[build] Melee Druid (Werebear) [WIP] [0.7.2]

[magaiti]

Werebear Druid build, as I see it.

Werebear got HUGE boost in 0.7.2:

• Werebear Form skill has a tree now. Passives in the tree allow for infinite form sustain, increased defenses, chance to cast a totem you are specialized in, regen boost for your companion, and more.
• Swipe specialization is carried over to Werebear’s Swipe skill. This probably doubles damage output compared to 0.7.1
• You can cast Entangling Roots in Werebear form, if you spec into Woodland Bear. This is huge AoE damage, if you spec the Roots right.

With my current gear, I have ~1000 hp, ~2700 protections , 100% glancing blow, 100% crit chance, ~6000-7000 crit damage.

Gameplay (0.7.1):
Arena 111-115, underleveled build, easy mobs:

Build Showcase [0.7.2]:

Last Epoch - Werebear [0.7.2]

stats (0.7.1)

Skills:
With right gear and passives we can have 100% crit chance, and restore 2 mana per crit hit, so we can sustain Werebear Form indefinitely (or at least for 5 Arena waves). Therefore, we don’t really get a chance to use Leap. And we can only benefit from Thorn Totem if we take Bloodthirst in Werebear passives.

Summon Spriggan

Vine Mastery 3/4
Lasting Roots 3/3
Frequent Healing 3/4
Garden of Roots 3/3

This is our crowd control sidekick. We use him to get bonuses from “requires exactly one companion” passive nodes. He’ll die a lot, if you don’t have minion affixes on your gear (and you shouldn’t as a melee), but you can just stand on his corpse and fight, you still get bonuses even when he’s down.

Werebear Form

Rip and Tear 2/4 (pathing)
Innervating Blow 1/1 (infinite Werebear form, provied you have 100% crit chance!)
Hightail 3/3 (reduced Charge cooldown - very handy!)
Pummel 2/3 + Food for Thought 2/3 + Ursine Wisdom - 5 points for a huge manacost discount, recommended for Overwhelm and Woodland Bear.
Thick Skin 1/3 + Iron Hide 2/3 + Woodland Bear - Roar now casts Entangling Roots!

remaining 5 points:
Bearheart 5/6 (defense boost)
or
Bearheart 3/6
Wizened Claws 2/2

Wizened Claws seem to work off of the number you have against “Spell Damage” in stats, and it seems to snapshot it on entering Werebear form. So you can pump your spell damage for the occasion, by swiping training dummy, for example.

Overwhelm + Skull Crush
Sadly, this combo just doesn’t work. In theory, Skull Crush should double our damage for a short time after Charge(Overwhelm)/Roar(Woodland Bear + Entangling Roots:Staggering Impact) , but I have a hard time actualy noticing any difference. It may be bugged.

Swipe specialization is now carried over to the Werebear Swipe skill, woot!

Swipe

Aspect of the Panther
Frenzy
Apex Predator
Wild Calling
Claws of Stone 1/3 + Avatar of the Wild - damage increased by 4% per point of attunement. I couldn’t notice any damage increase from this node while in Werebear Form. Probably it doesn’t stack with bonus that Werebear Swipe already gets from Attunement.
Because of this, I recommend taking Culling 2/2 instead

Ice Thorns (40% chance to cast when hit, even in bear form)

You don’t need to put this skill on quick bar. Specializing is enough for it to trigger reactively (if you have taken the required nodes).

Dagger Thorns 4/4
Bramble Armour 2/2 (20% chance to cast when hit)
Spell Thorns 4/4 (+20% chance to cast when hit, +4 base damage)
Thaw 1/1 (convert base damage to physical)
Anemophily 1/3
Thorn Shield 1/1
Bulb Shield 4/4
Frostroot Storm 2/2
Thorn Burst 1/1

Entangling Roots

Eterra’s Might + Roots of Lapp + Overgrown Path + Plentiful Thicket - huge aoe melee damage
Crushing Force 6/6 + Staggering Impact - long stun (0.8 seconds)
Reclamation 1/4 + Mystic Roots 3/8 + Grove Master 2/2 - increased AoE.
Imbued Sap 3/4 - damage buff

Crushing Force seems to be bugged and improves damage much more efficiently than Imbued Sap. Seems to be the same issue as with Mystic Roots, where “25% increased spell damage” actually works as multiplicative modifier.

Passives:

level 79 build

Primalist (20):
Natural Attunement 8/8
Primal Strength 2/8
Survival of the Pack 6/6
Thorn Bond 4/5

Beasmaster (16):
Ursine Strength: 4/8 (strength)
Savagery 1/15 (prerequisite)
Claw Guard: 5/5 (less damage taken)
Aspect of Lamprey 6/6 (leech)

Druid (55):
Blood Claws 6/6 (leech)
Soul’s Attendant 8/8 (attunement)
Spirit Claws 5/5 (added damage)
Tremor 1/3 (physical AoE proc, 1 point should be enough for Arena fights)
Strengthened Bond: 5/5 (protections)
(ascension to Druid) 1/1
Woodlore: 4/8 (vitality)
Ferocity: 10/10 (crit chance)
Forest Fervor 5/5 (increased damage)
Defense of the Heart 5/5 (protections)
Natural Duality 5/5 (increased damage)

level ~93 build

Primalist (21):
Natural Attunement 8/8
Primal Strength 2/8
Survival of the Pack 6/6
Thorn Bond 5/5

Beasmaster (25):
Ursine Strength: 8/8 (strength)
Savagery 1/8 (prerequisite)
Claw Guard: 5/5 (less damage taken)
Aspect of Lamprey 6/6 (leech)
Axe and Claw 5/5 (this seems to have wicked effect on Entangling Roots, increasing its melee damage by a huge amount. Probably bugged)

Druid (59):
Blood Claws 6/6 (leech)
Soul’s Attendant 8/8 (attunement)
Spirit Claws 5/5 (added damage)
Tremor 1/3 (physical AoE proc, 1 point should be enough for Arena fights)
Strengthened Bond: 5/5 (protections)
(ascension to Druid) 1/1
Woodlore: 8/8 (vitality)
Ferocity: 10/10 (crit chance) (maybe less, you only need to reach 100% overall crit chance)
Forest Fervor 5/5 (increased damage)
Defense of the Heart 5/5 (protections)
Natural Duality 5/5 (increased damage)

Gear theorycrafting considerations

• You need 50% mana efficiency to make Werebear’s attack as cheap as possible (costs 3 mana by default, can’t get cheaper than 2). The attack gets 2% mana efficiency per point of attunement, so before [0.7.2] you needed 25 attunement to get 50% mana efficiency. Now that we have mana efficiency nodes in the Werebear tree, Ursine Wisdom alone meets the quota.
• As much mana as you can muster, to fight in Werebear form for as long as possible. Use helmet, belt and ring bases with mana, and craft mana on amulet and relic
• cooldown recovery (helm prefix), since all abilities go on cooldown when we return to human form. (fixed in 0.7.2, so not essential anymore, take Glancing Blow or Vitality instead)
• relic with crit multiplier base
• Silver amulet with at least 34% crit base - this way we’ll have 234% increased crit chance, so a 30% base crit chance weapon will give us 100% crit chance. With extra crit chance available from Aspect of the Panther this is no longer needed. I recommend Oracle Amulet (less DoT taken) as a good defensive option.
• crit multiplier and physical damage on amulet and relic
• 100% Glancing Blow
• vitality and elemental protection. We get bonuses to protections from Druid passives, so makes sense to maximize them first, pump health second.
• hybrid leech on rings
• melee attack speed on Gloves and Amulet

Weapon:
leveling: Halberd or other base with 7% base crit, melee crit chance 13%, added melee damage
endgame: Sovnya with 12% base crit, prefixes: melee crit chance 13%, added melee damage

Why added damage on weapon instead of increased?

• Sovnya has 95 base, and we’ll have extra 10-20 damage from passives. A good T5 roll of added damage adds ~40-45 damage, that makes it at least 40/115 = 35% total dps increase.
• A good increased physical damage roll is about 150%, and we’ll have about 600-700% increased damage (including 100% base), that makes it only 25% total dps increase.
• increased damage breakdown: 100% base, 100% bear form, 100% from 25 attunement (passives), 88% from 22 strength (2 base, 10 passives, 10 bear form), 30+32+7+75+75 from passives, up to 50+50 from gear (relic and amulet)
• Werebear Swipe now benefits from Swipe specializations, so there’s even more increased damage.

gear affix breakdown

weapon p1: melee crit chance - added
Weapon p2: melee physical damage - added

Amulet: crit multi/phys.damage, atack speed, mana, elem.prot.
Relic: crit multi, phys.damage/vit, mana, elem.prot.

Head: Cooldown/vit, GB, health inc, elem.prot.
Body: 44% GB, health inc, elem.prot.
Ring 1/2: leech, vit, elem.prot, health added
Gloves: att.speed, vit, health inc, elem.prot.
Belt: GB, GB, health inc, elem.prot.
Boots: GB, vit, mov.speed, elem.prot.

TODO:

• Test Briarskin - does it deal good damage for the investment? does it cast specialized verson in human/bear form?

[BGonzo]

Excited to see how today’s update will finalize this build guide

[magaiti]

It’s crazy good now, at least compared to what it was in 0.7.1

[Macknum]

It feels great, simple as that. Seems that humi skills interact with bear skills like Swipe steroids buff Bear Swipe and the jump buffs the charge. Right now this feels more like a “ordinary” tanky dd to me then the sentinel classes. I’m pretty happy just waiting for that happy panda skin… maybe april next year ^^.

[magaiti]

I don’t think Fury Leap buffs Charge. Tried it and it doesn’t seem to work. Are you sure it does? Is there a trick to it or something?

[Macknum]

Warrior’s Entrance and Rage nodes work for me. Leave your char screen open and charg something, looks like the steroids are transfered over. I have no idea if other stuff is transfered as well or if this is just a “hidden” effect on Charge but dmg number is nearly doubbled after each charge for 3 seconds and with the CDR node from the bear tree it’s on a 3 Sec CD.

[magaiti]

To me it seems charge gives a stacking 50% increased damage for 4 seconds (no speed boost though), regardless of Fury Leap specialization.

[Macknum]

That’s maybe it. Well this makes things a bit different and still a lot of our human skills are wasted, so the best way may be a CD heavy build to change from human to bear and back as fast as possible. If you stick to long in bear you loose some steroids sadly :(. It’s like… "So you want to play bear? Just level mana efficency Swipe and Werbear and forget about everything else ^^. Makes me a bit sad. Sure you can invest into stuff that stay there like totems or a companion but outside of this it feels like wasting skillpoints ^^.

[magaiti]

Yeah I was digging that “14% increased damage for 10 seconds after changing form” node, but quickly realized that you can’t reduce cooldown by that much, so it will only work half the time at best. AFAIK all the cooldown reduction options you have for Werebear is a single helmet affix, that tops at 15%.

I prefer builds that are simple to control, so just went with infinite werebear form, spamming only charge and swipe 99% of the time. Just ignored nodes that don’t give permanent buffs.

Can you alternate between Werebear and Spriggan form maybe? Spriggan form is kinda useless though, doesn’t have a tree yet, and is designed as healer/controller, afaiu, so not suited for solo melee builds.

[Macknum]

That’s why bears dmg bonus from base spell dmg and increased spell dmg might get intresting. If spriggan is a good support in coop you can swap through 3 forms. Right now I do the same like you do, Swipe & Charge. Roar is to expensive for the buffs it offers from the nodes ravage is okayish but the dmg difference isn’t that big. Sure you are a rightclick monster and you can skill the tree so you never run out of mana if you use Swipe n Charge but I don’t think they intended the bear to be played as a 2 button spamm machine ^^. It’s by far the most forward in your face class but the foundation of the implementation seems a bit flawed. It still works pretty fine thou ^^.

[magaiti]

Turn out you can cast Entangling Roots while in Bear Form. And they do huge damage! I’ve updted my build.

[iDonors]

Hello there! Trying out your build and i am very new to Last Epoch.
I just swapped over to your new specializations which include entangling roots. I found these unique boots " Eterra’s Path " that seem to proc either a vine or roots every 20 seconds while moving. When they proc roots ( which now seems more often than the vine ) it proc’s the same roots you cast with all passives included. Would these be a viable end game option, or too chance based to be considered?

[Macknum]

@magaiti

Turn out you can cast Entangling Roots while in Bear Form. And they do huge damage! I’ve updted my build

Cast them? You can procc them when you change form, if you wan’t to play “perma bear” you are shafted.
Well okay rather the tooltip is simply wrong or the skill is bugged. If it stays mechanicly like it is everything is fine, if it changes according to the tooltip functionality it’s still a mess ^^. Okay so I overdid things a bit :D. If you take the “Ursine Wisdom” node roar only costs 7 mana ^^ for me it was a good time to take it and get rid of all hp reg because I play a leech heavy build anyway. This seems like totaly not intended.
How is the node intended to work @Sarno ?

[magaiti]

I’s bugged, you cast them when you roar. see the new video.
yeah have fun until it’s fixed.
It’s kinda strange though to have a node that adds +20 cost to Roar, but only procs on changing form

[magaiti]

I was thinking about those boots myself, sounds like a viable extra damage source, even if accidental.
They do cast the specialized version, you can use them if you like.
In my case, I have 29% Glancing Blow chance on my crafted boots, and I’d need to recraft that elsewhere to mainain 100% Glamcing Blow chance. So I’m just too lazy to do it.

One thing to consider though, how often it will proc in combat. Most of the time I either stand in place and spam Swipe, or use Charge to move.

[Macknum]

I think it’s a tooltip error and they’ve might changed it because some ppl, like myself, always said that human skills are wasted if you play “perma” bear. Maybe they wanted to add in the steroids from other skills there.

[iDonors]

i have no idea how to even craft the gear lol. im so new to the game that im lvl 54 and still using lvl 15 unique items lol. do i find the yellows with your suggested mods or do i craft it on white gear ? lol send help

[magaiti]

Ugh, there should be a crafting guide somewhere on youtube, or maybe there’s link on this forum.
I try to pick up blue/yellow gear that has mods that I need, and then add to it.
If an item has mod that you don’t like, you can either ignore the mod, if you don’t need the affix slot it occupies, or try to remove the affix using rune of removal. it removes a random affix and therefore can miss, but it’s worth a shot.

[Zikkar]

So if it cant go lower the 2 mana cost for swipe and 25 attunment gets you there is the mana efficiency points in the werebear skill tree even needed since they wont bring it below 2 mana or am i looking at something wrong.

[magaiti]

You have a point.
These 25 attunement were needed in [0.7.1], when Werebear Form didnt have a skilltree.
Now in [0.7.2], with efficiency nodes taken in Werebear’s skilltree you no longer need them for the Swipe attack.
Though IIRC there are other, more expensive attacks that might get cheaper with attunement.
In any case, Werebear’s attacks damage benefits equally from strength and attunement, but attunement also affects other skills, like Spriggan, Ice Thorns and Roots.
So in passive trees, I’d take attunement over strength when you have to take a stat anyway, but won’t bother adding attunement to gear.