My ideas on fixing Bears (Highly subjective)

[Uriel]

Hello fellow friends of nature.

I guess everyone now knows that Guardian droods aren't what they supposed to be. They are the weakest tanks, with broken mechanics and very little raid support. We don't have a niche to shine nor fun or interesting kills to use like Dark Simulacrum. So I brainstormed some ideas that I'd like to see. keep in mind that this is my opinion so you don't have to share it. I am also talking about Guardian druids in PVE. If some of those changes affect PVP or other specs I guess Blizzard can come up with a solution themselves.

Core mechanics:
We are the only tanks which have a active mitigation that is based on a chance and we can not reach 100% dodge chance outside of trinket proccs or a talent. All other tanks have a reliable skill that works 100% of the time. So we all agree that our active skill is pretty terrible, right? I see different ways to fix that.

1) Make Guardian of Elune baseline. That way we would dodge a strike 100% and not just only 60 or so percent. Maybe then change the talent to it adds the missing 3 seconds again (or increase its scaling slightly)

2) Make Savage Defense increasing armor. This would work as a reliable source of damage reduction. Palas have a talent that grants them a hefty amount of Armor so I see no reason why bears shouldn't get something similar (but maybe with lower numbers)

3) Leave numbers as they are but decrease the cooldown of Savage Defense so we could achieve an 100% uptime with good gear and adjusted playstyle.

4) As an alternative how about they put the damage reduction buff from pulverize into mastery and let pulverize add an increase to armor?

Movement:
Feral Charge should be baselin. As a replacement in that tier Dash should be usable in all forms, not just kitty (and maybe with a reduced CD but that would only be optional).
Displacer beast just sucks cause it shifts you into cat. Who ever designed that ability must have been drunk. Why not remove the cat thingy and let it act as some sort of blink usable in all forms without changing the current form to cat? Would make much more sense to me at least. Or at least a a glyph that supresses the cat switch.

AOE threat:
Droods once were the king of Add tanking. All other tanks but Droods have some sort of niche.
Id like to see the Thrash bleed replaced with lancerate bleeding. Thrash should also apply the Lancerate bleeding if 4 or more targets are hit. That way Pulverize would be more usable in AOE situations without using lancerate first. In addition it would proc Ursa Major more often when we need it the most: being attacked by many adds (Imperator comes to mind). Some might say its would be OP cause it also resets Mangle more frequently but if you compare Droods damage to other tanks it should be somewhat balanced. This would make us the AOE Bear again.

In addition we lack an AOE Taunt as well. So that should be added in some form as well.

AOE Stun:
All other tanks have some kind of AOE Stun or interrupt. Warriors have shockwave, palas frisbee and DKs Endless winter or whats it called.
So to bring bears back in line I'd like Mighty bash to be an frontal aoe stun (with a distinguished animation). I imagine it to work as some kind of shockwave with a shorter range. 50 seconds for 5 second stun is balanced imo. (Keep in mind I am talking about PVE only)

AOE Interrupt:
Incapatating Roar in its current form is just terrible. I did test it in several situations but even in normal dungeons it has almost no reliable use. I'd like to see it as an AOE Interrupt with a quite short radius similar to Belfs Racial.

Pulverize glyphe:
Add a glyphe so you can use pulverize without removing the lancerate bleeding stacks.

Glyph of ursoc:
Add a minor glyph that grands the bear the armored skin even if that talent is not chosen. Add more cosmetic choices for bears and kitties in general.

Guardian of Elune:
Is very weak. While it catches up in physical only encounters it is still pretty hard to use without a swingtimer. It is pretty sad though since the basic idea sounds quite good. The Mythic bears I have asked have a dodge chance around 15%. So in the higherst currently obtainable gear GoE reduces the CD by less than 2 seconds and ragecost by 9. That is just sad. Increase the scaling a little so you might reach 9 or 8 seconds. If it gets too strong with future gear just adjust the value again similar to what they did to Bloodthirst of Warriors. Or just make it baseline as mentioned above.

Theeth and claw:
I like that skill, but in addition to granting two charges the Draenor perk should reduce the rage cost of Maul by lets say 5 rage (I'd prefer making it free like Warriors HS but I guess that would make it too strong since HS has no defensive bonus like we do). This way we could pretty much spamm it and use the rage for self healing.

Dream of Cenarius:
The proc should add a charge that lasts a long time (like a minute or more) and stacks up to two times. So we can use Healing touch or Battle rezz when we need it the most. Since the current talents is just another chance based option with a relatively low duration (15 sec) it is too unreliable for a tank. Bank it for emergencies you'd probably waste proccs and if you use it immediately you might overheal and don't have it ready when you need it.

Pulverize:
Let's face it Pulverize is too strong compared to the other talents in that tier. Instead of adding a flat damage decrease they should add armor as an effect and shifts its current effect into Savage Defense. Like explained earlier.


While some of you might diasgree on some points here those are my ideas on how to fix bears. I'd like to hear what ideas y'all come up with. Fact is that the bear in its current state lacks performance in many departments.

[Captain Midnight]

Most of our problems stem from a lack of meaningful choices in our talent tree. There are some gripes I have with our core mechanics, though.

For example, I think our Mastery is the worst, most boring thing since it used to increase our armor. It makes no sense with the class, has nothing to do with our active mitigation abilities (e.g. Critical Block directly feeds into Shield Block, Blood Shield and Death Strike, etc.) and it's not even something we notice. It's a worse version of Block that we have no control over. It's strong, admittedly, but it doesn't feel like it's part of our original design goal. It feels like it was just stitched on in an attempt to...I don't know. I'm not really sure what the intent was.

I think having a one-resource system for a tank is extremely outdated, especially for Druids who have to choose between RNG mitigation and after-the-fact healing. Monks and DKs have it best, but even Paladins have HoPo and Mana (I know, mana's not really a resource any more at this point, but it used to be a lot more important, even with HoPo). Warriors, I feel, can manage a little better than us with their Glyph that lets them have 120 rage, allowing them to have enough Rage banked to use Shield Block and Shield Barrier in tandem for clutch moments.

Also, we're locked out of all of our class's utility spells, like Soothe, Remove Corruption, and Rebirth while we're in bear form, which is something that no other class, indeed even any other spec of Druid, has to deal with. On top of that, if we find ourselves in a situation where we're forced to leave Bear form to cast one of those spells, we sacrifice ALL of our passive mitigation AS WELL AS ALL OF OUR RAGE. Not only does popping out to cast Rebirth leave us vulnerable in caster form, but it also screws us over when we shift back into Bear form. Now, there are ways to get around or mitigate this, like from DoC or by dumping all your rage before you leave Bear form, but the fact of the matter is that this mechanic is archaic and unnecessary these days.

Anyway I didn't even really get into the talents and I didn't really address your post, but those are some of my thoughts about the root of the problem with Guardians.

[Surfd]

Part of my problem with the way Guardian Druid stands at the moment is that, since they did away with dodge on gear, agility affecting dodge, and all that, we currently exist in a situation where, as an "Avoidance" based tank, no amount of upgrades to our gear (outside of procs from trinkets or enchants) actually improves our Avoidance. Which seems really rather stupid. I mean, Savage Defense increases our Dodge by a flat amount, our Base dodge never increases, and nothing ever lets us improve the overall uptime of the Savage Defense buff. In essence, the only thing we do as our gear increases, is become better Stamina Sponges witth a larger mele damage "block" absorb from our mastery. Which is really bloody boring.

A fully mythic geared bear tank will have exactly the same dodge chance and Savage Deffense coverage as a freshly dinged level 100 in dungeon gear. The only difference being easier ability to generate rage (which having no decent rage dump is largely useless) and more ability to mitigate damage through armor / mastery / larger hp pool.

I miss the days when we were actually Avoidance tanks, rather then the Mitigation Meat Shield we are today.

[Gephyrophobia]

Part of my problem with the way Guardian Druid stands at the moment is that, since they did away with dodge on gear, agility affecting dodge, and all that, we currently exist in a situation where, as an "Avoidance" based tank, no amount of upgrades to our gear (outside of procs from trinkets or enchants) actually improves our Avoidance. Which seems really rather stupid. I mean, Savage Defense increases our Dodge by a flat amount, our Base dodge never increases, and nothing ever lets us improve the overall uptime of the Savage Defense buff. In essence, the only thing we do as our gear increases, is become better Stamina Sponges witth a larger mele damage "block" absorb from our mastery. Which is really bloody boring.

A fully mythic geared bear tank will have exactly the same dodge chance and Savage Deffense coverage as a freshly dinged level 100 in dungeon gear. The only difference being easier ability to generate rage (which having no decent rage dump is largely useless) and more ability to mitigate damage through armor / mastery / larger hp pool.

I miss the days when we were actually Avoidance tanks, rather then the Mitigation Meat Shield we are today.

Agility still affects dodge, lol. That's why GoE gets better with better gear.

[Uriel]

The thing is though that mythic geared bears have ~15% Dodge. 15+45 = 60% in the highest obtainable gear.
So in essence even if we keep up our ActiveMitigation we still get hit 40% of the time eventhough we wear the best in slot gear one can get. It gets even worse if SD is on cooldown.
Surf is right, it is rather stupid to let a talent base on a basic stat that barely gets any upgrades.

Like I said even in BIS gear you will only reduce the CD by <2 secs


@ Captain Midnight: You are right that bears are locked out of most abilities while tanking. I'd like to see my Dream of Cenearius change and maybe add more spells to the table.
I'd also like to see a comback of tranq or inervate as raid support skills.