Armor buff?

[teddabear]

Nature's Guardian now increases your armor by 16%, up from 12%.

Where did this come from?

It seems pretty obvious Bears could use either better cooldowns or more health. More armor is better but sounds like the wrong fix to me.

[Viromand]

I think wie have enough cooldowns, with symbiosis you get small extras. And health you have enough if you need some gem for it or use a HP trinket.

The armor buff is really nice.

[Arielle]

It's pretty much to give another way for h25m to get the physical EH they need to survive certain things (Horridon for example).

Doesn't change anything for 10s.

[Tehterokkar]

It's pretty much to give another way for h25m to get the physical EH they need to survive certain things (Horridon for example).

Doesn't change anything for 10s.

Or Tortos HC, I heard for the Bat tank having high HP pool is crucial to not get 1 shot during Stomp

[Dreyen]

They should stop buffing our armor and buff our damage reduction instead imo.

Maybe guardians will get to a good spot so i can go back to being guardian rather than being forced into boomkin in my new 25m guild ><

[Mystile]

They should stop buffing our armor and buff our damage reduction instead imo.

Maybe guardians will get to a good spot so i can go back to being guardian rather than being forced into boomkin in my new 25m guild ><

Armor.. is damage reduction...

[Kikazz]

They should stop buffing our armor and buff our damage reduction instead imo.

Maybe guardians will get to a good spot so i can go back to being guardian rather than being forced into boomkin in my new 25m guild ><

omg same thing happened to me.... but boomkin isnt that bad... its hard to get used to and pisses you off easily.

[Kojo]

Armor.. is damage reduction...

Armor is physical damage reduction, bypassed by magic, bleeds and a variety of special abilities, nevermind good ol' armor crushing debuffs.

[Viromand]

Armor is physical damage reduction, bypassed by magic, bleeds and a variety of special abilities, nevermind good ol' armor crushing debuffs.

Magic dmg is not a druids problem, almost all tanks need cooldowns or EH for that.
So far in ToT only Snapping bite ignores armour.
I think only SotR(if it even does it) lowers bleed dmg.
There are no armor crushing debuff in tot atm.

We already have a really high physical dmg reduction. And with the armor buff we will have a much better time with puncture and talonrake. And it will make us less spikey. And reduce alot of melee dmg aswell which ist still nr1 incoming dmg on all bosses.

So the Buffs is exactly what we need. Why should they give extra magicdmg reduction, we dont need it. On high bleed fights you use FR which is stronger than other tank classes off the gcd heal or Sbar. You always get %more dmg taken debuffs cause of the druid armor, not a amor debuff. And snapping bite is a unique special ability that can be dodged and T&Ced, so if you add the high armor to it a druid would take no dmg at all on that fight, either dodge or block with 1 T&C due to high armor.

So this buff is perfect not too much that they will rechange it cause it makes us too strong. Its perfect. Making Stamina mastery druids more viable now.

[Arielle]

There are no armor crushing debuff in tot atm.

He means things like Snapping Bite.

[Viromand]

He means things like Snapping Bite.

Yeah OK, but to be fair an amor crushing debuff is something completely different than an ability that ignores armor.

[Dreyen]

Armor.. is damage reduction...

oh i know, but you can theorically armor cap before that buff, and itll be easier after this buff, and it wouldnt make us as weak to armor reduction effects as we are right now (Which shouldnt exist anymore, magic damage is there for that and damage taken increase debuffs too)

[Deleted]

I thought that most things that will kill us in HC were just ignoring or bypassing armor.
Armor is not our problem, active mitigation or lack of it is the problem in dangerous mechanics.

[Raugnaut]

I thought that most things that will kill us in HC were just ignoring or bypassing armor.
Armor is not our problem, active mitigation or lack of it is the problem in dangerous mechanics.

To be exact, lack of active mitigation is not our problem, but rather lack of sure-fire active mitigation is our problem. For dodgable mechanics, we can take no damage, OR we can take full damage with active mitigation up. Compared to other class's mitigation, which are generally more stable, our mitigation is on the low end.

[Arkhu]

I can guarantee this fix is irrelevant for normal modes, and I am going to guess it's not going to be too beneficial for heroics either. As others have said, armor isn't the problem, and adding more isn't the solution. It's mostly a problem with encounter design if you ask me. Too many abilities in this tier are unavoidable and/or ignore armor (Triple Puncture, Snapping Bite, Talon Rake, Hard Stare, Impale), and this devalues our mastery as well as active mitigation. On top of this, Paladins are able to negate a lot of the tank-switch mechanics, which is simply unacceptable.

In my opinion, the second part of the problem is our active mitigation. A change to Savage Defense plus a long look at the way Tooth and Claw works is probably in order. SD is too RNG-dependent, which makes us super-spikey and it has to be more difficult to heal. Even on the avoidable mechanics, dodge is going to fail sooner or later, and when it does, druids pay the price by taking 100% of the damage. Tooth and Claw's mechanic is just as unpredictable. Aside from it being useless against multiple mobs, in many cases, I have to 1) hope it's available at the moment I need it, 2) have the rage to spare, and 3) cast it with about a half second notice or else I'm going to eat a massive Talon Rake, Snapping Bite, etc. I've also witnessed it doing some pretty bizarre stuff where it just doesn't seem to work the way it is intended.

[Arielle]

I can guarantee this fix is irrelevant for normal modes, and I am going to guess it's not going to be too beneficial for heroics either. As others have said, armor isn't the problem, and adding more isn't the solution. It's mostly a problem with encounter design if you ask me. Too many abilities in this tier are unavoidable and/or ignore armor (Triple Puncture, Snapping Bite, Talon Rake, Hard Stare, Impale), and this devalues our mastery as well as active mitigation. On top of this, Paladins are able to negate a lot of the tank-switch mechanics, which is simply unacceptable.

Of those, Snapping Bite and Impale are the only ones the Mastery buff will not help against. We're meant to be able to soak the damage and immediately recover from it, not reduce/avoid it entirely. This buff will certainly help with that in 25m, it just means you can't stack as much Crit in 25m. 10m isn't really a problem so the buff doesn't mean anything there.

Tooth and Claw's mechanic is just as unpredictable. Aside from it being useless against multiple mobs, in many cases, I have to 1) hope it's available at the moment I need it, 2) have the rage to spare, and 3) cast it with about a half second notice or else I'm going to eat a massive Talon Rake, Snapping Bite, etc. I've also witnessed it doing some pretty bizarre stuff where it just doesn't seem to work the way it is intended.

Why does T&C need to work against multiple mobs? You can hold procs for up to 10 seconds in advance of when you actually need them (combo damage). You should almost always have the Rage to spare for a T&C, especially with the 4pc bonus. Mastery actually makes T&C stronger since it means the melee hit will do less damage to you, and thus require less T&C to be negated.

I get what you're trying to say though, and there are situations where it is really annoying to use (which we've talked about extensively) and Blizzard is totally aware of that.

[exochaft]

An armor buff is something I will not complain about, I'll take what I can get! While I'm honestly too lazy to see how much the armor bonus would reduce for me in 25man heroic, I still think it likely won't matter too much on my end (as usual, proper gameplay and execution makes for a happier bear). Once Guardians start hitting that barrier where their life is in damage frequently, no matter what raid size or difficulty they may be in, this buff should help slightly.

Now, this is the second time Guardians have received a buff to our survivability via armor, which tells me a few things.

First of all, Blizz must think our survivability is too low... again. Now, we've have been brainstorming multiple ways to help increase the quality of life of Guardians with respect to survivability, but the easiest way to do so w/o disrupting the balance of Guardians is by buffing armor. If we wanted changes to how SD or T&C or <insert ability>, they likely wouldn't come until 5.4 anyways, since the time/effort to change those abilities is large.

Now we could say, coming from the opposite side, that other tanks' survivability is too high. While that may be true in some cases, we know Blizz tends to buff rather than nerf in these cases, unless something is obscenely broken. Also, since we're so far into this raiding tier, Blizz won't make any drastic reductions in tanking power or gameplay (5.4 would be the time to do it). I'd expect Blizz to make tiny adjustments where needed, and the PTR is reflecting this.

The majority of our tanking complaints seem to come from ToT and certain mechanics therein. Like all raids, ToT will come and go, and the mechanics will not be a specific basis for a class change once the next raid comes out. However, I will admit that this tier tends to favor tanking classes other than Guardians (mostly in 25man, 10man seems more balanced in this respect), and this actually is a legitimate problem. While all tanks will not be perfectly balanced for all encounters in a raid, the spread should be fairly even. I believe the major problem with this tier is that "tank-killer" mechanics are almost completely against Guardians and our active mitigation toolkit, especially compared to other tank classes where their active mitigation is the guaranteed answer to almost every "tank-killer" mechanic. Whether our Guardian problems are an actual class imbalance or raid design misfire is up to debate (and I certainly have opinions on both, but now's not the time), but for the time being, an armor buff helps to some degree as a slight fix.

[Arielle]

FWIW I can pretty much guarantee you Sacred Shield will get looked at long and hard in 5.4.

[Arkhu]

Of those, Snapping Bite and Impale are the only ones the Mastery buff will not help against. We're meant to be able to soak the damage and immediately recover from it, not reduce/avoid it entirely. This buff will certainly help with that in 25m, it just means you can't stack as much Crit in 25m. 10m isn't really a problem so the buff doesn't mean anything there.


Why does T&C need to work against multiple mobs? You can hold procs for up to 10 seconds in advance of when you actually need them (combo damage). You should almost always have the Rage to spare for a T&C, especially with the 4pc bonus. Mastery actually makes T&C stronger since it means the melee hit will do less damage to you, and thus require less T&C to be negated.

I get what you're trying to say though, and there are situations where it is really annoying to use (which we've talked about extensively) and Blizzard is totally aware of that.

To me, that seems like that's the problem with bears at the moment - we're meant to either avoid the damage entirely or eat it entirely and require massive healing (through FR or our healers), as opposed to a more predictable method of mitigation. We already have more armor than the other four tanks; adding more isn't much of a solution. Since dodging is impossible for many of the tank killing mechanics this tier, it puts guardians in a particularly bad spot. 10 man normals are perfectly doable with any tank, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a difference between them. It's just that it's more difficult to recognize since the overall damage is less.

Why should Tooth and Claw be useless when tanking Tortos bats and Troll doors? Off the top of my head, instead of applying a debuff to the individual mob, it could apply a buff to the bear. It's a wonky ability that needs work. I think it's silly to have active mitigation that is so dependent on RNG. I can play nearly perfectly and still get wrecked. A bit of armor isn't going to magically smooth out our damage intake.

[Arielle]

We already have more armor than the other four tanks; adding more isn't much of a solution.

It's not as effective as adding more Stamina, but it's still really effective against stuff it works against. You're not adding an additional multiplier, you're increasing one of the existing ones which is much better.

Why should Tooth and Claw be useless when tanking Tortos bats and Troll doors?

I'm fine on bats without even having to worry about T&C. Plus we still have typhoon and UV. Trolls are worse obviously. But even still it's not as bad as you're making it sound.