Bear Build

[DaviMOC]

As the title says I'm looking into a Bear Build( tanky as possible).

I know bear form is not popular and maybe is underpeforming and thats why I want to try it out. I love to swin agains the stream XD. Knowing that, what you suggest? Any tips on creating a build or a build link to get some guidance there that may work somehow nowdays?

What about splashing with fighter for its stance? Or barbarians for occult slayer or self healing. What you may suggest?

Edited: Found a topic about it later but it is a bit off the topic here as I'm not looking for a pure druid. I'm willing to acept splash suggestions and alike the only real requirement here is to use dire bear form =).

A link to the other topic: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...rm-druid-build

[unbongwah]

I still think druid 9 / ftr 8 / barb 3 is the least bad option for bear builds: focus on Cleave atks to compensate for their abysmally slow attack speed. If you're trying to avoid the known bugs as much as possible, you can take this wolf build and just take Dire Bear form instead of Winter Wolf. Whereas if you're willing to exploit TWF bugs, use this build.

[DaviMOC]

I still think druid 9 / ftr 8 / barb 3 is the least bad option for bear builds: focus on Cleave atks to compensate for their abysmally slow attack speed. If you're trying to avoid the known bugs as much as possible, you can take this wolf build and just take Dire Bear form instead of Winter Wolf. Whereas if you're willing to exploit TWF bugs, use this build.

Cool. Im adapting and its looking cool. Wanna ask about the [W] bonus as I noticed there you said it dosent apply to animal form weapons. Is it really true? I had a druid back when Fire on Thunder Peak was launched and crafted a thunderforged just for that because it seemed to work on my winter wolf. This was changed or I just Misunderstood that?

Tremor is not worth? Noticed that you just ignored bear spells. No way to make those anyhow useful?

Thanks for replying!

[bigdmag]

As the title says I'm looking into a Bear Build( tanky as possible).

I know bear form is not popular and maybe is underpeforming and thats why I want to try it out. I love to swin agains the stream XD. Knowing that, what you suggest? Any tips on creating a build or a build link to get some guidance there that may work somehow nowdays?

What about splashing with fighter for its stance? Or barbarians for occult slayer or self healing. What you may suggest?

Edited: Found a topic about it later but it is a bit off the topic here as I'm not looking for a pure druid. I'm willing to acept splash suggestions and alike the only real requirement here is to use dire bear form =).

A link to the other topic: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...rm-druid-build

Im in a static group with a Bear build. He is our dedicated tank and we have been running R 3-8, depending on the content. He is quite effective, 1800 Hp's at level 15. I believe Warlock/druid/fighter, not sure the split but I think he stumbled onto something pretty good. He can take a pounding while the rest of us do our thing. So I know first hand the bear build tank is viable. Now he does have a lot of gear and past lives and has really just hit his stride at 15, but the build is one of the better tanks ive seen. He is very hard to kill up to about R 5 or 6. R 7-8 he starts to take a little more of a beating but still held his own.

[unbongwah]

Tremor is not worth? Noticed that you just ignored bear spells. No way to make those anyhow useful?

Tremor is basically a weaker Earthquake. At that point, you're just making a gimpier caster.

Apart from Dire Bear form, druid 9 gets you lvl 5 spells; Animal Growth is the most useful one to this build.

He is quite effective, 1800 Hp's at level 15. I believe Warlock/druid/fighter, not sure the split but I think he stumbled onto something pretty good. He can take a pounding while the rest of us do our thing.

Even without knowing his exact build, I'm reasonably certain that ES and Stalwart D. are doing the heavy lifting in terms of tanking, particularly his HPs. Bear adds some modest PRR and couple of buffs (Rising Fury, Roar) and not much else.

EDIT: wolf form gets one big bonus (+30% atk speed) which can offset its many disadvantages (poor crit profile, lack of +[W] bonuses, etc.) if you build around it. Bear-form bonuses are a lot more modest and don't come close to making up for its poor melee DPS, IMO. My druid 9 / ftr 8 / barb 3 is my best guess at the most viable melee bear option, but that's not the same as saying "good." YMMV.

[newmart]

Tremor is basically a weaker Earthquake. At that point, you're just making a gimpier caster.

Apart from Dire Bear form, druid 9 gets you lvl 5 spells; Animal Growth is the most useful one to this build.

Even without knowing his exact build, I'm reasonably certain that ES and Stalwart D. are doing the heavy lifting in terms of tanking, particularly his HPs. Bear adds some modest PRR and couple of buffs (Rising Fury, Roar) and not much else.

EDIT: wolf form gets one big bonus (+30% atk speed) which can offset its many disadvantages (poor crit profile, lack of +[W] bonuses, etc.) if you build around it. Bear-form bonuses are a lot more modest and don't come close to making up for its poor melee DPS, IMO. My druid 9 / ftr 8 / barb 3 is my best guess at the most viable melee bear option, but that's not the same as saying "good." YMMV.

Bear has 4 con bonus, 15% AC bonus. U can also use rising fury to reach +10 Str and Con, so u can reach unbeliveable amounts of ac going bear, expertise and stalward stance. Also true for good amount of con and hp to barbarian builds.

But theres is a problem. CD penalities to bear form and combat expertise multiply, giving absurd amounts of Spell CD. This could be ignored if u are going to have decent melee dps and using spells only to buff, which is not the case of bear.

Going pure druid u get decent PRR (but no MRR), but Elemental form gives imunities an 100% fortification, and 5 dr. Elementalform is actually even better for tanking.

[cru121]

The best bear I ever played. The electric bear.
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post5959036

[unbongwah]

Bear has 4 con bonus, 15% AC bonus. U can also use rising fury to reach +10 Str and Con, so u can reach unbeliveable amounts of ac going bear, expertise and stalward stance. Also true for good amount of con and hp to barbarian builds.

True, but Rising Fury is a serious PITA to keep up: it only last 30 seconds, it can't be Extended, and if you forget to recast before it expires you lose all stacks and have to start over, IIRC. Plus there's that whole "you have to get hit in order to build stacks" factor, which in this example means the high AC you're building for is actually working against maintaining that high CON bonus. Oh, and it's a morale bonus, so it doesn't stack with Rage spell or Primal Scream. Just too many drawbacks, IMO.

[DaviMOC]

Thanks for replying guys. I ended up making some experiments on a pure Druid first lifer( no gifted gear or tomes, 32pts) and its now on 13. I'm having so much fun on it. Every time someone see me on bear form they ask why. lol. The good thing is that it got pretty viable on r1-r2 on easy quests 1 or 2 levels higher than mine , as I expected from that druid it cant out perform any dedicated tank, healer or dps but it can do it all and change roles in a fast way with little effort or drawbacks.

Tremor: Yeah, it is worse than earthquake, but why not both? XD. It still does a cool AoE damage that is not explained anywhere but its a good amount and have a nice jump atack motion(lol) and its only lvl 6 spell compared to a lvl 8 one.

As a tanking Bear: Found that a bear dont tank alone. Your wolf and summoned creatures with threat generation buffed from unyielding pack does the job, the "useless" mass bear end spell does a great job there and the mass vigor/regen spells does a great job there too. Its not a walking fortress like a common shield bearer or a balloon warlock but it does the job for fast fights or momentary situations with its temp buffs and spells like: "flight", "rising fury","animal growth" and and "hide of crocodile".

Actually my wolf got near 500 health on lvl 13, its very hard to die if I use ship buffs on it.

Noticed that bear is not bad at all it is just out of place. With the game's actual power scale everything got fast, enormous damage outputs made the active tanking playstyle of a druid not very effective. I suspect getting to epics the usefulness will get lower but I'm already happy to be relevant on reaper runs not only for my heals and even being able to solo small groups of higher level quests on r1 or r2 in a first life toon.