Attack Bear Guide

[Ellyidol]

First of all, this is just an opinionated guide, these are what works best for me and are not necessarily correct. Feel free to add and/or comment on anything.

This is an ATTACK BEAR guide, so this is an all-out damage type bear, and not a tank in any way. Still varies on playing style, but this is what I recommend.

Attack Bear Guide

Bear Roles

"Tanking"

There is already a very good guide on How To Tank here, so please refer to that guide if you want to learn how to tank.


"Damage/DPS"

With this setup, you are NOT looking to tank, but deal damage. Do NOT expect to have high armour/dodge, maybe decent.

Please remember, EVEN IF YOU CANNOT TANK AS WELL AS A PURE TANK, DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD NOT TANK.

The MAIN purpose of a BEAR, no matter what kind (Attack/Bow/Int/Dual) IS TO TANK!

Attack Bear

Stats

Before balancing out on how much Str/Dex is needed, these are the most important stats in decreasing order:

1. Base Damage

Pretty self-explanatory, you want to deal damage, you need damage.

2. Hit

High damage is useless without being able to actually hit. 80-ish is okay, but I'd recommend at least 95%.

3. Crit

THE killing stat. Crit is AWESOME for an attack bear since your skills are what kills the opponent, when those crit expect huge damage.

To understand more on DPS, Crit and Hit, please refer to Physiologic's awesome guide on DPS, Crit, etc.


Str/Dex

Now that the 3 most important stats are known, how much Str/Dex should you put? To me, you have 3 choices:

1. A bear using STR equipment (1H+Shield/2H)
2. A bear using DEX equipment (Bow/Gun or Talon+Wing)
3. A dual spec bear (Use of either, but needs boosting - see guide in sig)

I suggest a dual spec bear. Here's why :

How to spec your end game bear - Mr.Wallace

Option 1

Option 1 (which is my bear), you'd only want enough Str to use your equipment. You want to pump as much Dex as you can to be able to get those 3 most important stats. Dex gives the most damage and hit per point, while they're even with Str for crit.

Option 2

Refer to my Bow Bear Guide for more info on Dex/Bow Bears.

A bow/gun bear gives higher damage output, IMO. The range + the high base damage of guns/bows allows the bear to have the highest damage in-game when buffed. Accompany this with high crit, and you'd be normal attacking stronger than some birds.

You'd only want enough Dex to use equipment, and the rest into Str to boost your skill damage. You don't need THAT much Dex since Dex gear already gives a good amount of Damage, Hit, and Crit, providing you choose the right ones.

Option 3

A dual spec bear allows you to be flexible. Lets say your the only bear in the group, you can still do damage, but you'd probably be preferred to stay in the frontline even if your a damage/dps build. Bears still have the best buffs, damage debuffs, and mob control skills in game. Now what if there are 2 or more bears? You could then dual spec to a dex bear, doing more damage.

For the stat points, please refer to these guides :

Dual Spec Guide (Basics and Level 50)
Dual Spec Guide (Level 55/56)


Skills

There's a complete compilation of Bear skills in this thread, http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?19729-Short-General-Guide-on-Ursan-Stat-Skills. It also gives a guide on the other aspects the bear needs.

Since your after DPS/Damage, these skills would be in the order of importance:

1. Rage

This is a MUST if you want to deal damage. This does not only increase Crit, but damage as well. I believe it adds 10 damage per skill level, so a total of 60 damage at level 6. THAT IS HUGE.

2. Slashes (Vengeful, Crippling, Super Mega)

These skills are your "Nuke" skills. They are extremely spammable and cheap on mana. Combine this with the +60 damage and 30% crit of Rage, and you'd definitely be doing heavy damage.

3. Stomp

The new combo of bears, Beckon + Stomp = Smash, is a very good damage dealer. Combos go through a number of multipliers, the combo itself, and the possibility to crit. So that additional damage from Stomp is quite good especially after a combo.

4. Beckon

Beckon deals damage WITH Rage. Also, I seem to believe that additional points in Beckon increases the range, number of targets pulled, and the speed at which they are pulled. I say Level 5/6 since you are not looking to mob control, but to do damage. Therefore you'd want a decent beckon to pull and combo, but not to mob control. It's up to you on which you prefer.

5. Crushing Blow

It is THE most important debuff for an attack bear. Although it is single target, it provides what an attack bear needs, to be able to hit more. It's extremely good for bosses, as it also reduces the most amount of damage they deal.

6. Hell Scream

It's the next debuff a bear has. At this point in ranking of skills, its leading more to the survivability of an attack bear. This is an AoE damage and Hit debuff, so its definitely useful to take less damage.

7. Evade

I prefer dodge on an attack bear over armour. I've never seen a ninja that can take hits but more than that, dodge allows you to avoid the damage completely, compared to armour which only reduces, and which you don't have much of anyway.

6. Taunt

Although this is an aggro control, which you don't want since you don't tank anyway, this has a very good dodge buff. Level 6 gives you 8 dodge for 12 sec with a 6 second cooldown. So you have 16 dodge constantly buffed if you spam it all the time. It supports your evade buff.

7. Iron Blood

Its still a good buff, increases armour by 30 at level 6, so thats 30 damage avoided. Then again this is an attack bear, so you wouldn't want to be hit in the first place.

That being said, an ideal skill build for an attack bear would be :

Level 55:

Rage 6
Vengeful, Crippling, Super Mega Slashes 6 - Total of 18
Stomp 6
Beckon 6
Crushing Blow 6
Hell Scream 6
Evade 5
Taunt 1

Level 56 adds one more point into Evade.

Again this is just an opinion. You could opt to not get Evade and max Iron Blood, or even balance them out at 3-3, thats your choice.


Gear

Not to get too level specific for gear, but keep in mind the top 3 attributes for choosing gear :

1. Damage
2. Hit
3. Crit

You should find a good balance with these stats when choosing gear.

Pre 51, you should have gear sets anyway, Hate/Rift or Void/Sentinel at 50, and other set items for lower levels.

After 51, my one good suggestion for an attack bear set is a Bellow set for Str gear, and Gutter set for Dex gear (Raid Roach Set if you can for pink). These sets, IMO, add the most of the 3 most important stats.

Weapons

Before looking at weapons, it's important to know how damage is divided and calculated :

There's two things you need to think about: Damage vs skill damage. Damage is what you do when you do normal attacks, and it is seen in your character stat screen as "Damage: 192-204".

For damage:
1 point of STR = +0.02 damage
1 point of INT = +0.08 damage
1 point of DEX = +0.15 damage

As you can see, DEX adds the most normal damage per 1 attribute point used.

For skill damage:
STR adds more skill damage for bears
DEX adds more skill damage for birds
INT adds more skill damage for mages

But you also have to take into account that skill damage is calculated using a portion of your damage. So bears with high STR can have high skill damage, but bears with STR/DEX can also have high skill damage because DEX increases your damage by a lot, which in turns increases your skill damage.

Strength Weapons

Strength Weapon of Choice :

There are currently these weapons to choose from:

1H:

Sword vs Axe

The Axe shows higher normal damage, but the Sword has higher skill damage. The sword would be better for a bear since a chunk of its damage comes from skills, and not normal attacks.

2H:

There are a lot of 2H weapons to choose from, especially end-game.

Battle Sword vs Mace vs Hammer (Gurgox and Royal)

Hammers are more superior than a Battle Sword and Mace. That being said, lets look at the comparison between a Battle Sword vs Mace.

The Mace gives higher both normal and skill damage.

Hammers are the best of the 2H weapons. They have a stun proc on normal attacks which give you a chance to stun mobs (does not work on bosses). The Royal Hammer has 2 additional procs, a Freeze proc and a small Break Armour proc (4 armour max).

The first thing you should look at when choosing a Hammer is the base damage vs DPS.

The Gurgox Hammer has the highest base damage in-game, which makes it a better 2H weapon if you want to deal damage. Although the Royal Hammer shows more DPS, because of the huge base damage of the Gurgox Hammer, the G.Hammer has more "true DPS". More can be understood by reading this :

Hmm....so let's pretend in BS that an enemy has 120 armor.

When equipped on my dual spec build with a 1 dodge, 9 armor ring, Royal Sewer BFH has 183-213 dmg (198 avg), the Gurgox has 214-299 (251 avg)

(Effective damage = Avg weapon damage - enemy armor)

Gurg Hammer effective damage = 251-120 = 131
Royal Sewer BFH effective damage = 198-120 = 78

Gurg Hammer true effective DPS = Effective dmg/weap speed = 131/1.4 = 93.6
Royal Sewer BFH true effective DPS = 78/1.0 = 78

So even with slow-as-dirt speed, Gurg Hammer beats the Royal Sewer BFH. I know the Sewer has some procs though, I forget which.

Royal Sewer BFH = higher dodge, h/s, armor
Gurg = higher hit, crit, more "true" DPS

End Results :

56 Str/Dex Bear : Full Bellow Set (No Ring) and Full Buffs (6 Rage, 6 Iron Blood, 6 Evade, and 6 Taunt x2)



Same bear, with a Gurgox Hammer :



Stomp Damage on Bellow Set/Hammer :



Overall :

You'd want a 1H weapon with the most SKILL damage for clearing mobs. Note that even if a certain weapon has higher base damage, doesn't always mean they have better skill damage. Its always better to check the actual skill damage from the skills themselves.

You can use a 2H if your feeling edgy, but be prepared to be very soft The Gurgox Hammer still has the best 2H damage in-game.

A 2H also works best vs bosses, since you need to maximise the amount of damage you deal, and not worry about taking damage as compared to mob clearing.




Dex Weapons

Refer to my Bow Bear Guide for more info on Dex/Bow Bears.

I recommend Bows. They have shorter range than blasters/auto-bows, but your skills are close ranged anyway. They also have higher base damage, which means higher damage overall.

A talon/wing is decent, but I'd still prefer a bow since you're ranged anyway and further away from where the damage is being dealt (assuming you have a tank).

END

I hope the guide helps with those looking to do damage as a bear. I definitely think they are capable of doing large amounts of damage, you just need the right stuff.

Again this is an ATTACK BEAR guide, so whatever is said here does not mean it is the best set up for a bear in general.

Will be edited and updated.

Feb 27 - Guide Created