Question about Guardian Viability and help

[Deleted]

Foreword: this is my background if anyone was wondering: I have 10 current lvl 90s, including a druid and paladin and have been raiding for several years

Hey guys I've decided to reroll to a higher population server and I've got the hard choice of either going paladin or druid the deciding factor is the viability of bear, i've seen a steady decline (personally, I know that may not reflect statisically) in the amount of bears around and i was wondering how good bear tanking was at the moment and how viable it is?

I was also wondering about how well druid performs in certain situations namely when they are trying to pick up trash i am worried about the lack of ranged abilities like paladins to pick up stray mobs. and how well the active mitigation works e.g once u get a high amount of crit does it make it a smoother rotation with the higher amount of rage i'd be getting?

[Arielle]

Guardian is perfectly viable, but the room for error in some types on content (mostly 25h) is lower than other tanks. It's important to note though that this is only a snapshot assessment and things will change in 5.4.

[Tarazet]

Foreword: this is my background if anyone was wondering: I have 10 current lvl 90s, including a druid and paladin and have been raiding for several years

Hey guys I've decided to reroll to a higher population server and I've got the hard choice of either going paladin or druid the deciding factor is the viability of bear, i've seen a steady decline (personally, I know that may not reflect statisically) in the amount of bears around and i was wondering how good bear tanking was at the moment and how viable it is?

I was also wondering about how well druid performs in certain situations namely when they are trying to pick up trash i am worried about the lack of ranged abilities like paladins to pick up stray mobs. and how well the active mitigation works e.g once u get a high amount of crit does it make it a smoother rotation with the higher amount of rage i'd be getting?

I have a 523 bear. Haven't started on 10H content yet, but cleared 10N ToT and in the process I got quite familiar with the class' strengths, weaknesses, and the relative viability of the different builds. Compared with Cataclysm, our hybrid nature has been toned down a little bit. We aren't bearcats any longer. You now have access to the Heart of the Wild cooldown to provide some strong burst DPS in Cat Form, particularly when used together with Berserk, but it's not required. Many bears simply use Nature's Vigil and never shift out for any reason.

Regarding picking up scattered adds: our only ranged ability is Faerie Fire. Picking up adds with it is hit or miss, especially if you are talented into Faerie Swarm. The talent is useful, but does snare the target which can result in the mob re-aggroing someone else before it reaches you. The Incarnation cooldown can be useful against trash to allow you to chain-taunt mobs you can't reach. Once you get them gathered up, your Thrash dot makes your threat and AoE DPS excellent, I believe better than any other tank right now.

As far as viability: Guardians have quite a high level of damage reduction, provided you're using Savage Defense and Tooth & Claw effectively, and in a high-damage situation, we can bring strong self-healing as well. We lose a little bit of DPS compared with a Haste-build Paladin or a BM Monk, but we remain completely viable tanks for any content.

[Deleted]

thanks a lot for the help!

[Seelean]

Yeah man Bear tanks are amazing!!!! I love mine 526ai and I have a 491ai prot pally too!

One thing I can say between these classes is that pally brings much much more versatility to your raid compared to a bear; however a bear has incredible single target DPS and great survivability if you keep SD up, which thus increases your Fr healing with 2pc Teir 15 gear.

Now a pally can use Devo Aura which is an amazing 3min CD, plus you can Hand of Sac anyone in raud about to die or help an under gear'd off tank live thru though shit, you also can ßolo tank many encounters with BoP (Hand of Protection) to dump critical debuffs that require a tank swap.


Don't get me wrong I love my bear tank it's amazing I out DPS the avg DPS class hardcore and have ranked many times in top 150 Guardian Druids in the world via World of Logs.

Either way you can't go wrong either way