I DO NOT recommend playing this archetype in the current state. This is my current Phys Swipe/Maul Werebear: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oR41nyxQ
Idea is to use Swipes for clearing and damage and Maul as single target nuke. Maelstrom and Berserk stacks give more damage and attack speed. Pretty basic aside from using Vaion’s chariot as an additional 40% more multi for Maul.
It deals 80-100K crits with Swipe and my Maul (3 sec cooldown) hits around 600K max on the boss dummy.
Boss damage is pretty bad, Harbingers take ages. I tried the build against Aberroth and reached the threshold for his first ward bar after 2 vortex slams. Game(bosses in particular) is pretty unbalanced for melee right now which makes it worse.
Defensively melee werebear lost the powerful Aspect of Boar but its defense is still good IMO (even on a dual wield setup).
Offensively it is crap. Maul is supposed to be a big damage Slam skill with a cooldown and it is really bad at that. Its damage effectiveness is 250% which is pretty low. Look at other big Slam skills: Erasing Strike 550% damage effect, Judgement 350% (and an additional DoT), Forge Strike 500%, Void Cleave 400%, Earthquake 700%. But that’s not its only problem, it also lacks good more multipliers. It can get 60% more damage from the Werebear tree and 24% + 30% from the fury leap tree. This sucks for a skill with a 2-3 second cooldown, Earthquake for example can get 200% from a single node(Shatterquake) and it has multiple other nodes too!
But wait there is one more node that buffs Maul, Pummel and Bash which gives a 75% more damage against stunned enemies. This node is useless as stun is not a mechanic that can reliably be procced and generally stuns do not last long enough to make use of this (particularly on bosses). Stuns also have the fun ability of glitching certain bosses eg: Julra.