Let's start talking about the burliest bunch of bears, the Beornings...

[SSG_Orion]

This is not a post that pretends that there are Beorning changes imminent. It's a discussion to draw forth thoughts on our shape-shifting combatant and where some believe that there is room for improvement, skills, effects, and traits that are underwhelming, and a wishlist of what you might like to see moving forward.

[Oelle]

I'd like some traits and skills to have descriptions that fit with what they do and be totally clear.

Like when you trait your blue beorns selfheal in bearform... it has a hot. You can use it again, before the hot runs out... which overwrites the hot. Nowhere in trait or skill is said, that it overwrites the hot... therefore, you lose a lot of heal, if you use it before its over. It would be nice, if the skill clarifies this behaviour directly.

Or if you trait one of the three bee-swarm-updates (reduced mits in yellow, reduced running speed in red, reduced attackspeed in blue) and you start traiting another one... afair, the effects stop working. If its not intended to stack those, the traits should say so or be blocked after traiting the first one.

In general, i totally like my beorning as it is. Besides some clarifications and bugfixes, most other classes have more issues.

[19Euan96]

Hi Orion,

Thank you for starting to organise stuff like this! I’ve only played the red line bear so I can’t comment on the others but I will comment on this one.

Firstly, the animation for the third tier version of thrash has been broken for years now, the bear sort of limps to one side. I just hoping you can flag that one up.

I think the change the made it so you could permanently stay in bear form was fun, but in many ways made the man form obsolete. I honestly think the old gameplay where the bear was a temporary form change was more engaging, and would make the two forms more interesting again. I also think the removal of the free proc chance ability for execute took a lot of fun out of the skill.

My biggest gripe with red like bear though is how many of its traits feel unnecessary most of the time. Things like the snare on bee swarm has niche application or the sacrifice points, they always felt oddly placed to me in red line. I’d rather see more abilities first and foremost, actual new skills that give the bear more to do. I also think hearten vs composure is largely a strange interaction. I don’t know if it’s due to how values have changed over the years but composure for a significant part of the game is a downgrade from hearten in terms of healing and that feels illogical.

Going with the idea of the bear form being temporary again, I would like to see the power of the bear forms moved drastically raised, as if the form is an enrage window. For example, thrash hitting multiple targets from tier 1, as opposed to only in tier 3. Or maybe tier 3 not resetting until you run out of wrath etc. in the current form wrath feels largely unneeded except for burning an execute cast.

I think it’s a really cool clash conceptually but I feel like it arrived unfinished, especially in terms of traits and abilities compared to any other class. I mean, looking at what skills the brawler has compared to the bear the bear just feels like it could do with more

[Askelin]

Couple of ideas from the top of my head, in no particular order of importance, and without really thinking of any valid solutions.

-Since the class came out, bear form skills have never accounted for offhands, practically forcing a 2h meta if you want to play red.
While it's not a huge issue, it would be cool to allow it to compensate with maybe each melee bear skill hitting twice (with the second hit being offhand). In the past we have been told it cannot be done, perhaps you're the man, Orion.

-Execute still isn't worth even traiting. To my knowledge it doesn't crit and it doesn't do enough damage to really make it worthwhile, even with traceries, the extra trait for procs is too much investment for something that is pretty situational. Most bears just leave it as you're relying on the high crit from high wrath.
I'd say make it hit HARDER or rework how the skill works somehow, it's unintuitive to spend all your wrath on it and it's generally accepted that the bonus damage doesn't work as intended (much like the issue brawlers are having rn)

-Various red traits aren't worth traiting or are too far down the line to make use of when you are accounting for the utility in yellow and blue.

-To add to this, the capstones in red aren't all that great, for example, Call to Wild is a pretty big investment down the traitline and an extra slot to consider in your LI to make it worthwhile, it has a pretty long cooldown (3 minutes) and the damage increase from LI tracery is the only reason you'd even want it. And with that said I bash out more dps by taking yellow bees over Call to WIld. It's an outdated skill as wrath generation is much quicker these days, making its base effect only good for super emergency quick wrath generation (and even then, wrath potions are best for this).
To compensate I would change this skill into something like Recklessness for Warden, add a crit buff to it and bring the tracery bonus into the skill. Make it strong and people may think to use it.

-In my honest opinion also, I think the AOE for thrash should be a base effect when used on t3, maybe the capstone can add another effect? Beornings have enough 'armour break' type effects, maybe t3 thrash can be a guaranteed crit when traited? Beorning's AOE is almost solely relying on Maul and it would be nice for a strong cleave for trash mobs.

-A little idea regarding Armour Crush... Rending Blow could be taken out of blue and be made a basic Beorning skill (allows an extra filler skill for all lines without point investment). Keep Armour Crush a trait but bring it up the tree where Rending Blow was, this could allow people to dip a little further into red line's utility without sacrificing this important skill.

I think the change the made it so you could permanently stay in bear form was fun, but in many ways made the man form obsolete. I honestly think the old gameplay where the bear was a temporary form change was more engaging,

The issue with this is that originally that made bears relatively frustrating to play and severely diminished their effectiveness. Blue and red practically have no need to skinchange for wrath atm, but rotationally it is worth doing in red. But at least you aren't spending entire fights clawing for bits of wrath all the time.
The only time I ever find myself skills going grey is in yellow, because of the fairly high wrath cost of the heals.
I like being able to go hard with bear skills. There is a natural counter to wrath issues, bringing pots and also not spamming heals when one doesn't need it. It makes yellow very engaging as it is. But red relies on having high wrath for high crits, and blue... Well I guess with blue it's a matter of not wanting to be in man form for too long anyway.

[Inkling]

Question:

What kind of bear is best?

[gildhur]

Let us interact with objects and purchase stablemaster routes in bear form/Wanderlust.

[Frisco]

Only issue I have with Beorning is that the small number of heal skills can make higher tiers of small fellowship/fellowship instances nearly impossible, or at least were at L140. Maybe it was just the way the instances were designed. The 4-piece raid set was a step in the right direction, adding an AoE HoT to Encouraging Roar, but I think to be viable healers for smaller groups, that set bonus should be rolled into the skill or a yellow trait. Or another small AoE maintenance heal could be added.

Tanking is fine for their role as off-tanks (though for higher tiers they could use another emergency skill, and an in-combat rez in blue line could bring them more in line with Captains). DPS I tend to treat like other non-DPS classes. Fine for leveling, seems okay in lower tier stuff. I don't necessarily think they need to be made high tier raid viable. But as a premium class, maybe they should.

[Arabani]

Form dancing is my biggest issue with the beornig, I wish I could stay in one form and do my job without switching back and forth. I guess it is a less of a problem for the blue and red bears, but very irritating as a healer, especially when there are other factors that influence the performance. I'd love to stay and do my job in the man form as healer.

Another problem is that the class does not really have heals, wards or reliable damage reduction that can be maintained on people. Single target healing is more or less fine, but aoe is all about burst heals. I'd like to see Hots, Wards and Reactive heals added to the class. As I have said many times in the Captain part of the forum-reactive heals are great for mellee healers, they let them to keep the group alive and do dps.

Speaking about dps as a healer-more aoe would be nice as well.

As for the rest of the lines, I can not really comment on them, I play yellow only.

[Joedangod]

This is not a post that pretends that there are Beorning changes imminent. It's a discussion to draw forth thoughts on our shape-shifting combatant and where some believe that there is room for improvement, skills, effects, and traits that are underwhelming, and a wishlist of what you might like to see moving forward.

Well...I don't really have the time these days to go into the big detailed posts about everything wrong with the class (which were ignored anyway during Vastin's attempt to revamp the class ) but I guess I can still whip a TL;DR style list.

• General:
  
• Beorning has two forms, bear form and weak form. Whilst you do have reasons to swap to man form in yellow/red (you never want to be man in blue) it's still notably weaker and you mostly just find yourself wishing you still had stuff available in bear form.
  
• Claw swipe should really be baseline for all specs, bear rotation is fairly stilted and could use an additional fairly low CD AoE ability you can mix in.
• Red Beorning:
  
• Execute is a dead skill, nobody wants to dump their entire wrath pool into a skill that does mediocre damage. Could just revert all the changes Vastin made to it and restore OG moment of opportunity.
  
• The bleed focused playstyle is pretty odd, doesn't really mesh with the class fantasy of being a rampaging bear on the battlefield. Whilst the class probably should have bleeds I don't really think their maintenance should be the focal point of the rotation.
  
• Personally I'd favour redesigning red Bear to be a class that spends ~2/3rds-3/4 of its time in man form and transitions into bear form as a DPS cooldown that mostly just gives empowered versions of the man form skills. Man form animations feel pretty slick, it's just a shame the thing doesn't do all that much damage by itself.
• Blue Beorning:
  
• Doesn't have anything to spend wrath on. Guarded is either a passive thing via evades or you have to go into man form...which is a big no-no since it drops your morale by 20% and your armour by 30%. Would advise reworking Guarded to be something a Blue bear tries to maintain via wrath spending. Would also make it apply to tact mits as well because I really don't know why Bear has lower tact mit.
  
• You get bonus points if you make the wrath spending Guarded stacks something you can maintain 100% uptime on with low tiers but can also pump it to higher tiers for short burst windows of larger defence.
  
• Man form is outright awful in blue, you never want to be in it....not actually complaining about this, I like a line that sticks to pure bear form to fulfill that fantasy. Mostly just want to suggest fleshing out blue bear form further rather than trying to bump relevance of man form. Could set up man form to have some rapid recovery methods but I wouldn't want to swap to it during active combat.
  
• Needs an additional defensive CD of some kind. Spec is stuck with just Hide right now, Hide is good....but it still needs a second ability to keep it on par with stuff like Guard.
• Yellow Beorning:
  
• You made the mistake of making this a raid-wide healer which has an obvious issue. If it's tuned to pull similar raid numbers to a fellowship healer then the spec is undertuned in 6-man content, if the spec is tuned to pull competitive healing in 6-man content then the spec will be overtuned in raid content. Restrict it to fellowship based healing on its AoE.
  
• -15% phys mit on bees...I mean seriously, that is way too strong and I don't even know why yellow bear got this trait instead of red.
  
• Heals themselves are also problematic. The bear form heals are so much stronger than the man form heals. The constant form swapping set up isn't too bad here but man form really needs to bring it's own variation on heals, preferably being the form that applies HoTs or just general pre-emptive buffing whilst bear form covers the burst. Would also be nice to see lower CD on bear heals with more emphasis on properly managing your wrath as the limiting factor to heal output rather than your CDs.
  
• Maul is really too short a cooldown considering just how insanely strong it is.
  
• Dunno why it has an ally mark and an enemy mark. The enemy mark just feels a bit tacked on, whilst there are some synergies there I still don't like its presence.

[Soragrim]

From an endgame raider's perspective the Beorning class is in pretty good shape right now balancing-wise. We do have a guaranteed spot in higher tier raids in yellow line, while red and blue line can be played in mid tier raids and 6mans. Yellow Beorning has clear strengths and weaknesses and plays different from other healers, that should not be changed.

However, there are some major flaws regarding placement and effectiveness of traits:

Yellow line:
- remove -15% physical mitigation from debilitating bees and put the blue bees debuff there instead
- make Recuperate accessible by default

Red line:
- make Slash dot tier down instead of expiring
- Execute should be fixed/reworked, it is not worth traiting/using
- move composure into blue line
- change red bees debuff from movement speed debuff to +5% incoming melee critical chance at rank 5/5
- give red bear access to Claw Swipe
- there are still some useless traits left like Enraged Sacrifice, Turn the Tides and both capstones are mediocre

Blue line:
- make Recuperate accessible by default and remove the trait (prevents red line from using it)
- passive +max morale & armour value has to apply in BOTH forms
- Quick Recovery trait will make Recuperate stack up to 3 times
- change Armour Crush from +15% incoming damage to +10%

Genereal Changes:
- Bee Swarm slows the target by 20%
- add -5% physical mitigation to the Bee Swarm Critical Defence Debuff tracery

What's the point of these changes?

Currently, the combination of Armour Crush and Yellow Bees alone secures a Beorning's spot in a raid which is a bad thing. Also there is no point in bringing a second Beorning to the raid because every trait line has access to both Armour Crush & Yellow Bees.
In my opinion there should be a HUGE revamp (=nerf) of all +incoming damage and -mitigation/rating debuffs on all classes.

With these changes, yellow line will play out literally the same but with less offensive support while red line isn't hampered by having only 22 trait points left to spend in red tree (because you needed to invest 36+40 points for AC&Y-Bees). Claw Swipe in red line will close the gaps in current rotation and the changes to red bees will encourage more melee friendly raid comps in the current ranged DPS meta.
I haven't thought too much about blue line tbh, gameplay feels pretty lackluster and you have no defensive cds apart from Thickened Hide. Maybe changing Beorning's blue line to a support line like Brawler's yellow line could be an option.

[Pramist]

Hi, the following will be primarily talking about bear in reference to cap level content. (With the assumption that you aren't going to rewrite the entire game and class)

The first thing people seem to struggle with, and that people have mentioned in previous comments, is that yellow bear is less effective as a healer in high tier 3/6mans than the mini/rk/bcappy. I do not think this is a problem, so long as you view the yellow bear more as a support class (akin to the red cappy) than a healer. Bringing a yellow bear into a 3/6man means bringing powerful dps buffs/debuffs that you otherwise wouldn't have access to, and that comes at the cost of heals. If people don't know how to use that extra dps to manage with fewer heals then they need to try a different composition. I therefore think that right now, it's fairly balanced in that regard.

Otherwise, some QoL and general usefulness of the spec stuff listed below:

• Yellow: It would be nice if the Aiding Strike OGH buff tiered down instead of falling off completely when not refreshed.
• Yellow: This line currently has a lot of healing/support wrath spenders, and very few healing/support wrath builders. Some reworking of wrath costs on rejuvenating bellow, or bees could help make the line less reliant on wrath pots, and not need to spend several seconds every now and then essentially doing nothing useful to build wrath back up. This however isn't to say that good wrath management shouldn't be important, just that a lot of what we do right now to build wrath in yellow has no other value.
• Yellow: This applies to all lines, but usually yellow. Revival leaves you with no wrath and in bear form. Giving us 50 wrath on revival would solve this problem.
• Blue: Switching to man form while taking damage can kill you at the moment. Perhaps a 5s -20% incoming damage buff when switching to man form, on some appropriately sized cooldown would help them here.
• Blue: An 'on hit, reduce the cooldown of thickenhide by -1s, cannot apply more than once every second' could help make thicken hide a more flexible cooldown, as the classes only major cooldown.
• Blue: 'In Harms way' trait threat transfer is fairly useless. Something like an incoming healing buff here to you and/or your target could make the skill more versatile, and the trait more useful to pick up when in other lines.
• Blue: With the guarded buff being refreshed with Parries or Evades, and the 'Counter' cooldown offering evade chance, a passive 5-10% evade chance and potentially parry chance would be a nice increase in QoL. Also a passive or traited finesse buff could be nice to help your debuffs land.
  
• Red: A rework or execute is of course needed. Damage not dependant on current wrath, just a high fixed cost, and a proc for the skill to cost zero wrath. Or something similar.
• Red: 'Turn the tides' trait is an interesting trait, but you rarely get the opportunity to benefit from it, and when you do, the benefit is fairly small. Perhaps instead of dealing immediate damage, each corruption removed gives the bear some damage buff (crit chance, magnitude, general damage) on their next attack, or for 10s.
• Red: Otherwise, a general damage bump is needed to bring them more in line with other melee, physical, AoE dps.
• Red: A current problem with red, when only bringing one beorning to a fight, is that the debuffs from blue/yellow are more valuable than the ones in red. While i don't think that the other lines should lose their debuffs, the red line should have a powerful debuff of it's own. Perhaps changing the yellow debilitating bees to be -10% phys mits and -10% inductions, the blue suggish bees to -10% attack duration and -15% outgoing damage, and the red crippling bees to -10% phys mits (not stacking with the yellow ones) and +3-5% incoming crit chance would level the bees field, and not force the red bear to trait into yellow, leaving more points for red.

Finally, and the most important point, while the class itself is great fun, and very enjoyable however you use it, we are sorely missing one thing: Cosmetic hats for the beorning in bear form. It's fair to assume that, regardless of how difficult this is to implement, adding even a single bear hat to the lotro store would at least triple the games profit margins. This isn't just a necessity for you to add, it is a responsibility. We need them.

Thank you : D

[Arabani]

Currently, the combination of Armour Crush and Yellow Bees alone secures a Beorning's spot in a raid which is a bad thing. Also there is no point in bringing a second Beorning to the raid because every trait line has access to both Armour Crush & Yellow Bees.

There is no point in brining another beorning because the class is not competitve with with the others in the similar role, including the Yellow line, actually. Both Minstrel and Rune Keeper are more realiable and versatile (Captain healer is a different sad story). If you think that placing the debuffs in different lines will secure a spot for another bear, you just delude yourself. Most likely Yellow beorning will be replaced by a Minstrel or a Blue Captain.

[Soragrim]

There is no point in brining another beorning because the class is not competitve with with the others in the similar role, including the Yellow line, actually. Both Minstrel and Rune Keeper are more realiable and versatile (Captain healer is a different sad story). If you think that placing the debuffs in different lines will secure a spot for another bear, you just delude yourself. Most likely Yellow beorning will be replaced by a Minstrel or a Blue Captain.

My goal was to make red bear viable in certain comps in high tier raids rather than having two bears in one raid. Yellow bear is definitely competitive with other healers. Red bear being viable would bring a lot more diversity to raid comps because you are not forced to take a yellow bear anymore so you could use a blue cappy or second mini/rk.

[Khluzainn]

In general I agree with Joedangod on most of his items.

Specifically for RED:

I dont mind the bleed playstyle. I have 3 main issues with red.
Firstly Like JDG said I dont enjoy the playstyle of being in bear form 95% of the time. I would also prefer more time in man form and then go into bear form to burst and use procs from execute etc.
THAT BEING SAID - damage needs to remain at its current level or honestly a little higher. Changing the class to just use manform more and do 30-40% reduced damage is not the point.

Secondly is Execute. We have hunters using a 1-1.5 million upshot on an incredibly low CD. I dont know why we cant have Execute smash, having a proc that gurantees a crit maybe??, and have no CD being a Wrath dump. The tradeoff of this big hitter is that it starts you at zero wrath which is a massive damage loss and loses 15% crit chance until its restored. Make execute do somthing... Its not even close to being overpowered and it was never overpowered in its old form... It was only considered being too strong before becasue of PVMP. Bears in PVMP were too survivable, while having random nukes. That was a different era of pvmp though..

Third and finally, BEES. Seriously, RED bear will never see the light of day. Yellow beorn already is the best AOE healer without its amazing buffs/debuffs. It is already PREFERRED. On top of that yellow does not have to invest many points in its own line allowing it to easily get every debuff while also mazing its healing which is ALREADY great for what its suppost to do. Yellow bear doesnt need all of this extra to make it attractive. IMO I think the bee debuff (-mits) should be in red line, and it should be pretty deep in red too... Honestly the debuff could get nerfed to 10%. This would allow RED bear to have a chance. They could take armor crush and do comparable dps to other dps classes. Right now there is no reason to bring RED bear. While there are 4-5 reasons to bring Yellow bear. Even if bee mit debuff was removed from yellow, they could probably still grap it or even drop armor crush to get it and STILL be top tier aoe healer. Hands down.

Thats all. In general red bears dps could use a slight bump from current numbers but it actually parses decent.

[Arabani]

Yellow beorn already is the best AOE healer without its amazing buffs/debuffs.

He's the only class with an aoe heal. Make it groupwide, as every other healer has, and beorning won't be so preferred. The class already has issues healing upper tiers of group content.

As I have said many times-every spec of every class should be competitive and viable in every type of content, the difference should be in the playstyle. So yes, Minstrel, Rune Keeper, Beorning, Blue Captain should be equally good everywhere. If each of them is positioned as a healer. Right now only Minstrel is capable of performing equaly good in every type of content. Rune Keeper is fine, but tricky on some encoutners. While bears and captains have a lot of issue in t3+. They are more lilke a support class then real healers.

So, is beorning a support class? If not -his healing capability needs to be buffed and adjusted outside of a couple of raid-wide heals.

[Laurelinarien]

Something I'd like to get out of my chest about my Beorn experience: is there a chance you could take a look at the state a Beorn revives in? I mean, I'm usually a yellow bear in groups and if I die, someone rezzes me/DNF, I respawn with 0 Wrath and go thru the automatic animation of turning from Man to Bear form - which forces me to have to manually swap back to Man since I'm useless in Bear form without Wrath.

PS: I miss my Remm set to generate Wrath by shape-shifting

[Neinda]

I wish the bears had consistency as to what is allowed in bear form and what requires man form on the landscape. Sometimes the bear can do something and other times you have to switch.

[Wolbat]

Having played pretty much all of the highest tier content on both 130 and 140, I have a couple of thoughts on the state of the class.

blue line:

• no real wrath spenders, there is only really recuperate and with counterattack you are pretty much at full wrath all the time
• lack of defensives cooldowns: while thickened hide is pretty nice, your second best CD is counter which is a joke compared to every other viable tank class
• form swap penalty: you lose a significant amount of hp every time you swap form because the bonus hp only applies to bear form
• lack of self healing: there are several ways to tackles this, you could add a tweaked version of the gondor class essences as a passive or follow Sora's suggestion and let recuperate stack
• guarded: as of right now you are pretty much always at 5 stacks no matter what you do which makes it not very interactive
  you could add some sort of cashout for allowing you to cash out your guarded stacks for a temporary defensive buff

red line:

• fix the red trait line: it is quite telling that you'd rather go for utility from blue / yellow instead of going deep down inside of the red tree because there isn't anything worth picking up (except Call to Wild)
• make execute great again: make it a hard hitting skill that costs 30-40 wrath and add a moment of opportunity proc so you can use it for free (credit to Corvo for this suggestion)
  this makes the rotation more dynamic and actually gives you a reason to go deeper into red line
• decide on an identity: right now red bear has neither any real burst (like Hunter, Champ) nor good DoTs (like Warden) meaning you lose out on a lot of DPS when you have to swap the target or have to move away from the main target due to raid mechanics
  this lack of flexibility makes the class very infuriating to play compared to the other mentioned classes
• maybe add another big spender because your are again always sitting at full wrath anyway

yellow line:

• change the "feast or famine" state of yellow bear: this trait line suffers a lot from balancing issues which are admittedly not that easy to fx
  as a raidwide healer, your output is balance around just that but on the flip side we have seen ybear struggling in 3-mans and 6-mans early into the 140 level cap because the healing just wasn't enough while being arguably the best healer in a raid environment
  one fix for that could be that the value of your heals scales with the amout of targets your hit (if that is even possible from a technical standpoint) for example: If you hit 3 people with bellow, they each get healed for 100k but if you hit 6 targets instead, it goes down to 50k per target
  obviously this would need a lot of numbers tweaking but it'd make bear more balanced across the board
• lower / remove the cooldown after removing the Mark of Grimbeorn: this would allow players a more flexible playstyle while still retaining the unique buffs the mark provides
• remove Mark of Beorn: currently this skill has next to no value so either rework it or just delete it, wouldn't be a loss
• currently both forms have their own identity, man form being the utility / wrath building form while bear form has the big spenders which is great and should stay this way
• buff Overbearing: the one thing probably every bear player hates is reviving someone, 1,5s of induction only for the target to get revived at 50% HP sucks for everyone involved and too far behind minstrel imo
  which in itself is fine but atleast remove the induction or bump up the revived morale to 90%
• feel like another heal skill could be good if implemented well, but nothing that's 100% needed right now
  

general things:

• beeswarm and armour crush in their current form are too strong or else your wouldn't always trait both regardless of your current trait line
  for bees, you could change the debuff depending on your trait line so that you could have 3 different beornings which each bring unique beeswarm debuffs (attackspeed / induction in blue, -physical mitigation in red, - crit defence in yellow or something like that)
  that way you also eliminate redundancies which would occur if you'd bring a red and a yellow bear with the current state of things
• remove / rework -dmg% debuffs (looking at you, slam and piercing roar): either make them real multiplicative debuffs (like LM lores) or get rid of them, they just add unnecessary confusion for players who don't know how these kind of things are calculated
• fix / remove the supposed combat state immunity from Maul: it just doesn't work

[Oddessia]

Here's my mind-blowing, insightful suggestion that will make beos OP foreveeerrrr!


***** Polar Beos please! *****


That is all, thank you

-Ods

[Arabani]

***** Polar Beos please! *****

Hobbit beorning first, please!

[gildhur]

Let us interact with objects and purchase stablemaster routes in bear form/Wanderlust.

At the very least, fix the slight delay between pressing Man Form and the game recognizing that you're in Man Form. Almost every time I switch to Man Form to pickup an object, I get a "You must be in Man Form" error message and have to wait another second and try again.

[Khaz-Hadar]

Bare chested (or fur bikinied) Beornings. All other things pale in comparison.

[Aurora7]

This is not a post that pretends that there are Beorning changes imminent. It's a discussion to draw forth thoughts on our shape-shifting combatant and where some believe that there is room for improvement, skills, effects, and traits that are underwhelming, and a wishlist of what you might like to see moving forward.

Orion, Thank you very much for this.

Context for my input:
Solo, landscape, quests, max Beorning lvl 82, minor RP (i.e. No PvP, No grouping, No experience with full traits at lvl 140)

Current Red Trait Tree:
1st Row
Thrash & Critical Strike - Useful and provides a reward for the trait point investment
Any advantage - Not useful at all (if the enemy is down, hit 'em hard. Healing is rarely a beorning problem) Maybe useful for PvP or Groups

2nd Row
Bleed Damage - Useful and provides a reward for the trait point investment
Execute - Not useful at all; it is both a waste of wrath and trait points.

3rd Row
Lumber - useful (Lumber is a misnomer. A 350 lb black bear moving at 25 mph is charging and will bull doze anything smaller than a troll)
Serrated Edge - Not useful at all. Why would I spread immediate damage over 12 seconds? (Defeat it, now!)

4th Row
Melee Damage - Useful and provides a reward for the trait point investment
Enraging sacrifice - Not useful at all (Maybe in groups without a tank?)

5th Row
Turn the Tides - Only used to get deeper down the tree otherwise not useful (PvP maybe??)
Crippling Stings - Useful and provides a reward for the trait point investment

6th Row
Composure - Not useful at all (The Hearten heal is greater than 2% AND can be used to aid fragile NPCs)

7th Row
Broad Thrash - Not particularly useful. Thrash is for Single Target & Maul is for AoE. Mixing the 2 will have adverse encounter results.
Call to the Wild - Not particularly useful as the rewards are poor for the investment of so many trait points.

I do acknowledge those players (many above posters) who are far more skilled and experienced with full traits and in groups & PvP than I am.
However, for me, please keep it relatively simple. Trying to remember 6 or more cool downs and a dozen attack skills that need specific conditions, is well beyond me.
Now, how you accommodate this and the more skilled is firmly in the realm of the game dev gods.

Non combat:
Beorn's daughter Langhar has a beautiful red brown fur color that I cannot match in game. Yet I see it there in the intro.
Would it be reasonably easy to make it available for players?

Yes, a polar bear colored beorn would also be a great addition. (To RP a distant cousin in Forochel)

Thank you.

[Thanatos88]

General
* Remove interaction limitations based on form (i.e. bears can use the stable master and destroy cave-claw mounds just like a man can). This hearkens back to the age when you couldn’t go through a door or use a stable master on a mount back in the SoA days. The limitation was removed because it was unfun back then and should be removed for bears now
* Break out of Wanderlust when entering combat and allow for ranged skill to be used to start combat (e.g. Vigilant Roar, Bee Swarm, Nature’s Vengeance, and Grisly Cry)
* Revived bears should come back with full wrath. They were just defeated, they’re clearly enraged and ready for revenge
* More fur colors, please. Mostly want white and grey
* Why in the world can I not dance as a bear?
* Fix the animation of the bear’s front legs. They look really weird


The Claw (Red)
Current Mechanics
* Maintain a high wrath pool for more critical percentage
* Tier up Raining Bows and maintain it until Slash’s bleed is tiered up
* Tier up Slash bleed and maintain it
* Maintain Bash bleed, Biting (Serrated) Edge bleed, Expose debuff, and Bee Swarm
* Use Armour Crush on cool down (CD) (or when called for by raid lead)
* Use Ferocious Roar (FR), Relentless Maul (BM) Combo on CD (except when it would cause you to drop your Slash bleed)
* Animation cancel Bash or Bee Swarm with Vicious Claws

The Unfun
* Half of The Claw trait line is less DPS efficient to go down than picking up Debilitating Bees (Roar) and Armour Crush (Hide). More specifics in the Traits and Tree Bonuses section below
* Interactions with Wrath are largely irrelevant, leaving it a meaningless mechanic
* Execute is the only real wrath spender and is counter to current mechanics and is therefore largely worthless. It’s also too expensive and restrictive for too little value. I’ve tried really hard to make this skill work, but after hours of parses trying different trait layouts and traceries, nothing makes this work as well as having Armour Crush and Debilitating Bees. Two more Trait points would allow to have Moment of Opportunity (Execute’s random proc), Debilitating Bees, and Armour Crush, but alas we’re not there and the DPS parses on a dummy without them are inferior
* In an optimal skill rotation you’ll never get to use FR into RM while being able to maintain all your other buffs, debuffs, and dots
* Bash and Slash work differently when it comes to overriding vs renewing their bleeds.
* Lots of work to slowly build up DPS with bleeds to do mediocre damage (mediocre being about 85% of a Champion), and all that work basically disappears when the enemy becomes immune/untargetable/debuff-wipes or you have to switch targets

The Fun
* I actually like maintaining Raining Blows and the buffs/debuffs, I just wish all the effort was worth more in DPS
* Doing parses with other people while putting my debuffs on the training dummy, so I can take credit for the extra damage they do

The Fix (Bloodlust)
Add a buff called Bloodlust to bleeds (could make this exclusive to the The Claw or not if you want to offer an incentive to Healing and Tanking bears to dip in for more damage). Bloodlust tiers up any time the Beorning applies a bleed. The current skill’s application and any future application of a bleed’s damage is based off the highest rank of Bloodlust applied until the bleed times out. Execute is renamed Dominate and consumes all tiers of Bloodlust to deal damage and increase incoming damage based on the tier of Bloodlust consumed. Armour Crush and Debilitating Bees are redesigned/removed as Dominate’s debuff now fills that role. Broad Thrash now applies Slash’s bleed damage as well. Call To Wild should be repurposed to buff Bloodlust in some way like:
* Immediately doubles current Bloodlust (even over normal tier cap)
* Doubles the generation of Bloodlust tiers per application

The Fix (Wrath)
Redesign Wrathful no longer give more critical chance based on Wrath and instead increases the amount of Wrath generated passively while being in bear-form. Bear-form skills no longer generate or require Wrath, but do meaningfully more damage based on the amount of Wrath you have. At maximum Wrath, Execute unlocks
Execute ideas
* Execute becomes a genuine executing skill that does percent damage based on missing Moral
* Execute also renews bleeds on the target and spreads them to nearby enemies
* Execute also applies an incoming damage debuff to the enemy (Debilitating Bees and Armour Crush reworked/removed)

Skills
Bash
* Solid skill that will likely be in your top 5 skills in DPS parses
* Should be altered to renew the bleed rather than override it, creating an incentive to rank up Raining Blows before using it for the extra 15% damage on the bleed
Expose
* Solid skill for increased incoming damage
Execute
* Worthless for all the reasons stated above
Call to Wild
* Bad for all the reasons stated below

Trait Set Bonuses
Flayer of Evil: + 30% damage in bear-form
* I don’t know why this is only for bear-form
Battle Born: + 25% critical damage
* Fine, I guess
Sharpened Claws: after FR, your next attack will critically hit
* Nice when paired with RM, otherwise it’s mediocre
Brutal Energy: Relentless Maul does it’s damage in half the time
* Critically important
Festering Wounds: + 3 Bash bleed pulses
* Worthless
Raining Blows: Thrash adds a stacking buff of 5%
* Nice
Wrathful: gain 3% critical chance for every 20 Wrath you have
* Nice, but causes unfun choices around spenders especially Execute

Traits
0 ranks
* Thrash Damage—Mediocre; Thrash is used mostly to tier up Raining Blows and as filler
* Critical Chance—Good; glad it’s 0 ranks
* Any Advantage—Worthless; damage would be better with a heal at the end if you wanted
5 ranks
* Bleed Damage—Critical; must have for damage
* Execute—Worthless; currently (98 Trait Points spendable) Execute and Moment of Opportunity can’t be ranked up with Debilitating Bees and Armour Crush. The other two are more important than Execute.
10 ranks
* Lumber—Mediocre; not game changing for instance content, but for landscape and new players might be usefull
* Serrated Edge—Critical; must have for damage
15 ranks
* Melee Damage—Good; it’s more melee damage
* Enraging Sacrifice—Worthless; not even sure hot to fix it. I don’t ever want the healers to have to split their attention and Wrath is not an issue
* Final Strike—Worthless; because Execute is worthless
20 ranks
* Turn the Tides—Worthless; might be better if the damage increase was on the base skill and not the removal component
* Crippling Stings—Worthless; might be worth more in PvMP, but for instance content, nothing there
25 ranks
* Composure—Bad; might be worth more in PvMP, but the self-heal restriction is bad for instance content
* Moment of Opportunity—Worthless; because Execute is worthless
30 ranks
* Broad Thrash—Bad; Thrash isn’t used for it’s damage, so doing a small amount of damage once ever 20-30 seconds as AOE isn’t worth it
* Call to Wild—Bad; only useful with it’s corresponding Tracery for the damage and even then, it’s only really useful if you can use it after ranking up Raining Blows and before you use Bash and Slash Tier-3, while renewing Slash and not overriding the Bash bleed (instead using Vicious Claw to renew)




The Hide (Blue)
Current Mechanics
* Run into fight and establish agro in bear-form (likely swapping between Relentless Maul and Thunderous Roar depending on CDs)
* Use Counter at the start of the fight and on CD afterwards
* Maintain Vigilant Roar ICH buff, Claw Swipe Debuff, and Recuperate HoT
* Use Armour Crush and Debilitating Bees on whatever you’re group is killing
* Only drop into man-form if you need to use Hearten and/or Nature’s Mend

The Fun
* Just about all of the current mechanics

The Unfun
* Worth Adversary is only for bear-form
* Man-form has no real incentive to swap into if your group has good HPS
* Down But Not Out is too hard to choose to use or notice

The Fix
* Worthy Adversary should give bonuses to man-form
* Assertive Roar’s buff should last longer like twice the CD of the skill
* Biting Edge taunt should be independent of other traits

Skills
Counter
* Nice skill basically use it on CD
Counterattack
* Nice skill for damage and Wrath
Claw Swipe
* Nice bleed and debuff
Guarded Attack
* Worthless at end game because of Defensively Minded
Rending Blow/Armour Crush
* Great skill, maybe should be in The Claw; however keep the second interrupt
Recuperate
* Nice HoT. I don’t particularly like having to watch my buffs to make sure that I’m not wasting the HoT when I reapply
Thickened Hide
* Great skill, wish I had it on a shorter CD or another one like it in my kit
Thunderous Roar
* Great skill

Trait Set Bonuses
Guarded Attack: gain skill Guarded Attack
* Never used the skill at end game
Rake: gain skill Claw Swipe
* Great skill
Worthy Adversary: +30% Armour and 20% Morale in bear-form
* Should apply to both forms
Menacing Assault: Relentless Maul is larger and taunts
* Great
Down But Not Out: if your morale goes below 20% gain 20% max moral in man-form or 50 Wrath in bear-form
* I’ve never noticed it and controlling what form you’re in to take advantage of it is silly
Defensively Minded: on parry/evade build a stack of Guarded
* Great
Animalistic: increases Wrath generation in bear-form by 2 every 3 seconds
* Nice

Traits
0 ranks
* Vitality Increase—Mediocre; who doesn’t want more Vitality
* Opposing Presence—Bad for tanks, fine for DPS; tanks don’t generally care about doing damage and the extra taunt is at rank 5 and you have to be in man-form to use it
* Hardened Heart—Mediocre; if you’re going to use Hearten, might as well get Wrath back
5 ranks
* Vigilant Roar—Critical; must have for taunt and ICH
* In Harms Way—Bad; only useful for trigger happy DPS that you actually want to keep alive
10 ranks
* Weakening Blow—Bad for tanks, fine for DPS; for the same reasons as Opposing Presence
* All On The Line—Bad; because you have to go through In Harms Way to get it and there are better things to spend points on
* Rending Blows—Great; nice to have another interrupt
15 ranks
* Tactical Mitigation Increase—Good; it’s more mitigations
* Assertive Roar—Worthless; man-form skill and too short of duration
* Armour Crush—Great; probably too good and should be moved to The Claw trait line
20 ranks
* Recuperate—Great; nice self-heal
* Sluggish Stings—Good; more attack duration and skill induction on the enemy is better
25 ranks
* Quick Recovery—Bad; unless you expect to be spamming the skill
* Physical Mitigation Increase—Good; it’s more mitigations
30 ranks
* Thunderous Roar—Critical; your only full AoE Taunt, plus it has 15% ICH instead of 10 like Vigilant Roar
* Thickened Hide—Critical; your only real “Oh no!” skill




The Roar (Yellow)
Current Mechanics
* Put Mark of Grimbeorn on the tank or highest DPS person
* Tier up and maintain Encouraging Strike’s OGH buff
* Use Mark of Beorn, Armour Crush, and Bees (animation cut with Vicious Claws) on raid leaders target
* Heal whom needs healing
* Use Piercing Roar when big damage is coming from boss

The Fun
* Trying to maintain Encouraging Strike’s OGH buff
* Trying to mitigate damage with Piercing Roar
* Healing the whole raid with Relentless Maul and Rejuvenating Bellow
* Only one induction

The Unfun
* CDs on the marks is far too long
* Running out of Wrath, as this Trait line is actually over tuned on Wrath consumption
* Not having a 4ths heal in bear-form

The Fix
* Remove the CD for the marks
* Change the Wrath Refund Chance tracery to also work for heals not just attacks
* Give Encouraging Strike’s T-5 buff extra Wrath generation
* Create a new skill that generates Wrath while healing for bear-form

Skills
Encouraging Roar
* Nice skill basically use it on CD
Mark of Grimbeorn
* Nice skill; CD too long
Mark of Beorn
* Mediocre skill; CD too long
Takedown
* Mediocre skill
Nature’s Mend
* Good skill when fully traited
Leveling Roar
* Worthless
Rejuvenating Bellow
* Great skill, wish I had it on a shorter CD or another one like it in my kit
Piercing Roar
* Good skill, wish it was less confusing on how much damage was being reduced
Nature’s Bond
* Mediocre skill with too long of a CD that should basically match Relentless Maul
Overbearing
* Good skill, should revive would more morale

Trait Set Bonuses
Mark of Beorn: gain skill Mark of Beorn
* Long CD skill that doesn’t feel like it makes a large impact
Aid the Assault: Relentless Maul now heals
* Critical skill
Grimbeorn’s Strength: gives Mark of Grimbeorn more effects
* Nice effects, but it still doesn’t feel like it makes a large impact
Rejuvenating Bellow: gain skill Rejuvenating Bellow
* Great skill
Honey Cleanse: after using Cleanse, your next healing skill gains 10% critical chance for each removed ailment
* Nice, but it doesn’t feel like it makes a large impact
Greater Swarm: +20% damage on Mark of Beorn
* Nice, but damage isn’t really why you’re in the group
Bond of Trust: healing skill have a 20% chance to restore 5% of the max morale of the Mark of Grimbeorn
* Great, but doesn’t feel like it makes a large impact

Traits
0 ranks
* Encouraging Strike—Great; an extra 5% OGH is always good, assuming you can maintain the buff
* Raging Blow—Great; run int on every trait line
* Fate—Mediocre; generically good if you need more filler to get further in the trait line
5 ranks
* Stampede—Great; some fights require kiting
* Improved Hearten—Good; more healing on Hearten is better
10 ranks
* Desperate Shouts—Good; wish it had a shorter CD
* Shake Free—Great; only bubble you can give
* Takedown—Great; only knockdown skill
15 ranks
* Debilitating Bees—Critical for every Beorning; why you’re brought in the group, likely overpowered and should get reworked into The Claw trait line
* Imposing Presence—Worthless; don’t think I’ve ever used it
20 ranks
* Nature’s Mend—Great; nice heal
* Healing Increase—Great; more healing is better
* Leveling Roar—Worthless; don’t think I’ve ever bothered traiting it
25 ranks
* Quick Mend—Great; makes Nature’s Mend worthwhile
* Piercing Roar—Good; but the amount of damage mitigation is deceptive
* Crippling Roar—Worthless; maybe better in PvMP
30 ranks
* Overbearing—Critical; your only revival skill, would be nice if it gave more moral
* Nature’s Bond—Mediocre; CD is too long





Traceries
General
Bear Form Damage—Generically fine
Bee Swarm Critical Defense Debuff—Generically fine
Bee Swarm Damage—Generically fine
Beorning DoT Pulses & Swarm Debuff Duration—Critical and should get as a gold
Slam Damage & Bonus Wrath Chance—Fine for DPS and HPS, should have critical rating instead of evade
Hearten Heal Strength—Generically fine
Man Form Damage—Generically fine
Relentless Maul Damage—Generically fine
Roar Damage—Underwhelming
Rush Evasion Bonus & Duration—Fine for tanking
Vicious Claw Damage—Generically fine
Vigilant Roar Damage—Underwhelming
Wrath Refund Chance—Good for all builds; could be better if it applied to Wrath spending skills rather than attacks
Shake Free Cooldown—Mediocre
Slash Damage—Good for DPS
Thrash Damage—Good for DPS because Execute, CtW, and TtT are worthless
Nature’s Mend Healing—Good for Healing and Tanking

The Claw
Call to the Wild Melee Damage Bonus—Worthless because you don’t take the skill; if you take the skill then it’s CD is too long to use well, as it’s primary goal is to buff bleeds and keep those bleeds renewed. If the mobs die or boss goes invulnerable then it’s wasted for 3 more minutes.
Execute Damage—Worthless because you don’t take the skill
Turn the Tides Damage—Worthless because you don’t take the traits; also why does it have ICHR on it, when it should have Physical Mastery or Critical rating

The Hide
Recuperate Heal Pulses—Fine
Thickened Hide Duration & Tactical Damage Reduction—Critical
Thunderous Roar Cooldown—Critical
Vigilant Roar Incoming Healing—Great
Counter Dodge & Counterattack Damage—Great

The Roar
Bond of Trust Heal Chance—Critical
Nature’s Bond Cooldown—Bad as the CD isn’t enough. If it was able to get it down to 40 seconds then it would be good
Encouraging Roar Initial Heal—Good

[cwswim03]

general things:

• beeswarm and armour crush in their current form are too strong or else your wouldn't always trait both regardless of your current trait line
  for bees, you could change the debuff depending on your trait line so that you could have 3 different beornings which each bring unique beeswarm debuffs (attackspeed / induction in blue, -physical mitigation in red, - crit defence in yellow or something like that)
  that way you also eliminate redundancies which would occur if you'd bring a red and a yellow bear with the current state of things
• remove / rework -dmg% debuffs (looking at you, slam and piercing roar): either make them real multiplicative debuffs (like LM lores) or get rid of them, they just add unnecessary confusion for players who don't know how these kind of things are calculated
• fix / remove the supposed combat state immunity from Maul: it just doesn't work

There is 0 reason to bring a bear without both bees/armor crush. It would be a useless raid class if they were taken out.