Bear/Wolf Form + Reinforced Fists

[Failedlegend]

Well pretty much the title if you get an item with reinforced fists on it such as Antipode or Garments of equilibrium will it increase the unarmed damage of those forms?

[psykopeta]

http://ddowiki.com/page/Reinforced_Fists

from here click on unarmed (bottom) to

http://ddowiki.com/page/Unarmed

and now in bottom line, talks this time about druid's natural attacks, saying than they are increased by everything that affects to unarmed attacks (and garments give +0,5W to your unarmed attacks)

so should work, at least in theory XD

[Failedlegend]

Cool thx :)

[hermespan]

Well pretty much the title if you get an item with reinforced fists on it such as Antipode or Garments of equilibrium will it increase the unarmed damage of those forms?

I'm not sure that this is even worth it. Right off the top if you are unarmed you lose SM/ISM doublestrike (8%) with 0 benefit for going unarmed outside of a lesser monk stance.
Since you are in bear form you lose SA damage and melee alacrity
30% slower attack speed
Your crit range is cut in half

You can offset this by running around in lightning stance/LLS, but in bear form, it will still suck.
Yea it's more tanky but if are trying to be tanky shouldn't you gain the tanking benefits to be had with sheilds that come hand in hand with 8% more doublestrike, like DR 5, AC increase, healing amp etc etc etc?

I know wisdom increase to AC... however, with all the new natural armors with increased max dex bonus, you can hit the same AC, and gain the benefits of a sheild.

IMHO it makes no sense to build a bear druid to be unarmed unless you are building a stunner, which will work better in wolf form to begin with.

I call shenanigans on unarmed bear builds. :cool:

Doesn't make any sense...

Wolf form AC is plenty high enough for anything but EE. Then again nothing is high enough for EE unless you are in the 100's and you can't hit that without sentinel ED which offers further AC benefits to sheild users.

I switch to this for raiding survivability in EH and EE.

I've been in parties with other level 25 melees and hit higher AC and higher PRR than people that called themselves tanks.

Combine with easily achievable 21 total DR, healing amp in the 80s... and that's wolf form.

A sheild using bear is probably the way to go if you want a tanky druid. Just stock up on threat increase, doublestrike, etc etc.

I think a bear in max sentinel ED, with a epic wall of wood and suitable light armor would be virtually indestructible as long as he had some tanking gear, 108+ ac and healing amp.

All of this being said, tank builds are passe at the moment. The only time you need them now is in epic elite. However, even in epic elite, the mobs hit so hard that even a "tank" is gonna die with 6 mobs of any type on him, even if you are a mighty monk. You toss an intimidate and you are dead.

Get 2 casters on him and he's toasting.

The only kind of tank that works in "end game" at this point in time are DPS tanks. You need to out dps the epic elite mobs. You can't really CC them effectively in any meaningful way, including by hate or intimitanking.

It's sad but tanks have become completely irrelevant. My wolf druid can tank elite heroic raids and quests and epic hard. No one can tank (traditionally anyway) epic elite.

No matter how you slice it, any discussion about bear druid is eventually coming back to wolf form as a superior choice outside of flavor/rp.

[Failedlegend]

Bear/Wolf Form are considered unarmed regardless of what you actually have equipment...even ranged weapons. All that matters is the effects.

A Dex/Wis or Str/Wis Based Half-Elf Druid18/Monk2 with stunning fist can be a force to be reckoned with