No. The shield went from 50% to 60% from S1 fi S2, which was a negligible change outside of Incarn. And during Incarn it was always maxed (even before the buff) at 33% your max HP. So that was definitely not the saving grace. Not to mention the back half of the season that 50 → 60 buff got nerfed from 60 → 45 pretty much negating the entire damage bonus of the tier set
All the things that were there from S1. The overall shield increase from S1 to S2 was 4.6% bigger due to the 15% max hp from tier set. Bears were a lot further behind than the small hp boost and the 5% shield bonus (which i believe most bears were going laser in s1 anyway due to damage output)
Its not. The io is representative of how far someone can go. If bears are so much worse off, that number should better represent that gap. Like #1 tank vs #1 bdk. Thats currently. 300 point gap which better shows the differences in ability.
And this is victim of strength in numbers. When you have a plethora more of one class, they’ll be more represented at any given bracket.
We’re not really concerned with the others though, are we? When discussing tanks ability we want to see their max potentials. Such as we compare across the tops, and doing so we can see how DKs are lagging behind (until they find a way to get around one shots better they’ll always be behind RIP).
And this goes back to that prior point of doing a quick compare of scores for at a glance comparisons. And in doing so we can see the ladder is: Pal > Druid > Warrior > Monk > VDH > BDK
How are we claiming the runner up tank, that is beating the prior meta tank, as being in a bad spot?
Yes hes around the 2600 benchmark. Been playing around with different hero talents to see if i might be changing mains and in the process joined an H prog guild so my time with my tank has been limited in TWW.
Doesnt change the fact that Bear is probably the easiest tank to pick up and go with
blah blah leaderboard this and that, who cares about whether or not it’s viable in the highest level when it’s not fun to play at the moment. Make bear fun to play again, I’d like to do something different from spamming moonfire and ironfur, like spamming thrash and raze instead.
Right, unless there were any rank1 around able to provide valuable experience there is nothing else to discuss about them.
This is about how bear performs and feels at ALL levels, and there is certainly something off when most bears seem to star calling it quits at low score ranges.
I abandoned mine for the simple reason that it didn’t feel good to play, not because of reaching some hard cap, not even my own personal limit.
You know you can incorporate Raze into your EC build right?
To each their own. I picked Guardian simply to prove a point and have loved it ever since. I may have enjoyed Warrior more if not every ability generated Rage, or at least their rage cost was higher.
Hell you can cycle through every rage generating ability, and by the time you get through them all, theyre becoming available again.
You have to actively try to put yourself in a position to not have Rage to react to a situation (balancing rage to maintain the perfect amount of mitigation to dps output is part of that nuance to make a good warrior a great warrior).
But maybe thats what people need to “feel” like Bear is “fun”, is to have excess resources to maintain 4 stacks of IF at 80%, uptime and every third GCD be spent on Raze. But that would kill it for me personally, would just feel like an over glorified DPS
Honestly, Guardian is “OK” and I am pretty upset with my druid atm.
There’s a fair amount of frustration for GUARDIAN, FERAL, RESTO, AND BALANCE forms. They are “performing” OK - but they are all hindered by a class tree that needs desperate rework, and hero talents that are really just hot garbage.
Each druid spec is getting by with a crutch spec and playstyle to keep up with other classes or complete higher content, and there is zero balance between the hero talents being useful for all content.
I think the core issue here is the hero talents being terrible and the druid tree is a whole not giving ANY SPEC the benefit it should.
I would say no. Even with tons of gear, and this overpowered scarab trinket, there are too many points where I feel like I’m made of glass. Can I survive? Sure, but I feel like I need to be absolutely on top of things at all times, even on non-progression content, or I might implode.
Even without the above, I have almost no agency beyond rationing my cooldowns. If I have rage, I must press ironfur, period.
The point and advice you are trying to give from the 2500 IO only having completed a couple 10s with people who vastly overgear both you and the key, completely eludes me.
Pruning BASELINE abilities and then putting them on the tree as “new talents” is something druid has suffered for a long time, rest of the tree becoming boring % fillers.
Then you have hero talents based around specific abilities, meaning you’re locked into one pretty mandatory build, not allowing you to choose your own playstyle (at relevant content)
Bear does feel very punishing atm and its as if you need them to understand how bear works or that its not (insert other class here)
Sure you can experiment and mess with builds in lower keys, but as you go higher where you can and WILL get literally globaled on pull if you don’t have everything planned and mitigation rolling before you even hit them.
Then you have dps burning all the wrong targets before they even step in aoe range. You have to quickly fish them before they get one shot (GCDs and focus spent)
Healers overestimating mitigation outside incarn and ignoring (especially on pull where you need it the most) you unless you drop low, forcing you to burn resources, which messes up your rotation and generation, leaving you open for the next globals or pulls.
Then you have to get the casters that people expect to be magically silenced, roar, vortex, typhoon. More problems needing solution and more GCD spent outside rotation (Aggro or mitigation suffering from it)
Some groups might be smooth an easy while others are pure misery, and its simply not worth it for me to flip that coin anymore, even if I am confident I could go higher.
Too many problems with bear require other people being instructed to play in a different way than they are used to that don’t need to do with different tanks.
It should simply hold its own weight (like weak damage vs geared burst classes or resource starved vs overflow with no good spenders)
Oh im sorry, do i need to go do an 11 key real quick to prove a point? Dont mistaken me messing around with other hero talents as me hitting my skill cap lol
There are druids running DoTC in 12+ keys. Thats exactly what he wanted to do, and he can go do it. If hes really just wanting to use Raze since Thrash is the same between both, he can sacrifice a single talent to pick up Raze without turning to paper.
He can still have his “fun” and still play in his current range.
This whole “no you cant do that in an 11 because thats not what theyre doing in 18s” mentality doesnt make sense.
Every class deals with this. They needed a way to flesh out talent trees and make it so you could gain something every level.
My goodness, stop feeding the trolls. Know nothings who have no experience in bear who post constantly to the point where half the forum has them on ignore.
Just move on. You are not going to get any sort of intelligent debate out of them.
Yes, as per your highest score is 9 and 10s, I’d say try 12s and 13s and tell me if that changes your overall perspective and current state of bear, do try alternate builds that sacrifice survival and report your results.
There are people who play games with a guitar hero controller, or voice commands, etc.
Just because its possible doesn’t mean its good or fun for the average player.
There are also those who log off in raid spec and show up as DotC (my druid included) even thought they run keys as EC
No, druid has dealt with this through many talent tree redesigns, while people were getting brand new talents, druids were losing core abilities like wild charge and offered as a “choice” locked out of actually gaining something (net loss since there were two baselines in the same row)
For WoD, they druid tree wasn’t even complete until two weeks before launch, and it was felt. That’s when we got “Claws of shirvallah” a bipedal mob recolor forced into the worgen’s all four animation, shamelessly clipping its head into the ground, arms phasing deep under when swinging at… worms instead of target.
I do enjoy my bear, but the talent tree does feel incredibly constricting. Our initial threat is brutal, trigger happy rets flop all day. Non-phys damage cuts to the bone (looking at you Molten Giants in gb). It annoys me to no end that raze is a capstone talent and TnC is hidden behind a 2 point garbage dump that will leave you starved in key places (REALLY should be a branching point to TnC, with one side being offensive oriented and the other defensive).
The ease of play is pretty nice though, we do have a lot of utility baked into our kit via instant brez, roar and the like. I don’t feel like bear is in a bad spot per-say but it feels like our tree was designed with the thought of ‘we’ll go back and spruce it up’ which never happened.
Yup! Ravage feels like what thrash should be, a solid initial hit with a decent bleed to it.
There is no purpose for thrash to stack, when the first hit is weak and the dot ticks for 5k
And then you have swipe hitting for 50k
Meanwhile your dps are bursting for millions.
This. those things CHUNK and it feels bad having to burn our strong CDs like that.
I don’t know how I feel about raze in TWW, it doesn’t seem to synergize well with either of the specs and hard to justify given the lackluster damage on top of ursoc’s shield nerf (double dipping)
I would, but i flipped a coin and is says no. It’s not that i can’t, it’s just that the coin says no. You know, the rules for me but not for thee thing
Yeah but they’re logged as DoTC on WCL…i know the difference.
And the guy said he wanted to have fun spamming Thrash and Raze, and that’s your DoTC build. If that’s his version of fun, and it’s successful above his range, it’s successful in his range.
He could run:
CgGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAzMjZGzy8AWmZmxYghZmFLAMGMzMT0MzMzMzYWgNGAAAAAAwwYGYZbmNMmlBwEAAAwGzMDA
And be just fine, all the while getting to press his Raze
I do love a good echo chamber.
Don’t run 12s and 13s, and say druid is in an okay spot - point isn’t valid
Don’t run 12s and 13s, but agree with me and still say bear is in an okay spot - point is valid
lol almost as bad as GD
Are you still butthurt the entirety of Dreamgrove told you you were wrong and presented the same information/data that I did to you to disprove your claim? Ahh cheer up little guy!
Sure there is - but it’s also one of the few AoE abilities that has escaped the soft target cap
The damage is there, the proper times to use the spell are not (TnC procs outside of Incarn pretty much).
This is why I quit playing last expansion. The entire Healer line became the kid at the back of the class. Didnt need them. Sure you needed them for raids but for most content Healers were not needed.
I had my son (a geared raid tank) run my Resto Druid through a Heroic Dungeon. He literally pulled the entire dungeon without stopping and killed them on his own. I was just dragged along for the ride. Sure I got what I needed but it was at that point that there was no trifecta for me only the Duo.
The problem is Blizz made Tanks self reliant except for 1% of the game and the tanks loved the power and became the kid in the candy store when told no.
Im back to having fun again as I feel Im needed in a group at the level I play at. ANd before you tell me to find a raid group, find me 9 other people that will drop whatever they are doing 24 hrs a day 7 days a week to run a raid immediately upon the announcement. I travel a LOT and dont always have an internet connection and my hours are random. So I play the game to the best of my conditions and have never complained until the role I loved became the third wheel
I am indeed worried about Bear for next season for when the scarab trinket is no longer “relevant” - if there is not a similar item, then bears will probably use that older ilvl item to stay relevant.
Other than my aforementioned issues with the druid class tree (all those skills should be baseline and talents should be ENHANCEMENTS to CDs etc.). Hero trees need rework, I mean really, what does moon tree even bring except for a increase in arcane dmg (which is moonfire and a cd that requires you to spec half the side of the talent tree to even get, oh and change thrash to also be arcane).
Bear snap threat is abysmal, swipe is a joke - I don’t even use that in Moon spec anymore, I just use moonfire to reduce cd on my defensive (yes, that’s mangle, moonfire, thrash and ironfur for M+). If ironfur is macro’d it’s literally 3 buttons outside of cds. Ironfur dmg should NOT be split, should just be flat to all mobs.
So what are the real issues here? Honestly, if you removed the cat weaving from raidlogs - ST bear dps is horrid in comparison to other tanks. I mean we’re already bottom, but if you took that ONE spec out, it would be even more laughable.
We need all the defensive help we can get in higher tier M+ - because outside of cds - we don’t have ANY mitigation for any spells/tank busters, we have next to 0 avoidance. Ironfur provides about 50k armor - it takes 40 rage - which is generally 2 rotations of thrash/mangle. Mangle/Thrash is like 5sec cd? So it’s a solid 6 seconds for an application. SO WE NEED to lengthen it’s buff (talents) or proc additional applications (talents).
Paladin Shield of the Righteous is about 100k armor, with 3 holy power, which is like, oooh 4.5sec? They can also have that holy power going INTO the pull, by precasting hammers, Note: plate wearer baseline armor is a solid 20%+ more armor than bear and paladins/warriors can block. We have to go in with our pants down - which is CD or be globaled.
Our mastery scaling is HOT GARBAGE, we have no real HP advantage, we can’t block, we we don’t have any talent boosts to avoidance (parry/dodge/whatever). Our self heals are a joke, frenzied regen? 24% of your health over 3sec on a 30sec cd, talented to 2 charges? What? Most tank busters even from trash are going to take 50-100% of your health away unless you are running a defensive - 3 seconds is eternity, which generally means if you’re down to frenzied regen as a CD you’re screwed, and in under 3 seconds.
What short term fixes would help bear?
Iron fur dmg to be flat, not split over x-targets (reduced above 5 or w/e fine)
Mastery Nature’s Guardian - Value per point of mastery increased for health/healing received
Frenzied regen baseline upped from 20% to 40%.
Thrash - the 25% dmg/radius should just be baseline - change that to some avoidance benefit so we can choose increased dodge or %dmg reduction/gain
Longer term - Druid Class Tree needs all base abilities baked into the class - give us ways to provide group support outside of MOTW and Brez. Small amounts of passive aoe healing, cd reduction on things like mighty bash? Or even a multitarget option with reduced stun? Dream of Cenarius could easily be a class ability rather than Guardian specific. Innervate - how about 100% effectiveness? Or maybe haste/mastery % gain during the effect? Soothe? Dispel talent option? AoE rage dispel option? How about changing Hibernate to Sleep or throw us a bone and remove the cast time? And actually allow us to find a use for it? Well honed instincts? 24% health heal ONCE every 2 MINUTES? Maybe half that cd? THINGS.
Hero trees - maybe have a team look at making them interesting - rather than a bunch of minor buffs/cd reductions that someone threw together over their lunch break.
The difference being, one of us has the experience while the other one doesn’t so baseless opinion and all…
Its as good as an LFR / normal mode tank trying to talk about how easy doing content is.
They were definitely needed, but tank survival should be mostly on the tank, while healer fills the gaps, its how it always has been and how it should.
That’s exactly how it should be. A raid geared tank doing content that is not meant to be challenging and tuned around fresh characters, they should 100% be able to pull the whole thing without healing since they are far far above the survival requirements.
The issue with this design is that OUR fun was cut out and put in the hands of potentially a complete stranger.
If we rely on other people to do OUR role, then it just doesn’t feel good.
You are subject to someone else’s performance and if they are lacking, you are just not going to enjoy your time, as well as your own survival might feel inconsistent.
It can be extremely frustrating, especially the higher you go as it becomes more punishing. Imagine if your healing depended on how much damage the tank does, what then? what if your tank is doing 300k dps and any deaths are your fault? would you enjoy that experience?
Spamming 16 stacks of ironfur (and still being rage capped a second after) when 4 is the hardcap for damage and DR feels like they might have missed the mark in their design.
I mentioned this too, we either perma armor cap (with 0 magic defense) or we go in naked into a pull and get absolutely destroyed. There is little in between.
The way our mitigation and resources work seems entirely disconnected from what once was the design of a working spec, caught in between changes. Alpha / beta state.
In a strange way I am glad we don’t spec mastery, because bear without haste feels terrible, and we sure need all the versatility we can get in the current iteration.
That said… I miss having SOMETHING that made the spec unique, mastery is so irrelevant that I forget what it even does from time to time. I miss having a lot of HP…
Regen feels “okay” unless your healer is doing 10% of your total heal income, then you are constantly starved and its just not fast enough to top yourself before the next 80% hp tankbuster (from a thrash mob)
Hard to tell, the game has become so wonky that any small change can make or break it. Especially with hero talents creating nearly “two” specs per.
I’d love this, especially with how often a bit of position delay causes mine to miss targets and create aggro issues. Also the stacks are pointless, the damage is so low that the first two should be removed, and likely the entire talent around it too (so it can be tuned properly)
We need aggro on pull, instantly. Not after three full thrash rotations.
Intimidating Roar.
A spell that existed briefly during Legion. An improved incap roar that had a huge damage threshold, so it basically kept mobs stunned for around 2-3s without it counting / DR with stuns. It had some issues then they broke it and removed or people forgot it existed.
But if that worked, it would be what bear lacks. It would also be unique, having a CC that doesn’t DR with stuns. Imagine pressing incap roar if it didn’t break in .1 seconds. Bear would have some control in packs, especially a tool vs casters.
Heck I don’t want it but feels like we need challenging roar back with how bad our aggro is lol.
Remove Pulverize from the game and give something fun instead, fix the number tuning / talent tree so we have actual CHOICE and not one spec per type of content.
The point still remains, you won’t really notice much of the issues pointed out here on 9s, they are subtle (unless damage build) starting around 11s or so, which is in line where most guardians seem to call it quits.
When mobs start one shotting, having less GCD to spare, those issues become more critical, like DPS ripping aggro or healer not being proactive, those first globals on pull can be pretty miserable and a list of other things I won’t repeat.
RIP).
