I’m considering switching my main tank for 9.1 to bear.
Currently I play Blood DK and find the DPS is very low and while the HPS is fun, it seems I take much more damage than my co tanks. That plus the kite meta makes me want to switch. (Side note, if the blood dk had a second charge of D&D with grip, it would be extremely useful in mythic+)
I’m looking for a smoother ride and someone said if you want to stand your ground and have a ton of HP go Druid.
Wondering what you fine people think.
Guardian is fine, if a bit boring.
You’re the second person to say that it’s boring.
How so?
You have one actual active mitigation and what you do rotationally never really changes.
Mangle on CD/Gore Proc
Thrash on CD
Moonfire filler
Swipe is there but is only relevant on very large trash packs.
Get as close to 100% Ironfur uptime as you can and you’re now a competent Bear tank. Brewmaster and Blood DK are much more interesting, in my experience.
Brewmaster seemed interesting to me, I could go that route.
Guardian is doing pretty good – just right under DH if memory serves.
A few things to note when playing guardian:
You’re pretty squishy on any initial pull until you get stacks of Ironfur rolling. Make sure to have a cooldown ready for starting large pulls.
Your threat generation isn’t very high. Make sure thrash connects with all enemies as soon as you get the chance.
Your choice of legendary plays a huge roll in your survivability or damage. Refer to wowhead (or a similar website) for more. My personal recommendation is the barkskin legendary. Combine it with talents and conduits to reduce barkskin cooldown to ~35 seconds.
If running Night Fae, you can treat Convoke the Spirits both as a defensive and offensive ability. This is best used in large AoE scenarios, in my opinion.
Thank you, this is very helpful!
Guardian is very good, with probably the most self sustain of any of the tanks if you run NOW legendary or Ursocs for mass AOE.
That said your rotation is super simple and making mistakes doesn’t really hunt you that much. There’s also only 1 spender (ironfur) worth using.
Guardian can be more difficult if you weave (catweave/owlweave) but that’s really only for raids or situations where your not actively tanking.
The very biggest issue is that were 100% borrowed power right now. Any changes to that can/will gut the class.
Great! That’s what I’m looking for.
I’m wondering about this. Do you just stay in bear form the whole time? Do you switch to cat to kite? Weaving in cat to get away and owl to DPS until the pack reaches you? I’m guessing.
The main problem I’m having with my DK is taking damage while moving. I save all my cooldowns for those situations.
One big problem getting AOTC was moving during Phase 2 of Sire. As a DK, Death Strike healing IS my mitigation. When I move, I can’t DS so I take a ton of damage. Phase 3 is way easier. I will miss death’s advance to not get pushed back though…
So it’s like this.
If you drop bear form to access your other abilities, say throwing out a rejuv and swiftmend, you lose all your pooled rage, ironfur stacks, and bear defensives such as the extra health and armor.
So to do that you need to either be out of melee, have them stunned up or otherwise unable to hit you, or locked into some sort of spellcasting.
In a raid where you do a tank swap your pretty much free to do whatever you want when your not tanking, so in these cases you’ll go HOTW and blow a big damage convoke the spirits or just work through your cat/owl rotation.
The big downside of this is if you do it WRONG then you’ll die, so it’s a risk vs reward thing.
In dungeons you’ll find your weaving a LOT less, but it still has it’s place. You can offheal during “My house weeps with blight!” in plaguefall which healers will love you for, or blowing your convoke as a heal during ritual of woe to completely cheese it.
It takes some getting used to, there’s guides written on it by bears much better than I.
If you’re hoping to be better at kiting, Bear is not the way to go. We can reliably get out of melee using Typhoon or Vortex (depending on your Affinity choice), but once you’ve used them, your other options are limited and risky. That said, if you’d rather just stand in the thick of it soaking up all the damage, Bears are probably the best at that if you have the right legendary.
I will agree with the other posters that Bear has a very basic rotation. If you’re looking for complex, or nuanced moment-to-moment game play, look elsewhere.
Druids have a ton of quality of life perks. We have stealth, and instant travel/flight form that make getting around a breeze. All four of our specs are actually doing pretty well right now, so if you decide you want to try out another role, you have options. It’s really a fun class. I’d encourage you to try it.
This is absolutely what I want. I can face tank a good bit with my DK, but I just want to be able to soak a ton of damage.
So which lego do you recommend?
I tanked Sludgefist once to fill in for my raid. It wasn’t pretty, and I had issues getting away from his big circle or whatever you run away from. If roar wasn’t up I had…issues.
Mind you, that’s as a definite amateur bear. Where I use wild charge to be able to…well charge things. I may have been able to use Tiger Dash in that scenario if I was thinking about it and we didn’t have the fight on farm such that me getting a brez wasn’t a show stopper.
I guess you could utilize mass entanglement and ursol’s vortex on packs to help get room too. But at that point it’s less you being mobile and more immoblizing things instead. Which can work if you just need distance from something, but don’t help much on say…a boss.
And rooting probably doesn’t work that well in dungeons either with DPS since they’ll inevitably break the roots anyways.
But again, I am but an amateur bear, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Aabay and Vincent mentioned them above. I use Ursoc’s Fury Remembered because it’s a solid defensive choice with an offensive component as well. It also makes you a god during Berserk/Incarnation, which is fun.
The Natural Order’s Will is the other popular one. I haven’t made it yet myself, since I play multiple specs which all require their own legendaries, but lots of Bears around here swear by it.
As a DK i have Deaths Advance (which I also use the conduit for) and use Wraith Walk for Sludge and rotate the two. I have no problems there.
I’m night fae now, so I was thinking dash and the night fae ability should get me out of the stomp, but I don’t remember the cooldowns off hand.
I am a new bear tank too. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. I’m new to tanking too in general
Consider using the Oath of the Elder Druid legendary with Feral Affinity. That by itself will give you 126.25% movespeed in bear form. Throw on the Speed+Stam to Cloak enchant, and you’ll be moving at roughly cat form speed in bear form. [You’ll probably have to save stamp roar for when you or your offtank needs to run to a pillar, though.]
It makes Catweaving (and Convoke(Cat), if Night Fae) during his stunned phases significantly more valuable, too.
As for the topic at hand: To me, it feels like the thrash legendary is one of the best legendaries for doing M+, since trash clearing makes up quite a large portion of them, and it gives you a steady amount of shields. You can also open the floodgates with berserk/incarnation, allowing you to spam thrash for 15/30 seconds and become nigh-invulnerable in large trash pulls.
If bosses are a problem, the barkskin legendary is great for mitigating and healing a lot of the damage you take on a relatively short cooldown.
…There’s also the Rage of the Sleeper legendary, which gives you 30 seconds off Incarn/Berserk’s CD, 25% more damage dealt, 15% leech (for all damage dealt, rather than just thrash), immunity to the vast majority of CC [which also persists out of bear form!], but only during Incarnation/Berserk. While I really like using it for PvP to blow rogues out of the water or barrel through the entire enemy team and shrug off every CC in the book, it’s less useful in PvE by virtue of Incarn/Berserk’s long CD, compared to the always active Thrash legendary or the 35-40s CD of the Barkskin lego.
There’s really quite a few viable options for everything your bear wants to do.
I won’t go in depth but…
Ursocs Fury = M+ or mass AOE sustain. Basically godmode for 30 sec with incarn. Good for world content too. probably BIS for torghast.
Natural Orders Will = Spec to decrease barkskin cooldown to 30ish seconds and it’s just shy of an extra 4 frenzied regens per minute. One unexpected benefit is that YOU CAN USE BARKSKIN WHILE STUNLOCKED so you can basically pop out 2 frenzied regens while a rogue and his team try to take your node, along with a pulse damage that prevents caps. It’s really good. I would say go to for raid/node defense.
Rage of the Sleeper = Overlaps quite a bit with Ursoc’s fury. Great synergy with Venthyr covenant ability. Used to delete people in arena (delete might be a strong way to put it… used to apply 30 secs of higher pressure) since you can’t be crowd controlled. Flag runners will use this for transporting the flag, then swap gear to NOW to turtle the flag.
Circle of life and death = It’s not great… but it’s pretty good damage since moonfire is such a big % of our offense, especially world content where it’s pretty good for the standard “pull all the things!” wq strategy.
You can make an argument for all the others in niche content.
If you only craft one I would suggest NOW, if two get Ursocs, after that get whatever you think fills out for your kit for the content you do.
Go guardian. You won’t regret it. Don’t be a boring person, it won’t let you down. 
Bear looks really strong for 9.1, especially with some of the new soulbind changes - Night Fae in particular. If you’re doing keys, Night Fae + UFR leggo is pretty hard to beat. Face pulling with HOTW+Convoke (as balance affinity) on big pulls or during downtime on certain bosses is a lot of fun. UFR leggo with incarn up, you’re unkillable, even with crazy high stacks of Necrotic. Outside of incarn, you’re a fair bit squishier when you’re playing UFR>NOW. Just make sure not to waste defensives if you don’t need to. The barkskin leggo is very good, but it’s kind of overkill in keys. It’s better suited for raids, IMO. The damage benefit from UFR is too good to pass up on.
I recommend joining the Dreamgrove discord for more information.