Bear druids NEED to be buffed

I just watched the video and I agree with a bunch of points, but disagree with some others, so I'll post my thoughts as a guardian druid doing mythic content.

  • Talent choices

-- Level 15

Preach thinks that charge should be baseline, and while I wouldn't be opposed to that here is some more analysis of the talents in general. Feline swiftness is your go to on most fights. It is free movement speed. Movement speed is VERY valuable on several fights. The other talents you take in niche situations. Displacer beast is actually very useful on a few fights. On mythic imperator you can use it in the second phase after being rooted by mark of chaos in ranged making it so your ranged don't have to move as much. On Kromog you can use it so you can cheese the knock up and blink to the ground to avoid fall damage. On blackhand you can displacer after getting knocked back by blackhand in the first phase to avoid taking the fire debuff. The extremely obvious downside to using this talent is that USING IT MAKES YOU LOSE ALL TANKING STATS UNTIL YOU USE ANOTHER GLOBAL ON BEAR FORM. This makes it so if you are actively tanking the boss you really can't use this ability. Wild charge is rarely the best choice in pve. The reasoning behind this is, often using skullbash as a charge is enough in an encounter, and you get the added benefit of keeping one of the other talents.

Level 30 tier --

I always take cenarion ward here pretty much. Only time I haven't was to push out slightly more dps on our first mythic butcher kill (Cenarion ward is on the gcd, ysera's gift is passive.) Renewal is pretty much just having an extra healthstone on a 2 minute cooldown. God awful talent.

Level 45 --

Typhoon is occasionally useful for interupting an add or something. Overall this tier is fairly useless in pve.

Level 60 - Treants is terrible, incarnation is too much rage at once and not enough rage for rest of the fight. Soul of the forest is pretty much only option here, often as a guardian druid you will end up having to spam frenzied regen to heal yourself. Doing this makes you run out of rage very easily and you may end up having to spend even more rage on frenzied regen to heal yourself because you can't get up a savage defense. Soul of the forest somewhat alleviates that.

75 talents --

Agree with preach that these talents are pretty terrible when compared to other tanks cc.

90 talents --

I actually disagree with Preach here in saying DoC is the only choice. I actually go HotW on every fight pretty much. Natures vigil isn't what it used to be and is pretty much terrible. As for DoC at 681 ilvl I have 18.36% crit considering it is the least prioritized stat. With the extra 10% crit on mangle that brings it to 28.36% with DoC passive. Now 40% of those crits actually proc DoC. That means only 11.34% of mangles will actually give you a healing touch. It is super inconsistent and a lot of times when you need the heal you wont get one. but when you dont need one it procs. Compare that to HotW which you can pop on the pull for insane cat dps (My ferocious bites with pot + trinket procs is over 280k.) Even if you don't want to pop it for dps, you can just pop it in high damage situations to combine with cenarion ward, and you can put fat rejuvs on yourself for 40 seconds.

100 talents --

Pulverize only option and sucks to try to keep up on aoe. Make other talents viable pls.

Overall I feel in the future bears need a rework, however immediately they could use some buffs and be alright. I think that at least for guardian the talent tree needs some serious changes or buffs.

/r/wow Thread