Surprised by my Beorning

[DarthKeryx]

Most of my toons were at or near level cap. Made a Beorning and left him as a mule at level 7. Then saw videos that made the class sound pretty interesting. They can tank or heal or do damage? Wow. So over the last month or so took Ngeorn up to 130. There are a few things that have surprised me about my level 130 Beorning.

Of all my toons he has the highest morale. About 220k man form 255k bear. Important note = These days I play solo exclusively. My toons use only reward gear (especially from epic quests). No uber teal gear stacked with tier 4-5 Vitality essences. By contrast my Warden has 199k and 236k blue line. However only my Beorning has played through The Legacy of Durin chapters 3 and 4 that give some sweet rewards. If my other toons do them that might close the gap.

I see posts by people fussing about Beorning dps. I can't say there are no issues with damage especially since I no longer group/raid and don't run plugins. However when running Imlad Morgul instances it feels like my Beorning mows through mobs as well if not better than most of my other toons.

It took me a while to get used to Beorning skills. Man form - man skills - switch to bear form - bear form skills. Was especially hard to decide on skill bar setup b/c it changes each you switch form. Once I got used to forms and skills and settled on a skill bar setup - it is surprisingly easy to play. How many man form skills? bear form? One tricky part is knowing and using good combinations. Like man form - Call to Wild - bear form - Rush - Thunderous Roar. Boom.

At first I leveled my Beorning with a "might as well" attitude. A month later I think the class is one of the easiest and most fun.

[Joedangod]

I see posts by people fussing about Beorning dps. I can't say there are no issues with damage especially since I no longer group/raid and don't run plugins. However when running Imlad Morgul instances it feels like my Beorning mows through mobs as well if not better than most of my other toons.

Beornings run around with a 40% mitigations bypass. When running solo with relatively poor gear this mit bypass let's them perform somewhat comparable DPS to other classes in the same situation. In group settings the mits are essentially entirely removed for everyone meaning classes that were doing comparable DPS to Beornings on landscape are effectively getting a massive DPS boost that Beornings cannot benefit from.

Combine the above with Beornings poor LI scaling, weak traits and general low base damage and you get a spec that is entirely non-competitive in groups. Group situations being the only fair place to compare specs since landscape is designed to be relatively simple/easy.

[Ethrildar]

Combine the above with Beornings poor LI scaling, weak traits and general low base damage and you get a spec that is entirely non-competitive in groups.

Don't forget to add in the two separate times that Beorning had good DPS, comparable to Champs with Execute and Thrash hitting really well and it was then nerfed into oblivion for literally no apparent reason whatsoever.

[DarthKeryx]

Combine the above with Beornings poor LI scaling, weak traits and general low base damage and you get a spec that is entirely non-competitive in groups. Group situations being the only fair place to compare specs since landscape is designed to be relatively simple/easy.

So Beornings seem pretty awesome until they get into group situations. Thanks for the reply. Can you elaborate on poor LI scaling?

Thanks also to Ethrildar. I didn't really play Beorning until the last month and don't know how they have been nerfed.

[Omen_Kaizer]

So Beornings seem pretty awesome until they get into group situations. Thanks for the reply. Can you elaborate on poor LI scaling?

Beorning dps specifically is what hes talking about. Beorning dps legacies do +34.8% for each and again +34.8% for a few individual skills. Hunters & champs have the same or better mastery boosts plus a big crit multiplier legacy on top of that.

Making execute worthwhile plus giving a nice crit multiplier boost and maybe a moderate mastery boost would go a long way to closing the gap. Without working ground up to put red bears on par with other red lines. Though my concern is making yellow bears do more damage than they already do while healing, so maybe the boosts should be tied to the red line.

[Joedangod]

Beorning dps specifically is what hes talking about.

It's not restricted to DPS and % magnitude isn't the only issue.

There are basically only two decent legacies specifically for blue line and they're both on the carving, you end up using yellow legacies to fill the other spots and then realise that there basically isn't any point to have an LI weapon (outside of a 2h bees swappy). For red...there is a glaring absence of legacies for bash/thrash or even slash. The lack of Thrash legacy is pretty damn notable, it's one of the buttons you're gonna be pressing most often and it just doesn't get any boosts outside of the bear form damage bonus. I have no idea why they focused the damage increasing legacies on random utility abilities (including the damn taunt) and ignored the primary damage skills.

[DarthKeryx]

I have no idea why they focused the damage increasing legacies on random utility abilities (including the damn taunt) and ignored the primary damage skills.

You and others make excellent points. I have enjoyed this thread. There is one - emphasis on *one* - benefit of this situation.

It was surprisingly easy to prepare legendary weapon and carving for my Beorning. There are fewer legacies in the legacy pool to begin with. And not many are very useful. For many classes we often put together at least two sets of legendaries for different roles (blue, red, yellow line).* For Beorning one set is all you need. Weird if unsatisfying hybrid legendaries that have a bizarre mix of healing + tanking + (few) damage legacies. You're exactly right that no legacy for Thrash/Slash is bizarre.

Since this is the hand the devs dealt us rather than adding new legacies for those skills a better solution might be simply increasing their damage. Unless they make it relatively easy to modify LIs after we've already worked on them so much. Yeah I have a few post-imbuement scrolls. But which legacies to displace?

*Not everyone does this. Some players (and I regularly Inspect toons to look at their LIs) compromise. Not just casual players either but some of the top players on the server who group/raid like crazy. For example an elite Captain that uses an emblem with an odd mix of tanking + healing + damage legacies. I have little interest in the legendary grind (and burning stacks of Mithril Coins) and sometimes take that approach. Might not be raid-worthy but works for most situations.