Hello bear brothers,
I want to gear up a 2nd tank along with my prot war. Currently I feel prot war is so broken with 100% block, and short but strong def cds. How is guardian’s tankiness in masspulls, and in boss fights, with and without def cds ? How’s its single target dps ?
Got my bear to 2200 or so and swapped to BrM.
Bears are sponges. They soak up physical damage while being armour capped very easily, 2 charges (if you take the talent) for 50% damage reduction, one charge on a shortish cd for i think its 20%.
Frenzied Regen is incredibly strong to heal yourself through nearly any pull you do. Along with an instacast 2min heal and Regrowth proc (if you take the talent) that can crit for 2.5mil
The trade off is damage. AoE pulls, youre laughing. I was hitting about 2mil (lazily) on a 612 bear. ST is kind of meh in my experience. You wont be breaking records or shattering faces but it gets the job done.
Wothout defensives you’re a wet noodle. But as soon as you get Iron Fur rolling (near endless in AoE trash) its just sit there and relax
2 Likes
Bears can do much larger pulls safely during incarn, and it is not even close. Less healer reliant.
Warriors feel tankier outside of defensive cooldowns relative to druids and burst dps better. More healer reliant.
choose your tanky.
source… KSM on both and think both are awesome!
If you play Laser Bear, aggro takes a second to gather up
If you play Physical Bear, snap aggro is great
Laser Bear does well in mass pulls with Lunar Bear for damage and mitigation
Physical Bear is a little less so since it has to share Rage between two active mitigations while Laser Bear only spends rage on IF
Like every other tank - you just rotate CDs
You have enough you should never be without one
Why did you switch to BrM? That’s the tank I started with so just curious.
I just find the playstyle more interactive and in turn more fun.
The basic rotation is easy, like other tanks, but the effort you put in to sustain yourself keeps me involved with the game when doing the same dungeon for the umpteenth time
Yea. Brew is probably my favorite. However, since I only PuG I found it to be okay, but sometimes frustrating.
Dude same. I only pug or with an aug friend.
For the most part, groups have been good in the 8-10 range, not just timing keys good, but good in the way that they will play around having a brew. We’re tanky as heck when we get to pull the packs we want to pull.
Every time you charge into a pack of mobs, you need to use a defensive before attacking the mobs. It’s impossible to jump into packs without defensives. And I’m not talking about Ironfur here, but abilities like Barkskin.
You need to know how to manage your defensive cooldowns. You can’t just press them whenever they’re available. Let’s say you’re in a pull and there are only 2 or 3 normal mobs left. You won’t waste any defensive like Barkskin on that pull. Just Ironfur and some healing if neeeded from Frenzied Regen will keep you alive. If you don’t have defensives available, you won’t be able to do another pull. You’ll die, trust me. And that’s the hardest part of playing Guardian Druid (which, let’s be honest, is still super easy). The hardest part is managing your 4 defensive cooldowns. Wow, so tough, right (joking)? Just 4 defensive cooldowns, and most of them are available every few seconds. Hahaha, it’s so simple.
Besides, you always need to keep at least 2-3 stacks of Ironfur. I usually keep 3. With incarnation you can keep more than 9. Either way, all the rage you generate is for using Ironfur. You’re always going to spend your rage on Ironfur. And when your health drops below 60%, you use a charge of Frenzied Regen…
It’s by far the easiest tank to play. A lot of people also think it’s the most boring tank to play because it has less than 8 buttons to press and the gameplay is the same all the dungeon: spend rage in ironfur. Personally, I think the class fantasy is cool, and I enjoy tanking dungeons with the Guardian. Nothing beats pressing 3 buttons to generate Rage, dumping it all into Ironfur and then being immortal. For me, fun is staying alive and completing keys, and Guardian tanks with a level of mastery (ease) that’s hard to find in other tanks. You just turn off your brain and go without worrying about anything, lol.
That said, magic damage does hurt the Guardian Druid a bit. But if you manage your cooldowns well, even magic damage stops being a big problem.
That being said, I think Guardian Druid is the smoothest tank in the game. You won’t need healing at any point and your life all good, you’re completely self-sufficient. If you’re still unsure, just check YouTube… there are people doing +12 and +13 keys without a healer as a Guardian. It’s unreal. 1 tank and 4 DPS.
The guide from Dorki about the bear is all what you need. Good luck.
That is less bear, and more a highly coordinated group. I would assume the reason they’re using bear isn’t anything to do with their tankiness, but with how smooth pulling with moonfire is, and how much mobility they have to get a big pull packed for the 4 DPS to chain stops on.
Do these videos show them doing a full clear without a healer? Or just a single big pull at start, before one of the DPS jumps out to swap healer? Lots of unavoidable damage on many of the boss encounters, and some of the trash, that makes me think they’re not going 1 t 4 DPS the whole place.
1 Like
Full clear without a healer. The entire dungeon.
I dont think so. Prot Warrior has no self sustain like Guardian, same for brew . VDH and BDK would get crushed because the lack of defensives (and self sustain but of course they have defensives and self sustain, but Im talking about the entire bag of abilities) like Ironfur in certain moments and Prot Pally is just squishy like Brew.
Just check on youtube.
I did, and it’s all disingenuous rage bait. They’re taking a guardian druid with 4 hybrid DPS that can offheal, to dungeons that won’t delete the tank on the boss encounters.
With enough coordination on stops, most of trash damagw can be almost completely mitigated. So as long as the tank doesn’t die on the boss encounters, and they have enough self sustain to pull through big unavoidable aoe phases, you get the click bait videos you’re talking about.
End of the day, it isn’t a guardian druid thing, it’s DPS still having way too much self sustain and survivability cooldowns. Some of them anyways.