As title says (and this mainly goes for pugging) do you have fun tanking? do you enjoy the spec and the flow of it in random groups?
Personally, I still enjoy my dps character a bunch but trying to play my main, the one I always had fun with and liked difficult content as far back as challenge modes, just feels awful and unsatisfying now…
The reliance on healers:
EC has strong self sustain, with solid tools to smooth out the pulls, but even so, it can feel extremely inconsistent from one group to another, same pulls that were a breeze suddenly draining all your resources.
The forced cookie cutter spec:
I was excited to play DotC, experiment with talents, aiming for the fun / DPS talents but… for the reason above it just doesn’t work.
Being locked into one full defense spec with no choice isn’t fun, it also cripples damage, combining that with trigger happy dps bursting down different ST before you even gather mobs, while already compensating for slow / weak external heals is painful.
The range nerf.
For many it might not be an issue but… with a bit of latency and position delay, it can cause thrash to not hit all targets, which sucks on pull when GCD busy (exacerbating the issues above)
Toxic meta
I gave up tanking in DF for the same reason, so many people go into a pull expecting a pally / DH to silence everything, so they don’t interrupt, or cc, hoping it simply happens for them. (also, everything is tanks fault)
Its not a question as if its doable, its a question of if its fun or satisfying.
For me, in good groups the run is overall smooth, bear feels strong (or er… "sturdy) chain pulling everything (within reason) and having fun, overall enjoyable.
But then, bad groups are… the extreme opposite, an awful experience regardless of success, randomly a struggle at points it shouldn’t be.
Having tanked for so long, I can feel when they are underhealing, and even if I two chest the key, I am not having fun tryharding to compensate for it.
The worst groups that break early? yeah… those make me want to quit even attempting.
So, what are your experiences, do you have your premade, do you pug? is bear fun for you in challenging content? have you tried it in other than the one build?
I just decided today that i’m going to abandon tanking for this expansion. This has been my main since TBC and i’ve been subscribed since then. I stoped playing in BFA first season because Guardian was useless and could not get invite for M+, whereas other tanks were doing ok. Its not fair to pay the same as other and not having the same fun with the same effort.
I came back for amirdrassil because of druid forms (I recollect what happend to those not around for Legion Mage tower), and I happen to enjoy again tanking.
I wont be playing another toon as main. 18 years and i like this one. If i cant enjoy my spec, i cant enjoy the game, therefore Im quitting for this exp.
Ps: my wife came back to wow, she left in legion. She played resto Shaman. Like me it was her main since CATA, we both have alts, but alts are only fun as long as the main is comfortably completing the week chores, which we are obviously not achieving. She bought a new pc just for playing wow. She left in less than 2 months again with a distastefull sentiment, tired, in burn out. This time I know it will be for good.
Blizzard need to stop hearing the 0,01% of the elitist jerks that play this game.
If it its not fun, more people are going to leave, and they dont come back until the hope of a new expansion come. That is 2 years from now. And sometimes they just dont come back.
Second, you typed out all of that and never even bothered to mention what you didn’t find fun.
Third, every single tank (and spec and class for that matter) are more than capable of doing 99% of the content. I doubt you’re even close to the level of where class and spec even matter. I could care less if you quit, but the class isn’t the reason you can’t get invites.
I can relate to the lack of invites. In dragonflight I pushed to the edge of what bears could do pugging and then some. Past that, I’d get declined out of any groups that weren’t 200-300 lower score (you can imagine how those go)
I briefly played with a team on comms and the pulls were day and night from a pug, I was able to assign interrupts, call out the cc chain and so on. I was able to do huge pulls comfortably and smooth. (a pug would have yelled at me for pulling merely half the mobs and call me “bad at the game”)
So yes, bear is capable of more but you hit diminishing returns FAST at a very low score without others filling in the gaps that our toolkit has. Other people having individual responsibility is the downfall in pugs while other tanks can simply carry by themselves, with half the effort.
If a tank needs a team tailored around them to consistently succeed, while others just work with whatever you throw at them, and you are judged by the same standard with less than half the tools… then something is wrong.
Prot pally, considered the meta and OP tank, is literally only one key level above guardian. Now you can choose to be a bad lemming and pretend all of those guardians are being carried by their groups, or you can accept that the gap isn’t nearly as wide as the forums like to pretend and just work on getting better… and accepting some pug runs will fail regardless of your effort.
Now, lets analyze that data beyond a very short glance at the very top bleeding edge.
Score difference between top guardian and paladin (one-two keys) 133
Now if you keep looking, the gap widens to two keys at the top 2 (184 diff)
By the top 5, the gap widens between three to FOUR keys. and it keeps growing.
Before even hitting top 10, guardians are already below 3300 score (7 guardians above vs 7 PAGES of Prots over 3.3k , close to 300)
If we continue looking, the gap fall off a cliff, widening to pretty ridiculous levels the lower you go. If you check who completed a full set of 14s:
Amount of guardians in the world above 3200 score= 28
Amount of PROT pally in the world above 3200 score= 720
Amount of guardians above 3000 score= 383
Amount of guardians above 3000 score =3465
Guardians with all 12s completed= 640~
Prot pallies with all 12s completed= 4400~ +
At some point between 11s and 12s, guardians seem to start vanishing and giving up, if we exclude the top 0.0001% dedicating themselves to keys, with a push team, comms, and so on, the gap at the average level is abysmal and (ignoring skill argument) the effort required to get there might be far higher than most people are willing to put in, not to mention the requirements, connections and so on.
Long story short, the data shows the spec isn’t doing well at levels outside world first or super low tier, and people might not find it fun or rewarding enough to continue playing, regardless of being able to.
In all of that drivel you failed to mention the most pertinent part to all of your analysis (if we can even call it that)… The people at that level will play the best class and spec, even if it’s 1% better. Guardians aren’t vanishing, most people aren’t playing at those levels, and those that do typically have multiple tanks and play the current meta.
I have fun tanking keys, for the most part. Does it suck that bear feels worse than other tanks and that public sentiment isn’t in our favor? Yea, it does, but I like bear.
My alt is a prot paladin and I was tanking keys on it since the start of the season when everyone absolutely hated on prot pally.
Given the way they have copied Dragonflight almost exactly with this xpac, I can only assume bear will get a few changes for S2 and suddenly shoot to the best tank.
You have replied so much that you absolutely care, the fact that you’re replying to him means you care. You “could care less” about what he said about as much as Megan Markle wants “privvvvvacy”.
I used to love my bear too and had fun in keys, especially when we could pull a lot and survive through offense or other times where we had nice utility (the procs from wildfire and DoT heals felt satisfying)
Or we could go waaay back to the days of vengeance? resolve? all those mechanics that scaled up based on damage taken, becoming a god past a certain damage intake, throwing heal procs around for more than someone’s entire HP bar, while watching our damage go BRRR
Nowadays bear feels kind of meh, its not weak but not strong either, damage is lacking, survival feels all over the place. Its like you either take no damage, able to take tank busters dpsing in cat form (lmao) maybe swimming in rage at 10 stacks of IF beyond the armor cap OR you take massive hits, starved for resources going though all your cds hoping the next one lines up or the pull is over. Not to mention what happens to bear if going into a pull without rage or a good cd.
I feel like repeating something said in the feral feedback, something the highs being too high and the lows being too low, which in terms of resources seems to apply to bear as well.
Either having no rage to get going, or having too much of it and nothing useful to spend it on, since raze isn’t part of our build, maul is too slow and ST, and the shield from damage is far too weak and expensive to even talent into.
This!!! You never know when that spike is gonna get you. I quit doing keys after being VERY successful in DF. I loved tanking in DF. This expansion. I just do delves now and done with it.
I guess I grew tired of the whole timer thing, and the mentality of rush rush rush. So, add the mediocre Bear in this expansion to being burn out on keys. It’s a double whammy.
I like the rush style! Not the timer, I just like being that big bear rushing in, pulling like a rabid animal attacking everything (lol) often followed by terrified teammates screaming to get off this wild ride… but in the chaos of it, it was always planned and under control.
I like challenging myself to do better, harder content, or bigger / faster pulls, do more damage, survive things I couldn’t before…
But in TWW bear feels… crippled, underwhelming, like what I want from it isn’t there, while confined to one talent tree, one build, no personality to it, no choice.
Delves were fun because I could do whatever I wanted, run solo with fun builds but almost 50 ilvls (and brann xp) later, I’ve long outgrown the rewards and challenge of it.
Needless to say, those builds don’t do well on keystones I’d consider progression or close to that.
Wait for S2… Bear is at the bottom of most of the tanking charts. Sucks atm, but given Blizzard’s balancing, we are likely to see a repeat of DF S2 bear. Just be prepared to remind everyone of what S1 was like when all you hear is “OMG BEAR SO OP”
I think the missing link to keep bear fun is raze. I seem to have the most fun in builds where I can add raze to grind on a big pack, keeping thrash stacks and mauling hiigh priority targets but raze is just fun to hit with. Problem is where it’s placed on the talent tree, I keep having to give it up to increase survivability and bear just doesn’t feel like bear without it.
Ravage is kind of that feeling, but DoC is too squishy in bigger keys.
Raze shield was not a fix for bear, more of a bandaid to many of the issues but it worked better than what we have now IMO.
It would be strange to have both raze and ravage, I feel like using the “its the same picture” meme here, since they are objectively kind of the same.
Going back to the shields though, I think DotC should be that kind of spec (or SOMETHING) survival through damage, a more aggressive playstyle while elune would be the more passive sustain.
Be it shields, improved leech, health or something. Perhaps an effect similar to that Nerub trinket from first boss but obviously tuned to keep it balanced across different content.
Otherwise DotC feels like you’re a low level missing key abilities or talents, only works in irrelevant content… or raids where you have multiple healers and slow, predictable damage.
