From what I've tried out in beta, bear is in a pretty good place right now. Might have changed in the last few weeks, but it seemed fine to me when I tried it out.Originally Posted by wolfv
I have not gotten a chance to play MoP beta yet, but everything I have seen ready or heard really points to druids getting a dead 4th spec in bear. its kinda pointless when you spend over 50% of your time trying to be a worse verse of someone else. I see even if I do spend the time and effort to be a "good bear tank" people will want to kick me and be unaccepting of me because of people just simply have a base mitigation of what 15% last i heard with no chance to block cap, no armor bonus over any other tank class, and no inherent stamina bonus. now if i win one of these beta keys i will try it and give my 2 cents. but from everything i can see they are basically killing bear to allow for only one tank that wears agility leather.
From what I've tried out in beta, bear is in a pretty good place right now. Might have changed in the last few weeks, but it seemed fine to me when I tried it out.
That's pretty whingey. Bears are fine and pretty fun. Bear form grants 330% increased armour and a 25% magic damage reduction, and 20% more stamina which basically means a level 86 bear in greens has about 5k (approx. 10%) more armour a level 90 warrior in blues and the occasional epic, Excluding the bonus armour from mastery druids get. Bears just get better physical damage reductions from there gear than the other 5 tanking specs and the 3 plate tanks get screwed on stance based passive magic damage reductions. The stamina bonus is a bit out of whack since for the most part gear of the same ilvl has the same stam amounts Monks, Pallies, and warriors get 15%, DKs get ~18%, Druids get 20% and locks get 0% extra (though they have there funky voidlord soullink shit).
so yeah bears have:
most stam
most armour
most baseline damage mitigations
the world is not falling down for bears.
ok thank you, I had heard nothing about them switching druids back to where they were before as stam packing machines. as I said I have not had access yet and i was getting nervous from no one explaining how they are making up for that large a mitigation gap, I mean as it stands in Cata bears only have 3 mitigation (stam, armor, and dodge) and to basically take one and throw it out the window seemed unfun. the question I would enjoy having answered is without using any of the defensive rage abilities how bad a tank are you?
that is good to hear as i said, and i still do not think this is a good place for bears to be mostly because well, if half your defense does not exist when your not using it that does not sound as fun as your making out to be.
It is pretty much how all tanks are being designed for MoP.that is good to hear as i said, and i still do not think this is a good place for bears to be mostly because well, if half your defense does not exist when your not using it that does not sound as fun as your making out to be.
In cata bears still like mastery, expertise, hit and crit so you get those SD procs. Nobody actually stacks armour, its just too expensive in the ilvls (and if you do you're gearing wrong). Hit an expertise are going to be needed again (not just nice to have, but invaluable for rage gen) Crit and to a lesser extent Haste will provide further rage gen, Mastery and dodge provide passive defences,
Bad. Healers will hate you. Imagine being a rogue or kitty and not dumping combo points. Yeah that bad.
well i find it alot more fun than just spamming maul, and not really caring about rotation as it doesn't really matter as aggro is so easy to hold on to. Rage matters. rotation matters. Most stats matter.
I've been a bear since BC. I've been playing on the beta since it stabilized, and reporting back week over week findings/perceptions, and playing a pally tank as a comparison to boot. Bears are not dead - just the opposite. They're going to be harder to play right -- but then again, all the tanks are getting a reboot in a sense of you're going to have to manage some sort of active defense rotation on top of your threat rotation.
If you're a one button spamming tank (back in Wrath you could get away with Swipespam once they made it a 360 degree AoE), you're going to have a big problem with tanking on _any_ tank type come MoP. If you pay attention to your rotation, tooltips, and stay current with the trends, you'll be fine.
It's not about the stam, or the armor, (in fact, the 25% passive magic resist is a giant upgrade), but the main reason I'd be considering switching out of having my bear main tank is because I'm not looking forward to fighting with all of my guild's new monks to get gear upgrades. Same as how the warriors and pallies probably felt when they had to fight with DKs for upgrades back in Wrath. Paritywise, I suppose it's only fair since there are 3 cloth classes (mage/warlock/priest), 3 plate classes (warrior/pally/DK) and only two leather (rogue/druid) and two mail (hunter/shaman) classes. (Next expansion: Mail tank!)
You'll be relearning how your class works if you stay with bear druid tanks; lot of different stuff. But the other tanks got the same deal -- mechanics changes and overall squishyness increases. Stick with what you love, says I, unless everyone around you is a monk.
-Tielyn
I've read a lot about bear tanks, but I haven't really seen much about warrior tanks...is there anything special with them? I heard devastate costs no rage, same with a few other abilities, but were getting a new defensive CD called shield barrier....anyone mind giving me a run down on warriors and pallies? Just want to have an idea on what I get to look forward to when i get out of training.
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Fetz will have to do you a pallie one, I can't get on with it to give oyu a proper run down, I'll do warrior changes:
- ALL abilities are available in All stances.
- Vengeance only stacks in def stance
- Devastate is free, it has a 30% chance to proc Sword and Board finishing the CD of Shield Slam and increasing the rage it generates by 5
- Shield slam Generates 15 rage in def stance, 30% chance to proc Ultimatum, which reduced the cost of the next Heroic strike or cleave by 100%
- Revenge Generates 10 rage in def stance, has a 1.5s CD, only prcs from Dodges & Parries, Hits up to 3 targets
- SHield Block has a 15 seconds CD, 6 second duration, costs 60 rage, and you have 2 charges of it. Primary rage dump
- Stances chage how we
- Defensive stance generates 1 rage every 3 seconds in combat and is a 15% damage reduction
- Damage taken No longer generates rage
- Whiteswings no longer generate rage in def stance
- Shield Barrier, costs 20+ rage, absorbs 83%AP of damage, will consume up to 60Rage for 249%AP absorb secondary rage dump
- Enrage no longer increases damage done, instead it increase the rage generated from SS and Rev by 50, pocs only from critical blocks
- Thunderclap, cost no rage in def stance the dehaste debuff has been removed from the game, this now applies weakened blows debuff(renamed version of the demoshout debuff on live)
- Demoralizing shout is now a 1min CD, reduces done done to you by affected mobs by 20% for 10 seconds
- Rend is gone
- TC and Devastate now apply a rolling dot on hit, Deep wounds, ticks hard.
- Last stand no longer shares a CD with Rallying cry, no longer do you lose the bonus health after it wears off
- Recklessness no longer increases damage taken
- Challenging shout is gone
- Banners: think totems, can only have one done at a time, each has a 3 min CD
- Skull banner: increase crit dmage by 20% for 10s, for all raid memebers within 30yards
- Demoralizing banner: Decreases damage dealt by all enemies by 10% for 10 seconds withing 30 yards
- Mocking banner: taunts everything in 30 yards every 3 seconds for 6 seconds last 30 seconds
- intercept is gone
- charge has a baseline CD of 20sec, talents affect this.
What this means is that as a tank you are never gonna leave def stance. Basic priority is SS>Rev>Dev, not becuase this is necessarily the highest threat rotation but because it will produce the most Rage, which you will use to keep shield block up as much as possible, with shield barrier being used if you have too much rage to burn with just shield block, or if boss is a caster. You are not likely to ever use HS or Cleave whilst tanking outside of ultimatum procs. the basice rotation is arguably easier but we actually have a resource to manage now.
Thanks! Should be fun.....
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Just wait until you tank something.
"There are no men like me...only me."
-Kingslayer
I pally tank now, and found that threatgen in MOp was quite easy. I also found that s is still quite easy for pally tanks to mass pull multiple mobs at 1 time, as long as they use their abilities when doing so.
I'm debating between my Pally and my Warrior, but trying to find information is a hassle because the paladins all say that pallys are the worst tanks, and the Warriors all say that Warriors are the worst tanks, so I'm hopping between the both of them in the Beta to see for myself.
The main thing I dislike, and have always disliked, about the Warrior is there is way too many buttons/abilities. I'm counting around 30 abilities that are used regularly, which IMO is outright ridiculous. The fact that 90% of them are all cooldowns or situational makes playing the Warrior feel like playing a game of whack-a-mole.
The Paladin feels worlds simpler, both in rotation and in abilities used, but the Warrior feels like they actually have more cooldowns that could be useful: Warriors get Shield Block, Shield Barrier, Demo Shout (minor cooldown now), plus Shield Wall and Last Stand as the major CDs. Pallys lost a bit of their cooldowns with DP going to magic reduction unglyphed, since they no longer have a minor cooldown or a regular way to mitigate magic damage (I'm pretty sure DP is still 1m cooldown), but I believe to compensate they get more physical DR from SotR.
Can't speak to DKs, Bears, or Monks but a few Beta patches ago some people in a top 10 guild I was talking to said that Monks were (obviously) OP, then Bears, DKs were alright, but Warriors and Pallys were towards the bottom with Pally being better. Take that as you will though since as I said above everyone seems to think their class is in the "worst" position now.
dunno where this warriors are the worst tanks bullcrap is coming from. IF youre just a FOTM player get a pandaren whatever since their racials will be OP at the start. Warriors have about the same number of abilities as they have now though their actual rotation has been simplified in regards to the cata version. If you think its too many buttons don't play it.
Since the beta/PTR has been out for a while and it appears there have been no major tank changes for a while, how do you folks that are in beta/PTR feel the tank balance is working out?
I have yet to decide which of the tank classes I plan to raid as, but I have to choose paladin, warrior, druid or DK. I lean towards my warrior just because I love warriors, but I have cleared 6/8 HM as a druid tank. My issue is my co-tank is going heals and swaping with a druid and 2x druid tanks doesn't feel like as good as a combo of druid/dk, druid/paladin, druid/warrior.
Any thoughts on how you feel each are fleshing out is appreciated. Not a FOTM type (yes figured I would share that so Teng doesn't blast me with that
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