Bear Shaman gear overview - some rambling about stats, factions and starting gear...
Still a WIP...
Disclaimer: This will be done from a PvE point of view - it would be good if some PvP vets would add their suggestions.
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What stats should you focus on as a Bear Shaman?
There are 3 basic stats that make your character powerful:
1. Strength - gives melee combat rating (x3) and armor (x2).
Combat rating from strength boosts damage for all melee weapons except daggers. Since we deal almost exclusively physical damage through combos, this is one of the most important dps stats.
Armor provides mitigation against physical damage, which is most common. Coupled with our self-heal, it makes us pretty tough vs most enemies. Because of the armor bonus strength provides, it's perfectly reasonable to use some light (or even cloth) armor pieces while levelling as long as they provide better stats overall. This can result in weird cases like Tigers' light belt having more armor, but less dps than Tigers' medium etc. :)
Strength also boosts manifestation DoT damage, but it's a ridiculously small increase (about 10 dps for 1000 STR!)
2. Constitution - improves health (x8) and stamina (x2).
Health is second most important stat - without health we die :) For levelling you just need enough health to survive the pull (2-4 mobs), but for high-end PvE you will need a considerable amount to survive some nasty boss fights. You can ignore it most of the time - as long as you keep your gear level close to your character level. At level 80 you'll just need to get some specific items, but more on that later.
Since we excel in physical mitigation and self-heal, most of our gear has rather low constitution and a lot of dps classes will have more health than us.
Stamina can be important at lower levels when it is scarce (so you might want to avoid raw health and stick to constitution), later on you will never run out of it (unless you will be drained).
3. DPS (base weapon dps) - probably the most important dps stat as all our damage buffs are based on it. Summarized damage bonus from a good weapon easily tops the one given by full armor set - having a low dps weapon will severely limit you damage dealing potential.
When picking up a weapon you have to consider how it will behave with damage buffs applied (because some of them are up almost all the time). We don't have much choice in weapons, but keep eye on this if you want every dps point.
Now onto secondary stats:
Hit rating - after hitting 80 you will need a decent amount (10%+) or you will be missing even vs regular mobs. Full Pressing Strikes is a must-have and will allow a lot of freedom with gear setups. Some high-end bosses require 17%+, which can be achieved only with full dps gear.
Heal rating - increases the power of Sleuth of Bears, Celestial Gaze and Spirit of Yggdrasil. It can be critical in PvE, especially if you're healing tanks. Helps a lot when tanks are undergeared or have trouble with aggro swapping.
Combat rating - most of it was covered in strength section. Combat rating (unholy/holy/frost/fire/electric) adds extra dps to all of your melee attacks which goes through protection, not armour. Combat rating (weapon type) works only if using that weapon type, so in our case 2HB. Generic combat rating affects all weapon damage, so it will also affect your bow dps.
Critical rating - increases the chance to score a critical hit. It's very important for dps, even more if running a Mutilation build.
Critical damage rating - increases the additional damage we deal with every critical hit, so obviously you will always want more critical rating than this.
Mana - increases your mana (duh). Your base mana should be enough, at level 80 you can wear gear completely without it.
Health - also known as hp, quite important for first 30 levels (since your dps is crap, you don't have all your toys and fight are longer), but later on it'll be the least important stat for picking gear. It's good to have a few high health/consitution items for switching if some raw "tanking" power will be needed.
Stamina - all your combos eat stamina and in the beginning you will run out of it pretty often. Later on Balance of Nature and tons of strength/constitution take care of this - we even don't have to drink pots if we're not drained by enemy.
Non-class stats (will have effect, but small):
Magic damage - affects bonus magic damage and thus our manifestation DoTs. Based on some testing, 100 bonus magic damage adds only a few points of damage to the dots, so at best you'll be able to boost them by 100% and hit for ~150 (~300 crit). You need generic magic damage, because of diferrent DoT damage types and there's no armour that would give that without totally gimping our melee dps output. STR based HoX armour could actually bump the dps a bit (because of high Desert Bloom uptime), but it would be a marginal difference at the cost of loosing survivability.
Wisdom - will increase mana pool/regen, holy/unholy protection and all types of magic damage, the gain is too small to bother though.
Intelligence - won't increase any magic damage bonus, will increase mana pool/regen and elemental protections, the gains are too small to bother.
If the magic damage/dot damage coefficient would be boosted or there would be a good str/wis/magic damage armor available - these stats could be very important to our dps output!
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Starting gear and useful items
t.b.d.
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Factions - my first high-end gear
"Why even bother with factions? The items seem very expensive and I will throw them away as soon as I get some raid gear."
As far as PvE goes, there are 3 important reasons:
- raid accessories and weapons are often very hard to get (one item, random drop chance, once a week... many players)
- faction armour provides heal rating, while T1-T3 sets don't
- some stat combinations are only found on faction gear
T1-T3 armours should be viewed rather as dps/survivability gear... and not the best one.
To get the most of your class (better dps, better healing and better survivability) you will have to rely on faction gear... well, at least until you start doing T3,5/T4 :)
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Let's check what's in stock - I'll try to list items in priority order. Only stuff that is relevant to our interests.
Hyrkanians
Epic medium armour set - I call it the "proper T3". At the cost of dps and hit rating (compared to T3) you get slightly higher survivability than T3 and 1527 heal rating.
It's the best choice when staying alive and keeping your tanks in shape is the most important - obviously it's mostly useful in T3+ and tougher 6-mans.
I chose Hyrkanians over Children of Yag-Kosha, because physical damage is more common and higher hp pool also provides some edge against magical AoE.
[Kakaba Guide] - very good dps/survivability necklace, can be replaced only by T3 or T4. I've skipped it to get the Wolf Rider club faster, but if you're run more 6-mans than raids you should consider getting it.
Wolves of the Steppes
[Club of the Wolf Rider] - best heal rating blunt you can get before T3,5/T4 and chances are you will be still using it even when full T4.
As a dps weapon it's rather poor choice, but I would definitely get it if you want extra healing.
Tamarin's Tigers
Epic medium armour set - best dps set you can get before T4. It has only 600 heal rating, but with full Rear Guard, Club of the Wolf Rider and CC-break you can boost it to ~2100. It's one of the easiest sets to complete and actually my first choice.
If you plan to get 2 sets, then it's more reasonable to get this set, Wolves' Club and then start to level Hyrkanians.
Brittle Blade
[Death Ward] - provides one of the highest hp/armor bonuses plus some protection and good crit rating. You may want it for PvP and it's quite useful in high-end PvE. There's a similar ring in Amphitheatre of Karutonia Unchained, but the drop chance is pretty low.
Scarlet Circle
[Cape of Reprisal] - very good dps cloak. Skip it if you can get into regular Vile Nativity or T3 runs - you can get a better cape there.
Children of Yag-Kosha
Epic medium armour set - highest heal rating and the only armour set with protection, the drawbacks are the low hp and armour bonus. It's one of 3 sets that you may find interesting, but for me it had the lowest priority (I actually skipped it).
Yellow Priests of Yun
Epic medium armour set - balanced set, which means less dps than Tigers' and less hp/armour/heal rating than Hyrkanian. Meh.
Shadows of Jade
[Trickster's Charm] - nice dps ring, but it's low on the priority list and you will probably get something better or comparable by that time.
[Will of Salvation] - hahaha, no.
Epic medium armour set - another "balanced set", but with a weird evade chance.
I'll add some more stuff later on, I was just bored now ;)
