I have played blood DK, brewmaster, prot warr (current main). And gotten all of them to 640. I like that each of them has good repertorie that allow them to do multiple group pulls and survive just fine on low to medium keys.
Brwm stagger and picking up its own orbs keeps the damage intake stable.
DK once it gets its bones up has a very nice defence and while damage still comes a single button press of Death Strike is good enough to bring you back to full and leave a nice absorb shield on top of it.
Warrior… insert Metal Gear Rising -Standing Here I Realize- meme here
But guardian druid… I. just, cant!. i mean, you have the armor, you have a few defensives. But i feel that despite all that i recieve so much damage that i have either to do very small pulls to avoid getting overwhelmed or risk having to burn several cooldowns on a single pull.
What happened?, i remember last time i played guardian druid hard was back on Legion and once they got their legendaries they were straight up unkillable. Is there something i might be doing wrong or they just fallen from grace this expansion compared to the other tanks?
Incarn cd is where you can do mongo pulls. You have insane rage regen, shorter rage gen cd on your abilities and unlimited frenzy regens. This is 30s duration, outside of this you should stillbe able to handle multiple packs with 2 to 3 stacks of iron fur while cycling your other defensives (bark skin, rage of the sleeper, lunar beam and survival instincts and your 2 charges of frenzy regen)
Dps output is where bear weakness is, not surviving pulls. Keep at it and i guarantee it will click
Gotta be doing something wrong or maybe rolling with really weak healer (like entirely ignoring you and any mechanic designed for them to cover with you). As long as youre cycling cooldowns for magic damage and stay on your ironfur stacks/regen you should be fine til pretty high keys.
Well played Bear doesnt die from damage intake, it dies from old age trying to widdle away at mobs cause of their low dps.
Your other tanks really only have one big defensive outside of their normal rotation.
Bear has like 3-4, and they’re meant to be rotated. By the time you you get through Incarn, you can run into the next pack with Barkskin, and then you’ve got Rage of the Sleeper for back up if you need it. Should be going into the next pull with 1-2 stacks of IF on. By the time you get everything gathered up and ready to go, Lunar Beam + it’s awesome healing + mastery boost.
Barkskin will be ready by the time Lunar Beam falls off, and after that, Incarn is back up.
I like using Barkskin on pulls, and use Rage as a backup. Barkskin helps with those first few incoming heals to top you off before you don’t have to worry about it any more.
They bone shield and spam death strike every time it glows.
That’s…pretty much it.
Nah, they’re just not the meta this season.
I mean…maybe this is true as a blanket statement, but I love healing bears.
They’re reducing arcane damage only, which doesn’t make sense to me at the moment (maybe people who main bears understand the reasoning better?), but they are not nerfing any of Guardian’s survivability.
If the bear is good you don’t even have to heal them. I’ve watched some bears in 12-15 keys do some ridiculous pulls and rotate their CDs, and they don’t need help. It’s crazy how much damage they can absorb and just shake off like nothing
Its really simple actually, I would go with the talents from any of the top tanks in Raider IO and the passive healing is tremendous.
I got tired of spamming Ironfur and just macroed it to mangle, thrash and Moonfire. Its off GCD so you can press 2 abilities in 1 push. I made a macro with a cast sequence of Swipe and Thrash + Ironfur and you can pretty much handle 3 different ability spams with 1 button.
DoTC is NOT mythic viable at high keys because their self sustain sucks compared to elunes chosen and the dps is marginally better.
And no, bears have the lowest dps output of all tanks now and the devs don’t care.
There’s lot of reasons to love healing bears. Huge health pool and high armor means they’re pretty smooth most of the time. And they have abilities that magnify healing coming in, so a little help goes a long way (and gives healers a nice parse).
Bears have some problems and maybe the most significant is they lack a “niche.” Which is a shame (they used to be the “high dps tank”). But I really think if Bliz leans into the healing magnification thing they can make bear something powerful and unique.
Bring back After the Wildfire, reduce the cool down on Nature’s Vigil, make Symbiotic Relationship trigger off of all healing to you, make Dream of Cenarius not risk you loosing bear form, and consider a talent that sends a fraction of channeled healing received stream to others in melee range (like a living Shaman totem that streams out chain healing). Make the bear a “lens” for the healer so that healing the bear, heals others around them. A bit like Disc Priests doing damage to heal the group or raid.
Fits the fantasy, leverages off all those +2-4% healing buffs wired in to make indirect healing valuable (forest walk, lingering healing, nurturing instinct, natural recovery), and creates a cool relationship with healers. It might create options for direct healers to act as raid healers, juice up healing in crunch moments, balance out loosing tank dps, add needed spec utility, and inspire unique playstyles. Making bear the healing “lens” tank could add flavor, fun, and strategy to both the healer and tank roles.
^ This. I’ve only done a few M+'s this season and definitely felt like I was caught with my pants down after mindlessly spamming Ironfur and not having enough rage left to use frenzied regen when I was sub-50% health, or having to open the next pull with not enough rage to start with an ironfur.
I really want a hero talent between bear and resto that focuses on giving bear back their off heal niche and bumping restos mitigation (at the cost of no damage boost to go with the class tree rework to not take any dps stuff). Call it barrow watcher based on the druids that guard all the others when theyre dreaming in the dens.
Rejuv and frenzied giving absorb, early spring and lively spirit back but affecting atwf along with wildgrowth, regrowth castable in bearform, maybe a half powered cleave for barkskkm, ironbark and survival instinct to mimmick dks 2 target ams.
Make the big capstones a rework of the grove protection pvp talent that triggers on berserk or tranq so we make a big safe zone.
Then slap a nightmare hero tree together for balance and feral.
Agreed. I have tanked precisely three dungeons on my little bear. I did it overgeared, and that’s because I am not a tank and have no idea what I’m doing. ha ha
That said, I kept thinking that DH’s are the mobile ones, DK’s are self-sustaining, Warriors are decent damage (or used to be), etc…bears should have passive healing bonuses as a sort of utility for the group. Nothing huge. Nothing OP. Just…have them be the guys with that massive health bar and a little passive healing (like the symbiotic talent but…more)
