There has been a lot of talk about the uselessness of bears lately, and while BERSERKER is great, it is not for all bears. I was on my keeper staff mage doing some keeper tote runs and when there were bears, I realized I was STILL holding agro against the keeper, and decided to figure out why.
I ran a test today with the help of Lesrider (thanks!) and some other mage / birds that joined. I was on a bear, and when we got to the keeper, I did not attack. Instead, I just used taunt every time it cycled to see if a bear's low damage affects its tanking ability. What I found is that the first two taunts did not seem to do anything, but after that the keeper latched on to me, and I became the target despite doing no damage to him while the other four were bombing away at him. I kept taunting and he kept focused on me while the 'artillery' was free to pound on him with out a scratch.
So what the tests show is that Taunt does work, but it seems to 'build up' agro on the bear. This means when you have your damage dealers pounding away, a bear needs to hit taunt, and KEEP hitting taunt every time it becomes active. This will allow the bear to soak up the damage, and once again become the tank he was designed for.
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