Expect to feel squishy if you are not being proactive with your barkskin. Brambles is great in most cases (echoing what others have said) and i recommend you use barkskin as soon as you charge into a pack. The added damage does alot for your threat and the reduced damage taken is huge so you can pool up a couple ironfurs for as soon as it fades.
If you dont use barkskin or killer instincts on pull and you start with 0 rage you will become the meme bear for this expansion which healers hate healing more than a VDH who afk auto attacks. We take alot of damage without our mitigation up and we dont have great self healing to make up for large spikes. So just smooth that damage out from the start.
The spec can do just fine in all content except really high keys that require a bit of extra cheese. In 8.1 we will do more damage and arguably have better cc with that sweet sweet 1 minute CD on stampeding roar which will bring alot of value to your raid group in fights that require more movement.
In general there haven’t been many fights that favor the druid in uldir so far though. Last expansion that 1 minute CD movement speed buff was so powerful on so many fights that bears were the go to even if other tanks could mitigate better. But if fights dont require that added utility then you might as well stack up Brewmasters and blood DKs who allow your healers to really just focus on the raid.
Our AOE threat is…enough. Also ridiculously simple because anything over two targets reduces to /castsequence Thrash, Swipe, Swipe, Swipe. It’s not healthy AOE DPS though. Almost any other tank outperforms it.
Bear is fine for Normal raids and serviceable for Heroic though it’ll strain your healers. We can tank M0 without too much trouble but mainly because it’s very easy to overgear. Bears are nearly unheard-of in Mythic raid, and representation in M+ is very poor. Right now we’re basically just a slightly bigger brick of HP with less defensives, and very low mobility and utility unless we leave bearform and get smacked in leather. Mobility especially hurts because almost all of the Uldir bosses require quick repositioning.
I’m sorry what? We are very powerful as raid tanks… There isn’t a single boss in Uldir at Mythic that a Bear struggles with. We do not have high representation because early progression favored Monks henceforth everyone followed the crowd and rolled a Monk.
Iron Fur is really that powerful as Active Mitigation, We have talents we can shift for heavy Magic damage bosses, (SoTF). Even Mythic Fetid, I take the terrible thrash and IF is enough to eat the hit, (2 stacks for the Frenzy Phase). On bosses such as Mother, Vectis, and Zek’ Voz, Earthwarden actually comes in very handy as all of those bosses special attacks are predictable and can avoided, mitigated, or just aren’t that dangerous as long as you are not getting chunked down by letting IF drop.
So my issue with bear is less about performance, as I’m not a steady raider. I’m pretty casual these days and have been since LK. I love druid. Resto is fun and being able to be a stealthy cat is nice.
But dear lord, playing as a bear is mind numbing. So few things to actually do. I know people say “gives you more time for situational awareness”. Maybe. But hard to be aware when I’m half asleep waiting for mangle procs to change the 1-3-2-2-1-3-2-2 routine. I trudged through it in Legion because, well…having 10M+ HPs was just funny. Now I’ve moved back to my paladin for my main tank.
I just feel like a warrior tank, but without 50% of my warrior’s toolkit. I don’t feel like a hybrid tank, like my paladin. I can’t easily through out some heals while tanking, blessings, things like that.
Basically, I don’t have the tools of a ‘pure’ tank, or the utility of a hybrid tank. Just feels like the most bland tank.
But…and this is a big bear but(t), I keep coming back. Why? Well because druids just rock. The community as a whole just rocks. Healing as a druid is my favorite. The interaction is well thought out. Lots of tools and utility. Stealth, travel form, etc. I just keep coming back…and I’m sure I will this time too.
The few questions I still have are all about changes in 8.1, I’m not seeing any planned changes for Guardian as a spec. What can Guardians expect as the patch changes?
Aura buff to our damaging abilities (comes to about a 11% DPS gain, its ok but isn’t enough), We get access to Ursols Vortex again (AoE Grip that pulses) very positive change, and stampeding roar 1 minute CD baseline.
All in all we get a bit of damage and utility but will still lag behind Monks/DK’s. Our best hope is that by 8.2.5 the Theorycrafters are right and our scaling will be OP.
Why would I need to raid tank to know that their dps is the lowest? I don’t need to play it myself to look at the meters. Just go look at their stats instead of spewing nonsense.
I posted Guardian DPS rankings compared to other tanks on Mythic Uldir in another thread:
Keep in mind this is AFTER the 12% buff from the 8.1 patch. We’re still bottom.
I put together numbers on every fight, and fights in total. And also on overall damage vs. boss-only damage. On our BEST fights (which are not many), we’re 4th-best. On most fights, we’re on the bottom.