Gaurdian/bear tanks

[Jeromicz]

So I have had my bear my main charcter since end of Wotlk and It seems though they are slowly getting push out as being a good tank. It is a matter of being able to play it like any class and I can survive on the heroic highmaul fights just like my pally off tank. But just because am a bear I try to find pugs to gear up more and all and don't get invited because am rolling a bear compared to any other tank. No new models for a long time. Bears have nvr had a chance to be top tank seems to switch between warriors pallys and dks. And know the nerf on thrash. The only thing bears have left that's unique to them is their large health pool with ursals major... One last thing to nerf and it won't make since even to roll a bear. We also lost symbolis as well as might of ursac to increase are hp for a short time. Yet warriors still have the rallying cry even.Any body else feel like bears are getting more then just neglected with what's going on to bears?

[Bosen]

Form groups with friends and guildies if pugs are being stupid.

[Deleted]

Nope, bears don't seem that badly off to me. They do seem to have a bad reputation, though. I always get hmmming and hawing and disapproving looks when I ask to join raids as well, but pugs on a whole are not to be taken seriously. Just find groups that WILL take you and prove you're worthy.

And if all else fails, make your own pugs. They're not difficult to lead.

[CenariusTheForestLord]

Bears aren't bad. Paladins are just too good.
Although one might argue we need some form of extra cooldown for survivability.
3 flat damage reduction cooldowns isn't a very varied cooldown system...
With our AOE nerfed into the ground i do believe our Single target dps can go up a bit. Say lacerate and maul 10% buff or so, maybe even thrash dot. Mangle is doing decent damage.

Our survivability is doing fine though if you know what you're doing. Although our lvl 100 talents need work.
Bristling fur is nice but very niche since it doesn't increase overall survivability. Some passive buff included in the talent would be nice.
Pulverize at 12 seconds is very limiting, and feels clunky especially on fights like twins and tectus. Where either a lacerate uptime is mandatory (and having them drop constitutes a severe dps loss and time consumption), or lacerate is hardly used due to heavy AOE.
Guardian of Elune is good on paper, but our passive dodge% isnt high enough to actually do anything to the cooldown.

Sorry for my rant.
TL;DR: Guardians are fine, but prot pala and warrior are just too good atm.
PS: The ideas i mentioned are simply improvements i would like, so gaurdians can get back up there with paladins and warriors. It's either that or nerf warriors and paladins, which I think would cause even more of an uproar.

[Dreyen]

everytime i hear that pugs don't take guardians just becasue they are guardians i just lose it... guardians are a poor choice at mythic high-end raiding, for but normal and heroic? they are perfectly fine..

[Deleted]

There is no reason to take a bear tank over any other tank, we don't excel at any fight over another tank, and frequently other tanks surpass us. That however, does not mean guardians are not a viable tank, we're just behind everyone else. We can still tank no problem, and there a plenty of guardians tanking mythic.

Public opinion of bears hurts us more than our poor spec design.

[Dudziek]

Im currently playing dk tank, but im thinking about next tank as an alt. Now i've dilemma what to level up. I've got 80lvl war and 91lvl drood. I feel that guradian could be a nice challenge to play him, but i dont want a tank which will dying a lot and need x2 more heals. Is tank drood that bad? Should i've just forget about him and level up my war?

[Deleted]

Im currently playing dk tank, but im thinking about next tank as an alt. Now i've dilemma what to level up. I've got 80lvl war and 91lvl drood. I feel that guradian could be a nice challenge to play him, but i dont want a tank which will dying a lot and need x2 more heals. Is tank drood that bad? Should i've just forget about him and level up my war?

Not that bad, we're not dying more than any other tank, but we are taking more damage, not the case of 2x more, but about 1.3-1.5x more depending on fight and player. What will bother you, and what made me drift towards playing my warrior more, is the fact that druid tanks just lack the kind of defensive abilities and utilities warriors have.

[teddabear]

Mobility, taunts and utility are the big things hurting Guardians right now but the Spec needs a complete overhaul including talents, new mechanics and complete retuning.

[Dreyen]

Im currently playing dk tank, but im thinking about next tank as an alt. Now i've dilemma what to level up. I've got 80lvl war and 91lvl drood. I feel that guradian could be a nice challenge to play him, but i dont want a tank which will dying a lot and need x2 more heals. Is tank drood that bad? Should i've just forget about him and level up my war?

Druids take more damage, but they also heal back a lot... however if youre not playing well, a druid is probably worse off than any tank. Make sure you have cenarion ward and DoC and use them plenty for self-healing, healers might think you look squishy but if you go down to 20% hp and heal yourself back to 50%, it can only look squishy

If you consider damage taken + self healing done, druids arent too far behind other tanks, certainly not in the x2 damage range.

[Cannibalus]

everytime i hear that pugs don't take guardians just becasue they are guardians i just lose it... guardians are a poor choice at mythic high-end raiding, for but normal and heroic? they are perfectly fine..

IMO playing Guardian in a Mythic progression guild requires a higher skill-cap similar to MoP-Brewmaster Monk. We are progressing Brackenspore Mythic atm and i have no issues even though i am the weakest of all tanks when it comes to magic damage. It's just how you play it

[Dreyen]

IMO playing Guardian in a Mythic progression guild requires a higher skill-cap similar to MoP-Brewmaster Monk. We are progressing Brackenspore Mythic atm and i have no issues even though i am the weakest of all tanks when it comes to magic damage. It's just how you play it

I cringe a bit everytime i hear that, guardians have the highest hp and highest passive magic DR with pulverize, we simply lack in magic damage reduction cooldowns (See AMS, prot paladin divine protection unglyphed [They still glyph it for brackenspore], monk diffuse magic...)

Besides, if you have one smart paladin in your raid, he takes hand of purity, and uses it every breath (30sec cd, lines up with breath i believe), and it reduces the breath/dot damage by 81%... so youre basically worried only about the melee damage and no healing

[Kujako]

...passive magic DR with pulverize...

I'm almost sure passive does not mean what you think it means.

[Waldoe]

Form groups with friends and guildies if pugs are being stupid.

This is always the best way to improve and learn imo.

[Geckoo]

IMO playing Guardian in a Mythic progression guild requires a higher skill-cap similar to MoP-Brewmaster Monk. We are progressing Brackenspore Mythic atm and i have no issues even though i am the weakest of all tanks when it comes to magic damage. It's just how you play it

I handle the breath with barskin, pulverize & a big health pool (one or two stamina trinkets help with this). We sure have less tools to handle magic damage but the real danger in that fight is not the breath but the massive hits that all tanks get from the flesh eater, specially if your raid group doesn't kill him fast enough.

[Dudziek]

IMO playing Guardian in a Mythic progression guild requires a higher skill-cap similar to MoP-Brewmaster Monk. We are progressing Brackenspore Mythic atm and i have no issues even though i am the weakest of all tanks when it comes to magic damage. It's just how you play it

I'm always good at high skill-cap tanks I have to start leveling my drood

[Geckoo]

I'm always good at high skill-cap tanks I have to start leveling my drood

Honestly, is not like it has a high skill-cap, it's really a simple class, it might take a bit of skill to deal with the flaws it has by design when you don't have enough gear (it felt really weak in dungeons compared to other tanks), but that's not a problem once you are progressing with the apropiate gear in a raid enviroment. That doesn't mean that the class doesn't have design flaws once you have gear, it only means that what 'fixes' the class most, is not skill, but the increase in gear that both the tank and healers get once they are progressing through raid content.

[Deleted]

I'm almost sure passive does not mean what you think it means.

Pretty sure he means damage reduction. Which is a fair acronym to use.

[Geckoo]

Pretty sure he means damage reduction. Which is a fair acronym to use.

In that specific scenario sure it is (brackenspore's breath) because you have plenty of time to build up the 3 stacks of lacerate and have that pulverize passive DR for the whole duration of that magic damage. In fact, you'll probably have it anyway since it's part of playing the right way with only one enemy, two at most, and plenty of room to build up resources for that specific moment.

But it's really a clumsy 'passive' DR when lacerate is not the best choice, be it incarnation (yeah, i know, but is still there!), berserk or simply that the amount of adds makes thrash a better choice. Then there is no passive DR because it's simply not the best choice. In those scenarios our defense (not only magic) consists in a higher rate of rage generation to heal or dodge the damage more often with the hope that our bigger health pool is able to handle the damage in the first place, no 'passive' pulverize at all.

Not like that's a problem since it's something that we can handle, but i feel like it's really a consequence of a bad class design in many aspects. As i said in other thread, guardian druid seems like a bunch of working ideas that have no connection with each other. We have our small set of working ideas that work pretty well and when they don't work, then we have a totally different set of working ideas that can handle the situation... meanwhile our totally different mastery is doing stuff. It feels clumsy to me and somehow i even like it (i won't be playing it if i didn't!), but i feel like there should be some small tweaks to help the whole class to make more sense.

[lsmf5]

One minor suggestion that I think would provide quality of life and not be op is if you are using thrash on 3 or more enemies you gain a stack towards pulverise, that stack doesn't even have to cause lacerate.