Ironfur spam is boring and with the 4 stack cap on Throns of Iron, doesn’t feel rewarding at all to play.
But that’s ok I’ll just play After the Wildfire instead and sacrifice a portion of dmg for some powerful off healing–OH WAIT that’s been nerfed to the ground and is worth next to nothing now so guess I can’t play that.
Maybe I’ll try out this Guardian of Elune talent instead. Oh hey it’s trash.
Ok how about I do some keys with Ursoc’s Fury–SIKE my absorb shield will never be enough to soak even one melee attack.
Oh what’s that? They fixed Raze so it replaces and enhances Maul now? Too bad I never get to play it.
Woah! Scintillating Moonlight! A 2-point talent that reduces the dmg I take from things with my Moonfire by 10%, that sounds perfect for my moonbear build! Too bad I don’t have the points for it.
I know! I’ll do some raid and play with pulverize, surely its a powerful enough defensive that I’m not literally throwing the talent points in the trash. Huh my logs show I’m taking more dmg and dealing significantly less dmg playing with pulverize than without. That’s odd.
Seriously several Bear talents need changing, its ridiculous that so many fun builds and talents have been nerfed to oblivion and even more ridiculous that there are talents that have literally seen zero play since the change back to a talent tree system, what was the point of including them?
Yeah it kinda feels like a mess right now. Bear feels like the only tank that doesn’t have a niche.
Paladins are king of interrupts
DH is king of mobility
DK is king of self sustain
Brew I’m not too familiar with but they’re more mobile than us, and they have some strong utility with things like ring of peace
Both DK and DH are great at mob control and gathering
Bear is…. Idk, tanky I guess? We don’t really excel at anything, and the utility feels pretty lacking. Particularly with anti caster tools. We have 1 interrupts that’s like a 12 yard range. Nothing else to stop a caster and gather them close to us
Would be cool if lunar beam was a silence or something. Or if Usol’s Vortex acted as a gorefiend’s grasp and actually grabbed mobs after 1-2 seconds and pulled them to the middle.
Just something to improve the utility would be nice
Also, Bash should be baseline for guardian. It’s dumb that a giant bear can’t smack someone silly every minute or so
Guardian suffers from the opposite of power creep, I’d probably call it nerf creep. Because of how their mitigation generally worked (high armor, and high health pool from superior scaling), we would get to the final patch in an expansion, hit truly wild numbers. Then blizzard would nerf armor/health scaling, or our mastery conversion, or bear bubble. Then a new expansion would roll out, and they would never go back to revert the previous nerf.
Wildfire and dream of cenarius were victims of their across the board nerfs to tank self-sustain, completely dead talents.
Ursoc’s fury is just the burnt out cinder of what started as a really good legendary in shadowlands, and eventually got gradually nerfed down to 25%. Which would still probably be okay, if bear damage wasn’t so meh.
Guardian definitely feels talent point starved, even with so many dead talents though. The most obvious elephant in the room to blame, is that guardian druid gets a 5 point talent point tax to take our 3 minute CD lol. Absolutely criminal that they still haven’t done something about that.
Thorns of Iron isn’t hardcapped at 4 stacks of Ironfur. You just get less than the expected damage increase starting with 4 stacks of ironfur:
[Data pulled from my research on WoWhead]
["Expected Damage" is calculated as if Ironfur worked exactly as stated: '20% of Armor [at time of casting] dealt as damage']
Stacks Armor
0 Ironfurs: 78871 Expected Damage: 15774 Actual Damage: 50176
1 Ironfur: 131366 Expected Damage: 26273 Actual Damage: 70227
2 Ironfurs: 183862 Expected Damage: 36772 Actual Damage: 90278
3 Ironfurs: 236357 Expected Damage: 47271 Actual Damage: 110329
4 Ironfurs: 288853 Expected Damage: 57770 Actual Damage: 124512
5 ironfurs: 341348 Expected Damage: 68270 Actual Damage: 137196
6 Ironfurs: 393844 Expected Damage: 78769 Actual Damage: ?
See how the actual damage dealt increases by 20,051 from the first four usages of ironfur, then only 14,183 at the fifth usage of ironfur, then only 12,684 at the sixth usage of ironfur? You’re still getting extra damage with each ironfur beyond 4 stacks, just not quite as much. [Note that Thorns of Iron calculates its damage dealt based on the amount of armor you have after using Ironfur.]
…but yes, Guardian’s talent tree really needs some love… 
You need to spend 49 points to fill out the guardian spec tree. Thats the most of any tank. Next highest is brewmaster, with 46 and the lowest is prot warrior that only needs 41.
Damage reduction from armor increase is capped at 4 stacks**