Radio silence on the tree rework. Minimum input on class tree rework. Terrible tier set bonuses…
I get that the tier sets are simple and I’m good with that, but being terrible isn’t the same as being simple.
Maul needs a rework or deleted.
See zero reason to play bear if it goes live as is. Communication on plans going forward would be great.
Months with no chatter at all Feelsbadbearman.
Plz help us bears and don’t keep forgetting about us.
Now I have a reason to believe the new designer doesn’t know how to play tank neither. Druid is a 4 spec class, I don’t understand why bliz keeps hiring designer who doesn’t play 1 spec at all. Is this really the best you can get bliz?
Hey! 2 charges of Survival Instincts.
Wee.
Just read the notes for this round of beta changes… Was actually thinking I’d see some changes or updates. Bears are a joke spec at this point. Zero communication from anyone on the status of updates.
Sorry, it hasn’t changed. I think it’s either a rewording change to the second node “improved survival instincts” Not the first time they duped me into thinking there was actual changes when it’s mostly just changing the category of the spell.
Still costs ya 2 points to get the same version we’ve always had.
I posted this in another comment but this is my thinking:
I am sad to see how ignored bears are. I honestly expected the rework to be announced yesterday with the beta build but clearly they aren’t going to be fixing the big issues with the class/spec tree for bears anytime soon.
This is my thought: I personally think maul should just be flat out removed. It’s been useless for many many xpacs at this point and basically ignored for years. I personally think mangle should just become the spender and the other generators be buffed to compensate for losing mangle as a generator. In my eyes, they serve the same purpose (aside from one being a builder and the other a spender at the moment) but mangle is always the bigger priority and it actually has an interaction with incarn. I would love to see talents buff mangle and add a bleed management component as well.
I would also love to see GG made baseline or just a passive leveling upgrade for moonfire. I do think having options to buff GG like FoN + EN are great and harken back to the Legion bear with the cloak and boomy shoulder option (my fav combo of the xpac tbh, it felt so good).
I think the talent choices should be pushed into focusing on one of 3 playstyles:
If they did this right, I would be back to wanting to main a bear in an instant and I feel all 3 playstyles would feel different, be useful, and have a different purpose. I think this base work is well established in the game for it, it’s just poorly implemented. Too much is put into maul (vomits) and the incarn vs gg focus is there but not really fleshed out as well as it could be…
The most fun I ever had on a bear was in WoD and Legion where I would catweave often on farm/progression and in lower/mid m+ content (Legion) where I could risk burning a small CD to toss some rips and rakes without dying. Knowing when to push that is a skill cap and super fun. The druid is all about shape shifts anyways, so why not put a really hard and fleshed-out focus on that for us?
I had hoped to Main a druid in DF…but I am feeling uneasy about the design of our trees especially the Druid Tree.
Yo! I love this idea! I agree with all the points as well. Really well thought out. I haven’t had Maul in my bars in literal years… I think adding a bleed component would build on the feral class fantasy and add more to the spec.
Yeah, I was hopefully when I started Beta, bear was looking okay but part of that was seriously overgearing the starting content. But when they opened up the lvl 70 server and I started testing all the tanks I play routinely (warrior, pally, druid, dk) I quickly realized how far short bear was coming up.
I’ll compare to warrior for a few reasons.
Maul is useless still. Even with grabbing every maul talent, and using it every time instead of Ironfur (sorry healer) to test it…averaged around 7% of my damage. 7% for all my rage use. Meanwhile my warrior using Revenge to spend rage, revenge was hitting for 25-30%.
Now I realize revenge is sort of like thrash in some ways, in that its a basic AoE cleave for agro and DPS, but basically no comparison between outputs of rage consuming output between the main rage consumer for warrior and for bear. And to note, 30% revenge was despite actually using rage on Shield Block and Ignore Pain. 30% vs 7%.
Damage profile of guardian really stinks right now. As tuned, my moonfire (playing a GG build, even with some of the maul talents) is 50% of my damage. It shighly skewed towards one ability, which worries me if tuning changes even slightly, the damage isn’t going to keep up. Compared to other abilites, moonfire DPS doesn’t tend to keep up in the long run.
Meanwhile the warrior damage profile is more evened out between 5-6 abilities. Sure revenge leads the pack, but my top 5 abilities are all above 15%. So if one item gets tuned down some, its not a massive impact overall.
Mobility for guardian is a joke. Especially for a class that is always touted as “one of the most mobile” classes. I think my pally feels more mobile now and that’s sad. Guardian, while tanking, feels about the same as my DK on mobility, just without the ability to pull mobs to me instead of running to them.
Utility. Surprisingly in DF, warrior is WAY ahead here based on talent selection. I can talent that my shield wall extends to my party (at reduced value). Now couple that with the avatar talent that anytime I use avatar, I get a shield wall at a lesser effect, or vice versa, and I can actually help my healer a lot with well times CD usage. Intervene basically acting like a Blessing of Sac. Party buffs (long and short). Really the only thing my bear has is the ability to help heal, but only after a pull) and a combat rez (can be offset with engineering).
Heck, I even find impending victory to be more useful than FR.
I love druid. Love guardian, but looks like it’ll be sitting at least the first season. I tank and heal. Druid has always been my go to to balance those two usually early in an expansion. But this time, honestly looks like resto will be for healing, and warrior will be for tanking. Warrior just feels so much smoother and a complete package.
The only thing I can think were bear beats warrior is the ability to pick up snap agro is easier. Swipe for melee and twin moonfire do grab agro easily and moonfire seemingly does a good job keep agro on ranged mobs that I can’t group with LOS (there are some that just target another person if they lose LOS in Ulda for example). If I mistime something on my warrior, or get overzealous DPS that won’t want 2s for me to get things rolling, it is a little hairier on my warrior at first than my druid.
I’ve talked about the trees elsewhere. night and day difference between them.
Thanks. I was a bear main for years but I’ve been a tank main since BC, the only tank I don’t play now-a-days is paladin.
But yea, I think a solid focus on mangle being either a major hit or having a bleed component would be the way to go. You could kit out either or depending on if you want sustained rot damage for big add fights, fort week in m+, kiting or high mobility requirements in fight design or for a big mangle hit for priority target burning, tyrannical weeks, single target with lower mobility requirements, etc.
For the record, I also don’t care if it’s “mangle” or “maul” but we only need one button. The spender vs generator differentiation between them no longer makes sense and since maul has been a trap for years and years, it’s clear the designer for bear hasn’t mained or really played a bear at any decent level.
Maul would only be okay to use in single target farm scenarios but even still, GG MF, Trash, and mangle still hit harder so why bother?
I have some thoughts here but can’t reply at the moment. Planning to reply in a few hours when I’m back to a computer. You’re not wrong btw and I’m planning to main this warrior in DL with my DH and DK as backups. Shame because bear is always a favorite tank of mine because traditionally I’ve been able to make it as easy and chill or as complicated as I want.
We’re just going to ignore Ursocs fury then?
This whole thread has been filled with consistent complaints that “maul is useless”
Are we all looking at the same tree?
UFR is arguably the best Lego ever made for guardian and come Dragonflight, it now includes maul via its talent equivalent. That’s a huge.
Maul has been give a substantial buff in damage via multiple talents that are being deliberately overlooked because “mAuL sUCKs”. That damage buff now transfers into massive absorbs.
Last I checked, Ironfur only reduced physical damage. What kind of damage does an absorb mitigate? Asking for a Friend.
Maul is the most useless skill in all classes’ skills, and that’s the root of the spec tree, lmao. I wonder how many bears even don’t put it on action bar, and I wonder what would happen if I didn’t use it at all under any situation.
The 3 ultimate talents of the class tree has 0 value for bear. I don’t understand the logic here.
Protector of the pack: Oh shoot I’m dying, the healer can’t keep me up, I should shapeshifter into human form and heal myself.
Heart of the wild: It’s so valuable so it’s a 5 min cd and last 45s. You are a bear you should be easily to kite the adds for 45s to make the full use of the 5min cd.
Nature’s Vigil: now you have a reason to use maul, that 20% of your maul dmg will heal your teammates, so your healer can save those healing and use it on you because you are not using iron fur. Since bear’s st dmg was increased like 5%, bear should have super great st dmg now right?
You are correct that IF only mitigates physical damage.
You are correct that the absorb would be beneficial for magic damage.
You are INCORRECT in assuming that maul is the better play to use. Thrash hits harder. It’s partly a tuning issue, but more importantly, maul doesn’t cleave, thrash does. In any 2+ target scenario, you don’t even consider maul if you’re gonna run UF since it’s a net loss. In single target, even if maul was buffed, you’d still rarely use it. You could in a PURELY magic damage scenario use it to dump rage as IF would be pointless, but it’s so niche there is no benefit. If you removed maul and gave all the maul benefits to mangle, it would be better. Based on tuning, it may be better to use in incarn windows when fighting 1-3 targets for the UF benefit since mangle has cleave functionality in the incarn window, but again, why even go that road? Thrash spam, especially when effects like luffa’s, EEE (legion legs since you mentioned Legion), and rend and tear are in the game also just further incentivized that thrash spam was superior. Add the 3 jagged claws traits and that made the gap even further. Also you mentioned the current UFR but that only is applied by thrash currently.
I know maul is added into that for DF, as you pointed out, but as I stated above maul is almost never the better move.
Edit: Also, I believe it was Sha who also tested out the maul buffs and even with EVERY talent for maul, it still did significantly less damage than a GG buffed MF and only made up around 7% of the total damage he did in testing on beta… and that’s with him dumping ALL rage on it. Very similar experience to Kelyselen above. So you’re argument about it being buffed to 9s and still skipped over because “maul sucks lol” is wrong. Maul is bad because it’s just a bad design.
Also Moonfire has talents that reduce enemy dmg against you by 4% …also the healing it provides will probably be way above the little shield provided by Maul with UF.
Same thing now as in SL beta…guardian is an unfinished product.
The designers doing something when they don’t even know why they are doing it. There is a moonfire build and a maul build. The moonfire build provide dmg, rage and healing, there is no reason to choose the maul build. They don’t even know why maul was created at the beginning and what they should do to make maul better. Just like when people keep telling them “make starfall stackable” for years, and they finally found out “oh that’s the best way”.
Imo, just delete this spec, clearly that’s the best way for idiots to deal with something they can’t handle. Then ignore the players’ furor over their incompetent, stay silence just like when they were hiding away from the zombie who eats their brains.
…and dmg reduction ^^
lmao
JOKES!
maul doesn’t cleave, thrash does. In any 2+ target scenario,
If your entire argument as to why maul sucks (ST ability) is that aoe senarios exist, then im gonna have to ask you to stop talking.
Stop pretending that raids aren’t predominantly single target, or that a quick respec is for some reason now out of the question for encounters that arent. Like… what? Kid took time out his day to explain to me that thrash is better in aoe? YOU DONT SAY!!!
lol
In its current iteration? No.
With DF talents and the synergy they bring with other spells. Absolutely I will, for reasons you cant seem to comprehend. None of which having anything to do with “hOw MuCh dAmAgE” it did. Passive DR & Damage absorbs to name a few.
You call it “niche” despite a sizable amount raid boss damage being non phisycal.
Lets take that last raid for example.
Pantheon, skolex, oracle, halon, lords, Rygelon.
All bosses in which druids took more magic damage than physical.
Some upwards of 60-70%. Feel free to check the logs yourself.
You dont know the definition of niche.
In regards to your first comment… sorry but you’re wrong. You are disagreeing with the masses, not the other way around. Maul is bad because it’s bad.
Comprehension clearly isn’t your forte if you think the only reason I said maul sucks is because the aoe exists. It’s about redundancy and synergy. The tuning is part of it sure, but there is no reason to have maul and mangle. They are pushing maul to be relevant again but why?
I don’t personally know a single bear that asked for maul to be relevant and most of us haven’t used the ability in any real capacity for many xpacs. There is no reason for maul and mangle to be there. Consolidate them, make it a spender, let it provide all the synergy that both currently are attempting to give, and buff rage gen from the other generators to compensate for losing mangle as a generator. Literally every talent that works with maul could work with mangle the same way if this happened with the exception of vicious cycle. Even UF would work if this happened, the only reason it doesn’t is that it’s 1 spender and 1 generator, but if mangle and maul were combined and kept as a spender… there ya go.
I called maul itself niche, because it is and has been for years with how the spec currently is. You mentioned the magic damage as part of your argument but not once did I say remove maul and in turn the ability to synergize with talents like UF or Tooth and Claw. Instead I specifically said to remove maul and give all its benefits to mangle. Maul as a button simply exists for no real reason anymore. I get it’s a rage dump, but in prog there isn’t a ton of reason to spam a rage dump. Those scenarios do happen, especially in high magic damage fights, but as a whole, it’s rarely used for a good reason.
EDIT: I do also realize that making maul and mangle the same button and keeping it as a spender might result in the same scenario that maul is currently in. That would be more dependant on tuning and rage gen. The reason I suggest the consolidation is because the split benefits between mangle and maul also aren’t super fun or great. Maul being a rage dump should hit like a truck so we want to make the choice of do I use my rage on maul, FR, or IF. Currently that’s not how it plays in practice though and it’s pretty sad. But being the main nuker, having the incarn benefits of mangle means you rarely would push it during your damage amp when you SHOULD be wanting to build the rage to dump into it. I get adding the UF and TnC will go a ways to helping that choice be valid, but you also again have to worry about tuning and how thrash falls into that mix as well since it sees many of the same or similar benefits.
Regardless, we can agree to disagree, but I still feel that the few talents aren’t enough to make it super relevant and it just feels like a button for a button since maul used to be a core part of the kit long ago.
Maul has been a meme for years… it’s a dead horse. Only time I even pull it out of my spell book is to off tank raid boss. Other than that… whats maul?
Maul might hit ‘bigger’ with the talents, but damage is also important with raid bosses. 1% wipes can happen and in which case, the moon fire build still is superior. Because you wont be dumping that rage into maul when you’re the targeted tank.
So, yeah. DF really has limited our choices to do you want a moonfire build with this extra node or that extra node. Unless there’s some huge change to maul… that side of the tree stinks of dead meme horse.