No it is not necessary. I believe there is a vitality node at roughly the same tier, i would go with that instead
Hey this is a really useful guide. I was just curious as to why you donât go for Briarskin (increased spell damage per point) in the Druid skill tree.
You can I might have ran out of points or been working on a different build and didmt fully optimize the passives. Feel free to change 
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Honestly just not great at this stuff and thought maybe Iâd missed something. Thanks again!
Thanks for the video. I like the roots idea. It also makes the wearbear more engaging to play. I wanted to share some ideas you might like.
Wearbear roar gets 2% mana efficiency from attunement. So with 50 attunement, the roar will completely refund its mana cost from roots. We can save 5 points in the wearbear tree this way. Swipe also has a node to benefit from attunement.
Iâm using a staff which sacrifices a little melee damage, to gain a lot of spell damage. It has +11% melee crit and +melee physical damage. Even though my base crit is now only 16%, I can still achieve 100% crit/uptime.
I like to cast my roots in a line so that I can hit fire golems while they have their fire aura.
Thanks again for sharing, you helped me improve my build.
Edit - Looks like Avatar of the Wild doesnât help wearbear swipe
are you referring to the adaptive spell damage? Not sure what gets benefitted from that. Its regular spell damage that boost your damage/crit chance
Yes you can get it optimized much better than i have. Good work!
I was testing Roots and Thicket Blades damage. I still like the 50 attunement idea but I went back to a melee weapon instead of a staff.
If we go attunement, we have to be careful to keep up our armor.
Yeah that melee weapon with + atk speed and + Phsycial flat damage is potent.
Any reason why you ended up going bear over ice thorns? Just curious
at the time of this video i believe defense benefitted from solo companion.
Natural duality in the druid passives gives 30% increase damage and 75 all protections with a solo companion. Plus solo companions can be useful. The bear does decent retaliation damage and is a good distraction. You can also play around with the other companions.
Ice thorns wonât do much damage so we would be using it for the 120 armor/cold protection, which is a 40% chance on hit. You would have higher armor/cold and lower other protections with this option. But you donât have to worry about the companion dying.
Hope you donât mind me boardman, I like talking about the wearbear
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Actually - I would love to talk bear craft - I have been enjoying the druid I made and want to continue to play test and optimize. Would you prefer we do so in forum or head to discord?
To start, Im wondering if Chimera is neccessary on bear or not (the global %dmg is insane) as opposed to a spelldmg/set jade ammy.
At first I was not a fan of the bear, but utilizing the solo companion passives makes sense and feels good, I would go bear over ice thorns currently. And still running on hit totems because they are just too useful with the chill/freeze (I tried out the poison route, but it seems the poison clouds arent working as intended? Iuno. better to go for utility on them either way as theyre not a primary damage source)
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Chimeraâs Essence amulet? Its not necessary but its decent. An amulet with 60% spell damage and 25% crit multiplier would usually give more damage than 160% (because we should be close to 100% crit chance). But the unique amulet has movement speed which is very valuable against the new mono bosses.
I used Orians Eye for my wearbear in the previous patch while doing arena because it gives very strong protections.
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Doing it on the forum would help everybody else âbear craftâ.
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My biggest issue is the slow damage.
I currently have a 78 werebear who would be 85 or so if it didnât take forever to kill Golems or some Bosses.
I have a 7% crit Sovnya with T5 flat Phys and T5 Attack speed. I have Solarum bracers with T5 attack speed. And I still feel like it takes forever to kill stuff.
I even have an Idol that helps me get Haste, and my tooltip Basic attack DPS is like 9k but despite all of this, DPS is too slow. In high Mono/Arenas, it doesnât matter how tanky you are. I got 1.3k HP and 50% dodge with GB cap, but it takes a full minute to kill ONE Golem so there is a lot of room for one shotsâŚ
Ive done the math and min/max several builds. Wearbear does have less dps than other builds. It may need improvement but I still think its a fun/decent build to play.
The wearbear has some hidden potential. If we go for the node that gives increased crit chance from spell damage, then we can still get 100% crit without a polearm. So we can go for a 2hd axe and put 10 points into the primalist passive to get +40 physical damage when wielding an axe.
I was able to get to arena 300 last patch. But T5 items were nerfed so the gear needed to get 100% crit without a polearm is harder to get now. It would be a long term goal.
No idea what my crit chance is. I am using a Silver amulet, Solarum bracers, and with the 7% I still get just 79% on my character panel. Any idea how I can determine whether I hit 100% or is that 79% accurate? Not sure it maths in the Spell Damage conversion.
Also Werebear seems tanky and good, on paper the stats it has are much better than most of my other classes, but in practice it takes a lot to kill tougher targets.
The character screen wont add in any crit chance that isnât global or if the crit chance is specific to a skill. Maehlinâs gloves converts bleed chance to ignite and that doesnt show up on the character screen.
The spell damage conversion is definitely factored into the stat screen - Most of the time you need to roll âMelee critical strike chanceâ to bump it up; however, like Bladeandshadow said, with spell damage you can get up to 100% without it. For example, I run spell shared increased spell damage and spell damage while transformed suffixes on both helm and chest.
Bladeandshadow - Iâm curious if youâve tested running an 2h axe vs polearm (that 7% melee crit chance, helps a lot - but mostly seeing if the damage/ats seems to have better output and where youâre pulling the passive points from?)
Maybe we can build an optimized skill tree for critbear on this thread? Will have to be typed out as there isnt a current site for passive builds.
Here is a shot at a written skill build: (Please comment and discuss adjustments to build, so we can form a best fit!)
Things to consider: Ursine wisdom or not, amount of spell damage (weapon choice polearm vs axe) and speccing into Ancestral Weaponry with 2h axe potentially (assuming spell power is covering crit). Possibly going for 4/4 in Hunters of the Deep for near 100% uptime on aspect of the shark (I like this option, not sure if points worth it though)
Lets Assume lvl 85 and that the build is:
Swipe
Werebear Form (No ursine wisdom, and specced for wizened claws and star claw)
Entangling Roots
Summon Thorn Totem
Summon Bear
Primalist Base:
Natural Attunement - 8/8
Primal Strength - 6/8
Survival of the Pack - 6/6
Berserker - 5/5 (assuming you havent gone ursine wisdom)
Beastmaster:
Savagery - 8/8
Ambush - 1/8
Artorâs Loyalty - 1/1
Boar Heart - 4/5
Lamprey Teeth - 1/6
Porcine Constitution - 5/5
Shaman: Currently unfilled could build out to the 25% ats with totems up, would love to see thoughts on optimization
Druid:
Blood Claws - 6/6
Woodlore - 8/8
Spirit Claws - 8/8
Rootborn Wrath - 5/5
Eternal Nature - 10/10
Oaken Form - 4/6
Woodland Bond - 1/5
Natural Duality - 1/1
Ursine Maw - 2/8
Briarguard - 8/8
I realize this leaves 3 left over skill points - but I figured 85 is a solid mark for most people to aim for? Could make a 50>60>70>80>90>100 breakdown?