This feels like when people explain how communism would work if they were in charge. Ok… sure, but you’re not and people don’t act like that.
A group that is trying to maximize their chances of completing a 15, a 12, or a 10 are going to look for the people who give them the best chance of beating that dungeon. If I had to choose between an enhancement shaman for my group or a hunter, it is going to be very hard to justify the hunter over the “better spec” unless I’m just recruiting from friends and I know the hunter is amazing (I’m literally thinking of a enh shammy turned hunter for this xpac who I’d take over anyone else).
But if I’m choosing from randoms, I’m always picking the shaman right now. Sure, he might NOT be a better player, but if I’m having to guess, I’m going to pick the classes that are performing better, which is basically what the meta is.
If you’re only going with friends, sure, take whatever. But the moment randoms start being considered, the meta rears its ugly head.
its really hard to put this in a way people would understand andwithout misunderstanding me.
first and form most, these are keys that no one in this forums will see. the amount of people who do these keys art less than .1% of the population of key players. when i say brew is 1-2 keys behind prot pally. that usually means that tank balancing is extremely good until you reach these cutting edge scenarios that no one here will ever do.
second, its hard to play at your specs skill ceiling in these keys. theres a million other things these players have to worry about and even squishvegan themself stated that they could be doing better in these keys as a bear player and is making alot of mistakes rotationally in these push keys compared to casual 12 keys. very few players actively push their spec skill ceiling in these high keys and the players that do this are often overlooked compared to yoda and noawh. for example, reholy often and succeeds pushing bdk skill ceiling to its very limit in his keys. you can compare reholy and kyrasis in these same keys and you will instantly see a difference in the twos performance. reholy is simply the better player rotationally. but why isnt he doing the same level of keys this season compared to kyrasis? simple, time. kyrasis has time to do these push keys with a subpar build and leaving alot of damage and survivability on tye table for no good reason other than ego. but yet hes considered the best bdk due to having the highest key done (even tho reholy has kicked him out of the no1 spot multiple times since his arrival to the key scene).
as for brew, yes theres a hard wall for brew due to the mechanical nature of the spec and its healer reliance. but that limit is far away from anyones reasonable reach that its kinda silly to mention it. also andybrew who is argubly the best brew and tank in the game is taking a hiatus so theres not really anyone who pushes brew that can actually pus hthe spec to its ceiling rn doing keys. only 千丝之城 is truly pushing the limits with brew due to him working closely with brew tcers.
brews inherit issue is the complexity behind the spec to do damage and survivability. do i think it needs to be simplfied skill floor to allow for more brew players? yes, theres clearly a skill gap for brew and it shows with alot of brew players for keys. (btw im not calling anyone out in general, its just a observation from brew logs ive seen passed around the brew discord.) but at the same time, i feel like its okay for one mechanically rotationally complex tank spec to exist.
its a bitter pill to swallow, but most people pushing these top level keys arnt pushing theres specs skill ceiling. all you need is organization, time and dungeon mastery for these top keys, hence why meta tank is always the tank with the lowest skill floor. its very hard to actively push with all these things in mind and adding spec ceiling to the mix.
thirdly to really hammer it home. i really need you to understand that no one here will see these keys. the 17-20 bracket is where stuff like tank meta starts to matter but its also such a small population that it literally doesnt matter for anyone put the .1%
seeing a sea of pink only proves my point that the tank with the lowest skill floor becomes meta, because its less of a cognative load for these top end keys that no one here will do.
imma be real with you, everytime i pick shammy for my pugs, i often find a person whose doing less dam then the sin rogue i pick. or a person who leaves after one wipe on meme keys. hence why i dont pick shammy anymore.
You’re not wrong but the points you and I are trying to make are not mutually exclusive, either. All I’m saying is that there’s probably an overemphasis on meta at levels where it just doesn’t matter nearly as much as things like player skill and knowledge and things like team cohesion and communication. It’s a choice that people are making in huge numbers when it comes to things like pugging, but it’s still a choice.
Yes, but all of those things matter when you’re building a team, not when you’re pugging someone to fill out your team. Given that the VAST, VAST majority of people pug M+, the meta matters to them, whether it should or not (there are arguments for and against…)
The meta matters very little if you’re putting together a team to do your weekly 10s, because you’re factoring in all the things you mentioned, but if you start to push higher and higher with that team, you start to feel worse and worse if you’re playing a spec that makes it harder on the rest of your group.
I love my bear, but I certainly notice how much easier it is on my prot pally, and I’m certainly not the only person to notice that.
i mean ya prot paladin does feel better cause again lower skill floor for more upfront damage and performance.
bear is also kinda weirdge, i know for a fact alot of bear pushers arnt using raze despite it being a fantastic damage button. im no bear expert but i do know that stuff like “no raze builds” and EC builds where people hard ignore lunar beam while pushing are extremely common. along side other weird things like macroing iron fur with moonfire for some reason just leads to leaving alot of defensive and offensive values under utilized. another weird choice is using earthwarden for meme keys since that has 0 value for anything other than the niches peak keys are known for. like how soulmonger has no point in anything under a 15 for vdh
i do know both hero trees for bear are great in keys, just dotc offers more st/prio target compared to EC blanket option. its very common to see the average bear player fudge the skil lceiling for the spec with these two hero trees in ways that lowkey boggle the mind. im not calling you one of them ofcourse.
Raze was introduced when the damage to shielding ratio from Ursoc’s Fury was much higher, and the healing to health ratio was much higher as well. Back in Aberrus on my bear, I could go through whole fights not pressing Iron Fur almost at all and be perfectly happy spending all my rage on maul/raze and acting like a psuedo Blood DK. It didn’t work AS well in M+ keys as you went higher, but the amount of self healing a bear could do was immense through UF.
Since then, as all tanks know, health has scaled dramatically, damage has not, self healing talents have been slashed alot, to the point where even taking UF as a bear anymore is effectively not worth the talent point.
Back in Dragonflight, the balance between the damage of Maul/Raze and the damage of Thorns of Iron (our other rage for damage talent), was heavily tilted towards using Maul and Raze. Now, that has tilted far over towards Thorns of Iron. In DF, it was a choice. Do you want more armor and less damage, or more damage and healing, but less armor.
Now its, just spam IF because the damage loss from not using Maul/Raze is pretty small and the survivability gain is immense.
As far as why people take earthwarden, even for content it isn’t super needed for, it is because we no longer take the maul talents in our moonbear spec, and the earthwarden line is the only path we can take to get down to our beserk talent and our Thrash talent. The bear tree needs ALOT of work, but blizzard doesn’t feel bears are important enough to really invest time into.
idk i feel like this observation is flawed, cause raze is still a very good button this expansion even if it was unfair nerfed.
theres other paths other than earthwarden as well, options that increases your damage by a fair amount. its like taking soul monger pathing cause people dont think soul furnace isnt worth it when its often 4% more dps overal. you can legit go through vunable flesh and tooth and claw which seems alot more worth than earthwarden for meme keys. just cause you dont take raze doesnt mean maul doesnt exist, which can be used to st and prio targeting
i wont say bears dont need a rework, they probably do need some sort of reshuffle. but im sorry i just dont see a r eason why you should take earthwarden at any capacity. heck you can probably take raze for more dps impact according to the dreamgrove website.
That means you’re giving up a ton of self healing from Frenzied Regen, and maul/raze damage is really not that much when you consider that the opportunity cost of it is:
Is
Maul/Raze > Thorns of Iron enhanced Ironfur + Cleaving Moonfire
?
When its damage was alot higher and it provided more benefit to the spec, sure, but right now, maul/raze damage is simply not worth the button press.
Even as Druid of the Claw, one of the most common ways to play is to float your free mauls to use on Ravages outside of CDs because you need the rage badly to keep up enough Iron Furs. Raze in Dragonflight felt like hitting Ravage right now AND it healed you. It doesn’t feel like that anymore and it costs the world in talents and rage.
If Raze hit as hard as Ravage and shielded me for 60% of its damage, I’d be happy to use it alot more often. /shrug
thats cap and frankly alot of bear experts and tcers disagree with that sentiment. but you do you i guess. i just dont see the rationality of using earthwarden for things its not needed for. freely giving up damage
Ok… during cooldowns Thorns of Iron and Mangle/Thrash is going to out damage using Maul/Raze, and outside of cooldowns my rage needs to go to keeping up Iron Fur.
I suppose if you wanted to try to do as much damage as possible you could build around Raze, but chances are you’re going to die alot doing that.
In single target, I’d certainly like Tooth and Claw for the damage reduction, but in that situation, Earthwarden actually ends up giving more DR over the fight unless the boss simply doesn’t auto very often…
I am still mad that they nerfed Ursoc’s Fury from 40% to 25% when it was already pretty weak in the beta. That killed any hope of running Physical bear in M+
if you die in weekly keys, then frankly i have more concerns then the use of raze. earthwarden again only has a niche in cutting edge like soul monger.
again earthwarden like soul monger, is just pointless dr. you dont really needed until you need it and you simply dont need it until really high key levels. where killing some damage for DR benefit does matter. i dont see where im losing you tbh its a simple concept
Ok, so you’re saying its worth netting a bit more damage in weekly keys. I suppose if you want to, but those are also keys that don’t require the little bit of extra damage.
But yea, I suppose, if you want to juggle Raze in keys you can get away with it in, you can. Just feels like a disappointment to me compared to how strong it used to be.
i mean what else would you do in casual keys? anything bellow a 15 you can blast through. so why not push more damage. plus with maul and raze you get more aoe and st. i dont think its a small % but granted i do feel the disappointment of using something that was strong and now its not super strong anymore. doesnt make it useless tho.
leaving damage like that everywhere tends to stack for tanks. soul furnace is 4% overal damage for vdh and people drop that for soul monger for keys where they dont need soul monger.
Safest just to assume everything changes weekly with the additional random hotfix mid week. Play what you like as a main, no matter what, and an alt or two occasionally when you have time. I don’t personally have time to gear every single character for every single role and game mode, so I let go of that stress. You can play what you think is mathematically best, but if you don’t play that spec to a very high skill level, you might play your preferred main better, regardless of tuning. I hope this helps. As you mentioned, flavor of the month rerolling constantly is annoying and feels like work, not fun, to get the new character up to what your last character was for gear.
i dont think its a small % but granted i do feel the disappointment of using something that was strong and now its not super strong anymore. doesnt make it useless tho.