Idk if this is a hot take but I hate the idea of tier sets providing better mitigation CDs. If I have to rely on a tier set for survival then the class needs fixing.
Id prefer a tier set to be more damage based for tanks to make my gameplay for fun. Not feel punished for not having it.
Itâs not stellar, but 15% hp is effectively like having an almost perma barkskin on (Itâs the same as having a perma 14.5%-ish DR running all the time). Plus then we heal back 6% of the damage we take, which is buffed by all the things we have that buff healing taken.
If you net everything out, druids are getting a âpermaâ ~20% (maybe more?) mitigation. It doesnât look like typical mitigation, and itâs not as good as if we just got 20% damage reduction, but itâs really, really good. Itâs probably not enough to shift the meta, but itâs totally enough to move us up 1 tier as a tank. (C â B most likely)
The 20% buff to thrash/raze is also basically a 20% buff to UFR, which right now underperforms and loses steam as you approach 20s but this will probably push it over.
None of this is to say âbear is fineâ or ânow bear doesnât need changesâ. We do. We really do. But this is strong. Honestly itâs strong enough that I worry these are the changes. Iâd rather not be propped up by tier. But weâre getting significantly better and more reliable tier bonuses than just about any other tank.
How do you figure? Our mitigation doesnât scale with HP, it scales with armor. Itâs just armor. Bears are a punching bag.
To be equal in terms of power to shadowlands, it would have to be 140% of damage done. Itâs currently 50% of damage done. Another victim of their change to challenge healers without thinking through all the knock on effects.
Again, not seeing this at all.
I thought the same thing. My initial reaction when I read the set was âthatâs cool, maybe thatâll help.â But all balance is relative, and then I saw the BDK one. And the VDH one. And the prot warrior one. And so on and so forth. Druids didnât even make top 4 for tsnk set strength.
It doesnât move the needle. YeH, the weekly 20 or whatever will be doable once you pass 440, just like todayâs 415, but the other tanks will be 3 key levels ahead of bears until week 12, just like this season.
But hey, donât sound the alarm or anything. Thereâs nobody answering the phone anyway.
Yeah the problem here is that dungeons & raids will be tuned around the top tanks.
And the top tanks are getting stronger buffs than guardian, so the guardian tier set wont help us I think.
Iâm giving up and going back to alance now that Stellar Flare wont be a must anymore ^^
Making up numbers is fun!!
Did we have raze in shadowlands?
No.
Thrash hits harder now than it ever did in shadowlands, as we have all the thrash leggos and talents combined.
Then âŚâŚwe have raze! Raze does more damage than thrash overall. UFR uses that combined damage.
It used to be 75% of just thrashâŚ. Now itâs 50% of thrash and maul/raze. Where in the hell did you pull 140% from?
So I donât think itâs 15%. But it is there. Increased HP pool is a form of mitigation.
Take Bear at 600k health.
Damage ability does 100k
Barskskin reduces by 20%
Bear takes 80k, left with 520k health, 87% remaining health roughly
Bear at 690k health (15% increase)
Damage ability does 100k
Bear left with 590k health which would be 98% (based on the 600k health pool).
Too early in the morning to do the math, but the mitigation is in full effect until that same ability starts doing 190k damage (whatever modifier that would be). Can treat it like an absorb shield if youâd like.
Youâre bragging about Prot Warrios tier set which is a temporary HP increase + offensive capabilities and Bear gets perma HP increase + offensive capabilities (which plays a lot more into the UF so it would be like doubling down on the absorb shields if you play that way).
Itâll be interesting to see what the top bears are able to do with the new set.
The critical thing to remember about Bear is the main mitigation problem is getting absolutely chunked by some stuff. After the Wildfire and Frenzied Regeneration usually have a massive amount of overheal. Squishvegan has a 25 AV you can check where heâs got 82M in damage taken, 50M in healing done, and a massive 95k in overheal. Even not counting Wildfire (42M) heâs still healing far more than heâs taking in damage. A health buff is very much helpful for bear mitigation.
Health pools were doubled, as well as damage taken as a way to ânerfâ healers. 75% x 2 - 10% relative dps increase compared to baseline.
Oh I see. Youâre comparing ending health after taking 1 hit.
No, I donât see. This doesnât make any sense.
You still need the same amount of healing. Extra health != mitigation.
Itâs not about the healing thatâs required. Itâs about surviving the encounter.
400k HP Warrior is about to take a 500k hit
Pops Last Stand, 400k Warrior is now 520k warrior.
Survives the hit, can get healed back up
Increased health is mitigation.
Except the warrior blocked 250k-500k and never had to use a cooldown and is ready to block the next one. And the next one.
The Druid took all 500k, and will die on the next hit.
Health is not mitigation. This isnât rocket science, man. Hits keep coming. They keep happening. Nothing, not one boss in the entire game, hits you once and then stops.
If youâre taking 100k damage per second, and one tank blocks 1/2 of all incoming damage and has 500k life, their TTL is 10 seconds.
For pure HP to give you the same TTL, youâd have to have more than 1M HP, and youâd need to take double healing received to make healing that well even remotely plausible.
Ah yeah, i forget, Warriors have built in magic damage mitigation that they can just afk an entire fight and taunt and never needs healing. 
Increased health is mitigation. You not wanting to accept the examples doesnât stop it from being a thing. Why is Prot Warriors tier set focusing on Last Stand which is a temporary HP increase?? Itâs a form of mitigation.
If youâre only using pure HP as a form of mitigation and ignoring all armor and other DRs, then sure. But thatâs not the case and you know it, otherwise that Warrior is taking all 500k damage as well.
You keep using that word. I donât think it means what you think it means.
Yeah, basically. They have a ton of DR build into their kit in the form of passives and a spammable absorb besides. Warrior durability is never the problem. Never. Ever. Itâs never, in any circumstances, the limiting factor to success in any encounter. They are, for all intents and purposes, impervious to damage.
It is. It arguably wasnât back when tanks werenât as self-sufficient at keeping themselves alive. But in this day and age, health is absolutely a form of mitigation. If druids have enough HP to survive the hit, frenzied regen will bring us back up to tip-top shape.
Am I speaking Spanish or something? Health is not mitigation.
Mitigation is the prevention or avoidance of damage. Health is how much damage you can take before you die. Your health and your mitigation are both factors in your EH, or effective health, but they arenât the same thing.
And yet, a Warrior hasnât broken a single 30 key. Weird.
So youâre applying all of Warriors mitigation in your examples and taking away everything Guardians have and using raw HP as their only form.
Good argument sir.
Base health, no. Increased health can be looked at like an absorb shield. This was already covered.
Again, especially with bear overheal. Keep everything else the same and give bear 2M health (without affecting FR) and it becomes completely self-sufficient. Bearâs problem is getting just massively chunked without a significant defensive up. If you get hit with an enraged Ice Cutter on a 21+ without SI or Barkskin youâre just going to die.
Yeah, they have to take 4 other squishy mortal party members with them on the keys. But donât take my word for it, look at logs and look at the battle stance uptime.
How in the hell. Am I being punked?
If itâs an absorb shield, itâs gone after the first hit. So it was a 90k buffer on 140M incoming damage.
Awesome.