I got Guardian to 2.8k last xpac and have been playing VDH. How does it feel? Thinking of coming back season 2 because I can’t get away from playing my Druid.
Same as they were last xpac.
Physical Bear is quite a bit weaker than Laser Bear due to rage generation.
But aside from that, plays the same and feels the same
Going laser bear you get an extra CD window with Lunar Beam
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What Grizzle said. But to speak to how it feels… for me personally, the big thrashy play feels pretty good. You have decent tools to keep it lively and respond to different situations, does good damage, and the play feels reasonably fluid and smooth.
The talent tree feels like you’re making too many compromises, I’d like more breathing room between needing kool downs, but both those issues seem to be getting better in 11.1.
Laser feels less engaging (imho) but yea, it hits harder and takes bigger hits. So I kind of go to that as my “work clothes” then got back to DotC when I just want to enjoy myself.
Short answer, there’s definitely room for improvement and it’s not as solid as DF. But it’s not in a bad place and if you liked the play before, you’ll likely have fun now.
Only complaint I have with Guardian is the Ironfur stacks. Ruins the gameplay to constantly be feeding your rage into them and watching them drop off.
If they were to make Ironfur cap at a lower stack total with a longer uptime then tune things accordingly around that I think the spec would be a lot more fun.
5 Likes
Honestly, Ironfur management is the thing that keeps me from getting into Bear a lot (I only use the spec to solo Delves).
I don’t have experience with other tanks, I wonder if everybody else needs to budget almost all of their resources into defensives? Because Bears might as well forget that Maul exists as a rage spender.
DK: Main budget is simply number of banked Death Strikes versus refresh of runes. It’s more of a constant cycle than it is budgeting.
DH: To some extent is budgeting since Vengeance really doesn’t want to burn multiple defensives for layering and relies somewhat on sustain-burst self healing.
Paladin: Their primary active mit is also their primary damage spender, Shield of the Righteous. The only economy choice is that versus Word of Glory, which gets enough free procs via gameplay to not really care most of the time.
Warrior: Yes-ish, in the sense that Revenge operates on Rage at the same time as Shield Block and Ignore Pain do. Their gameplay with this is a little different in some ways, but fairly similar.
Monk: Not in the slightest. Monk in general is a CDR tank for its primary active mitigation, and that CDR is triggered through their normal rotation. No clashing resources.
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It’s passable. Still has the same deep flaws it’s had since end of legion, but you should of be able to time all tens with enough effort.
Bad tuning on DOTC/baseline survivability means you’re pigeonholed into a laser bear, which isn’t very fun. Not as much damage as some of the better tanks, bad survivability outside of cooldowns.
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And when does a bear not have a CD running? People make this arguement without realizing bears cam maintain 85% uptime on CDs. The other 15% are not needed as stacking IF takes care of the basic melee damage
Can you elaborate on the flaws?
Only real flaw is no actual way to deal with straight up magic damage. We have to have a CD rolling for it, which goes back to:
But we are getting a talent next patch that lets us reduce magic damage by 8% (don’t quote me on the number haven’t really looked at it in a minute). You’ll still need a CD rolling for any content you don’t massively outgear
The most obvious problem with bear is that outside cooldowns, we are VERY vulnerable to magic damage. Which means our viability usually ends up being directly tied to seasonal dungeon lineup. This one is the most egregious flaw, because it only exists due to blizzard knee jerking mid legion and deleting Mark of ursol instead of reworking it.
On GCD frenzied Regen- dying to GCD lock because your reactive is in GCD is bad design for tanks. Less obvious this season, because they dumpstered tank self sustain pretty hard, but the problem is still there
Lack of well defined niche, so there is often another tank that just does whatever you are looking at, better. Our niche used to be super high health pools and armor, but post mastery nerf, our health pools are not really noticably different from other tanks, and we need to actively keep 1 stack of ironfur to equal the plate tanks in armor.
3 Likes
I personally love it.
It’s simple to play and therefore lets you keep your attention less on your rotation and more on timing your defensives and the fight itself.
As mentioned above we are weaker against magic damage, but anything physical just bounces off of us especially when you start getting x3-x4 Ironfur Stacks going.