I’ve decided that I’m no longer comfortable not knowing how to bear. I main a restoration druid. I heal in our raids and lots of M+, and I’ve gotten really cozy with balance in 5-man content, as well. I use feral for everything else, and I love doing visions in cat.
But I’ve never Bear’ed.
I want to learn to Bear. I’ve sort of fallen into good essences and azerite gear for tanking, so my Guardian set is almost as good as my resto set (like…without even trying), and I want to learn, but I’ve never tanked. Jumping into the role at the end like this? I’m not very keen on that.
I was considering creating a new Druid and just leveling it in low dungeons. What do you guys who tank think? Am I overthinking this? How did you learn? What advice do you have about learning to tank? Any bad habits I should avoid developing? Etcetera. I’d like to hear what tanks have to say about learning to tank.
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Coming from a Bear, don’t start with Bear!!
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I’ve never played bear before, but as a tank main, I can confidently say holding aggro these days is a joke (unless its Skittish week).
Spamming thrash and tabbing around to use some attacks is all you need to keep aggro.
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Bear is really damn boring.
Obviously it’s subjective but it’s the least complex spec right now so you might get your brain fried from only have 2 buttons to press… it’s like the BM Hunter of tanks.
My favorite tank is Brewmaster! I don’t recommend it cause it’s super weird compared to other tanks but I like Brewmaster!
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I switch to bear on my druid alts at level 60. Low level guardian is horribly unbalanced.
I rarely ever see a bear tank in M+ or raids, because they aren’t well equipped for it. It’s always blood dks, warriors, or monks. Bear druid were GODS in Legion and unkillable, until they got many nerfs and dumped into the garbage bin.
I realise I probably should have given actual advice besides “bear boring,” hah!
I don’t tank outside of dungeons because frankly tanking raids with another tank scares me, but you should learn to be confident first off. I see a lot of new tanks terrified to pull more than 1 mob when their group is fully capable of keeping them alive and killing the mobs.
That’s not to say you should go pull the whole room, just that when you see you’re not losing much health with what you already pulled; you should have the confidence to pull in more. If you’re struggling to maintain aggro in AoE then tab targetting between all of them is a healthy tactic.
(the above advice only applies up to 5-8 targets in Shadowlands)
Oh, you may want to mark your target with a skull if you need DPS to focus it (it helps to let us know who you want dead so you don’t lose aggro on a less important mob you aren’t directly focusing).
Past that things are honestly super easy for a tank. Taunt mobs that you lose aggro on (or want more aggro on), taunt your main target, and otherwise continue your rotation. Use cooldowns if you know you’re about to receive a lot of damage, but it depends on the fight so I can only give general advice on that. Oh and obviously read up on mechanics beforehand, hah! Don’t stand in the fire!
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Advice from a tank who’s played every tank spec to +15’s and above except guardian this xpac.
Learn in m+. Dps or heal some runs with the specific intention of WATCHING the tank and learning from the good ones.
Watch the routes, the positioning on bosses, etc. Pay attention to what works well and what doesn’t.
Read the guardian guide on icyveins or wowhead.
Then just start tanking them yourself. If you’re really clueless, do some normals just to get the hang of your abilities.
If you don’t know dungeon routes and how to tank bosses, you’re going to get flamed. Hard. That’s why I suggest you do some runs specifically paying attention to that stuff first.
Once you get the basics, get method dungeon tools and download the weekly routes etc.
Lot to learn, good luck.
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Our main tank is really decent, and so I have been watching where he takes different pulls and where he positions things in our M+ runs, but I’ve just never tanked. I’ve healed bad tanks, though, and I know how rough it is. I don’t wanna be “that guy,” you know?
I’ve got the proper gear to get started, and I’m hoping to run some +5’s or something, which I totally outgear, just to get the basic non-Awakening hang of it in dungeons where I literally should never die.
I just wont’ get confident until I’ve done several and have a healer tell me I’m not a stress ball to heal, etc.
I don’t anticipate liking tanking much. I like to heal. Still. I don’t like knowing there’s this whole spec and role on my main–and that I have excellent gear for it–but I don’t ever even try it.
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Yah, just jump in some +5’s then and get cracking.
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I second this!
Or run heroics if you’re really nervous. Just don’t get comfy there.
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Bear tanking while not the hardest of the tanking specs is not the most brain dead either that belongs to paladin. They skill gap between good and bad bear tanks isn’t huge but does exist knowing when preserve cds, rage spending/conservation for iron fur a good bear tank can have 100% uptime if done right while lesser skilled fall behind and thats about a good chunk of dmg mitigation
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This is the part I find frustrating because I can’t really test this out on dummies because the dummies don’t hit me and give me rage.
I’ve watched videos about it and read about it…but I haven’t yet learned to DO it. Ha ha. I’m an anxious and hesitant person IRL, but I’m okay with being aggressive in the game. I just have to get the courage to take the first dive. That’s kinda what this thread is for. 
I figured I’d get some responses that boosted my excitement, and it’s working a little already.
My best advice is go balls deep you will probably sink a few times but the pressure will help you swim
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As the first reply said:
Bear tanking is, sadly, pretty boring.
You’ve obviously never met a fire mage on full mastery built
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Tank rotation and defensive are normally easy to learn, what is harder to learn is the M+ routes, when to use defensive, how to get aggro etc. Normally it will come with pratice, you can look guides or discords if you want to maximise your gear since gearing as a tank isn’t as simple as dps (simming a tank xd). Once you’re comfortable surviving and tanking in general, the fun can start because then you can start optimizing dps.
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I’m not the best at bear tanking but best advice is you’re always squishy on pull. Especially if you’re doing a 2-3 pack pull. Iron bark, Survival instinct are your friend. Never save them for “special occasion”.
Have a plan on where you wanna go and what you wanna do. Spend time look at mythic dungeon tool (MDT) and in ways have a familiarity on what to pull next. This will speed up your run.
Lastly, don’t be afraid to pull fast and hard. Trust your team to have your back. And as much as possible, never depend on your healer. They’re there to cover the gaps but you depend on your own survivability. And if it means turning tail and run away while your dps kills things for you then do it. Kiting is a good tanking strategy as well
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Waste of time tbh, might as well learn in M0, you won’t learn anything in leveling dungeon because you don’t have full toolkit/abilities and everything does 0 damage to you.
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Go to lfr and look some guides for every fight. Maybe do some content in bear mode so you get use to it.
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