Bear Shaman Guide

[Gaigaozan]

This thread was copied over from the original forums. Credit goes to longtail the original poster.

For AoC v3.3.9 (***currently out of date for 3.4 revamp***) ^

One distinguishing feature about this game is that it has never emphasized a healing only playstyle - priests in this game are expected to contribute a fair chunk of damage, as well as weakening their enemies and boosting their allies. In fact, some of our healing stems from attacking, and there are many end game instances that require everyone to be able to do decent damage. Most of our significant healing comes from heal over time effects so refreshing your heals too frequently do not provide additional healing to your recipients. Heals generally affect an area or group, hence reducing the micro-management involved. If you're unfamiliar with healing in this game have a look at Basics in Healing.

Why a Bear Shaman? The only melee priest class. Wears medium armor, and the combination of heals plus high regeneration makes them formidable opponents. Fair single target damage (typically in the middle of raid damage parses). Excellent group support feats. Good enemy debuffing abilities.

Why not a Bear Shaman? We have to keep track of several things at the same time, and often struggle with finding enough quickly accessible key binds for all our abilities.

Manifestations and their visions are a signature ability of the Bear Shaman. When a manifestation is running, performing a successful Internal Bleed combo will trigger the manifestation's associated vision. Handling manifestations and visions add a degree of micromanagement that turns some players off - don't let it! Bear Shamans are effective even without triggering visions, and in time using them will become second nature.

To play this class effectively you must pay attention to the secondary effects of our abilities, and where possible you want to stack their effects. For example, when you get Blood Warrior, notice the damage buff you get when you cast your blue heal. Similarly, when you get Blood Fever you get a damage buff when a manifestation is running. This means you should ensure your blue heal is refreshed periodically and always have a manifestation running. Timing them with Rune of Aggression and the Manifestation of Sun's vision can provide you with a nice damage burst - also a good time to trigger Lycanthropic Bite to leech back health from your damage. For more defensive play, you may want to time Stone Hide with Manifestation of Spirit, or Stone Hide with Manifestation of Forest's vision.

This guide provides leveling feat recommendations, important buffs/debuffs to track, and suggestions for the aspiring Bear Shaman. The leveling builds include only what are generally considered core Bear Shaman feats, so point allocations are intentionally incomplete to leave room for player preference and experimentation. Most builds are good for PvP and PvE despite a few specialized feats. Statistics quoted in this guide are for Level 80, and may be lower if you're below 80.

Many of these tips are compiled from various threads in this forum, helpful players in the game, and my very bumpy personal experiences. I hope this guide will encourage more people to play with a challenging but versatile class. Should you find any errors or have suggestions, please post a comment or message me.

Build to mid 20s (click to see build)
Keep up your manifestations, green (Renewal) and blue (Blood Flow) heals in combat.
Regularly casting Blood Flow every 15 seconds (when Blood Champion wears off) will give a standard burst heal.
When you run a manifestation take a moment to note its remaining cool down time when the manifestation buff disappears - this is when you want to run another manifestation. It's often easier to watch your manifestation cool down timer rather than your buff bar for an active manifestation. Keep in mind there is also an AA to reduce manifestation cool downs, which you'll need to account for when you feat into it.
Once you get Empowered Renewal, try to trigger Renewal just before a finisher from the highest ranks of a combo for maximum burst damage. For example, with Shrewd Blow 4: <activate combo>, UR, <renewal>, UP. If a finisher has three blows, all of them should benefit from Empowered Renewal's bonus. I strongly suggest getting accustomed to using Empowered Renewal while leveling up.
Apply Ursine Brawl when available.
Crowd Control (CC) abilities like Ursine Crush makes leveling a lot easier. Double tapping forward will also give your subsequent attacks a chance to stun for a short time.
Try to hit the least shielded side of your enemies by varying your combos with different finisher directions. Use your CCs to stun/knockback then circle around to allow your finisher to land on their unshielded rear.
Skills: maximize Running Speed and Casting Concentration. Climbing of 250 will allow you to safely get to Vistrix and most useful places. Hide can be used to tactically position yourself before certain fights - 125 should be enough. Any skill with 125 or less can be reset for free (alt-left click the "-" skill button).
Build to 50
For elite mobs, use available Crush Armor ranks to stack 5 physical torments, and refresh as needed to maintain the 5 stack. Each physical torment is a -900 armor debuff.
Use Rune of Aggression whenever you or your melee group members are fighting.
Become familiar with triggering manifestation visions, and be aware of their effects.
Regularly casting Blood Flow every 15 seconds will also refresh damage buffs, energy + stamina regeneration. Balance of Nature will give a noticeable energy + stamina heal over time to everyone in the group regardless of whether they're affected by Blood Flow. Since the gains are not linear, this is either a 1 or 5 point feat, and is strongly recommended to take at least 1.
You will also get a heal bonus depending on your Nature's Wrath counter - hitting two or more mobs at once will rapidly build it up (max of 10).
Grace of Nature is more useful in PvP than PvE.
There are two quest chains in Gateway to Khitai available in the mid to upper 30s that culminate with an expertise point reward each (I recommend using the two points to get Decisive Strikes 1). One quest chain is from Dair Usun in Menudsjin's camp. The other is from either Taichu (Last Legion) or Li Min (Scarlet Circle) by the gateway to Northern Grasslands - they will not affect your faction rating.
In your mid-thirties start getting quests for Sanctum of Burning Souls in Wild Lands of Zelata. Some of the quest lines begin in Old Tarantia and Khemi. Sanctum gear are the best available for a while.

Build to mid 60s
All manifestations are now available. Become familiar with their effects, and what their visions do.
Winter's Bite/Arctic Slumber is excellent for PvP, but is almost useless for PvE.
As you approach 60, try to get quests for Amphitheatre of Karutonia in Ymir's Pass. Amph gear will likely carry you through till 80.
Approaching 80
Figure out your combo rotation. Note that with these recommended rotations, you don't have to use UL, or any of the lower left/right keys. Ensure a manifestation, your green and blue heals are always running.
PvE: Internal Bleed 2 or 4 to trigger visions when available, use all Crush Armor ranks to get to 5 stacks then highest rank to maintain stacks, highest two ranks of Shrewd Blow, highest rank of Ursine Brawl when available. Ether Theft (if feated and as needed).
PvP: Internal Bleed 2 or 4, Crush Armor 3 and 4 (ranks 1 and 2 are also useful to debuff soldiers), Ether Theft (if feated), Shrewd Blow 4, highest Hinder Movement as needed.
If you're only using Internal Bleed to trigger the vision as opposed to damage, stick to rank 2 - it's faster than the higher ranks. However, if you start getting feats that buff Internal Bleed then use the highest rank available. Since manifestations last 25s and Internal Bleed has a cooldown of 10s, you ought to be able to trigger two visions per manifestation.
Many players only use up to Shrewd Blow 4. Rank 5 requires LR, takes 3 steps, and has a long finisher. Nevertheless, try using your highest rank combos for PvE - their overall DPS should be better than their lower rank counterparts (though we still need more objective testing). Be careful of situations where getting locked in long finishers will be fatal (e.g. Reliquary of Flame, and Palace of Yun Rau). In most cases, you can cancel a combo early by moving or hitting Esc.
Rune of Regrowth. A single point is enough - benefits from additional points are marginal. Great for raids as the heals affect everyone close to you. Relatively long cast time (2 seconds).
Booming Roar is almost useless for PvE. While silence is necessary in T3, these duties are typically carried out by other classes. Still a useful AoE silence for PvP. Note that it does not interrupt any existing casts. Player victims will get a recently impaired immunity after being silenced.
Level 80
Activate Lycanthropic Bite when you start taking damage to leech back health with your attacks. Use it in concert with Rune of Aggression.
Shrewd Blow 6 can drop in Yag Godslayer mode, and Ursine Brawl 4 in Coppice Godslayer. Shrewd Blow 6 will however require an extra directional - one player suggests swapping out Grace of Nature for it during PvE. Finisher for Shrewd Blow 6 has a long animation so not recommended for PvP. They can be also purchased from the Contraption Merchant in the Armory for 50 Campaign Badges (mini-game tokens) each. Don't go out of your way to get them.
All Ferocious Smack combos share the same cool down. Ranks 1-4 have the same animation duration, so use the highest rank available. Rank 5 may drop from Caverns of Malice in Godslayer, and its finisher animates faster than the lower ranks. May also be purchased from the Contraption Merchant in in the Armory for 50 Campaign Badges. Rank 5 is recommended if you PvP.
There are several level 80 build recommendations here, along with useful information on manifestations, their visions and other important feats. If you're unsure about a build, I recommend going Iron Hide/Rampage, which is decent for PvE and PvP, has good damage, and a bubble for getting yourself out of trouble. Rampage, Iron Hide and Balance of Nature are among our best feats. There are several variations of this build, again depending on your play style:
If you find you don't use Ursine Brawl, then Animalistic Fury (for Shrewd Blow) is a better choice than Ursine Onslaught. Neither is a particularly good investment for 5 points - pick one to move down the tree.
Empowered Renewal or Slaughter? In theory Empowered Renewal is more useful for shorter fights, while Slaughter is better for longer fights. Empowered Renewal is highly recommended while leveling, but is less significant as you get better gear since other bonuses will overwhelm the bonus weapon damage. For PvP, the answer isn't so straight forward - you'd likely find arguments for and against it depending on who you talk to. For Empowered Renewal to be effective you have to trigger it just before a combo finisher, and be able to consistently land the finisher - all blows from the finisher will benefit from the extra weapon damage. Crush Armor 4, Shrewd Blow 4, Internal Bleed 4 have finishers with three blows, while their lower ranks only have two or a single blow. For an end game build, both feats are underwhelming for 5 points - since Untamed Regeneration uses 3 points, you might be better off just investing 2 points in either Slaughter or Empowered Renewal so you can move down the tree.
Deft Renewal. If you elected to get Empowered Renewal the general consensus seems to be to also get Deft Renewal. Ensure you also make consistent use of Ursine Brawl to stack the evade debuff. However, 8 feat points here seem like a poor investment, especially since it's hard to quantify its benefits in our game play (or parse).
Wild Energy and Untamed Energy. Not recommended. Did not see Wild Energy proc in Testlive. Untamed Energy works, but we generally do not have mana issues.
Ether Theft. Recommended. Nice mana support ability for the group. Cool down is 25s.
Rune of Grounding is an excellent feat if you're up against a particularly strong caster or several of them but greatly hinders your movement. Helps if you can snare them with Hinder Movement or Arctic Slumber beforehand. Also useful in many PvE situations (e.g. makes you immune to Vistrix's stun and breath damage, Spellguards in Kylikki, and Yun Rau's Yun Fire).
Spirit Walker. Recommended. One of our better DPS burst abilities these days.
Observations about Other Builds
Rampage/Mutilation gives us the best damage. Excellent for PvE and PvP too if you can manage without Iron Hide. Here is a sample build.
Nature's Revenge is likely our best healing build - see this post here. Worth considering for PvE.
Iron Hide/Booming Roar is good for PvP group support - arguably the best type of build if you're with a coordinated group.
Rampage/Booming Roar is a build with compromises. You won't have a bubble. If you opt for 3 points in Rampage, there won't be enough left for Balance of Nature (energy + stamina heal over time). However, placing 1 point in Balance of Nature will only leave 2 points in Rampage, which significantly reduces Rampage's effectiveness. I do not recommend this build because these compromises hamper our key abilities too much.
No General tree? Nope! In the old days, everyone used to have a lot less health, so big heals (e.g. Fierce Recovery) were a lot more significant and many priests would feat into the General tree to reduce their cast times. Since big heals were not scaled up along with the health buff, they now only account for about 10% of a soldier's health, i.e. not a big deal. Besides, there are enough useful feats in both Bear Shaman trees that you wouldn't want to give them up over what is offered in the General tree.

Build was still considered somewhat revelent as quoted below

While the gist is about the same, there are enough differences that a new player might find the outdated guide confusing. At 80, my rotation is slightly different from before, with more emphasis on Shrewd Blow when feated accordingly down the Wrath tree (see http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpos...35&postcount=1).

As far as leveling is concerned, my guess would be to get Empowered Renewal asap, then further down Spirit to get Rune of Agression and Mani of Sun - these should give nice burst damage for burning down mobs quickly. I do not think it makes much difference where you go from there for leveling purposes - perhaps all the way down to Iron Hide, though I think you may find Booming Roar particularly satisfying when interrupting some of the more damaging/annoying combos/casts. For 6-mans and raids, I expect a Wrath based Mutilation/Nature's Revenge build to be more effective.

[Misiuggah]

Some tips how to keep the buffs running in PvE without thinking too much:

1. Cast Blood Flow before every Internal Bleed.

You have to execute Internal Bleed everytime it's off cooldown (10s cooldown, execution takes ~2-3s) - depending on your last combo before IB, you will be casting Blood Flow every ~13s. Blood Champion has 15s duration, so it will be on all the time.

2. Click Renewal whenever it's off cooldown.

It's best to get the Empowered Renewal buff just before the most powerful combo finisher, but waiting for the right moment is lost dps anyway.

3. Cast next manifestation when the recast cooldown on the active one is at 25s (50s recast - 25s duration = 25s).

Finding the buff icon on top of the screen may be a bit hard (especially in groups), better look at something that stays in place all the time. Recast can be modified through AA later on - you have to include it of course.

4. Cast Rune of Aggression whenever it's off cooldown.

Similar case as with renewal - it's better to cast it when you're running Sun manifestation, but waiting for the right moment is also lost dps.

Sticking to these rules in the beginning will allow you to keep a fluid rotation, with all buffs and heals up - doing something even less optimally is better than looking at your skills, thinking what to do next.

[Misiuggah]

A few words on combos.

At the beginning you will learn some generic melee combos like Censuring Strike, Sweep or Slam - those will be only relevant until you start getting your class combos: Internal Bleed (IB), Crush Armour (CA), Shrewd Blow (SB) and Ursine Brawl (UB).

Class combos have 2-4x better damage or apply extra effects. It's sad to see level 80 BS using Censuring Strike because the tooltip says it's "powerful" or some **** like that. Get rid of "Tortage combos" ASAP.

IB is our most important combo - triggers visions and applies a DoT - it has to be executed everytime it's possible.

IB has a 10s cooldown, so you have to fill this time with something else. Obviously the execution time will be important, but you should also look at the finisher bonus - you can loose 1-2s if there's no good alternative (you would have to use a really crappy combo).

SB is the best filler (very short cooldown), but it's slow and damage is less reliable. At level 70 it can become the #2 combo thanks to the synergy of a few feats.

CA debuffs the enemy, is very fast and the damage is more stable. This is a good choice for levelling, but the cooldown is too long and you will have to add something more to the rotation.

UB has crap damage unless you'll feat +45% bonus and you'll get the extra rank - it debuffs the enemy, but it's hard to notice this effect in PvE. It has a much wider area of attack (~180 degrees) and is very fast to execute, so it has some tactical usage.


Feated combos (only avaiable if you put points in corresponding feats):

Ether Theft has nice damage if you'll get it as soon as possible (at level 25-30) when you still have a poor choice of class combos. Later on it's just a good source of mana, but you won't need it.

Bloodthirst has good damage, but long cooldown. The healing effect is very small if you're hitting only one target. Not really worth feating, but if you'll have it anyway (because of Nature's Revenge) you can try to find some use

Bewilder - again good damage, long cooldown. The debuff is great and works on players and many mobs (doesn't work on dungeon or raid bosses though) - while it can be fun for PvP (for suicidal mutilators ), it's not worth feating for PvE.

[Misiuggah]

What gear is good for BS?

Bear Shamans can use cloth, light and medium armours - all high-end sets tailored for BS are medium and you should stick to that type. There are no drawbacks on using heavier armour.

While levelling it's not unreasonable to use light armour for Barbarians or Ranger mediums if the stat bonuses will make up for the loss of dps or armour. Small barbarian armour pieces are always worth considering, because the strength makes the armour level almost equal to medium.

BS can use only 2-handed blunts and most weapons of that type in the game were made with BS in mind (and all are perfectly usable).

Notice that all our buffs rely on weapon damage (DPS in the item tooltip), so this stat has much more weight than it may seem.

Consider that most of the time you'll have the manifestation (15%) and Blood Flow (45%) weapon damage bonus on.



What stats are important for a BS?

1. Strength - increases armour (+2 for every point) and melee weapon damage (+0.08333 dps for every point).

2. Constitution - increases Health by 8 for every point (pure Health is also good), also increases Stamina and it's regen... but Stamina is not a problem anymore.

3. Combat Rating (generic, cold, fire, unholy, holy, 2HB, electrical) - increases melee damage. Yes, combat rating (fire) will work on every melee hit - you don't have to use fire-based combos. The only combat rating that will not work is that which mentions other weapon type (dagger etc.).

4. Critical rating - increase your chance to deal critical hits.

5. Critical damage rating - applies bigger damage bonus to critical hits (on top of the standard +50%)

6. Hit rating - reduces target's evade chance, very important on higher levels.

7. Protection - very important in PvP, less important for PvE (useful in a few high-end encounters).

8. Heal rating - almost useless in PvP (so people say), gives a lot of flexibility in high-end PvE (tanks can have shittier gear, be more clumsy etc. )

Other stats also affect your character in some way, but if you'll stack them, you'll loose much more in the process.

[pekka]

I have seen few BS in the past using only Blood Flow even at lvl80 so for new players:

Renewal is an Ability, look for the yellow icon in the Abilities tab instead of spells or combos. You have to click it before a physical hit to activate (bow is also perfect).

^^

[Bulkarr]

Thank you very much for all these informations.
I'm new to the game but coming from many years of gaming. This guides are really good and I start to do much better because this guides, just takes some practice to press the right buttons at the right time.
I'm an avid keybinder, and it's necessary for a class such BS.

Thanks

[Jaedelyia]

I read the first post and realized that I seriously miss the Rune of Regrowth. Damn it was nice. Now I have another manifestation to place sometime between other usefull manifestation.

Come on, that heal was nearly free, quite long and was working above all other feat. Now I have to sacrifice a manifestation to place it.

How do you deal with that, guys ? Do you have a particular "Manifestation rotation". Like Manifestation of the Sun, quickly pop its vision and going to another ?

[Misiuggah]

I read the first post and realized that I seriously miss the Rune of Regrowth. Damn it was nice. Now I have another manifestation to place sometime between other usefull manifestation.

Come on, that heal was nearly free, quite long and was working above all other feat. Now I have to sacrifice a manifestation to place it.

How do you deal with that, guys ? Do you have a particular "Manifestation rotation". Like Manifestation of the Sun, quickly pop its vision and going to another ?

Manifestation of Regrowth is better than Rune of Regrowth - faster cast, more healing (for one point) and more uptime (IIRC, I was never a big fan). I have it only on my tank spec that I use for 3 bosses. You can feat it in dps builds, but it works best in encounters where dps doesn't matter and it's coupled with buffed blue (Blood Healing) and green heal (Rejuvenating Spirit).

Rotation? Most of the time it's easy mode:

1. Forest (for 30s debuff, enemies must be close to get the first tick)
2. Immediately Sun for 20s (to pop vision damage buff 2 times)
3. Spirit for 20s until Forest/Sun is on cd (to pop the vision dot once and for the damage debuff).
4. Rinse and repeat

If you didn't train cd reduction, then you have to leave Sun for ~25s and pop 2 visions during Spirit.

In certain PvE situations (when people are undergeared, dps doesn't matter) you will also have to change the rotation - in my tank build I switch between Spirit and Regrowth to give tanks those few % more mitigation. If you're lazy, you could probably skip that and make the tanks sweat more

Obviously in PvP it will be more dynamic and varied.

[Jaedelyia]

Thanks for the tips, Misiuggah.

Personally I miss the "Rune form" of regrowth because that was basically a "hit-the-button-once-and-let's-heal" feat. You could have it up all the time without having to chose between that and another thing, and do other micro-management at the same time. Plus, the vision of the new manifestation (gradual protection increase) is pretty lame, I think.

I will try your rotation and to different test... I feel like spending money on respec just for the sake of testing, tonight

[XaatXuun]

I just started AoC and a Bear Shaman, so from what I read, Wisdom is not really needed or less important and to build stats in what's quoted ?

What stats are important for a BS?

1. Strength - increases armour (+2 for every point) and melee weapon damage (+0.08333 dps for every point).

2. Constitution - increases Health by 8 for every point (pure Health is also good), also increases Stamina and it's regen... but Stamina is not a problem anymore.

3. Combat Rating (generic, cold, fire, unholy, holy, 2HB, electrical) - increases melee damage. Yes, combat rating (fire) will work on every melee hit - you don't have to use fire-based combos. The only combat rating that will not work is that which mentions other weapon type (dagger etc.).

4. Critical rating - increase your chance to deal critical hits.

5. Critical damage rating - applies bigger damage bonus to critical hits (on top of the standard +50%)

6. Hit rating - reduces target's evade chance, very important on higher levels.

7. Protection - very important in PvP, less important for PvE (useful in a few high-end encounters).

8. Heal rating - almost useless in PvP (so people say), gives a lot of flexibility in high-end PvE (tanks can have shittier gear, be more clumsy etc. )

Other stats also affect your character in some way, but if you'll stack them, you'll loose much more in the process.