RFC stands for “Request For Comments” — which basically means that I need your help (again!). I’m getting a lot of questions about the pros and cons of each pet family and in particular the pet family skills. But there’s no way that I really test all the pet families in every situation myself, so I want to hear about your experiences with them! (And yes, with 32 pet families this could take awhile.)
Today’s RFC: The Bear family and the Swipe pet skill.
Bears have long been a favored pet, especially for young hunters, because they eat just about anything and they have high survivability. Of course, later in life many hunters gave up their bears for something that did a little more damage, like a cat or a ravager.
Now, however, bears are seeing a renaissance among experienced hunters. As Tenacity pets they still have the survivability, but they can do significantly more damage now with Swipe and their various talents.
So I want to know: Are bears any good? Is Swipe worth it? Should I use a bear? Or alternatively: When should I use a bear? What are bears best at?
So please, if you’ve had any experience hunting with bears in a post-Patch 3.0 world, take a moment to comment and let me know what you think. In particular, I’d like to know:
- What are the pros and cons of bears in general?
- What are the pros and cons of Swipe in particular?
- Are bears particularly good (or bad) for soloing, grouping, raiding, PvP, tanking, damage-dealing, etc?
- What talents do you suggest for bears? Are there any required talents, or talents you should definitely skip?
- Do you know any clever strategies for hunting with bears, or are there any particular gotchas to watch out for?
- Would you recommend a bears?
(These are just guideline questions — you need’t try to address each one in turn. And yes, this post looks a lot like the bat RFC — after all I’m asking the same questions!)
I’m especially looking for input from people who have been hunting with bears for the past couple of weeks (since Patch 3.0), but even if you haven’t, feel free to throw if your theorycrafting — just let us know whether your advice is based on experience or spreadsheets (or both)!
This post will remain here as a reference for the future, and additionally I’ll try to distill the basics down into a brief summary for use on Petopia.
As always, thanks for your help!
Bears are cool BA pets for soloing at low levels with swipe you can pull three mobs give him a few secs to get aggro and then spam multishot till everyone is dead. BUT it is only best for the low lvls because at 37 you can get your first gorilla and they are MUCH MUCH better at soloing. they hit unlimited enemies with thunderstomp PLUS it does additional threat which means you dont really have to give him much time to gain aggro. Also not only can u multi shot but you can volley all you want! For this reason I would recomend soloing with a bear up to lvl 37 and then going gorilla.