Page 3 of 6 FirstFirst 123456 LastLast
Results 21 to 30 of 51

Thread: Need advice on Bear Shaman pvp

  1. #21

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Keldjan View Post
    I have questions regarding page one tree builds given by Lurvi :
    Why Ursine Onslaugh over Animalistic Fury ? Isn't Shrewd blow combo doing more damage (it does at my level 27) ?
    In PvP you primarily want to debuff your target, so you will end up doing BAs/FG and Ursine Brawl besides your IB. There is no room for SB.
    It might be viable, if you are specced into Booming Roar and your pet already has debuffed your target sufficiently.
    Furthermore you don't specc Nature's Revenge in PvP which makes SB a monster in PvE.

    Quote Originally Posted by Keldjan View Post
    Balance of Nature or Endurance of the Bear for the two points to spend to go further in the spirit tree ?
    Imo BoN is a must have in PvP. It nets you so much energy that your whole team becomes extremely mobile. You dont even need to "hit" your Bloodflow (blue heal). In a Booming Roar/Iron Hide specc i prefer to have 5/5. Endurance on the other hand only helps yourself and even when being able to sprint more helps you to survive better than a little bit of hp reg does.

    Quote Originally Posted by Keldjan View Post
    Is bewilder combo mandatory in this build : http://goo.gl/C5kjhJ ? What about Brutal Walker ? This build is only for pvp or can make it in pve too ?
    The whole point in mutilation specc is to buff up your IB damage. Thats why Mutilation is mandatory (hence the name of the build). And spending 1 more point
    in Bewilder gets you a lot of utility: Safe yourself or even better your teammates from pesky melees.
    About Brutal Walker: Its a decision between that, 5/5 BoN and Ursine Spirit.
    As stated above BoN is pretty advantageous. So is Ursine Spirit imo. Your main manifestations should be Forest/Spirit, if you get comfortable enough with these 2 add
    Mani of Sun to get some burst potential. Ursine Spirit doubles the efficiency of the spirit debuff and doubles your manareg for the time the mani is up.
    I would consider taking Brutal Walker only in a mutilation specc.
    Last edited by Corais; 14th December 2016 at 17:21.

  2. #22

    Default

    nice posts lately, first off, Keldjan, yes you can use it in PvE, but you will be loosing out on some dps.
    Corais, you are right about BoN, rather sac points from untamed strikes if you want endurance of the bear so much.

    so we had 3 opinions here on how to approach bear shaman playstyle, which was interesting:

    Quote Originally Posted by Wheya View Post
    1:1 bs is a beast, in groups you will find out that your heal is not sufficient vs multiple opponents to give you that surviveability that you have in 1:1 situations. So in minis you want that 1:1 situations make happen, which can become difficult because others want you to heal them.
    Quote Originally Posted by Khramps View Post
    Seeing how most players have no clue how to play up front on a caster, I'll normally charge the ranged in the back (with ursine bond to avoid random ranger trap) and use silence. Immediately fall back and rejoin to the idiots fighting the tanks up front because that happens 75% of the time. Heal them. Kill the melee. Push forward towards the ranged when.
    Quote Originally Posted by Vasylyos View Post
    1) Positioning for me one is maybe the most important factor for rewarding gameplay. Good bs stays behind his meeles, not infront of them. This way you meeles get full healing and you will be hit by less CCs which is the bs killer
    I have to say I respect all these, but, it's about awareness:

    - sometimes you should hunt out that 1vs1 if there is a 2nd healer in the team. if not stay together with the strongest player in the team (and flagger)
    - definately disrupt their backline for a moment after landing a mass blue on teammates. if your spec/opposing enemies support it, you can survive a 2vs1 situation, which is huge for your team.
    - other times, if you know the enemy team has a scary sin, bear shaman is one of the classes that can shred that sin apart very quickly, so you play more defensive to def your backline instead. or to avoid mass cluster where a bs will die so fast if caught in a CC.

    Fun part about this is, we have a variety specs to choose from, and use for what style of play we like the most. but I think the ultimate bear will have insane awareness, and very good technical execution. the quality of todays minis however make it all a joke though. actually I would like to play with Iron Hide again, cause it's the skill that can give you the most flashy plays. Im not kidding, one time I killed a PvP 7 sin from full hp with one feral growl, the whitehit crit for 2k and combo did like +7k damage, cause there was a tos giving me full enrage (iron hide damage buff) and it will go along well with the style of minigames these days... looking at the videos posted the last week.

    the style of dreadsix is probably the best, very back and forth. you are more likely to avoid getting focused too hard, and you will provide nice heals. great benefit with bear shaman is you don't rely on big cooldowns for damage, so you always can dish out decent numbers. tbh I always had a dream to learn how to use shrewd blow better, and with this kind of play it could be slick, charge into their backline, fire up some combosteps, leave one prestep to give more room for running back, return to your backline and **** up whatever is there with a buffed up shrewd blow 6.
    Last edited by Lurvi; 15th December 2016 at 17:20.

  3. #23

    Default

    My thoughts were about the mediocre bs that wants to be effective and not the exceptional BS like Dreadsix but even so in a premade (not the super low quality pvp of pug with people running around like headless chicken focusing the first thing they see) healer going rambo mode will usually end up dead ursine bond or not. One of the things i miss from my fury days is that people supported their healer. Now its all crying for more heals even when they go papertank specc to get a bit more dps.

    As far as manifestations go imo ''specced winter'' is for me really hard not to take. I would like your opinion οn what is the best manifestation to pair it with. For now i prefer Spirit but I would like to see your thoughts on this, considering i rotate usually 2 manifastation rather than 3

  4. #24

    Default

    oh, I see. Still very nice to see all those styles of play mentioned here!

    about constricting yourself to two manifestations...? Forest and Spirit pulses are just so good and ideally you want to run around with them both pulsing for quite a bit.

    you want to emphasize vision effect from winter which also is very strong, this means you'll have less time to pulse the other two, so I guess you could sac one of them, but why...?

    - forest pulse can be used as 0.5 cast one-time debuff, since the wrack has a 30 second duration.
    - or you can see yourself happy with 1 vision proc from winter, put down forest and let pulse on entire enemy team, or on some tank that definately should be debuffed.

    spirit on the other hand, can't be used as 0.5 cast debuff to such an extent with only a 10 second duration to the pulse effect. BUT it is probably the stronger pulse of the two if you leave it on to pulse. Gives your team more survival, which synergize with healing. Plus the debuff is one of a kind in the game!

    so in my eyes, you need to main spirit (if you feat ursine spirit, ofc), but still use forest as a quick fire and forget debuff. And sometimes let go of the constant winter uptime to let forest do some debuffing, or spirit spam. This could go the other way around also, if you see you're rolling enemies, just let go of constant spirit uptime, and do more winter/forest...

    2 manis will work, but why do it when you have forest for free in the feat tree? Get used to 3 manis, you will see a big payoff, and it's way more rewarding and fun to play. It's not such a hassle as it might seem!

    Bear Shaman is a known debuffer, and Forest is the main spell for debuffing, so without it...? What does it make you?
    Last edited by Lurvi; 16th December 2016 at 10:03.

  5. #25

    Default

    I agree with everything you say Lurvi as bs has so many viariables and options to counter every possible enemy. From my experience winter it too sweet and should be proccing all the time. This leave me with 2 more manifastation as a dont have any more keybinds.

    1. Sun which i dont really use

    2. Spirit and forest. Forest seems only good for the debuff and spirit which is necessary to procc as i get low on mana and its overall the most complete manifestation.

    Am i missing much not using sun? do end feats have synergies with some manifestions better than others? example spirit with bewilder tree or forest with BR etc

    Still i am testing feats with my biggest problem being ''rampage'' place on feat tree and the way it works. Can it be possible not to fully feat it?

    Would such a specc work?

    11d3b21c3b2803bc403cb7e3ab103b2e23b1523b3443b6c83b 9863b4703b40e3b4d53b85c3ac3c3a9843b72d3a9e83b3aa3a ab03ad6a3af5c3ae943bbdc3b0263b7f43bb7c3cb1c3b1b4

  6. #26

    Default

    rampage with 1 point at 5x stacks give 40% weapon damage, so it's a double value point! I have one spec with rampage 1 point and it is surprisingly sweet. you can notice the difference, but use empowered renewal well and you'll still do threatening damage.

    that said... you have also given up blood fever to get 1 point mutilation, which will weaken your hits average damage a bit, but it is a risk vs. reward with claws of the reaper + mutilation, so when you are lucky you will see even more scary damage.

    me and cryformesky used to play around with some troll max damage spec, which was close to this: https://goo.gl/Rh8R3a - I never felt more damage in any spec, cause you will proc the companion spirit very often, even with just 1/5th chance, since we have physical crits from mutilation.

    (sorry cry, for letting out our secret!!!)

    so for your spec, I would reduce the gamble of your spec by giving up the second point in rampage to mutilation for more crits to muti, just for that +5% crit chance on dot, it might sound silly, but I would. Either way, it won't matter much, can turn it the other way around and say rampage increases overall damage aswell, which is does, so.

    hope you understand. your spec will work! it has "weakened" features of that troll spec I showed, but instead stone hide + booming roar to supplement, which now when I type this down sounds really scary I wanna try it, lol

    ps. the code you put down there has some spaces, maybe fix that so others that want can see.

    EDIT: as for your of keybinds, try find a solution. there's a reason I tried to argue so much for you to keep 3 manifestations, it will make a difference!
    Last edited by Lurvi; 16th December 2016 at 13:21.

  7. #27

    Default

    According to my tests critical dots from internal bleed do not trigger a companion spirit. It might have worked in the past. Similar to empowered renewal which in some builds (patch of AOC) grants you permanent 150% weapon dmg bonus on totem and in other builds it does not.

    Sidenote: imho in a mutilation build crushed organs is mandatory.


    I would like to talk about 2 feats: untamed strikes and endurance of the bear.

    I see untamed strikes in almost every bear shaman build and I do believe it is very useful in pve or vs strawman because of the additional hit rating.
    Imho untamed strikes are wasted points in a pvp build, though. I already have sufficient hit rating in pvp so it's all about the increase in critical damage. 3.3% for 3 points if I am not wrong.
    Let me do some math. I try to 'translate' the 3.3% crit dmg into a weapon dmg modifier. Assuming I do 2000 average dmg (I am far away from that but I want to be generous). So if I crit I get 3.3% of 2000 which is 66 additional dmg. Unfortunately with a crit rating of 20% (I have less) I would only get 1/5 of that 66 which is 13.2dmg additional dmg on average. We also achieve an average increase of 13.2 dps if we have a weapon with 150dmg/sec if we add 8.8% weapon dmg.
    150 * 0.088 = 13.2 (13.2 / 150 = 0.088).

    Conclusion: if we do on average 2000dps then 3 points in untamed strikes are worth on average 13.2 dps or it is similar to additional 8.8% weapon dmg. 8.8 / 3 = 2.93% extra weapon dmg per invested point. It is less if we do less than 2000 average dmg. Untamed strikes is only useful because of the hit rating.


    Now some similar math with endurance of the bear. With 5 points I get 130hp every 4 sec or 130/4 = 32.5 hp/sec on average.
    Let us assume I have 30% mitigation. So my enemy would have to do 46.4 raw dps (= 32.5 / 0.7) to counter endurance of the bear. (46.4 dps * 0.7 mitigation = 32.5 hp/sec)
    If my enemy got a weapon with 150 base dps this would translate into 46.4 / 150 = 30.93% weapon dmg. (150 * 0.3093 = 46.4.

    Conclusion: with a mitigation of 30%, endurace of the bear is worth 30.9% less weapon dmg for my enemy. Of course it is worth less if we are debuffed and it is worth more if we have more than 30% mitigation.
    The beauty of endurance of the bear is: it is always working as long as we don't have max hp. Additional weapon dmg is only working if we actually hit the target.

  8. #28

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Wheya View Post
    According to my tests critical dots from internal bleed do not trigger a companion spirit. It might have worked in the past. Similar to empowered renewal which in some builds (patch of AOC) grants you permanent 150% weapon dmg bonus on totem and in other builds it does not.
    did you test the poison dot from spirit vision also? would be nice. I didn't notice the builds where it triggered green? afaik it's always been perma weapon damage bonus, but I have not always been playing, so.

    Quote Originally Posted by Wheya View Post
    Sidenote: imho in a mutilation build crushed organs is mandatory.
    crushed organs good and hella fun? yes. mandatory? no.

    Quote Originally Posted by Wheya View Post
    I see untamed strikes in almost every bear shaman build and I do believe it is very useful in pve or vs strawman because of the additional hit rating.
    Imho untamed strikes are wasted points in a pvp build, though. I already have sufficient hit rating in pvp so it's all about the increase in critical damage [...]
    Conclusion: if we do on average 2000dps then 3 points in untamed strikes are worth on average 13.2 dps or it is similar to additional 8.8% weapon dmg. 8.8 / 3 = 2.93% extra weapon dmg per invested point. It is less if we do less than 2000 average dmg. Untamed strikes is only useful because of the hit rating.
    first off, I will say I am biased cause I have t3 craft, and this weapon lacks hitrating...
    however, the number of assassins evading my combos with cat's paw before and after this feat was given to us has decreased. like I said in the previous post, bear shaman is a great class to shred through assassins. cat's paw and/or their innately high dex give them opportunity to laugh in our face, and I won't have it. plus there are other cases where high hitrating shines. lucky hits through conq evade, while bewildered / fangsed, as well as barb / ranger evasion buffs.

    maybe you are happy if you have PvP 10 weapon or t3.5, but I don't think you should be. hitrating can surprise you. though I see the argument hitrating isn't always doing something.

    you use so much math to come to a bad conclusion with the CDR... you forget to apply it to real situations. PvP burst can't be measured in "dps" here. killing someone is never done in a second, it's done from maybe ~3-6 seconds ( a bit general, but you get the idea) . this leaves room for way more than the 2k damage you're putting out here, so the numbers you show here don't translate as good examples.
    even the 8,8% weapon damage you conclude with, is a good number and I'd take it. still it doesn't explain what CDR is good for!
    when do we get the nice/clutch kills? usually in combination with critchains! so it's about enabling those crits in that ~3-6 second window to become more decisive, and make sick kills. It's the best way I can put it for now... you should not look at it as an average increase like you do. it isn't.

    now there is mutilation to keep in mind also.

    so all in all, amazing hitrating benefits occasionally exist! cdr benefits somewhat exist! together? totally decent feat, so I disagree when you say they are a waste in PvP.

    but the bigger man will go 5/5 BoN like our man Corais.

    Quote Originally Posted by Wheya View Post
    Conclusion: with a mitigation of 30%, endurace of the bear is worth 30.9% less weapon dmg for my enemy. Of course it is worth less if we are debuffed and it is worth more if we have more than 30% mitigation.
    The beauty of endurance of the bear is: it is always working as long as we don't have max hp. Additional weapon dmg is only working if we actually hit the target.
    in minis you need balance of nature, anything else is just a betrayal. so unless you play without empowered renewal, the only time you can use it fully feated is in a duel spec. luckily, that's when bear shamans can make really good use of the feat, so.

    again your application of math is kinda funny, but sure. this time it works when you look at it from a duel perspective! but for minigames? get caught and you're dead in 5 seconds, which is normally the times a bear dies. this is what I call a waste of points.

    in minis only those that dont want to stress over use of empowered renewal should use it. or if you somehow have the points to spare... don't misunderstand. the feat good and all, especially for a duelspec, but it's a point issue here however it is good and it can definately save your ass in minigames too. there is a difference with or without! and todays pugs are so scattered around, maybe you are right Wheya, it can be much much better than what I have it to be in my mind. but you have to consider that BoN + empowered renewal can be more amazing.
    Last edited by Lurvi; 19th December 2016 at 16:25.

  9. #29

    Default

    I have not tested the ability of the dot from spirit vision if it can trigger a companion spirit.

    The effect of empowered renewal on totem I only mentioned because I did not wanted to look like an idiot who says "trololol, IB dot doesn't trigger companion spirit. I know better than you". I respect you as a someone with a lot of knowledge and I am pretty sure you tested it in the past and it has worked in the past. It most likely just changed like the renewal effect on totem. As far as I know a bs could never ever trigger a green heal on totem. The only thing that has changes over time is the perma weapon dmg bonus effect but the perma boost should be the norm. I remember years ago on Asgard server my mentor who was playing bs as main talking about this effect and a few months ago I was very surprised to see that this effect wasn't there. Today everything is fine again.


    About untamed strikes and endurance of the bear I have nothing new to say but I can say it with other words and try to show better examples to hopefully make my point more clear.

    In my previous post I came to the conclusion untamed strikes would grant something similar as a 8.8% weapon dmg boost for 3 points over time but that was with a very generous example of 2000 dps on strawman.
    I assume in reality the vast majority of players will struggle to get 1300 dps on strawman. This with pve dps gear and a nature's revenge spec which nobody will use in pvp. So if we take 1300 dps instead of 2000 dps the overall performance boost would be more like 3.3% from 1300 which is 42.9 divided by 5 aka 20% crit chance which is 8.58 dps which would be 8.58 / 150 = 0.0572 or.... -takes breath- in other words with a base dps of 1300 your overall boost would be 5.72% weapon dmg for 3 points in Untamed strikes. I consider even this example with 1300 dps as optimistic for pvp.

    However it is true, it is not the damage over time that grants kill credits in minis usually. It is the burst crit that grants kill credits most of the time. So maxing out everything that can increase dps especially stuff that increases burst dps should be a good thing.
    Let me take a look at such a burst example. Let us assume I do a feral grow finisher, hopefully it crits, I got full 5 stacks rampage and I use empowered renewal. Let's say this finisher does 4400 dmg. Something like 1000 + 1700 + 1700 = 4400. This is something I do not see all the time but it happens. A pretty good big fat crit.
    I can't repeat such a hit immediately even with luck because empowered renewal is on cd and chances are high that rampage is on 4 stacks instead of 5.
    Now let me examine this finisher. I've done the math and came to the conclusion with a crit boost of 50% (every crit gets that) + 26% (from gear and aa) = 76% crit boost my base dps before the crit applied would be 2500 dmg. Test: 2500 * 1.76 = 4400. Such nice numbers

    But this is not enough for me. Next time I have untamed strikes and I get additional 3.3% crit dmg. So I get 2500 * 1.793 = 4483. 83 dmg more. Yay!!!
    I already explained why untamed strikes in the long run / damage over time is very weak. Now the only question that remains is how many times it happens that a crit with 4400 dmg would not be sufficient to get a kill credit while a crit with 83 dmg more would grant us this kill credit. Very hard to test but I have my doubts that it will help a lot.

    However it is true that we not only get 3.3% crit rating but also 3.3% better hit rating. In my previous post you can see that I completely ignored this fact for the pvp aspect and I said I think hit rating would be only useful for pve. I did not even consider that more hit rating could be useful in pvp. I am wrong as Lurvi pointed out. This hit rating can increase your chance to hit a ranger or sin with 'evade bubble' by 3.3% but rangers and sins with evade bubble do not happen all the time and this additional 3.3% still are only 3.3%. To hit or not to hit can make a huge difference of course but the occasions are too few and the 3.3% is not enough for my liking to justify 3 points.
    3 points in untamed strikes might not be completely useless and are not a complete waste but imho it is difficult to get closer to being useless. Pve is a different story.
    Weight of the world, 1 point, 5%, that's fine and good but not Untamed strikes, 3 points, 3.3%.


    Endurance of the bear however is underrated I think. Empowered renewal is most definitely very valuable and a must have. I am also a big fan of balance of nature. There are lot's of people who say it's kinda useless or 1 or 2 points is sufficient. I love to have at least 4 points in it and currently I am using 5 because I love to sprint all the time. This is a matter of playstyle, though. I have no doubts that people with only 1 or 2 points still can do very well. I do believe Korrando is such a player if I am not wrong and he is a way better Bs than me.
    Before I would spend points into endurance I would max out empowered renewal and spend as many points into BoN I need to feel good before spending points for endurance. Nevertheless endurance of the bear is a good investment of points. I have already done the math in my previous post just let me add that my physical mitigation is higher than 30% and my magic mitigation even higher than my physical mitigation but is is diffcult to provide the fully enlightened answer because of debuffing. I just want to point out once more that endurance of the bear is working all the time as long as you don't have max HP. So it's is working while you are fighting and get hit, while you are kiting, while you retreat. It helps you to stay a little bit longer in combat, it helps you to get back into combat a little bit faster. Considering I almost always have a stupid necro dot on me I just feel better knowing that I have endurance of the bear. It is always working and the numbers are really not that bad.


    All in all this entire wall of text is about me trying to explain why I think: eotb > us


    btw this is my build I used most of the time, nothing special: https://goo.gl/QqKaBN
    I used to have 2 points in winter's bite instead of rampaging crush but I used it not very often (almost exclusively forest and spirit with focus on spirit) and I learned to love those additional 2m stun range.

  10. #30

    Default

    yeah, I even said it in the post where I showed a bulk of builds
    Quote Originally Posted by Lurvi View Post
    typical Rampage + Booming roar: http://goo.gl/VmLGeg - here you see I put points in endurance of the bear, which is a decent feat. but the points here and in untamed can be allocated elsewhere (energy buff or weight of the world) This goes for all builds when possible.
    see, in this build I prioritized 1 point untamed strikes over weight of the world, so, yeah, I like my hitrating. But there is a mistake, 1 point BoN is very questionable, and I regret that particular variation, but it was to show that endurance is a viable option. So Im happy you did it more justice. We pretty much agree on Endurance, it's just about having the points for it.

    the 2500 feral example is better, but there is more there if you think about a whitehit + dot in addition to that. untamed also is more effective in a mutilation spec, which was really popular some years ago. and I don't think 1000-1700-1700 is a rarity at all, but that's another discussion.
    This was what I didn't really agree with, that you thought untamed was a waste in PvP. It really isn't. If you read Vasylyos post, a bs has to be refined to be scary, and putting points in untamed helps only a tiny bit, but it can help. It's the only way to boost dmg, kind of.

    as for companion proccing, it was so many years ago I tested it, you probably are correct it must have changed over the years. I'll look into it soon.

    ps. nice build. rampaging crush is a contender. might do a better colab of builds later tbh.
    Last edited by Lurvi; 21st December 2016 at 11:32.

Page 3 of 6 FirstFirst 123456 LastLast

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •