It’s getting annoying dropping like a fly if there is any wiff of magic dmg
Short answer, they’re not. That’s why they have higher health pools.
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Which is sad because their “larger” health pool really isn’t all that much bigger than any other tank.
Just gotta rotate through the cool downs properly.
Barkskin reduces ALL damage by 20%
Survival Instinct reduces ALL damage by 50% (2 charges)
Frenzied Regen heals 33% max health (2 charges)
Null Barrier Essence
Edict Trinket
(Last 2 accessible by everyone else as well)
Sucks, but with 5 charges of damage reduction to all damage, just have to keep them rotating on cool downs
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Don’t forget Rend and Tear is a 6% damage reduction from your target to all forms of damage and Pulverize can give you 9% damage reduction for 20 secs.
But most of our magic damage reduction will come in the form of Essences, Trinkets and Healers.
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You’re living 2 expansions ago. DK & DH have way more health than bears do.
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Nobody forgot. It’s just extremely minimal.
You also forgot that they’re mutually exclusive. 
Sad but true.
For dungeons with a more magic-focused damage profile, I’ll usually funnel every talent/essence/trait choice into every Barkskin/SI CD reduction possible. Having a 2-min SI recharge with a 30s lingering mastery buff is actually pretty nice if I’m getting trucked by magic damage.
I didn’t forget nor did I imply that they were. 
6% damage reduction is nothing to scoff at over the course of a long fight and 9% on demand is pretty dang good. If it is minimal, take Lunar Beam on content that you don’t outgear and report back on how minimal 6% is.
You know this, you have seen/tanked more content than I have. I don’t know why you have such a bad taste in your mouth for the spec but are so successful at it.
Maybe getting more mastery may help as well, bigger health pool and the boost to healing received can make a difference.
Guardians aren’t terrible at mitigating magic damage, they just do it differently than other tanks.
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DK and DH have high health pools because they are reactionary and heal back lost health. The higher health pools are to allow some not so quick reactionary players to still play the class. That said, none of that negates the fact bears still have high health pools, which is their mitigation to magic damage.
The never ending cycle of X tank is weak let’s give them more stam has made Bear’s strength no longer a strength.
VDH - Demonic Wards (65% stam)
BDK - Veteran of the Third War (60% stam)
Guardian - Bear Form (45% stam) + Mastery (4% health + rating)
Warrior - Vanguard (45% stam)
Paladin and Monk don’t have a listed ability in the spellbook. I know they have a buff b/c BrM is getting reduced to 30% (from 35%) in 8.3. Side note, my BrM (441 ilvl) gets ~18% healing received from Celestial Fortune, while the druid (448 ilvl) gets ~11% from mastery.
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If you’ll forgive me a few moments of going full-on Grammar Nerd Humor, rather than this:
Would more correctly be this:
But, yeah… grammar humor! 
The fact that Lunar Beam is one of the worst talents in the game (and essentially a big middle finger at druids, at this point) doesn’t negate that a 9% damage reduction (which is the best we can get) is pretty weak compared to what other tanks in the game have, all things considered.
Well success is cuz I’ve been playing this character a long, long time with a lot of the same people and this is a team game.
The bitter part is mainly due to the history of tank balance within the game. Basically it goes like this:
- In The Beginning, there was Warrior.
- In BC, Blizzard brought Druid and Paladin tanks up to snuff, although there was a lot of tank variety and there were some fights (Illidan…) that a bear simply could not tank. But there were also fights (Azgalor, etc.) where bears excelled. And back then it wasn’t because of class design, really, it was because combat worked very differently then and was all about how the different classes worked with regard to the combat table (which effectively doesn’t exist anymore, for same-level content, and hasn’t for many years).
- Then they made Death Knights, in 3 flavors.
- Eventually, GC fell in love with the DK tanking model (which he helped design) and decided to apply their ‘active mitigation’ model to all tanks. Up until then, tanks got resources by being hit, then spent resources for offensive moves. With active mitigation, tanks generated resources by attacking, and used them to defend. The model was reversed.
- Death Knight revamp was next.
- Paladin revamp was next.
- Warrior revamp was next.
- Blizzard made Monks. Hey, wait… what happened to the Druid revamp? Never happened.
- Skip past WoD and get to Legion. Blizzard made Demon Hunters and… HEY! The Druid revamp happened! Druids were finally brought into the Modern Age that started with DK mechanics back in Wrath of the Lich King.
- In BfA, Blizzard removed almost all of the Druid revamp.
Bitter? See #10, above.
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I’m not sure you could say there wasn’t a revamp between wotlk and cata, it just sucked. Bear tanking in wrath before the active mitigation change and even bc was amazing in comparison to now. Tanking on a bear now feels much like it did in cata and mop. I miss my savage defense bubble.
not the best answer, but not giving druids rage of the sleeper while lots of other classes retained their artifact abilities was extremely dumb by blizzard
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Not trying to be Drez here (<3…), but there is 0 evidence presented in this group therapy session started by a DK not posting on their Bear to get help. Just a couple interpretations of the history of Guardian (bear p.c.). Show me the money!
There have been encounters/raids scattered throughout time where Bears have completely dominated. Wasn’t there like 2 raids in Legion where they completely cheesed some tough encounters, and were 100% bis for whole raid? (Plz correct if not, I’ve been super casual since returning in wod).
With 6 tanks now, if you believe in the vanilla=warrior only theme, there is 6 times more class tanks to fit into the “excels at X encounter” rotation. People lose their minds when they homogenize tank design across the board. Then trip out when X does Y well also. It seems like distaste of design philosophy and current systems in place is bleeding over into complaints of complete inability?
In BFA not having cleared/timed past m+15 and NO raiding I cannot claim we are 100% robust in all directions from experience. But I can feel like we mitigate white damage to an extreme. Leaving plenty of room for 3 legitimate cooldowns to counter magic.
Let’s get the OP’s evidence plx.
Are we talking about Shadow of Zul here? Because I think we’re talking about Shadow of Zul. Everywhere else, the damage can be prevented with group coordinated CC and interrupts (RIP pugs) or the attacks are spread out enough that we can manage them with Frenzied Regen and timed CDs.
What else is there to say, though? Warriors get trashed even worse by Shadow of Zul, with their lower HP pools. This is one place where the core kit of VDHs and BDKs excels. I think it’s okay for them to have that.
EDIT: I also very hazily remember Bearcats being very strong in Dragonsoul. Hybrid tank used to be their niche. The revamp for Mists was cleaving the spec in two, but it seems they didn’t have time to fully flesh out either kit - I remember it feeling lacking in Mists. Nevertheless, it was fine for all content - the first group I golded CMs with had a bear tank.
Higher health pool ? So the bear’s way to deal with magic damage is to be a mana sponge ?
And as mentioned VDH has plenty of health and can get a passive 21% magic DR with void reaver up
Grats on finally recognizing bear design… It’s only been this way for how many years now…
Ya it’s been this way for years while other specs have evolved in powerful ways.
Actually I take that back because guardian has regressed from their previous design. They can’t even slow things anymore.
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Bears were the most popular tank in Nighthold, where Star Auger was the big tank check and you wanted to solo tank because of the DPS check in the last phase, but there were tons of Death Knights and Brewmasters solo tanking Star Auger as well. Other tanks definitely struggled on him (we had to get my Warrior co-tank his kill by having him go dps instead).
In Tomb of Sargeras, Bear just narrowly edged out DK as the top tank, by the slimmest of margins. But the main reason you wanted a bear on Kil’jaeden was for Stampeding Roar. Note that cat druids ALSO have Stampeding Roar, but cat druids were in the toilet at the time (what else is new?) so they weren’t really an option unless you wanted to gimp your raid a bit.
The top tank for the second half of the expansion (Antorus) was, by far and away, Death Knights.
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