I thought bears became really good in S2 when they changed the Raze talent to not longer replace Maul.
The damage boost from the tier was astronomical. Extra rage, flat damage boost faster incarn cycles. It was OP, for sure.
But then all the dungeons were largely physical damage, a big change from season 1. That helped a lot too.
1 Like
It wasn’t just Maul/Raze or S2 bonus
It was a result of the Holy Pally Rework, the introduction of Augmentation, and the dungeons uses just fit perfect for bear all at the same time doing big pulls that were easy to keep big CDs in alignment. Now Holy has been nerfed, S3 has more magic damage, and Augmentation has taken a hit.
Personally I like S3 way more. I feel way more tanky than before. S2 felt like a return to the brain dead playstyle from SL/Incarn with feast and famine playstyle. S3, I feel solid every pull. Sure, can’t pull 5 groups at once, and then have to wait 2 minutes to do the same but I can consistently pull 2 groups every time. But I prefer having lots of short CDs than one massive long CD.
1 Like
The old set bonus was more rewarding for high level play, the new set bonus is more powerful at lower levels and way worse at higher levels.
There’s gotta be a middle ground. Bears being the worst tank has been a meme all expansion outside of the second half of season 2.
Bears need a fundamental rework. Been saying it all expansion.
1 Like
I hate that you’re right.
1 Like
The extra Rage evens out with being able to go GG this tier too though. But the damage boost to Raze/Maul was nice 
but the 100% damage reflection with the 4pc from season 3 adds quite a little bit of damage as well that makes up for the missing 20% that was lost from season 2. Just checking the last few runs from details and my Blazing Thorns is doing anywhere from 28-38% damage of Raze/Maul.
Outside of having to rely on tier to make up for a lack of magic damage mitigation from a standard base point, they’re fundamentally fine
It doesn’t. I was doing more dps last tier in keys than I am this tier. It’s disheartening. Especially when my DH alt I’ve never played is doing another 40k on top of that.
They don’t scale, and there’s no expression of mastery. Bears are either tuned to handle high keys, or they’re not and there’s never any in between. It’s annoying.
All tanks have their problems, but it feels like Druids are designed the same way Boeing designs airplanes. Forget aerodynamics, just use BIGGER POWER. Then they occasionally (or rather, consistently) forget to add the power.
Absolutely it does. Lol 15% increased Rage generation is 2.5 rage per 2 GCDs in season 2. 5 Rage per 4 GCDs. 7.5 rage per 6 GCDs.
1 Galactic Guardian proc = 8 rage, passive, and proc’s often. Especially in those big pulls where you’re spamming Raze and in those Incarn windows as well.
15% rage generation from Mangle and Thrash would have net me an extra 1095 rage in my last run. GG procs net me 2496 rage.
20% increase to Raze/Maul would have net me: 6.5million damage
Blazing Thorns (4pc) net me 12.5 million.
The rage generation for more Mauls/Razes/faster Incarn windows isn’t there.
The lack of rage generation for such things = fewer Raze/Mauls over all = lower damage overall compared to season 3.
There’s your problem. GG is dead since it now eats globals. “Often” is funny. It’s what? 2 PPM? 2.5? And what are you giving up to get over there? Even if it’s still used itself, that’s less rage than we lost with the blood frenzy nerf.
Probably why your maul/raze damage is so low. Wasting too many globals. I do ~150k dps in keys this season at 485, I was doing that much in keys at 447 last tier. And my DH beats both and I have literally never played it before.
They reverted that.
Weird. Top parsing Guardian druids were barely breaking 80-100k on average depending on the dungeon (few outliers).
And now we’ve got Guardians breaking 200-230k
Nope. It’s about in line with what other Guardian Druids are doing and roughly a combined 20% overall damage.
Oh, we’re playing this game. Ok.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/X1GrBMPta6H4LknA#fight=13&type=damage-done
120k log dps, 150k details dps.
My entire set of guardian logs this tier. Same player. Same skill. Same approach. As apples to apples as you can get. I’m not saying I’m playing perfectly in either set, but I’m consistent.
Too bad I can’t get into any groups as a bear. Had to swap to resto to beat the LFG boss. Bears are dead, and it’s widely known.
2 Likes
Fixed that for you. Yes, I also said there’s a few outliers.
You’re not consistent. Your key range is consistent, I’ll give you that much (may be higher if you stuck with bear). But your DPS is horribly lower than it should/could be in comparison though.
You were parsing 90% for dps for the key range in S2 (going off that Brackenhide run)
Now your highest DPS run is only parsing for 40’s.
Even your 90s parse for key range for Fall, you’re running 58% dps parse for that key level. I’m not going to break down your logs for you. You’re a smart guy and a good Bear, there’s no doubt about it. But you’re definitely not consistent in your DPS. You tanked hard. Could be from running Flashing Claws instead of GG.
Even with the extra procs of Thrash, your overall rage generation is about 75 per minute lower than mine running GG. Over the course of 30 minutes, roughly 2k extra rage. Which is about an extra 12-15% extra rage overall added in to your run to do as you see fit with.
TL;DR - you’re not playing consistently. You’re playing about 50% of your normal abilities sir. Which I’m not understanding why
Personally im voting for season 2. But if we could get a guaranteed way to use ALL of the shield right before it expires somehow id take the season 3 version.
3 Likes
They got their rework in legion. Mark of ursol for magic damage, ironfur for physical damage. They ended up being top tier for ONE raid tier, and were punished by being obliterated for BFA, and Shadow lands.
Anyone holding out hope for a proper rework to fix bear is delusional. Dev cycle for bear is pretty obvious at this point, half the time it isn’t even clear that they remembered bear was a spec, until they accidentally buff them into top tier and then slap them down hard the next tier.
We will always be at the mercy of season dungeon choice, until they bother to give us a realistic tool for dealing with magic damage. Unless they come up with something new, that basically means giving us adaptive fur back, mark of ursol back, or unnerfing mastery scaling so we become god kings of health scaling again.
Personally I think bringing back mark of ursol, but making it something that converts armor into magic DR, and turning ironfur/mark into a binary choice could be interesting. Letting us adapt between heavier magic damage or physical, at the cost of the opposite. Something like a bear eclipse mechanic that isn’t instant to get into, but extremely strong if you’ve pushed yourself into the “right” type of bear armor.
1 Like
I think just turning a portion of our armor into pure DR (instead of physical) would be good, if they want to continue the “brick” approach.
they hope that season 2 bonuses will keep them in the god comp but refuse to understand that sets will be rebalanced and it won’t be the same
not to mention it did nothing for us defensively and its going to hurt next season… I loved season 3 set with it being a massive DR for us to use vs all dmg
I loved this playstyle before. Let me adjust my DR to what I think is coming in.
1 Like
i 100% agree that encouraging playstyles that are antithetical to the normal goal is a bad idea. i think a small change that could be made is simply allowing the shield to absorb unmitigated dmg. and to be sure im clear on what i mean, ironfur would not reduce the dmg that the shield would do due to the reduced dmg taken
it will not make up for it, it will be back to the exodia composition.
it is what it is and it will happen all over again, the thin balance between been good-bad-extremely powerfull has always been something to debate.
i think bears back to full power its somehow a good thing as more people will try out tanking with the easiest tanking spec making Queues better for everyone and even for the “non meta tanks” they have a guaranteed spot until 27-28s and above so if they get thier sets good for them.
i disagree my friend the vast rage generation with ursocs fury absorb shield its often enough to outheal any damage as absorb shields are the most efficient way of healing and its a “better version of blood dk”
a blood dk: makes a “blood shield” with every deathstrike a low duration PHYSICAL ABSORB SHIELD based on damage done/taken and item level.
Ursoc Fury its a limilets Absorb Shield that the only thing that it needs it to fuel on “endless rage”.
thats the purpose of S2 Tier Armour giving you insane ammounts of rage to pay up ironfurs/ursocs fury and take no damage to your hp at all, allowing you do to “giga chad pulls”
1 Like