Int Bear Discussion

[kiitz]

Hi everyone,

I have been a dual-spec str/dex bear for a while now, like many end-game bears, due to Ellyidol's influence. I love dual spec because it gives me a lot of flexibility.

A week or two, I saw a post saying that an int bear can clear a wave of enemies with a single other player and it got me interested.

I think the most well known int bear is Htiek. I happened to see him at the CS one day and noticed he had a whopping 180k to like 300 death ratio, or something like that. Don't quote me on this, but just I remember being blown away by his numbers. After seeing that, I decided to try it out.

I just want to see if anyone else out there has used an int/dex dual spec for a bear. This is my current understanding and my thoughts. If you have any additional input, please post below! (This is all strictly PvE btw)

1. The main reason to make an int bear is to be able to utilize the AOE power of the gem blast staff and increase your trash enemies (non-boss)

2. The gem blast staff has a proc that does roughly 300 AOE fire damage to the enemies (thx Ieversori)

3. When you need a tankier set up, full enchanted with wand and shield (and tank ring) will get you 147 armor and 39 HP regen, which should be enough for catacombs.

4. The dodge in the "tanky" set up is only 9 (with tank ring) so don't know if this is good enough for Stronghold round up.

5. In gem blast staff custom set, you end up with about 103(?) armor and 30-something HP regen. If you have tanked as dex, then these stats should be plenty to run easy maps (hideout, roach) with the usual hp pot spam as most dex bears are used to.

6. The key is keeping auto attack going and using slashes increase chances to proc (again, thx Ieversori)

7. The proc is relatively small radius, so grouping enemies into a little ball is useful, which is exactly what a good bear does. (again, thx Ieversori)

It sort of seems to me like the int/dex dual spec tank bear is the next iteration in the end game tank bear.

I started off tanking with mostly strength and some dex to increase my hit. This worked well, though my DPS really blew and it was difficult to hold threat when there was a really strong dps in the group.

I switched to dex/str after seeing ellyidol tank as dex and reading his guides. Got custom set and started doing a majority of my tanking in dex. This was great - high dps, can hold aggro even when there is a full custom set bird in the group. The basic idea of increasing the skill cap here is trading tanking stats for more damage. Its harder to tank in dex and you spend more money on pots, but you contribute a lot more to your team.

Next iteration: INT/Dex combo? Further reducing overall tanking stats for more dps and "group contribution". Losing 130+ points in strength reduces base armor and HP. The int build will be used in place of strength. Average clearing with blast staff will help clear mobs even faster. The int play style is more difficult because not only are you squishier, you also are trying to keep auto attack going and focused on increasing procs. It feels like it increases the skill cap even further. Still go dex on bosses.

*Note, I've only played a little bit of the int/dex build. By no means am I an expert, so just looking to write down everything i've found out and my general thoughts. Looking for input from other people with experience!

Kiitz

[Eversor]

Well, in regards to using the roundup method in stronghold with this build it would seem that a drainers talon set with henchmans wing would work best. High dodge and decent armor too.

[neko]

Thanks for your findings, Kiitz. As a ballpark figure, how much more powerful is your mob clearing ability over the Customized Set? 20%? More?

Let us know after you play some more in your current setup whether you plan on staying on as DEX/INT. Thanks again!

[neko]

Well, in regards to using the roundup method in stronghold with this build it would seem that a drainers talon set with henchmans wing would work best. High dodge and decent armor too.

Hey Eversor, I just learned that your bear's name is Latin for "murderer." Cool!

[Salutee]

There is a mage set with dodge. I would recommend using that. It also decent with pvp and you can get around 300 damage slashes with the staff equiped.

[Eversor]

Hey Eversor, I just learned that your bear's name is Latin for "murderer." Cool!

Thanks. Lol I think you are the first person to say anything to me about that. My forum name which is the root of my other ign's is something similar. ;-)

[Sky../]

I thought occisor is a tooth or something. Maybe the one next to the incisors?

[Tengotengo]

I was just thinking about this today, as I just dual spec DEXd my bear. I'm not...i dunno, getting in gear with it yet. As archery equipment is non AOE, I'm seeing a failing in the clusterbombing technique. Now a Bear with a Gem Blast staff...I can see some real explosions going off.

It's the nice thing about BS gear; all of it serves some sort of purpose. I don't remember off the top of my head, since my mage has been running around with queen gear or queen/lowmans, but I think Scrapers has some dodge and a humongous damage boost.

[kiitz]

I did a few test runs with Jackychiu (custom set full dex bird) and we 2 maned up to gold fever a few times in int mode and a few times in dex mode. Int mode, I used enchanted gem blast staff set and dex mode I used custom recurve set.

Gem blast Enchanted set has more armor and hp regen and I could definitely feel a difference in survivability over running as dex. Further, the skill damage is roughly 30 points higher than in the custom set. I didn't look closely at each ability, but I will later when I get a chance. Finally, the gem blast staff has the AOE proc which really makes a difference.

Clearing as definitely faster as int and sometimes when I could get the staff to proc, we could kill everything. I'm still not very good at playing int, so we still had to do clean up work, but there wasn't much of it and most were at very low health so spamming a few slashes and shots would kill them all.

Running as dex I was much squishier and almost died a few times. Also, we were not really able to clear all the mobs and had to stick around killing enemies off most of the time.

My current conclusions: Int is better for clearing enemies, however, in most scenarios, the difference isn't going to big enough to warrant changing to int for the average bear because with a full group of 5, doing lets say an additional 15-20% damage to regular trash mobs isn't going to do anything when we are already doing 200-300% of the damage necessary to kill them. The biggest obstacle to going int is probably getting the additional gear. It works well with enchanted due to the huge hp regen, but I don't think it would do nearly as well in other non-tanky mage gear. Perhaps using scrappers would do the trick, but I haven't tried it yet. I think for this reason, the average bear has no reason to go int. However, if you are a frequent player, with lots of gold, lots of gear and you are bored of the standard specs, or are looking for a higher skillcap/team contribution, going int bear for clearing mobs and switching to dex for bosses is a pretty good option.

[puzzlefopz]

yeah int bear is only good with BS gear. Cosmos bear? lol sounds 2 funny and werd

[Htiek]

Htiek skills on all his chars definitely do **** damage skill wise lol someone should tell him about the stat based skills revamp.

Seems dex/int always not suggest anytime

[Slush]

Seems dex/int always not suggest anytime

He has returned!

[kiitz]

Seems dex/int always not suggest anytime

Lol, int/dex bear in int gear with staff does more skill dmg than anything I've found so far including custom set. I'm sure Htiek knows this cuz he is the OG int bear... But what I don't get is why he would say that, lol. Conspiracy to keep a good thing under wraps?? Jk jk. Can't be.

But I still don't get why more ppl don't do it. Maybe it's the gear burden, maybe warrior bears just don't look as manly holding a fairy wand.

Though, peckkahead did recently try it on her bear and she says she loves it too.

[Otukura]

I think that was my post

Also, I think Htiek was saying that it seems like it's not suggested my most players.

[neko]

Lol, int/dex bear in int gear with staff does more skill dmg than anything I've found so far including custom set. I'm sure Htiek knows this cuz he is the OG int bear... But what I don't get is why he would say that, lol. Conspiracy to keep a good thing under wraps?? Jk jk. Can't be.

But I still don't get why more ppl don't do it. Maybe it's the gear burden, maybe warrior bears just don't look as manly holding a fairy wand.

Though, peckkahead did recently try it on her bear and she says she loves it too.

Hmm...it gives me some incentive to rebuild an Enchanted set again. Maybe I shouldn't have sold those recipes. Lol

[kiitz]

Neko, try it! It will be funny cuz then you will have a str mage and an int bear! They were getting dressed in the dark and got their clothing mixed up...

If you have the plat to spare, respec to int/dex and i'll let you test run using the gear i'm using. If Int/Dex bear starts to take off, expect to see enchanted set sky rocket past custom set, cuz there are more mages in general and if you add end game bears... ouch. I wonder if we can get gem blast staffs pretty expensive, cuz its a pretty key part of the int bear set.

If you wanna try it, i'll get on my bird and we can try 2 manning. You'll see the difference.

[Otukura]

I think it's less damage when the staff doesn't proc, because of the crit rate, but when it does it more than makes up for it.

[Corpser]

Therr is a build that alows you to use str gear+ a lvl 50 wand
Go 123 str
Rest int use int gear f osisris to boost str then equip hate gear this i for lvl 54

[kiitz]

Otukura: Yeah, gem blast staff is less single target DPS, but int/dex bears only use it for clearing the trash mobs. gemstone staff will still stay expensive due to int mages.


Corpser: You can do that, but you don't become an AOE trash mob killing machine... You end up being a str bear with a wand. Even in full enchanted set using wand and shield, the damage isn't that great. Its on par with str gear in terms of skill dmg. The true power of int bear is due to the fact that 2 hand staves contribute so much of their dps to skill damage and because the staff also has an AOE proc which is only effective on tightly grouped packs of mobs.

I've never tried lower str gear + wand, but I imagine rolling with custom set talon + wing or ench wand + shield is probably similar - and those sets provide enough tankiness - ench set, significantly more so.

[CryoBlade]

This makes me even more tempted to make an int bear...
One question, how much hit% do you have when equipping the enchanted set? I checked and saw that enchanted items didn't give any additional hit%.
Edit: It'd be nice if you could take a screenshot