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.
- Rage
- It’s looking to be the most complete tank regardless of meta tier rankings
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.