The coolest bear around?

Primalist
1

For my last character in beta, I wanted:

  1. To be a bear, because bears are cool.
  2. To be a POLAR bear, because they are even cooler. Freezing cool.
  3. To use some totems, because… errrr… because!

Meet Chillpaws, the coolest bear ever:

First note: I have failed so far on the “totems” challenge, because I need two idols to proc them and I can’t find a single one… Maybe one day…
Anyway, to get my totems (Thorn Totems, turned to cold, with freeze rate per attunement point), I would need to get rid of my spriggan, and he is quite good, so I am not even sure it would work. My theory is that it would give me more damage and freezing, at the price of the spriggan defenses (healing and crit avoidance). I would keep an unspec spriggan for the 30% boost of solo companion node, and respec base primalist tree to the middle line, minion spell damage and totem adaptive damage (taking out the points from first life node), rest pretty much unchanged. Haven’t been able to test without the [insert profanity here] idols.

As it is now, I am reasonnably happy with the build so far.
Gameplay is very simple:
. Spam swipe to proc maelstrom and a massive 16% leeching
. Roar on CD for instant maelstrom stacks, some cold damage boost, and impress the bear ladies
. Rampage to escape dangerous stuff

He just killed Rahyeh, easy deathless run so far including Majasa and Rahyeh.
Quite slow on bosses, so I am not sure he will scale very high later on, but with capped CSA and Endurance from tree, high health, some freezing, and a lot of leech, even when the fights take long I never feel in danger at all. He can facetank almost everything.
In fact, he is SO tanky already, my plan was to take aspect of the boar next but now I am not sure, I might try and go full cold damage instead from passives…

High rage on kill means I don’t have any problems staying in bear form all the time.

I thought I would get rid of Frozen Ire earlier than that, but with cold melee, cold spell, and freeze rate it has been very helpful so far and I haven’t found a better alternative yet. Maybe a well crafted crystal sword for elemental bonus. Or a second Shattered Lance.

2

Wow, no passive to sustain you rage? I’m impressed. So how do you do? You don’t stay permanently in bear form?

That’s also one of my plans, but later. Now Paladin and after, very likely Acolyte.

I missed something, how does Swipe proc Maelstrom?

Yes, with Swipe as the main damage dealer. That is for me the main problem of Werebear form: it relies too much on Swipe. And that’s why I’m very happy with the recent rework, because it brought new ways to play Werebear form.

3

Bear form nodes, 10 rage on kill, 2 on swipe hit. + 2 on kill with unique armour. I do stay in bear form, unless I stop fighting.

It is a bear form node, top left. That’s the whole point of the build, really.

Yep. But maelstrom is becoming more and more efficient, it does a bunch of damage once the stacks get high. I think it will soon be the actual main damage dealer. And if I get totems one day… Oh well…

Edit: when I say “rage on kill”, it is actually kill for mobs but hit for rares and bosses. In bosses fights I am always at max rage.

1 Like
4

My mistake, I don’t know why I did not see or recall it. :frowning:

I’m lazy, I don’t want to lose my form, even when walking. :wink:

5

Good thing there’s a node in the Druid passive tree for that.

6

Yes I know (and I use it), but Houlala did not take this node. :wink:

7

The thing is, turning into a bear gives you a free roar.
So being a human once in a while is not a bad thing: turn into a bear, roar, that’s 8 instant stacks of maelstrom, with haste and frenzy kicking in, before I even start swiping. Not a bad way to begin an encounter.

8

I did not realize you could get so many stacks of Maelstrom. It’s a really interesting build!

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