Comments on: About bloody time!

By: Catal

Catal — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 09:52:38 +0000

And a further thought about swipe: for me, the hardest bear tanking was ’til 25 when I could glyph maul. They’re not changing the level of swipe. It’s still not ’til 36. So I still won’t be recommending new tanks play bears in the really low levels.

By: Catal

Catal — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 09:31:17 +0000

Fang, I always have a hard time using victory rush on my warrior ’cause you have to get the killing blow to use it. Works for me mostly when there’s trash around that’s so little even the high-aoe people aren’t bothering to kill it and you finish it with a cleave or tc. Which is never. I’m pretty sure I get more healing from Leader of the Pack than Victory rush.

To whomever said “Blizzard wants all druids resto:” May be true at level cap, but they sure don’t want you leveling it. Nothing but swiftmend and rejuv ’til OL! I respeced my troll bear/boom. Maybe I’ll go resto again someday. Maybe I won’t.

I agree that low-level bears were really, really challenging, but I kinda enjoyed it. Maybe I just spend too much time on level capped dk and warrior, but having to actually think about how to hold more than one mob is kinda fun. Yeah I had one or two really bad instances, but usually I was running with one of those dps that out-dpses normal people 10 levels above him. (2.3k dps in reg UK? I’m pretty sure any of my tanks would have had an issue with it at-level.) I’m not saying they shouldn’t change it; I’ve been telling people not to use a bear to learn to tank since the change, it would be really nice to be able to say “I love being a bear! You try it too!” again. I just don’t feel like I’m as ecstatic as I should be.

By: Fangtastic

Fangtastic — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:22:38 +0000

Warriors do have a fairly potent self heal now in the form of Victory Rush. On a fight with lots of adds, like the first boss in heroic deadmines, or even some trash we can use it several times. Glyphed, Victory Rush is available every time you land a killing blow and it heals you for 36% of your health. Warriors also have Enraged Regeneration on a 3 minute cooldown which heals you for 30% of your health, stacked with last stand etc it can be quite potent.

We have to keep in mind that the only tanks that can cast self heals are Paladins but then while casting they can’t parry/dodge/block and they have a pitiful mana pool compared to their health. I think the real champions of self healing and blood death knights. And THEY get a battle rez! :D

Maybe they could give us some variant of heroic leap – so we can get far far away, do the brez and be back in bear form for when the ugly gets to us. :)

By: thebitterfig

thebitterfig — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:21:36 +0000

I don’t mind much that bears don’t have meaningful self-heals outside of caster form (Warriors can’t heal at all). Every class has it’s style and that part doesn’t bug me. However, Rebirth really needs to be usable in Bear form. Maybe some sort of tweak where the target is slightly weakened for a few seconds, or maybe bear-version has half the life/mana restore of caster-version, if they really feel the need for PvP balance, but there needs to be some way for a Bear tank who’s getting beat on to battle rez someone without getting creamed.

By: bigbearbutt

bigbearbutt — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:53:55 +0000

Speaking purely from my own point of view…

I’ve been trumpeting that Agility is critical to Bears since before Wrath. When asked about Agi versus Stam DURING Wrath, I advocated the benefits of increased crit and avoidance. (And the teeny armor it used to give).

It was only at the tail end of Wrath that the “stack stam” fanatics took over with justification, and I hated it. And I still talked Agi for 5 mans, left the stam stacking to the serious raiding druid main tanks.

So now… it’s business as usual around here.

It seems so ironic to be telling Druid players… “Adapt or die”.

By: Fangtastic

Fangtastic — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 16:25:55 +0000

I’ve been playing a warrior and bear tank and there is one thing that really bothers me – savage defense is great, but it doesn’t do anything for when you’re not hitting mobs and then when its up it seems to last not as long. For instance, when on the first boss in hHoO, when we run back up after pulling the levers with the snakes chomping on your butt, on my warrior, I seem to take way less damage because I’m strafing and able to block a large number of hits. On my bear, given swipe and thrash have a CD, there are several seconds where I am getting no mitigation from my mastery. And in ICC it seemed like the SD bubble would be up for a few hits that came in at the same time (lots of mobs), but now it seems like it just goes POOF on the first hit.

We do have our cool toys though – I love skull bash’s charge component. I truly think its an awesome interrupt!

Also, grats to the DKs on their brez. I mostly run 10mans though so our group is still limited to one rez per encounter. For parity’s sake I wish they’d make it castable in bear form – a DK tank may be able to battlerez (still can’t parry or dodge while casting) but as bears we also loose our armor during casting which makes it much tougher for us.

By: Herr Drache

Herr Drache — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 15:55:55 +0000

I’m still appalled at player’s ignorance about all things druid!
Pre-Cata, you had to beat it into people that being “def capped” meant you specced bear.
Now you have to explain to them again and again that agi is actually pretty good.
My wife plays balance. And yet again she has to defend herself ever freakin’ turn when she rolls on gear with spirit on it. Perhaps she’d like to NOT have to GEM for hit?! I don’t care what T12 looks like, I don’t care that there MIGHT be another drop SOMEWHERE – here and now is a major upgrade piece for the next boss. Here. Now.

On another note, when I geared my DPS toons via the dungeon finder, I’ve run into:
- bad paladin tanks
- bad warrior tanks
- bad DeathKnight tanks. Really bad DKs!!!
but never, ever into a bad bear tank. I guess once you go bear, you read this blog (or the other way around), and you’re too afraid of the Wrath of John, and you end up a great tank :)

I’ve always admired bear tanks. Regardless of what Blizzard throws at you, you just shrug it off and find a way to excel. What’s hardest to overcome is the ignorance of the playerbase…

By: Tsudrats

Tsudrats — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:40:25 +0000

Not sure they even like us healing … my tree spent most of Northred getting rogue gear … oh sorry … feral kitty gear dropping leading to many guild jokes that I should run as a cat with hardly a leather heal piece to be seen other than off emblem purchases … and then any decent cloth healing gear I couldn’t need on because it was cloth and in the wisdom of the almighty blizz they saw fit to remove the need option if it was not deemed appropriate to your class.

I think we were all supposed to be cats and they just forgot to tell us … wait … no we were supposed to be rogues and they forgot to tell us

By: Solitha

Solitha — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 07:37:36 +0000

Posted this on Eao’s blog, and now here too…

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2089112630?page=8#152

The buff to Swipe is not meant for bears with Thrash. It’s meant for the low-level bears that, Blue acknowledged, are having too rough of a time holding aggro. In the same post, she said they see no problems with level-capped AoE bear threat.

Despite that, I’m going to enjoy having an easier time picking up adds that are streaming past me towards the healers.

By: bigbearbutt

bigbearbutt — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 05:24:35 +0000

Yep, you’ve got some very good points. It is very tough right now, especially after having our day in the sun and feeling good. I have to keep hoping that everything will work out all right by the time they see us hitting some serious raiding content.