Very uninspired to play my Guardian Druid right now. Nearly BIS, ready to push keys past 23, and it’s like the magic is gone from the class, especially knowing what other tanks can provide.
This isn’t even complaining about the extreme nerfs that weren’t reverted. It’s the entire identity of bear being based around incarnation, with every faucet of the class being lackluster outside of a 30 second window every 3 minutes.
Heck even looking to shadowlands (we don’t know exact number tunings), it looks like bear is incentivized to put incarnation back together again via 15 talent points, with the added bonus of hoping and praying that moonfire carries our lackluster ST damage.
Class just feels meh, and oddly enough lacks the absurd tankiness that other tanks have in high keys, as well as damage.
Also recent buffs did absolutely nothing. 3% more damage is like… Man.
Im excited for new talents, least those can have a few differemt style of play.
Really though you are right bear is pretty stale due too their rotation just being 4 buttons that have almost 0 synergy to them.
What do you mean lacks the absurd tankiness? Bear is the tankiest tank of them all baseline and even more going into the next expansion.
Damage wise, sure I will give you that and utility wise, again I will give you lackluster there, too. Defensive-wise, though, bears are the tank for that. Barring things like Paladin immunity. Barkskin is up very quickly and easily, SI is up pretty often and then you can stack Ironfurs if physical damage is coming.
Next expansion looks better as there is even a new talent in there with "every 200 rage spent heals nearby allies for 3% of your(the tank’s) maximum health. It’s a better Ysera’s Gift since it doesn’t require us to be at full hp to take effect nor does it do only 1 person at a time.
Yeah I do agree with you there with this.
Also, keep in mind we get to be Arcane Bears again like we were back in Legion, if we wanted to go that route. That was a fun playstyle in Legion and it comes back around for this expansion, if they decide to keep these talents.
Now, I will say I def don’t want all of these talents and would rather have some newer and better/more fun talents, but at least with some of these they’re incentivizing crit build Bear.
What do you mean? If you’re referring to doing the highest of highest keys, no, I do not do that. Those are more about damage than anything else and as long as your hp doesn’t hit 0, you’re fine to do more damage. That’s usually how the meta goes, whatever does the most damage.
And no, in general they are the tankiest tank. I also think you missed where I said “baseline” too, because they are. Every other tank requires 4pc to be ahead of Guardian and Guardian is generally always, every expansion, middle of the pack due to damage and other systems, not due to being less tanky.
What do you mean? Heroic as in raiding? Yeah Heroic raiding, not mythic, however again as I said at a base level, the bear is literally the tankiest tank. The other tanks can only surpass it in being tankier when they acquire 4pc, otherwise they aren’t anywhere near as tanky. Bears’ biggest issues are the beginning of every pull, which is countered in mythic+ by saving rage to use ironfur at the start of each pack and then damage is the biggest issue, or damage outside of CDs I guess would be better way of saying it.
Again, the other tanks literally require having their 4pc tier set bonuses in order to surpass the bear’s regular beefyness.
Also
Yes, this right here. They can go full on offensive build while still being very meaty/defensive and requiring the least amount of attention from their healers.
Again, without the 4pc, which people won’t have going into the next expansion anyways, bears are the tankiest tanks. They’re still extremely tanky once they get their 4pc, too, it’s just been nerfed so badly it’s not an absurdly high buff like the rest of the tanks’ 4pc is.
Again, it literally requires their 4pc and bears’ 4pc being nerfed so heavily for every other tank to get better than bears are defensively. They will not have this going into the next expansion. We’ve seen what blizz has done so far to bears and to DKs, they’ve split the kits up so going into next expac, yeahhhh.
They just need bigger damage buffs is the biggest thing as their damage is abysmal outside of incarn.
1st of all, there is no such thing as “most tankiest tank”, you can’t talk about survival without a certain dmg curve(even last patch, bdk is much more tanky than bear on tyrnical boss).
2nd, no tank is squishy in raid or keys like 15-19. Those are squishy players, not squishy tank. You think bdk need more attention is because bdk using a different style of dmg mitigation(mitigating after dmg not before). It just looks scary.
3rd, class balance is a thing only for hard core content. It doesn’t affect players only doing keys for vault or lfr raid even if you have no class balance at all.
4th, mist weaver monk is the tankiest tank because all other tanks need to be lv 60 to compare with it. But a lv 10 mist weaver monk, the best tank/dps/healer in lfg.
Blood DK, before this set bonus, was never tankier than bears for any of Shadowlands seasons. Bears could also play without requiring much from the healer, too, especially those stacking Vers/Mastery over Haste.
I agree, it causes a lot of healers to be scared because a lot of them see HP dropping and immediately starting healing.
Agreed fully with you, this pertains mainly or mostly only to the very high end of high end content, nothing more.
I assume you mean Brewmaster, or I’m missing the point here with this one.
I disagree with you on BDK being tankier than bears last patch, even for Tyrannical bosses.
I wasn’t talking about trying to snipe heals in between heart strikes.
I’m talking about overall sustained damage. Bdk’s require more hot management to keep their hp from trickling away. If left to their own devices, they will eventually die.
Guardians can be left alone.
They are immortal during cds and Fr+ufr+Ew cover the in between.
I don’t know why I even list reasons. Let me just make it easier for both of us. Please install the game and tank a 25 DOS in tyrannical week with both bear and bdk, and then use the log to prove that bear is the tankiest tank.
One way to tell that is from your detail. Every time after the run, you can check the healing tank did and the dmg tank taken. dmg taken - healing done = healing gap. This is not 100% accurate(means a 1k healing gap doesn’t mean it’s better than 1.5k). But can give you a general idea. You’ll find dk’s healing gap is quite small. Of course it’s not gonna be 0 most of the time, but checking that after each key, you’ll find a general idea of the tank’s tankness.