hello, I’m Vishal, and I’ve formerly played as Beware during my Cutting Edge days.
Before I get into what I’m suggesting, I just want Blizzard to know I’ve been a fairly loyal player to this class. I’ve been playing since 2007 and started tanking during Wrath, moving from Paladin to Guardian and DK and back to bear after realizing the most valuable asset to playing a Guardian is the simplicity of it: This allows you to pay attention more in raid as well as shot call.
I’ve seen the various changes to bear over the years and found them a mix of confusing and fun. Its like developers don’t know which direction to go with Bear, or they don’t want to admit they use Bear as the simple dummy tank to test abilities and fixes before taking them and giving them to other tanks.
One thing that should be returned to bear is the absorb bubble. Like a Monk’s stagger you can, no pun intended, make bear great again.
What you do is change Maul, a rather useless dps filler, and make it a choice for rage implementation.
Bears have plenty of rage now, but we’re lacking in mitigation and health compared to other tanks, and this is the first expansion in a few years that can be said.
If you’re going to make Bears an obese feral druid with no health to soak magic damage, no utility to compete with other tanks, and generally no special aspect to make it more fun to play vs. its other specs then you guys can at least return the one change you ever made to bear that worked well enough to be left alone.
CHANGE:
Maul would continue to strike two targets, and striking more than 1 target would buff the secondary aspect you should add to it. Maul would provide a (Insert Understandable Value Here) absorb shield that in place of healing with Frenzied Regen would grant Bears the magic damage reduction they need to compete with other tanks.
This would also be a very balanced change in regards to forcing bears to choose yet another avenue for their rage. Bears can mindlessly armor spam or frenzied spam to survive and yes they have Bark skin and Survival Instincts, but these CDs are so nerfed after the loss of Artifact Weapons that you might as well only count them for large damage reduction CDs to be used at appropriate times.
Bears need something so they can compete in Mythic Dungeons as well as Mythic End Game Raiding. Provide us with an Absorb bubble like we used to have in Mastery that is only available if we use our brains and hit the target with Maul instead of blowing rage on another armor or frenzied hot. This change would balance our spec well enough to not only make it competitive but FUN!
Also, this would give bears a reason to go one way or the other in terms of versatility vs. mastery. You can tweak Mastery again and provide us with the health pool you took, or at least make it possible again, and give us the absorb on demand from Maul to make versatility stacking another avenue. A balance act between the two stats would provide bears with a decent health pool as well as absorbs, so up to you- obviously.
If nothing else, just think about it okay? I want to do Plus 10s again but no one will take me because you’ve effectively killed Bears by ignoring their development. Happy Holidays!