Where are the bears?

[Bleedinggum]

Bears I think make the best tank when we are not needed to tank 24/7 on a boss. We can jump kitty and put out some good numbers. For randoms with the changes I may try to tank again for them (most likely no). My dk is so much easier and funner to tank with then my bear. I do think bears are missing something. Just cant put my finger on it right now.Saying that I will wait 30 mins if I want to do a random on my druid.

[Feralan]

I've been a bear tank since vanilla Deadmines (though I only did very little raiding) and am proud of it too. My bear is my main and will always be. But ... I also have a warrior, and it feels like a "night and day" difference despite the fact that both use rage. The warrior has such a big toolbox and never seems to run out of rage. The bear? Can't do a single damn thing off the bat unless Enrage is ready. In combination with Feral Charge costing rage now, I often feel starved and slow on my bear, while my warrior zips around and never runs out of juice.

My other quibble is that we don't seem to have anything unique anymore, and most of our utility is unusable when tanking unless we can wriggle free of the monsters for a couple seconds so we can shift. Warriors got a self-heal like ours and it's better because it doesn't eat rage. Death knights can battleres and don't risk being clobbered while doing so. Innverate is worthless. So we have Stampeding Roar ... yay. Getting an interrupt was great, but that aside I just feel like a furry third-rate warrior.

So I really wish they'd fiddle with the rage generation and make Feral Charge free again, and give us some useable and useful utility.

Also, I don't PUG much (unless I have at least one guildie with me, ideally a healer) because I am / we are among those much-hated casuals, and what I really don't need in my day is some meter-humping arsehole brat demanding a CC-less 15-minute zerg stampede run before his vaunted raid starts, and calling me all sorts of names for doing heroics at the proper gear level instead of T-whatever epics. (Though to be fair, my experience with randoms has been better in Cataclysm than it was in Wrath, overall, but that is damning with faint praise.)

[invader]

aye bears r shit compared to other tanks in that respect and we could still do with a few lil tweaks but still more fun than other tanks for me,,, i find it even better now that after a few rotations as bear on most bosses i can switch to kitty and outdps most dps and still take next to no dmg for the most part (smart cds and engi ftw)and keep aggro much to the groups annoyance but meh i can so i will cos its fun !!! (in dungeons btw i might get a g kick for doin it in a raid ;p)... but yea we dont seem to have any redeeming features like other tanks i.e self healing n what not but we is just simple meat shields with simple "will work for food" ideals !!

[Dassen]

I tanked a heroic on my bear earlier. I go bear when I'm tired of resto and vice versa.

[Swinekicker]

I know that this thread is older, however, I'm a bear and love it! Tanking new ZA/ZG content, scoring 21k+ dps on trash (10k boss), and watching the healer's mana stay topped constantly is awesome. I think that many old-school bears still may be having issues with the changes that occured with cata such as the lack of stam stacking, and the confusing addition of mastery (does mine block 54% more of my 30% AP or wth?), bear just haven't found their niche yet. Along with slow gearing (3 toons on avg rolling for the same gear). I love my bear though, so I'll see you all on the inside!

[uzumati]

I'm a bear and love it! Tanking new ZA/ZG content, scoring 21k+ dps on trash (10k boss)

Try Alysrazor for 140K + dps

[Deleted]

Hi, im here , rawr ?
I do a HC a day ur just very unlucky.

[Buttered Toast]

say herro to a bear :3 we're still here, some are off hibernating, others mangling people at yellowstone. i queue everyday, so im sure im filling some peoples longing for the grizzle tank experience

[Richmond]

I'm still around

[Deleted]

I got sad that theres no more bears so I started gearing did my first rise of the zandalari I got ZA it was going smoothly up until dragonhawk when on single target dps who were doing over 19k dps said Im doing good cause their aggro never passed 45% but when adds spawned it was a nightmare. I will be stubborn and continue but it will be hard with adds =[

[Deleted]

Hello! A former bear from WotLK, but now a cat since Cata here! :3
I used to play bear and I loved it! It held decent aggro in trash and managed perfectly in boss fights.
But when Cata came I decided to stick with cat for 3 reasons;
1) I had already played every other druid spec than feral dps
2) The Cata heroics were "harder" and they needed more to do than just swipe spam etc.. (y'know.. WotLK hc style )
3) I felt it was going to be a lot tougher with the cd coming to Swipe and hp increase "nerfs" and all that..
What does this delightful story have to do with the actual question?
WELL! I think that's what the most of feral society thinks about bears.., Hard to pull off, "weaker" than the others (only form of mitigation is dodge and high health pool) and even the cosmetic side which many have said,.. isn't so appealing (the infamous bear ass).

[Tealicious]

As said earlier in this thread, if you have tanked before WOTLK, aoe packs are not an issue for the 'diehard' bear. Ive been tanking since TBC on my bear and i had no issue holding aggro against aoe packs when cata was launched. I was managing without the swipe CD buff. Then when they did, everything became a breeze. If you can't play a bear well, its best not to play a bear at all. If you can however, most of them are very skilled and also, very rare to find nowadays

[helusay]

Former Bear tank here. In my opinion this is a great single boss tank, but on mobs just awful especially when your dps tells you to "just swipe" which is another means to say "I am not targeting your target". That being said, bears have big troubles with crowd control and it is very easy for healers to pull aggro overhealing as well. Of course the bad taunt CDs in Lk...ugh. Bears can also be quite tough to gear up properly and I found the single biggest problem was seeing past my huge bear ass tanking in game. Gave it up in LK, it was an off spec anyways and I am more popular with my Resto OS.

Does DPS EVER attack what the tank is targeting, I think not. I am getting burned out on Tab > Rune Strike constantly. But a pug is a pug I guess, nothing you can really do about but play down to the lazy/dumb players in them I suppose.

[Jitters]

I'm too busy standing in SW in Fire kitty form and getting ogled to que.

[lizzylizzay]

So, maybe it's pure (and I mean pure) bad luck, but I haven't had the *pleasure* of running a heroic random with a bear tanking, since JANUARY! I must have run 300 heroics, on multiple alts and whatnot, and I'm not joking, I haven't seen 1 bear tanking them...

My question is: where are they? Did Blizzard made bears unplayable/unrewarding to play? I'm asking cuz I just restarted playing my drood, leveled it to 85 balance/resto, but (I think) I'd like to drop balance and go bear, but should I?

Not 1 bear in 4 months...

This post was made in April, no doubt, but even when my account was active a month ago and I was healing on my paladin it was once in a blue moon that I would get a bear tank in a random. I mostly get DKs (which if played right make me feel like I'm just wasting space in the group xD).

But I also bear tank and from my experience before my account ended was that it was completely frustrating having to ask people, usually freshly geared healers, if they needed CC, only to hear crickets chirping. Sometimes I would get a "Just pull you noob tank" comment. Then when I pull a group of adds the healer begins panicking and spamming big heals, DPS decide to go balls to the wall and nuke a target I'm not even attacking, etc. Then we wipe and I get blamed for being a shoddy tank >.> Then again I was talking to a DK and a ret paladin in my guild that are constantly ripping threat off tanks in dungeons and raids because of their DPS that vouched that I held way better threat than their main raiding druid tank. Made me feel a bit confident about my skills as a bear to say the least.

Long story short, I'm guessing they're just tired of pugs being stuck in wrath mode at the end when everyone was fully epic'd out. You know... when bears could just swipe all day and hold mobs and not have to worry about idiot dps getting a head start on aoe nuking the mobs.

If I come back I know I'm only going to tank with buddies from now on. It's a pain having to deal with people who don't care to ask about fights and blame every body for mistakes except themselves. =/

[Bigslick]

I got sad that theres no more bears so I started gearing did my first rise of the zandalari I got ZA it was going smoothly up until dragonhawk when on single target dps who were doing over 19k dps said Im doing good cause their aggro never passed 45% but when adds spawned it was a nightmare. I will be stubborn and continue but it will be hard with adds =[

Bear aoe threat is absolutely fine. The problem arises when DPS assumes it's instant, which it isn't -- especially when your aoe threat moves (swipe/thrash) won't always find their targets on the first swings since most tanks don't currently place a high value on pursuing hit and expertise caps.

On dragonhawk in particular, the adds are normally streaming out (unless you hard-burn the boss to force a simultaneous release from both sides, which while more hectic can also be easier). This means that DPS have to have the mental capacity to understand that just because you have threat on the ones in your range 'now,' it doesn't mean you have threat on the ones still en route. For example, a shadow priest mind searing off of you will be damaging any add that you plan on picking up before it gets within range of your aoe moves.

In short, adds aren't the problem; uneducated / irresponsible DPS are.

[Burkabarbie]

AoE threat isnt really the problem for me, it's more a problem with initial rage. Just removing the rage cost on charge would help out big time imo.

[Mustakrakish]

I'm with OP. I've only ever encountered 1 Feral bear tank since Cataclysm release. It was a fairly average geared Druid in ZA but omg, easily the best tank I've run into during my random dungeons. Very good player, held threat amazingly and the healer said it wasn't a hassle to heal him. WTB moar bears!