Guardian druids take too much damage?

[Hecow]

i main a dk tank and after reading this i jumped on my druid. il 619 all pvp hit a heroic thinking I'm going to get jacked and nothing, it was cake i did 4 heroics no prob. not as easy as dk but i think nothings wrong with them at all. INT things and use your cd's

[Hyve]

They take more damage, but not to the point where it's an absolute disaster. Whenever I run with a Druid, I just make sure to use more CC / Interrupts / Stuns to ease the Healing I need to do. It's nothing serious, but a small tweak to them before the Raiding begins would be nice.

[Bill Nye the Spy]

They take more damage, but not to the point where it's an absolute disaster. Whenever I run with a Druid, I just make sure to use more CC / Interrupts / Stuns to ease the Healing I need to do. It's nothing serious, but a small tweak to them before the Raiding begins would be nice.

Agreed. Still a rather fun tank to play, but they do get trucked harder than other tanks.

[exochaft]

As a healer, I've had bears that get obliterated by everything and I've had some bears that just don't really take damage. There hasn't really been much of a gear difference between the two types when I inspect them, so I think it has a lot to do with player skill.

Having better gear certainly helps, but I've noticed that tanks that make intelligent use of their CDs and are knowledgeable of the fights tend to be much easier to heal. That being said I have yet to have a brewmaster monk that wasn't a struggle to heal.

From the bear side of things, it really can be pure luck as to what happens. I've found that varying outcomes tend to be a combination of rage generation and whether we avoid attacks. Having a slow start to rage generation when starting from 10 on a pull can delay any use of active mitigation for a while, and unless you spec GoE there's no guaranteed that you will dodge attacks with SD active, either. Over time, everything should balance out, but in the short term you can be an impenetrable fortress or a paper bear. For normals, it's not that noticeable. For heroics, you can feel the pain but usually recover without much stress. For CM's, you may end up using most of your major CD's at the start of the fight to just not die.

While I was an advocate against removing the ability completely, I really wish we still had Enrage, or some ability to allow us to generate extra rage on-demand (or at the very least for an initial pull). Maybe it's a push for us to use Rage potions and make alchemists happy!

[Deleted]

We can't use rage potions because we really do need to use healthstones a lot of the time.
Ive been running my bear through heroics without too much trouble, but we to take a LOT of damage. I dont have much of a basis for comparison, as my dk isnt 100 yet, but it sure feels like a lot. Im having to rotate all my cooldowns on trash in heroics. Im sitting at 618 at the moment. Honestly I think its a lot about how you play your druid rather than the class itself. If you fuck up, then you really fuck up.

[Whitepaw]

There still remains a very basic design issue: Bears have active avoidance, other tanks have active mitigation. Besides that, there is a balance issue with AoE damage for all specs. AoE is now so important that it needs to be balanced. In short, nerf Blood Boil.

[Deleted]

A lot of people in here only seem to focus on heroic dungeon damage. I've personally went for gold CMs on both my guardian druid and my blood death knight. I found it way easier to manage the damage without relying as much on personal cooldowns to be up for every pull on my death knight.

On another note I found Guardian of Elune to be very nice on bigger pulls in CMs, although a bit of tweaking regarding the uptime would be nice. Maybe allow a 3rd charge instead of a lower cd would be a good fix.

[bhot]

Tried to do challenge mode skyreach today and struggled pretty badly. The first boss hit like a truck. One healer could not keep me up at all. Another was able to after many attempts. My guild had to sub me out for a blood DK who was much easier to heal.

[Deleted]

When i go from my brewmaster over to tank on my druid i always get this "wow this is so much better" feeling. So at least you're not in the bottom of the barrel but its not the smoothest ride.

[Gothmog]

I alt a brewmaster and while I agree they take a fair bit of damage as well, monks have something we don't. Guard+Expel Harm.

When a monk drops low, he uses those two abilities and wham, he's bought himself 6-7 seconds of survival during which healer can focus on him again. Doing that costs him very little.


When a Guardian drops low, he can opt to choose Frenzied Regen that heals him for ~8% of his health, drains all his rage and makes him a widely painted KILLMENOW sign on his forehead because he's not going to use anything else for the next 10 seconds while he's building rage for SD.


That's the difference. That's why, despite both being "so-so" I don't play my bear in CM's anymore and I do brewmaster.

[Deleted]

Got to agree on the low hp part. Only way i found to somewhat survive that problem is to always keep a buffed up instant cast healing touch ready as it heals more than freenzied regen and if you combine the 2 you get a nice chunk back.
With the bonus from resolve you can get quite alot of health back from just your own heals.

[Fojos]

They take more damage, but not to the point where it's an absolute disaster. Whenever I run with a Druid, I just make sure to use more CC / Interrupts / Stuns to ease the Healing I need to do. It's nothing serious, but a small tweak to them before the Raiding begins would be nice.

To be honest. Having to use other means to be able to survive when other tanks don't need to is an absolute disaster.

[Faladrath]

Yet druid tank was used for CM world first golds by pulling packs without CC...

[Viromand]

So far I had no problems at all in hc havent tried any CM yet.

No healer complained, even survived a few misspulls where i thought i was going to die.

I was a little frustrated at first because in my opinion normal dungeon with an ilvl 600 group is harder than hc with an ilvl 610 group maybe rng on my groups but I found it to be alot harder on nhc to survive when nobody has any gear.

If you have problems surviving hc dungeons, maybe use the 100 cd talent with 1 min cd. I know its worse than Puvlerize but still better than pulverize if you dont have it up when you pull a group. typhoon, stun and if tauren the aoe stun are really strong in heroic. Pay attention to cast that do alot of dmg, and interrupt them, especially the spiders in SBG, their bite does alot of dmg. And with the new improved berserk, using it with NV makes you almost invincible during that time. Just because some talents are not the best or got nerfed, doesnt mean they suck on hc trash groups. BF and berserk plus NV are really strong in heroic, tho i dont use BF anymore when I started hc, i found it to be more valuable than pulverize on trash.


As said i had no problem in hc dungeons but there is one thing that is really annoying maybe im doing something wrong but if you start a boss fight in hc and you start with 0 rage it takes alot of time before your "stuff" is up. I know alot has to do with ilvl and rage generating stats beeing low. Still i feel like it take way to long for SD and puvlerize to be up on a single target boss, I miss enrage. This might lead to some healers saying we get hit very hard, due to the fact that nothing is up for the first 5-7 seconds. So i started using my CD at the start mostly.


And DKs have always been strong when it comes to trash tanking in CM or HC. And of course you are going to have a hard time when you dont use your CDs, stuns and interupts. Its not like the other tanks just charge in and only AA and stay alive. And like someone said GoE even if considered pretty bad can still help you in alot of situations.

[Deleted]

Yet druid tank was used for CM world first golds by pulling packs without CC...

No, that would be a monk. I have no idea where you got druid tank from.

[tokodasa]

Bears are fine if you just want to do heroic dungeons and probably just normal/heroic raiding. Otherwise we're pretty much useless right now it seems. In CM's bear tanks get destroyed and offer nothing in terms of utility or "big cooldowns" that other tanks have. I have been rejected for CM daily groups even at 638 ilvl because I'm a Guardian, and I can't say that I blame them. One of our active mitigation tools is an avoidance "chance" and the other (FR) isn't even worth using half the time all the while other tanks have flat damage reductions as theirs. I don't really understand the "we scale good with gear" excuse because obviously no one is going to have that gear at the beginning of an expac so I guess they just expect us to be fine with being useless until we get carried through some raids.

It's also a bit demoralizing to see people who are big figureheads and sources of feedback in the bear tank community saying that we're fine or that it's just a "skill" issue all over the internet as if it's even possible to fail at the watered down toolkit we now have. This is probably why bear tanks from a design perspective have been going downhill for a while.

Oh well, I will be playing my Warrior for WoD.

[Deleted]

I've managed to do Slag mines Challenge mode gold so far as a Guardian druid, I would attribute the time to how well my teammates play more than anything else. It's hard to survive through a pack without some form of shield wall and kiting and getting the gold times is all about standing still and aoeing right now.

[Sopa]

Bears are fine if you just want to do heroic dungeons and probably just normal/heroic raiding. Otherwise we're pretty much useless right now it seems. In CM's bear tanks get destroyed and offer nothing in terms of utility or "big cooldowns" that other tanks have. I have been rejected for CM daily groups even at 638 ilvl because I'm a Guardian, and I can't say that I blame them. One of our active mitigation tools is an avoidance "chance" and the other (FR) isn't even worth using half the time all the while other tanks have flat damage reductions as theirs. I don't really understand the "we scale good with gear" excuse because obviously no one is going to have that gear at the beginning of an expac so I guess they just expect us to be fine with being useless until we get carried through some raids.

It's also a bit demoralizing to see people who are big figureheads and sources of feedback in the bear tank community saying that we're fine or that it's just a "skill" issue all over the internet as if it's even possible to fail at the watered down toolkit we now have. This is probably why bear tanks from a design perspective have been going downhill for a while.

Oh well, I will be playing my Warrior for WoD.

I could quote you a thousand times. True words. Specially on the second paragraph. I am more than likely changing my bear spec for moonkin.

[Deleted]

I like healing druids, warriors or Dk's. Monks on the other hand takes an insane amount of damage.

[Viromand]

I've managed to do Slag mines Challenge mode gold so far as a Guardian druid, I would attribute the time to how well my teammates play more than anything else. It's hard to survive through a pack without some form of shield wall and kiting and getting the gold times is all about standing still and aoeing right now.

I dont know how the new CM works, but it sound exactly the same as CM in MoP. If you have a group with high aoe dmg and classes that can aoe stun (wl or dk) the tank doesnt matter that much, and you always had to use CDs in CM. Our kit currently ist just awful for aoeing stuff down while avoiding dmg.Sure thrashing all day gives alot of rage but FR just feels so weak curently. and dont know if TnC benefits from resolve but i dont think so. Pulverize is just awful for aoe tanking and dpsing. And our mastery doesnt seem to be that good against aoe packs aswell.

I do feel Druid has some problems currently and may require some better play in CM then other classes. Good CD usage is required for every tank in CM, our problem is if we dont have them up we feel really weak on trash mobs.

Ill try some CM and try to provide some logs.


What talents did you use for Slag mines, or in general for CM

It's also a bit demoralizing to see people who are big figureheads and sources of feedback in the bear tank community saying that we're fine or that it's just a "skill" issue all over the internet as if it's even possible to fail at the watered down toolkit we now have. This is probably why bear tanks from a design perspective have been going downhill for a while.

Its not like alot of these figureheads dont agree with you its just:

CM: Challenge mode is a really bad way to compare tanks. Cause the group setup overall has much more impact. And I believe back in MoP Blizz even said something about Tanks and classes can not be balanced around CM. The thing is in CM if you have a druid tank and 1 dps DK and one WL with another aoe stun class, the druid would take less dmg than a warrior or pally with non aoe stun setup for example. But yes our group utility is very bad currently.


Lack of data: Noone has actual data on raid encounters yet cause there are non. I feel like our kit seem pretty nice for single target tanking. And even GoE or BF seem pretty nice situational talents for specific encounters. but again no actual data that can provide proof of druids beeing really strong or just bad.

Alot of current stuff is just how people feel about things, like FR it does feel like a joke and i dont know if TnC benefits from resolve(i dont think so) the changes to vengeance really hurt our survivability coming from TnC.

I recall people crying about DKs when MoP started due to the CM, and tbh they were kinda bad in the first raid on some encounters. Sure druid wasnt the best either. When the first raid starts and mythic is open and you can see from the data that druid suck all will agree with you but thats the main problem noone has actual data.