Generally AoE (controlling/training groups of enemies) is what people are referring to if the bear comes up short in a tank comparison. There aren't a whole lot of situations in the current dungeons or raids where a group of adds is super dangerous to a bear tank, but then of course that may not be the case for every tier, so it isn't a consistent sell. And that means the idea is in peoples heads that 'bares r bad' regardless if it actually matters for the content they're doing or not.

03/24/2011 8:37 PMPosted by Stormclaw

In 4.1 It looks like our AOE threat may be improved a lot. AOE mitigation looks unchanged.

The Swipe cooldown change should be helping quite a bit with AoE threat come 4.1. We are also considering some very simple changes to Savage Defense to help it provide some better mitigation when AoE tanking.

03/28/2011 5:21 PMPosted by Waniou

Mind if I ask if there's any intention to give Swipe to bears earlier, say, around level 20? It's a pretty essential tanking tool in low level dungeons and while it can be countered by low level DPSers learning to play, I get the feeling that's really really never going to happen.

Yeah there are a number of issues like that for when abilities are given for classes, mostly in relation to running dungeons early on, and then quite a few for PvP twinking and keeping those brackets balanced a bit better. They're legit issues and we hope to be able to spend some time going over ability pacing again. It probably won't be something we'll get to in 4.1, though.

For Savage Defense the change we're thinking about would probably be instead of reducing the next physical attack for X damage, it would instead absorb X damage for some duration. Big single target hits would probably drop the shield either way, but all the dinkier hits from pack pulls would be mitigated rather well. It's probably something you'll see fleshed out on the PTR.