Mark of Ursol removed completely?

[Cazz17]

They were flat out removing it, as they said the large health pools and FR was enough to help them survive. Haven't seen any changes from that.

[Erleichda]

??? What part of +Health, +Healing (received), and +Attack Power "applies" to Magic Damage? (unless you're referring to the Magic Damage that bears do, in which case... sure?)

The combination of +health and +healing received is functionally equivalent to -damage. There's no interaction between the AP side of it and magic damage reduction, so saying that it benefits fully might not be fair. Paladins also get magic damage reduction from the main part of their mastery while warriors, BM and DH self healing scales off of AP.

Balance wise, the removal of mark is probably fine. Bears will still be solid against sustained magic damage. Gameplay wise it feels problematic. There's now nothing bears can do with rage to emphasize magic damage reduction. Bears won't interact with magic damage much at all.

[cmcfaide]

??? What part of +Health, +Healing (received), and +Attack Power "applies" to Magic Damage? (unless you're referring to the Magic Damage that bears do, in which case... sure?)

They're referring to the fact that +HP and +Healing received from our mastery improves survivability when taking magic damage. This is in contrast to, say, warriors, whose mastery (improved Block and Critical Block chance) only applies to blockable physical damage.

Yes, the loss to MoU will have an effect on our magic mitigation. Will it make us unviable? Of course not. We still have some of the strongest passive mitigation (physical and magical) of all the tanks, and probably the most comprehensive toolkit as well.

[Everwake]

Side note, but did the Guardian PvP nerfs (thrash, FR, etc) end up getting pushed through? I don't see them in the patch notes.

[huth]

??? What part of +Health, +Healing (received), and +Attack Power "applies" to Magic Damage? (unless you're referring to the Magic Damage that bears do, in which case... sure?)

Bear mastery is functionally identical to damage reduction, increasing your effective health pool without changing the amount of healing needed to fill it.

[Deleted]

Did you actually just suggest DH and Warrior being better than the new bear on magic damage fights? You understand they're both extremely weak to magic damage right?

Do you realise DHs now have 20% passive magic reduction

and Warriors have spell reflect 50% magic reduction 25 sec CD 5 sec duration + Ignore pain is being buffed by 20%

They were lacking only on sustained magic damage (like Krosus dot) before the buffs while bears could keep up MoU 100% of the time.

So yes, in 7.2.5 Warr,DH > Bear on magic fights

[Nevcairiel]

Do you realise DHs now have 20% passive magic reduction

Thick Hide (6%, 10.5% with Chest), R&T+Legs (10%) or Pulverize (9%), Scintillating Moonlight (4%), and probably some more i'm missing.

Worst case without the chest legendary and using Pulv, thats 20.1% flat damage reduction on everything, including magical.
Best case with Chest and R&T+Legs, that value comes up to 26.4% reduction on everything.

DHs needed the 20% reduction, but that doesn't make them any better then bears. We have passive reductions out the wazoo, and thats not even counting mastery yet (DH mastery is only physical, for example)

[cmcfaide]

Thick Hide (6%, 10.5% with Chest), R&T+Legs (10%) or Pulverize (9%), Scintillating Moonlight (4%), and probably some more i'm missing.

Worst case without the chest legendary and using Pulv, thats 20.1% flat damage reduction on everything, including magical.
Best case with Chest and R&T+Legs, that value comes up to 26.4% reduction on everything.

Not sure where you got 20.1% and 26.4% (your worst case would be 17.9% and your best case would be 22.6%), but you're also missing Adaptive Fur. Granted that's only useful on subsequent hits from the same school (excluding Chaos), but it is another significant source of passive mitigation.

[Raugnaut]

Bears could essentially gain close to 50% magical damage reduction WITHOUT CDs. Not to mention enourmous HP pool, and the ability to instantly heal up any damage spike that doesn't kill us.

The only thing I don't like is the continued reduction of rage generation. Ironfur nerf is to be expected - Chances are we will end this expansion with a 40% or something Ironfur by the end of the expansion. (This also further increases the defensive value of the Ironfur trait). But being able to push less buttons throughout a fight just sucks.

[ONCHEhap]

Read: "If there's a Magical fight, fuck the Bear, someone else's OT will be better".

Perhaps this kind of design simply doesn't work for raiding where you only need 2 tanks (and you need them on pretty much every fight). They should just make each tank more or less able to handle any fight in their own unique way. It's why there's so many DPS roles with many of them having similar playstyles and even damaging in the same way, but some are more suited to specific players' flavors and some are different.

Idk, it's weird when they can't balance 6 specs, makes me have no faith in them able to balance the other 6 healing specs and 24 DPS specs...

Absolutely not,they still have more magical defenses than any other tanks even without MoU thanks to both their passives,and their large array of defensive cooldowns

In comparison,most tanks have 20 seconds cooldown on their magic mitigation,and DKs have no magic mitigation aside from a small AMS on a 60 seconds cooldown
Bears still have it easy

[Dreyen]

They literally said that bears have no weaknesses, which is true, so they gutted ursol for the sake of giving bears a weakness rather than nerfing it.

TBH I find the design of "weaknesses" pretty meh, especially for tanks since you are usually stuck with 2 tanks... What's the point in a forced weakness? I'd rather have every tank be able to deal with every situation in their own way, with perhaps some having strengths, but don't force a weakness by making a tank the only one without any viable answer to something.

Not saying bears shouldnt have been nerfed, they were in much need of some nerfs

[Nevcairiel]

Not sure where you got 20.1% and 26.4% (your worst case would be 17.9% and your best case would be 22.6%), but you're also missing Adaptive Fur. Granted that's only useful on subsequent hits from the same school (excluding Chaos), but it is another significant source of passive mitigation.

You are right, I was tired and calculated it the wrong way around (and forgot about Adaptive Fur). In any case the point stands, if you add mastery to all our passive mitigation, we still beat out the likes of DHs and whatnot. Bears don't have a new terrible weakness, they are just not insanely OP in every situation anymore.

[Deleted]

They were flat out removing it, as they said the large health pools and FR was enough to help them survive. Haven't seen any changes from that.

"Healing from Frenzied Regeneration and Skysec's Hold is no longer increased by Mastery: Nature's Guardian."

[Deleted]

"Healing from Frenzied Regeneration and Skysec's Hold is no longer increased by Mastery: Nature's Guardian."

What do you want to tell us with this post? I mean those heals aren't supposed to be increased by mastery for the same reason that Gift of Ysera isn't increased, because they scale with total HP (even if that correlation is a bit indirect for FR since it scales more with missing than with total health, but the point still stands), which is increased by mastery directly. So if those heals were increased by mastery again, they would benefit twice, which is not supposed to happen.

Edit: Also why would it matter? FR usually overheals a ton anyway, so reducing its healing by a bit isn't a real issue. I think if they would have toned FR down to 30% and left us with a nerfed MoU (20% or 10% and stacking) we would overall be in a more balanced place, especially with the rage nerfs.

[Cazz17]

"Healing from Frenzied Regeneration and Skysec's Hold is no longer increased by Mastery: Nature's Guardian."

I was only talking about the MoU removal, not any other changes.

[Zoibert the Bear]

Good ol' Blizzard and overreacting with nerfs to both mitigation and healing.

They won't stop me from maining a Guardian, but this sucks for solo players as always.

[Deleted]

I think solo players will still be able to tank all of Firelands and broken isles WQ fine.

[Nevcairiel]

Good ol' Blizzard and overreacting with nerfs to both mitigation and healing.

They really didn't. Guardian is still fine.

this sucks for solo players as always.

Tanks are not balanced around soloing things. If you could solo anything relevant with ease, whats the point of all the other players in a raid?

[Cracked]

Your huge health pool is your magic hits defense. Hence Mark of Ursol was an overkill to begin with.

[Zoibert the Bear]

They really didn't. Guardian is still fine.

Guardian is fine on a balance level. Gameplay-wise, effectively removing a button and thus decision making is select situations is bullshit.

They overreacted.

Tanks are not balanced around soloing things. If you could solo anything relevant with ease, whats the point of all the other players in a raid?

Never said they were. Still sucks for solo players which is all I said, are you just trying to be a prick for some reason? Good God.