Itemisation and Stat Derivations

[Joedangod]

~ Beorning: Stats and Gear ~

In a fit of poor judgement I rolled myself a second Beorning to cap at 75 in order to take part in an on-level Orthanc group. Foolishly I believed that at 75 Beornings might just do well at this level range compared to other classes, I was once again mistaken. The main issues I located at this level for the class are involved in the items available and its stat derivations (although the problem with man form being woefully underpowered is still present). So, let's get to giving more feedback!

~ Itemisation ~

A few aspects of this one are perhaps forgivable in terms of the level 75 Beorning but that doesn't hold true for the level 105 gear. I will start with the issues clearly present at level 65 and work upwards to 105. I'm starting with level 65 as very little of the equipment under this level is perfectly suited to any class considering the number of times that stat derivations have changed and the Beorning actually does do quite well with the might medium armour boxes as quest rewards. The focus here will be on the instance gear obtainable for the Beorning.

When it comes to gearing out a class at 65 I typically hop on over to Harndirion to check on the In Their Absence cluster armour, for most classes you get a reasonable set bonus for this set which will tweak how one or two skills work. On a Beorning, you get this:

And this is only the beginning. It only has the one set from Harndirion whilst all other classes have 2 sets, it has no set from Barad Guldur (65 or 85) either. The Galtrev set also comes with no skill/trait set bonus. It's only with ToO gear that we start to see setbonuses appear:

Once again Beornings are short changed in terms of setbonuses, all the other classes receive a 2 set bonus towards skills as well as the 4 set whilst Beornings just get stats. Another obvious thing to note here (besides the power regen on gear for a class that doesn't have a power pool) is that there is no difference in the stats between armour for each traitline. All 3 sets have the exact same stats which is incorrect as both healing and tanking should have different stat priorities than DPS with vitality taking the place of Might. The healing and DPS 4 set bonuses may be fairly generic here but they are actually just about the strongest setbonuses available to a Beorning at any level.

From 75 onwards the Beorning will run into a variety of issues with gearing. This is the point where the might armour boxes stop being offered as quest rewards and Beornings are essentially forced into wearing agility gear. The stat derivations offering 5 points of physical mastery per point of agility do offset the problem slightly but the Beorning remains fairly weak in the 75-95 range. At 85 we find the next few sets:

Once again we have no 2 set bonuses for skills on any piece of gear here. The setbonuses themselves are also incredibly lacking.

If we start with the healing sets here:
Natures bond is a fairly useless skill. It has little to no use as a panic button to keep another character alive as the only 2 heals that are even going to transfer to this other character would be recuperate or bellow, since recuperate is a skill far down in blue it is impossible for most Beornings to get until they have all their trait points. The mark of Grimbeorn parry chance is probably the worst set bonus in the entire game, adding a 1% buff to parry for your marked target is so minor that there's really no point in getting it.

The DPS sets aren't much better:
Call to wild is fairly negligible as a skill. Sure it's nice to be able to use it 25% more often but it doesn't really extend the amount of time you can spend in bear form by a useful amount as you have to drop back in to man form to reapply execute for the mitigations bypass lest your DPS suffer. The 3% attack duration change doesn't help much either considering the Beorning attacks are plenty fast anyway (to the point where massive debuffs of +300% attack duration don't make a notable difference to the speed at which you perform your rotation) and you spend very little time at full wrath what with all of your bear form skills rapidly draining it (including a certain main DPS skill which can completely drain it in one go).

Tanking seems to do the best out of these sets:
Thickened hide CD reduction is a welcome bonus to the only real defensive panic skill the Beorning has. The 1% parry chance is lousy in comparison considering all other tank classes get buffs like this just passively in their trait tree or they use swords giving them a 1 or 2% bonus to parry which a Beorning cannot get.

Finally we move on towards 100-105 armour sets. The Beorning still doesn't do too well here, a lot of the previously mentioned set bonuses were recycled (which is fine considering the class was implemented at 100 and those sets were just retroactively added, of course it would be nicer if those set bonuses were good to begin with).

The Nature's Guard set is somewhat fine, all DA sets were fairly generic for set bonuses.

The osgiliath armour is actually pretty decent for tanking, both set bonuses have value and the 2 set bonus is quite interesting albeit nowhere near as strong as some other classes 2 set bonuses on the same armour. The Throne gear also manages a decent setbonus for the 2 set however the 4 set for tanking is lacking. Claw swipe doesn't actually reduce the damage enemies do by the 9% it advertises and the knockback it has makes it worthless in a lot of places where you are required to hold a target on one spot.

The osgiliath roar set has an excellent 2 set bonus making it the best 2 set piece to use at cap for a healing Beorning. The 4 set bonus of the Osgiliath Roar and the 2 set bonus for the Throne yellow line armour are both lacking as previously mentioned, the 4 set bonus for Throne is still the worst set bonus on current raid armour and really shouldn't have seen release.

The Osgiliath claw armour is passable, relentless maul damage buff does help AoE damage a little bit but this is a pretty minor buff. The 4 set bonus for the redline Throne armour is pretty weak, Beornings already have about 45% crit chance on average whilst DPSing so this additional 5% on a low uptime (~33% due to internal CD) is negligible.

The last few set bonuses to cover are on the BB jewellery:

The bonus to execute damage is pretty small especially considering the low proc chance of execute. The bonus to crit chance is again fairly negligible. The -5% mitigated damage for sacrifice is worthless, sacrifice is only really worth mentioning in yellow line and you already reduce the damage by 45% in that traitline. The incoming healing proc is interesting but has a low uptime and is hardly equivalent to race of man racial giving 5% passive incoming healing, captain traits/skills giving 25%+ incoming healing or guardian traits giving 5-10% incoming healing bonus.

It's also worth noting that Beornings suffer in terms of what items they can equip. They only have the following options:

• Bows
• Daggers
• Clubs
• Axes
• Spears

This restricts them from using swords, maces, hammers and crossbows. Of these four weapon types the inability to use a sword is the most egregious as the lootbox weapons a lot of people use when leveling are swords, swords are also notable as the strongest tanking weapon for the parry bonus (as minor as it is). The lack of crossbow also prevents the Beorning from utilising a few good tank items in that slot.

~ Stat Derivations ~

When it comes to stat derivations Beornings are pretty darn weird.

The following table gives a comparison between Beornings and Champions/Guardians:

	Beorning	Guardian	Champion
Might	Physical Mastery: 8 Tactical Mastery: 6 Block: N/A Parry: 3	Physical Mastery: 8 Tactical Mastery: 8 Block: 3 Parry: 2	Physical Mastery: 8 Tactical Mastery: 8 Block: 3 Parry: 3
Agility	Physical Mastery: 6 Tactical Mastery: N/A Critical Rating: 1 Evade: 2 Parry: N/A	Physical Mastery: N/A Tactical Mastery: N/A Critical Rating: 1 Evade: 3 Parry: 2	Physical Mastery: N/A Tactical Mastery: N/A Critical Rating: 1 Evade: 3 Parry: 2
Fate	Critical Rating: 2.5 Tactical Mastery: 4 Tactical Mitigation: 1	Critical Rating: 2.5 Tactical Mastery: N/A Tactical Mitigation: 1	Critical Rating: 2.5 Tactical Mastery: N/A Tactical Mitigation: 1
Will	Tactical mastery: 5 Tactical Mitigation: 1 Resistance: 2 Evade: 1	Tactical mastery: 5 Tactical Mitigation: 1 Resistance: 2 Evade: N/A	Tactical mastery: 5 Tactical Mitigation: 1 Resistance: 2 Evade: N/A
Vitality	Morale: 5 Resistance: 2 NCMR: 7.2	Morale: 5 Resistance: 2 NCMR: 7.2	Morale: 3 Resistance: 2 NCMR: 7.2

As you can see the Beorning has the weakest BPE of all 3 classes when it comes to their stats. For some reason 1 point of evade is attached to will and Might/Agility only give 3/2 points towards BPE totals respectively whilst champions get 6 points towards BPE from might and 5 points towards BPE from agility, guards receiving 5 points towards BPE from both might and agility.

[Mukor]

Perhaps they should do in the first stats that the mastery of beornigs are calculated as the other classes, except wardens this should be overworked too, one stat for beornings gives 8 phy and tac mastery. I would say agility, cause they´re medium armoured, but anything else would be fine too. Much better as this 6 from migth 5 from agility and so on.
I think this will solve a lot of the problems beornings have at the moment.

[Joedangod]

I think this will solve a lot of the problems beornings have at the moment.

I honestly think it would just weaken the class. Currently you get more mastery than the majority of classes due to the agility bonus to mastery. Revamping it so that you only get the 8 points from might or 8 points from agility would result in lower mastery overall (although perhaps making it agility would be an increase since you need to spend fewer essences increasing crit rating).

Still, the fact that it currently can get higher mastery than champions yet still does far less damage than champions goes to show that mastery rating isn't really the problem. It probably has more to do with either how well Beorning scales with mastery or the base damage of the skills in the first place.

[Mukor]

Neverless should this be consistent there is no reason why 2 classes wins their primmastery from a second stat. this gives unfair advantages .560 times 6 from stat tomes + levelstatsvalue times 6. around 3.5k mastery more appear from an incomplete programming/think through.
This is more incomplete as the passive more crit of agility classes and tac mit of will classes and the win of mastery for this both caused of this.

[Joedangod]

Neverless should this be consistent there is no reason why 2 classes wins their primmastery from a second stat. this gives unfair advantages .560 times 6 from stat tomes + levelstatsvalue times 6. around 3.5k mastery more appear from an incomplete programming/think through.
This is more incomplete as the passive more crit of agility classes and tac mit of will classes and the win of mastery for this both caused of this.

It's certainly inconsistent and should be changed but at the end of the day it is a small bonus and not of primary concern to fixing the Beorning class.

[Mukor]

It seems they don´t want hte beorning. Just look at the bonuses which you posted. e.g. red line thronne set 4 pieces why not give this 5% permanent minstrels have this.
But thickenend hide cd is much more tankier than the bonuses of guards and wardens. Same counts for claw swipe stacking. And this fate/vita/migth is caused through this statsconfusion.
And for blocking they may add blocking with twohanded in blue as for champs or allow them captains-shields in blue, doesn´t know if this helps in bearform.

[Joedangod]

But thickenend hide cd is much more tankier than the bonuses of guards and wardens. Same counts for claw swipe stacking.

Guards actually have similar/better set bonuses on Osgiliath armour, I assume they are only absent on Throne armour as the Guardian is simply far too durable at the moment. Claw swipe really does not do what you think it does.

[Mukor]

Guards actually have similar/better set bonuses on Osgiliath armour, I assume they are only absent on Throne armour as the Guardian is simply far too durable at the moment. Claw swipe really does not do what you think it does.

-3% outgoing- dmg on all inside 5m radius and this permanent. And this times4 isa lot outgoing dmg reduction.
And it´s different to have such a bonus on a slot armour or a fix stat armour. The win of cd is nice but not worth to sacrifice stats.

[Joedangod]

-3% outgoing- dmg on all inside 5m radius and this permanent. And this times4 isa lot outgoing dmg reduction.

Yeah, this doesn't do that.

Skill	Debuff on tooltip	Damage taken	Difference
No debuffs	-	1102	-
Claw Swipe T3	9%	1035	6.08%