The same issues are present throughout, though.
It’s not like we have a slow, and then at +20 keys suddenly our slow is deactivated.
We just don’t have a slow. Ever. And the slow is just one example. The same things that make Brewmasters better than us, at everything, in +20 keys or in Mythic Nzoth or whatever, are still there in +5 keys and Normal Nzoth.
Blizzard’s solution in Shadowlands is to nerf bears and buff Brewmasters, though. (The Brewmaster buffs are HUGE, too.)
Will you reroll to the monk forums as well?
Whether the content is outdated or not is irrelevant.
The point remains that if tank X can complete a +10/+15/+20/higher key then a Guardian druid should be able to do close to the same key level. If they’re not able to do so, its a clear indication that the borrowed power systems are the prime reason why the class is able to do what it does now and that the base spec itself as a whole is incomplete.
That doesn’t change the fact that Guardian is lacking, needs changes, and the spec should not be so reliant on these extra systems to be complete.
I feel you’re stuck on a the idea of a certain key level or difficulty level and that isn’t the point here. The difficulty is relative to a point in time, regardless of whether its Season 4, post-Season 4, or Season 1 of SL.
The point is all tank specs should be competitive at the high end of play; it does not matter what that difficulty level is at any point in time – that is the relative point. If a class cannot be competitive because of their toolkit, because they need extra systems to hold them up, etc – then that clearly implies class design flaws that is on Blizzard to address so that we can avoid this continual roller coaster of problems.
Why would anyone want to pay money or pay with their time earning gold on a game where the philosophy is
We know you want to be competitive but because of your class/spec choice, we’re sorry but we can’t make changes so you can be. If that is your goal, then you need to consider playing something else.
That’s exactly what you’re implying by giving in to that.
We want Guardian to be competitive, we want the top leaderboards for keys to be littered with all tank specializations regardless of the class you play – that’s the way it should be; that’s the way we want it to be.
As a player you shouldn’t be motivated to re-roll for an entire tier or expansion solely based on the fact that playing one tank over the other immediately makes content a massive factor easier at a given difficulty than the tank you’d rather play. This just means that progressing beyond that difficulty level becomes exponentially easier than the choice you’d rather have made in the first place as well.
The original design behind the 6 tanks were that each tank had strengths and weaknesses and you picked the tank for the job based on that. But we’ve moved beyond that point so much so that some tank specs have virtually no weaknesses that matter compared to others and that’s the reason why we have this disparity.
When you overlay that with the “lets make threat matter again” ideology, lets make dungeons full on AoE-fests, lets make affixes that are clearly more dangerous than others be negated by a tank class; this just compounds an already brittle, un-balanced, and biased situation.
The esports side is so tiny that it doesn’t effect 99.9% of people
What does e-sports have to do with a player wanting to be competitive? What does e-sports have to do with specs out-right being incomplete? What does it have to do with anything that pertains to this discussion?
Your the one who brought up leaderboards, and that’s exactly what that is.
And, to be clear. That is in no way saying bears don’t have issues. But it’s far from the “Bears literally unplayable garbage tier can’t do the job so weak” doom and gloom that is being peddled.
For 94% of people, guardian will be fine
A bear completed a +30…Whether they can do so as a result of borrowed power or because of baseline abilities is irrelevant if they can complete that level of content. Borrowed power has been there path for two plus expansions at this point. It’s one thing to ask for improvements for certain things, but for the love of God quit acting as if bears are stuck in LFR when they clearly aren’t.
Does a leaderboard for achievement points, number of pets collected, or the number of bosses you’ve defeated while playing WoW imply e-sports? No.
A leaderboard in its simpliest terms is a tool that allows measuring something against a common set of metrics, that’s it.
That could be said for almost every spec in the game, but that doesn’t mean we need to be cavalier and accept that’s just how it is.
Why not fight for change?
At your play level, things like this don’t matter because you’re only doing trivial content, yes. Go and tank Mythic Nzoth and then come back and tell us how you weren’t in a much worse situation than any other tank would have been.
And keep in mind that the bear numbers on Nzoth aren’t even an accurate picture. Pumps on Frostmourne, for example, did all of his progression on his Brewmaster (like a smart bear) before flipping to his bear to snag a farm parse.
For context, I’ve a 120 of each tank, running 15~s for several of them, heroic raid for most of them, and they’ve all been in a various state of play this expansion, sans DK, and maybe monk because honestly covid quarentiene kind oh just makes everything bleed together
I’m well aware of bears weaknesses compared to other tanks, and where content would be harder or easier.
But here’s the thing.
I still run more and harder content that most people. I’m still, more or less, in the top 100 druids on my realm by I.O (and I’m not competitive. I sit in hour+ long keys because it helps people who want to try as much as try to time keys)
I’m not saying this to to invalidate your point. I agree with it. I couldn’t be more clear than outright saying Druids require some love.
But it’s hyperbolic and toxic at points here, and Blizzard is very much going to write off any feedback like that.
The harder content is, the larger small gaps become. Bear mechanicsal design, not just it’s missing tools, make them an I’ll fit for cutting edge players, and we are in a mighty need of a redesign. The class is plagued by the same issues it’s had since legion, and they keep being covered up and overlooked, resulting in… Rather boring borrowed power, to steal a phrase.
On top of that, the severely rushed prune job that came at the end of legion stripped bears of tools that we were designed around, either via artifact passives or tools (berserk technically predates legion, but it wasn’t much felt so).
Blizzard will not balance properly for anything higher than good enough, unless you can present to them a clear, concise layout for exactly why.
Hyperbole hurts your case
You haven’t been paying attention since halfway through Legion, then. Because you’ve got it backwards.
Bears are angry because Blizzard has completely ignored over 2 years of patient and constructive feedback.
My big issue with the concept of borrowed power is exactly this. It is an easy knob for Blizzard to tune to fix issues within a spec or class without a class getting bad enough to go nuclear and stop working.
Conduits, and legendaries, and relics and artifacts, azerite, etc…
They’ve all served this purpose for various classes, and as a design approach I think it is ugly, lazy and frankly it’s the biggest problem I have with blizzard on design, because as a company, they are so sure they are right and know better than the players that feedback almost doesn’t matter.
And every expansion, the thing players said would scale fine or not scale enough gets adjusted, and things move on.
At this point, after 15 some odd years of playing, their treatment of this just isn’t strange. Blizzard is glacially slow at making content and yeah, the playerbase deserves better.
Bear won’t get a redesign until they stop using knobs to adjust things, or they develop a system that will work especially new with a new system they have planned…
Cycling the problem over to when that new system expires, and gimping druids again. It’s the cycle of Blizzard.
Hey Tewa, check druid alpha forum. Remember that discussion we had about Venthyr’s ability and the downside it would have? 
Thank god that a Brewmaster was around to immediately chime in about how an ability that kills us is fine.
Amen, brother!
Fine? That’s good enough for you? That sound like mediocre to me. Releasing a Grade C class is unsatisfactory. They should be developing a Grade A Guardian.
Just wanted to point out the truth of this statement. I actually quit playing in Cata and again in WoD because of Bear design. And even the years I have dedicated I’ve had to spend a lot of time frequently re-rolling when Blizzard tinkers with and inevitably destroys class design of classes over and over.
Not sure what the deal is but they(Blizz) seemed to have had things progressing decently into MoP and while things were still lacking in specs like Bear(being a Dodge tank) and Warlock(and many more), but they took a huge nose dive with class design after MoP.
Anyways, I’m kinda rambling but I’m not even sure how Bear currently is as I promised myself if I came back to play WoW that I would just find a new class and play.
I came back again a few months ago but have just been playing other classes.
The great news right now is that Bear isn’t terrible in 8.3 so long as you don’t push the envelope of content. As you might have guessed it, if you want to push cutting edge content, you’re going to find you’ll need support from your group to get there, particularly in Mythic+ as Tomoboar will confirm.
The problem with Guardian (and fwiw it isn’t the only spec) is that its held up by all these tertiary systems like Azerite, Essences, and Corruptions. If you remove those things from the game entirely you’ll quickly see that Guardian won’t be anywhere near as competitive. The spec lacks a full toolkit, things that other tanks have access to via baseline abilities or talents. Going into Shadowlands, while we’re getting some neat legendary effects and what-not, the glaring issue remains that the toolkit remains lackluster and the affinity row change is only going to compound that problem.
I mean it’s not, and you’ve been consistently proven wrong about this for years, but keep marching on.