RFC: Bears & Swipe
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!
51 Comments
Well I made a new hunter recently and I must say my bear is working very well for soloing. Swipe allows multi mob tanking (nothing compared to gorilla, but a great alternative if your not a primate fan) and it does good damage as well. Survivability and tanking abilities are very high so I’d recommend a bear highly as a tanking pet choice. At 40 you could nab the better gorilla which I would recommend for functionality though. I personally don’t like gorillas myself so i went with bear, and struck gold!
Beware the bear hunter in a group. A novice with a swiping bear can cause all kinds of CC problems and agro mobs off the designated tank if they do not understand tanking mechanics.
Otherwise, they’re damnably cute!
I tamed a bear in anticipation of 3.0.2 – I wanted to be a bit of a maverick and go against the masses of people taming gorillas. I was hoping that swipe would be an effective alternative to thunderstomp in holding multiple mobs to the pet.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t.
I leveled the bear up by living in Q’D, beating the stuffing out of the blood elves mindlessly following Kael. I’ve got a personal vendetta against blood knights, so they often bore our wrath, usually in pairs.
Swipe just could not generate enough threat to keep anything beyond the first mob on the bear. I had to do the walk of shame to retrieve my body more times then I would have liked, and I consider myself a pretty competent hunter.
That said, on a single target, the bear performs like a champ. This same bear was the tank of our Headless Horsemen group on a fairly routine basis and with a stream of good healers, rarely died and held that aggro extremely well. With charge he was also able to get to the head pretty quickly and start doing damage there, thus missing the swinging cleave.
Would I recommend a bear? If the hunter foresaw themselves in a lot of one-on-one situations then yes, absolutely. But if the hunter anticipates trying to take on multiple mobs at once, then swipe is not the answer for threat generation.
Pros: Swipe, while not as good as thunderstomp, still hits three targets. Multishot hits three targets and misdirect is on a 30s cooldown. Sounds like a perfect match to me.
Cons: Why take a pet who can only hold three targets when you can take one who can hold a good deal more? Yes, I’m looking at the gorillas here. Bears can’t compete with AoE tanking in that regard.
Personal Experience: I’m severely limited in my experience, as I roll as marks, so my bear doesn’t have all the points/abilities he could have. (All the more reason I *should* have a gorilla, but that’s beside the point.) However, I did drag my bear around to a few various quest mobs to help guildies who were leveling. He was a real star on the rock giants in Hellfire and Netherstorm, picking up the adds on his own without any help from me. I always take the +healing talents for him, so mend pet does more and heals from outside healers do more too. He tanked Uvuros without ever dropping low in health or getting close to losing aggro. I like taking last stand, it’s my top tier talent of choice for him, since I only get one. It was an incredibly handy thing to pop when he off-tanked Moroes on a Kara run early after the patch. (He was originally just supposed to eat the blind, as we’d been lacking melee classes on the run and had no actual OT, but he did end up holding Moroes for a bit.)
Wrap-Up: From what I’ve seen, unless Blizzard is going to remove the limit on bear pet swipe targets, you’ll be better off with an AoE gorilla. THAT SAID, I am never giving up my bear, who is my favorite pet of all time, so I have been having him tank things that most wouldn’t. Pets in general hold better single target aggro than they used to ever since the patch. (My new pet crab held pretty solid aggro on single targets, even when she was considerably underleveled for the elementals on the plateau.) Gorillas are the kings (and queens) of tanking as pets go at the moment, but bears are a close second. I haven’t heard much from croc owners myself, as most people I know have gotten gorillas. Pretty much any tenacity pet is going to be able to take real hits; the difference between them seems to be how many mobs they can hold. I’d really like to see Blizzard remove the swipe limit for pet bears (hey, if it’s good enough for druids….) rather than nerf thunderstomp. I thought the point of these changes was to give us more options, not force everyone to get gorillas (again).
Oh, I forgot to mention that I’ve had to do a lot of juggling between toggling claw and swipe on and off, depending on what my bear and I (and our party) are fighting, just to make sure he’s generating enough aggro on the correct number of targets.
Also, I did do some testing as BM and HIGHLY recommend taking taunt. It works like a “real” taunt; my bear was able to taunt off one of my guild’s main tanks (who holds ridiculous amounts of aggro) as an experiment. Add that and intervene to your available talents (plus roar of sacrifice, when you can) and you’ve got one well-protected healer.
Since I suck at responding to questions I don’t know much about(Been playing hunter for 3 years, And had a cat for mostly every moment of those 3 years..)
I’ll awnser in my onw two cents.
Bear, is mostly for leveling. I wouldn’t feel very strong if m pet was to tank, And it can’t(Abviously) in instances/raiding. Pvp, no reason to attack a pet unless its REALLY annoying you, or if you want to add insult to injury. I don’t think they could do much damage, But, This is coming from a hunter who’s always had a damage pet. All in all, 10-30 something, As a tank pet. Sure. Then if you can swallow down a butt-scratching ape, Get one of those. If not, keep your teddy and keep leveling! But, if you want a dps pet or something, Should look into the many choices of pets that are even open at ten!
(Disclaimer – I am not an expert or even good hunter) YMMV but I really liked my bear (Bjarn from 12-70.) An expert hunter like BRK is recommending Gorilla AoE tanking. But another site was saying the advantage of the bear swipe over stomp is you are less likely to accidentially acquire new friends.
Back when food was an issue, bears were really convenient.
I think swipe should have unlimited targets. Thunderclap and druid-Swipe got the same treatment, hunters pets being considered tanks shouldn’t be left out.
Swipe is not as good as thunderstomp. thunderstomp hits unlimited targets, all around the pet, and generates additional threat in addition to dealing far more dmg than swipe. The only reason I take a bear is because everyone else has a gorilla.
All I would say is if swipe could hit unlimited targets (considering it only has a frontal-arc range unlike thunderstomp) and thunderstomp got toned down just to make this more competitive, then bears will be perfect non-exotic tanks.
The bear mechanic brings up a similar issue in regards to pulling. Devilsaurs through their monstrous bite size increase makes them take steps backwards as the stacks increase. Its led to some misspulls but thanks to the 25 man raid nerfs wasnt much of an issue.
Back to the bear though. From my experience there’s nothing a bear can do that other critters like my devilsaur, or other such ferocity pets can’t do equally as well. As a leveling tool maybe, but at 70 and for the upcoming expansion why trade max dps for “Hey she wont die before i do.”
my biggest problem with swipe is haveing to switch between it and claw depending on the fight.its mostly a focus regeneration and cc issue.
my moms druid and my hunter are doing damn well with my bear tanking for us in mara.i dont think we can take the princess yet,but weve managed to get our staves made without haveing to pug the place.
plus bubba will eat almost anything…
As mentioned swipe is not as good as the aoe gorilladin. Its still great for tanking multiple targets, but one thing people left out. A bear can only swipe targets in front of it :( That’s a big problem. If you have had any experience with pet positioning, its really hard to get your pet to move all the mobs in front of it so that swipe is hitting them. So hopefully Bliz will make swipe an aoe cone effect. And hopefully they will smarten bears up a little so that they round up all the mobs in front of them. Its not that hard to manually do this, but it takes time and its very annoying to do every pull.
Also I would love if they gave all tenacity pets some sort of aoe aggro capability that way we don’t have all the hunters running around with a white gorilla :)
Don’t nurf the gorilla, just buff other tenacity pets up to par with it.
Swipe could definitely use a buff to either affect more targets or increase the agro against secondary mobs. I love my bear. I tamed Old Sooty because he matches my black bear shoulders from ZA.
I used the bear to tank the Headless Horseman when we swapped out our tank for someone else. He held agro very well and when it dropped agro, was able to taunt the boss off. Unless he’s tanking though, the bear really brings nothing to the table in an instance that another pet wouldn’t be better at.
Well, I personally like Bears.
Actually I like them a lot more than Gorillas
But I have to tell you that Gorillas are the best leveling pets right now hands down
I wish they would make swipe like thunderstomp
Then I would buy Bears
otherwise It’s sad to say I’m sticking to my gorilla for leveling
/sigh
I LOVE BEARS!
I agree with most of the hunters above. I tamed a bear as soon as the PTR came up with patch 3.02, but was quite disappointed with swipe. It held mobs against healing aggro but not multishot, which I had hoped.
When the gorilla thunderstomp cooldown was reduced, I went gorilla and never looked back. Its just too good.
If swiped was buffed too a useful ability I would go back to a bear in a second, because I just love bears.
As for what buff:
1) Swipe damage/threat should be increased so that it can hold against multishot and maybe the odd volley like thunderstomp can.
2) Increasing the target limit would be gravy! But there is not much point in increasing it if your multishot/volley pulls the mobs immediately anyways. Better to hold 3 mobs well than try and fail to hold multiple mobs.
I’ve been playing with a bear, specifically Bjarn for almost all of my Hunter career. With patch 3.0 bears have never been better. Swipe alone does not provide enough threat to compensate for heavy healing or AoE, but combined with a misdirected Multi-Shot or Volley it is more than enough to maintain aggro. I’m not a dedicated raider, but theoretically since swipe has such a short cooldown, especially with the Longevity talent it can provide a second focus dump to go with claw. The crowd control concerns with swipe are minimal since swipe has a very short range, but if a sheep does wander too close it is a valid fear. Ideally all crowd control takes place far enough away to be safe, but we have all seen that impertinent sheep that wanders in the exact wrong direction, or the undead that resists the first shackle and gets shackled right next to the tank that hasn’t learned to back away from sticky situations. The Guard Dog talent deprecates a bear’s open-ended appetite in the higher levels, but in the lower levels were it counts and the talent is unavailable it is still very helpful. With all the right Beastmastery and pet talents a bear is incredibly sturdy, and Mend Pet and other healing does wonders to keep him up. During the scourge invasion zone attacks, I handled the regular elites along with several adds without a problem.
Well in my case now that WolK is almost out i been doing a lot of old dungeons for the achievements and the gorilla holds aggro a lot better than the bear i had.
I did lvl them to 70 before making my choice, So IMO gorillas win on multi-tanking.
Y’know, i’ve yet to try out a bear. i was thinking about getting one today in fact, but i’m getting a rhino for my tenacious pet and i hate to run out of stable space. this has been helpful to read this though, i like these posts mania, it’s nice to get the peanut gallery’s opinion.
Honestly, I’ve been playing a hunter for three years, give or take, and out of all the pets, bears are one of my more disliked pets. Every bear I’ve ever had just never seems to be able to hold aggro, take any damage, or give damage like some of the other pets used for tanking no matter how I trained them. Personally, they don’t look that pleasing to me, either. I prefer wolves above all other pets, to tell the truth. So far my two wolves have never let me down.
But hey, don’t take my words too seriously, these are just personal experiences and whatnot. I’m sure a lot of hunters have bears that beat the pants off of pretty much everything else.
I’ve experienced much of the same problems already mentioned and I think the real weakness is Swipe being a cone in front of the bear while the Gorilla’s Thunderstomp is 8 yards around the Gorilla. So if a mob goes behind the Gorilla or to the side or is a caster and is slightly out of melee range that’s no problem because Thunderstomp will hit them all and generate additional threat. The Bear’s Swipe simply won’t hit them and has a 3 mob limit so it’s limited in effectiveness.
So Swipe needs a wider cone of effect to be more effective. I don’t know if it necessarily needs an additional threat component since it has a shorter cooldown than Thunderstomp and its damage got increased recently but it certainly couldn’t hurt.
I’d like to use a Bear, especially since they close their mouths now, but Swipe just isn’t as good as Thunderstomp in my experience.
My first pet on my hunter was a bear. Spent ages trying to get the tame to finish before he stunned me. That said, I haven’t tamed a bear since the patch. I hear many people have trouble with swipe holding aggro on extra mobs. Could popping Kill Command then hitting swipe make a difference? I use a similar mechanic with my gorilla and Thunderstomp and see an improvement in the threat generated. I can safely AoE after that.
I have a mix of PvP and KZ-through-BT gear and my bear is the first pet I ever tamed, and it breaks my heart what a hard time he now has keeping aggro. (I’m Marks, with Go for the Throat and 45 percent unbuffed crit.)
Swipe simply doesn’t keep up — the bear in general has a hard time of it, unless all he’s doing is Growling. The official boards (and beta boards) are useless as always, with “just tame a gorilla lol” as the answer to questions about this issue.
My gut says that Thunderstomp is too good AND that bears are having a problem of their own, probably that Swipe isn’t good enough.
I suspect that leveling up will help the bear catch up, even as my crit dips until I return to level 80 raiding gear, but at this moment, the bear needs help. I shouldn’t need to routinely Misdirect onto a Tenacity pet (with nothing but talents to help him generate aggro) fueled by Go for the Throat.
Get a gorilla, with an aoe attack, you don’t have to worry about positioning or only hitting 3 targets.
I have Bjarn, and until 3.0 he was more sentimental than practical. The cat was my ubiquitous pet.
I have had no trouble with a bear multiple mob tanking as long as I let him build aggro for a a few seconds, he is tough enough to tank for much longer than that w/o any mending. Then I focus on his primary target. As long as I pace myself (I am MM) he holds aggro until the mob is too diminished to matter. The bear has become my favorite BG pet, if I were BM it would be undoubtably different for me. However as a MM hunter I have found the bear supremely usefull and highly recomend you try one. That said the sheep issue is a valid concern, doing dailies on Quel he almost always pulls in a murlock slave or two.
Gorillas are STILL OP.
I’ve said this a million times, and I fully expect them to get beaten with the nerfstick after the expansion is out and they do their first post-expac balancing pass.
That said… I personally have not had any trouble with keeping the three-mob aggro on my pet with a Marks hunter. What are you guys doing, shooting a subordinate target and expecting to not get it in the face? I don’t understand. My MM hunter has both of the Barrage talents, so my Multishot is probably as nasty as possible for my gear, and while I don’t -spam- multishot while soloing (I mean, who does), and long and hard-learned lesson of never using volley outside of instance AoE… I can still plink his spare targets and never pull them off.
To be frank, if you’ve pulled more than three mobs in a solo pull, you’re asking for trouble anyway. I’ve gotten more than that sequentially, due to bad pathing or what have you, but the last thing I want to do is use a gorilla’s nonspecific AoE and end up with 3/4 of an entire zone on my case because he decided to go running off (as pets do, I’m sure you all know) and drag up as many friends as he can before stopping. Um. No. Thanks. I’ll pass.
I would like to see Swipe do a bit more threat, but it’s certainly not enough difference to make me not like bears. I also like the far more ‘controlled’ aspect of Swipe, and can rest in the knowledge that a badly timed Thunderstomp isn’t going to make matters worse.
Also… Bears are just that much more awesome than monkeys. What did the hunter in the original WoW cinematic have? Yeah. You know it. It didn’t say ‘ook’.
I’ve never, at the level cap, fought just one thing, either at 60 or at 70. How safe and boring just to kill one thing at a time! (And, for a hunter — how unnecessary.)
I found that my turtle, only due to shell shield, outlives any of the other tanking pets.. Ive tried several of them, including the gorilladin, but the turtle seams to be able to take the most damage. I do love bears though and have a nice white bear on my lowbie hunter..but for endgame boss tanking i prefer a turtle
I tamed a bear with 3.0 because all my previous pets suddenly became “ferocity”. I leveled it up to 70 (a matter of 3 instances) and then didn’t take it out the stable much, but I plan to level with it in wotlk (tomorrow!!!). I tested it after swipe got buffed though: means farming bloodelves in netherstorm for an hour or two.
concerning tenacity talents: there are obvious choices: Charge, Stamina cause you want Blood of the Rhino, Guard Dog -> Taunt, Intervene (well i could skip this one, cause Teddy never autocasts it. and i simply hate the minimum range, makes manual casting that much harder).
To all the comments above: i never had a gorilla, so i really can’t compare. I can say though that swipe got buffed in damage since 3.0 and that it doesn’t only hit mobs in front of my bear. I’m quite sure about that, it even says so in the skill detail (“Swipe 3 NERBY enemies”). Swipe also has a really low cooldown (3s when skilled i think) and with my gear, without any buffs it hits for about 110 and i’ve seen crits for about 250.
Now sure, without additional threat, i can’t multishot or volley if i didn’t use misdirection first. And against a single target you should better turn it off (but usually i don’t care).
But let me compare bear to pets that only attack one target:
if there is only one target – not much difference, huh?
two or more targets: I gain aggro off single target pets through using “mend pet” and even “go for the throat”. no laughing please, i don’t manually use gftt but instead have a steady shot + gftt macro, so every time it’s ready, gftt is active. this doesn’t happen with bear (at least if there are no more than 3 targets).
more than 3 mobs: i usually misdirect the “right half” of the group onto bear and let it attack the left-most mob, works fine.
and before i forget: in situations where my pre-3.0 pets would have been dying or at least screaming for heal, bear is still bearing up (hehe).
all in all i’m happy with my bear as a tank. probably gorilla aoe is better at the moment, although thunderstomp has double cd compared to swipe (think of this when saying it makes lower dmg pls). i guess that’s because “This ability causes a moderate amount of additional threat”.
When I created my Hunter (just after 3.0 went live) I wanted to get AOE-tanking capable pet as early as possible. Even before I got Valley, just to handle unwanted adds. The first one available was the bear… Well, I found out that Swipe is extremely inconvenient and cumbersome to use. Mobs often stood out of reach of Swipe, and repositioning means my pet takes extra damage and doesn’t damage mobs itself.
The next pet to try out was crocolisk. MUCH better than bear, imo. Bad attitude is usually already up when you have finished previous pack of mobs and gather next one. No room for Valleys, but allows for convenient one-by-one decimation of hostiles. I dumped my bear _even before I got a gorilladin_.
At 32, Daemonie’s and Paladilla’s ways crossed and they lived together happyly ever after. :) My hunter dinged 70 a few days ago, and I don’t think that a bear (or any other pet, actually) would allow me to level as fast and comfortable.
As for Swipe vs Thunderstomp and their damage/cooldown relation: Thunderstomp wins hands down, thanks to rational use of Kill Command charges.
I like the gorillas aggro taking.. but i often play just with my husband (who are an arcane mage) and when the two of us alone face “bosses” or 5 man quest nothing have compared to the Turtles survivability. I use MD to let the turtle get aggro.. and then it keeps it… giving that i shoot md at it every 30 sek.. I heal it whth mend pet + the draenir racial heal and with that, the two of us can take down elite mobs with 100k in health :) If all tenacity pets would get a shell shield like ability where they absorb damage, i would trade my turtle for a bear any day.. mostly due to i like the bear look better
Tbh the best way to clear mobs is spam Volley these days… sad but true. Its just like the age old mage trick of run around gather mobs, frost nova and then icestorm. Now hunters have their very own copy but this is ONLY possible with a Gorilla. A bear or any other current tenacity pet doesnt have this option. For single target tanking a bear or other tenacity pet is good and you can kill mobs in a jiffy but for seriously fast killing you need to grab multiple mobs and burn them down with aoe.
This isnt a mechanic that is wrong with Gorillas and that they need to be nerfed. Its a mechanic that is wrong with all the other tenacity pets. If they nerf the thunderstomp then we will likely loose our aoe tanking option. This is a nice new feature for hunters which gives us a varied role other than straight dps. To nerf it would be to send us back into the dull monotony of single target dps nuking. So the logical answer is to adapt some of the other tenacity pets to be able to aoe tank. The most likely way would be to add a pet talent into the tenacity tree for aoe threat (like roar). It could be done by buffing Swipe but that still only leaves Gorillas and Bears as the AoE pet tanks and this isnt solving the problem across the tenacity board.
What Chiana said. ;)
I have not tamed a gorilla yet (and I don’t think I will), so I can’t compare them – but I am very very happy with my bear. Tamed him after the patch as a leveling pet, and even with lvl 65 he held aggro and survived against one of the lvl 72 elite trees in Skettis. Misdirection and T5 sure helped with this, but I was impressed.
Got him to 70 doing dailies, and since I rarely use multishot but burn down one Naga at a time, he was perfectly able to prevent healing aggro or taunt a suddenly respawned caster naga off me.
There’s that mining node on the beginning of the naga area, and I always used to send my pet at the naga near it while I quickly mined the node, then turn around and finish the naga off. Not with my bear – he eats the naga before I have finished mining, so I don’t think the damage output is that bad.
Anyway. He’s a tank. And I think it comes down to this: we need different pets for different occasions. The bear is just great for questing, where you normally don’t use CC or want to fight 5 mobs your level at a time (If you do, more power to you, but I just don’t see the point in making things complicated). For instances/raids I will sure keep my raptor, who does much better damage, and if you want to round up 10 mobs and volley them – take a gorilladin.
We have 5 stable slots – use them. ;)
i tried the bear thinking the swipe would be nice for multiple mob tanking and it turned out that it just wasn’t that great. if the mobs weren’t all in front of him then the swipes would miss causing problems pulling aggro, on top of which it just doesn’t do enough damage to hold. maybe if they had added increased threat like thunder stomp, but even then i just don’t think it would hold aggro very well off any targets beyond the first. the gorilla is best AoE tank by far, with the gator in close second, his bad attitude works quite well tbh as its a counter attack to every attack done to him on top of which it lasts 45 seconds(think thats right…) which is forever, and with the right talents and BW turned on he hits for plenty to hold aggro as long as you give him about 5-6 seconds to get aquainted with his targets.
These pets are for solo solo solo!!
I did not have one for long (again, my bat issue), but in the time I did it held aggro like a monster. Not as good as a gorilla though. Nerf the gorillas!
I took my bear Zaxxis insignia farming in Netherstorm yesterday in the brief 20 minutes before the servers went down again. (50 insignias and FIVE keys) Here’s what I discovered about bears:
Diet-Tied with boars with being the easiest to feed. They’ll eat anything you can get your hands on and is edible.
Aggro management-Great against the target the bear has his attention on. He can even hold a couple of extra mobs as long as you change his target every so often.
Appearance-Now that they can close their mouths, they don’t look completely stupid and have been given an idle animation. They also have a variety of attractive skins.
Swipe-It’s like having your own bear druid, except swipe can’t hit more than three targets and only in front of it. The biggest problem though is the three target limitation on swipe. If you can keep three targets in front of the bear swipe will hit them but as I was killing the ethereals, I noticed that mobs exhibit the same combat AI pets do, as in it will get behind the bear if it’s not directly focusing on them and therefore avoid getting swiped. What needs to be changed is the way swipe hits it’s targets. In my opinion, swipe can still keep its three target limit but change it to be more akin to a druid tank’s swipe and let it hit in a 360 degree circle around the bear that way it can hit those targets that creep behind it. It also needs an aggro modifier so it generates an additional amount of threat to help it with keep attention focused on it for much longer.
Bears are great against single, double, and triple pulls but pale in comparison to the gorilla for those mass pulls. Not to say BearOE farming isn’t doable, because it is, it just requires a bit more management on the hunter’s part.
I LOVE my bear (the rare white one from near ironforge not the quest one dont remember the original name) I woulndt trade him for a butt scracher any day. Take away that anoying (and rude) butt scratch I may have to try one out. *grin*
For my double…
Bears are great for: soloing, grouping as an off-tank or even a main tank if needed, farming to an extent.
Not so good for: PvP, despite it being a tenacity pet, the crab or scorpid is a better choice; raiding, you should be using a ferocity pet in a raid, it isn’t going to be tanking anything unless you severely outgear the raid.
Talents: For soloing, you can probably skip the bottom tier talents: last stand, taunt, and roar of sacrifice. If you’re going to be using your bear as a main tank or off-tank in a group, you should definitely get taunt and last stand if you have enough talent points for it. Otherwise you can just focus on getting the key talents for a tenacity pet: blood of the rhino, pet barding and grace of the mantis. If you insist on PvPing with a bear, roar of sacrifice is a must.
For hunting with a bear, the only thing you have to watch out for is swipe aggroing non-hostile mobs.
All in all, aside from the limitations on swipe, a bear is a great pet and a hunter wouldn’t make a wrong choice if they chose to go with one.
I haven’t played much with my new bear (I don’t really like any of the tenacity pets much except scorpid, and the bear is the least unliked of the aoe tanks available), but I did try out a longish fight (elite) with adds(nonelite). Keep in mind, the bear was only 65, so he took a little more damage than a level 70 bear would.
One on one with the elite, he held agro about as well as you’d expect a pet to hold agro. I got agro from the adds after my first mend (I had stupidly done single target damage for the misdirect), but I think some of the mobs weren’t in range of swipe (or swipe hadn’t gone off yet and hit mend too early). Feign death put everything back on the pet til the end of the fight, when I trapped one add and just took the damage from the other. I did pull the elite right at the very end, when I intimidated and finished him off.
During that fight, my bear had 40 more dps than my dps pet, which was a few levels higher :P Swipe may not be the agro-generator that thunderstop is, but it’s good for minor healing agro while the hunter single-targets everything else down. I may keep him leveling up (depending on how crowded the quest areas are). I don’t care for primates at all, and I refuse to get a gorilla. The bear should do fine unless the quest areas absolutely need volley pulls.
OK…I am a little obsessed as a hunter. I run some 12 characters at various levels and they are all hunters. I originally tried the bear under the new patch because I was looking for a fruit eater in the Tenacity family to balance out my female Belf hunter’s stable. (She has a dragonhawk and a moth so I wanted to keep feeding simple).
I had left bears behind previously as their ability to take damage was not coupled with good aggro or damage. To my surprise I am getting very attached to Whiteout (tamed as a Mangeclaw). Swipe coupled with charge makes a bear an good outside partner. I haven’t had the chance to take her into a dungeon, but I suspect that in a team she will still stack up well, as tanking in dungeons typically isn’t a hunter’s pet’s responsibility.
She’s fun. She’s cute. She hits hard and moves quick. The bear animation is excellent and, hey, I like her.
On matters of taster there can be no argument. ‘Nuff said.
I gave up my bear a long time ago for a cat when I was about level 35 or so with my dwarf hunter. But with all the new excitment about bears I went out and got myself a polar bear. Well, after grinding him a little bit for Keruni rep I just wasn’t very excited about him anymore. Why??
Well, because the Gorilla is freakin awesome. I love pulling up to 6… 7, 8 mobs and downing them all with the gorilla and volley. I haven’t gotten rid of my polar bear yet, but I don’t know if I can take him out for leveling now that I have my gorilla up to 70.
Like Emowin said, Gorillas are butt-scratchers. I had one pre-patch and loved it, but now they’re as overpowered as warlocks! :P When something is overpowered like that, no way I’ll ever play/tame one, even if it’s fun and has supreme advantages over other classes/pets. The easier it is, the less fun it is. That’s why I don’t like gorillas.
That, and the fact that they scratch their butts. A LOT.
LONG LIVE BEARS! However, aesthetically, bears stink. That jaw is screwed up.
I don’t have any recent experience using bears, but from culling through other people’s comments they appear to be second or third rate compared to gorillas.
Now, knowing Blizzard that probably means gorillas AOE threat will be nerfed in the not too distant future (look at what they did to dragonhawks before you scoff), or failing that they will insist all is working as intended… however what they SHOULD do is give swipe a boost – if gorillas can keep a whole area aggroed pretty well, then it stands to reason bears should be able to keep just 3 (frontal) mobs aggroed even better.
We’ll see…
By the way in re: generally keeping aggro on the pet post 3.02, I’ve had to play around with my various hunters’ specs to accomplish this:
lvl 70 BM hunter with Devilsaur: no problem, but what do you expect from a BM spec? :)
lvl 70 SV “crit” hunter with carrion bird: had to replace exp shot with gftt; less dmg from me and more from my pet meant pet could just about hold aggro if I was careful (I plan to get exp shot at lvl 72 but likely will only use it in instances)
lvl 70 BM/MM with gorilla: this one took a lot of work, originally starting as a SV “trap” hunter (got sick of constantly spamming trap/disengage/arc shot), ended up as 30-31-0; now works pretty well though not effortless like my BM spec.
I’ve got a lvl 43 hunter I’m thinking of kitting out with a hyena and trying a SV/MM “shooty” spec, with the hope that his pet’s slow ability may buy me enough time to burn mobs down without worrying about holding back. Will see…
Gorillas are OP right now, plain and simple. You know that when people who don’t even want one, get one as their main pet. In fact, due to the AOE, it’s not even a bad DPS pet if spec’d right. They are hands down the best tanking pet, and probably the most useful all around pet in the game. Blizzard has said time and time again that they don’t want to make any one pet the pet everyone HAS to have to be a good hunter. They didn’t like EVERYONE using a cat after BC. This means that the Gorilla will most likely get nerfed, or the other tanks will get buffed.
Bear vs Gorilla after the most recent patch:
As both are tanking pets, their stats are basically the same, but there are some major differences due to the pet class ability. Swipe has a shorter CD, but does overall less damage than the Gorilla’s stomp. So straight up the bear can hold less agro based just on dmg. The Gorilla’s stomp has an additional threat bonus, so he’s doing more damage and gets bonus threat. The gorilla can hit more targets and is not limited by the location of the enemy. And to top it all off, since they have the same focus cost, but the Gorilla has a longer CD, the Gorilla has more focus to dump into regular attacks. So the gorilla outdoes the bear in every way possible.
I hated using a cat in BC because everyone else had a cat. I had to retire my wolf that everyone loved so that I could compete on damage. Now I’m looking at having to give up my beloved bear for the almighty gorilla, and I hate the very idea of that.
I hope that Blizzard either gets to nerfing or buffing the tank pets soon though, otherwise it will be too late.
Yeah, I really HAVE to answer that. Mad is my one and only (ok, not only, but I never found something better) companion since I started playing Funny aka Jorna in May 2005.
First, let me say that bears are cute. They are really soft and make good pillows at night. And, as you already said, they eat pretty much anything (which is not so important since the new skills with 3.0).
Above all, Mad is a tank. With level 60 he was tanking half of Molten Core (including flame packs and such) except of bosses of course (my mates were afraid of wiping). He pulled Shazzrah without dying and was the greatest hero of all. Way up to 70 he cleared most dungeons, as there were no def warriors for months. With 70, he played with Onyxia all alone (healed by a Paladin, fighting against a mage’s aggro) – which was the cleanest fight I ever had.
Those were the pros. The cons are… well, bears have their mouths open all the time… no, this is fixed. Ok, they are a bit slow sometimes, but increased pet speed makes playing with bears really comfortable. Since they have their own class skill, there are no noteworthy cons anymore.
I can’t tell anything about Swipe. I just activated the skill and started fighting and saw Mad holding all those bad guys away from me.
What are bears especially good for?
Soloing: yes, very good.
Grouping: if the tank isn’t doing his job, yes.
Raiding: unlike other pets, they don’t die, so very good.
PvP: I love watching the Horde beating Mad within 30 seconds.
Tanking: as I wrote above.
Damage-dealing: no. Doesn’t matter, because the hunter can deal with damage while the bear has aggro.
Talents… skip stamina. Put everything into +aggro and +armor. Taking less damage is worth much more than +10% life points (which you don’t need when taking less damage).
Clever strategies… let the bear pull three enemies, misslead with multishot and go afk.
And last but not least: > Would you recommend a bears?
What am I doing here? :D
It seems like Bears (pet) vs Gorrilas is the same bit with Bears (Druid) vs Paladins (pre-Wrath). In that a bear (either) does better with one target or a couple, against the much more aoe minded Pala(Gorilla)din.
The thing is Swipe looks fine in theory, but the pet doesn’t have the AI to back up a few spaces to ensure its Swipe is hitting all the targets it can. And the mobs aren’t just going to neatly group up in front of the bear without some clever tricks from the hunter. Swipe really only works if something else is keeping the mobs attention, as a supplement to the group tank than as a versitle tanking ability on its own.
In A Nutshell:
“What are the pros and cons of bears in general?”
Pro-they are good for tanking small numbers of mobs (1-3ish). Have a nice taunt ability, good solo pet.
Con-Lacks an AOE ability to damage multiple targets around the bear
“What are the pros and cons of Swipe in particular?”
Pro-Can hit multiple Targets
Con-Can only hit 3 targets, and targets must be infront of the bear
“Are bears particularly good (or bad) for soloing, grouping, raiding, PvP, tanking, damage-dealing, etc?”
As a Tanking pet bears are good for soloing ans small groups, they lack sufficient abilities for raids-no AoE. In pvp they can hold thier own for a bit, but are not designed for high dps that is common to pvp pets.
“What talents do you suggest for bears? Are there any required talents, or talents you should definitely skip?”
Talents for the bear depend mostly upon what you are going to be using it for (id solo, group etc) I would recoment giving the bear as much armour as possible, Charge is a must, Spiked collar would help in adding more damage, Guard dog and taunt are handy in group or soloing, if you want to use your pet to protect members then Intervine and raor of sacrifice are a good combo.
“Do you know any clever strategies for hunting with bears, or are there any particular gotchas to watch out for?”
Since I havent used a bear myeslf, I’ll leave this part blank.
Would you recommend a bears?
Bears would seem to be a nice choice at lower lv’s, however it would appear that gorillas would be a bette choice at higher lv’s….if only for thier AoE skill. though with proper pet control and training, bears have the potential to be a good endgame allie…
thus concludes my summery of the above posts.
Hildr has a softspot in my heart and always will, but she passed away from all the wounds she suffered at the hands of the invading Litch King forces last week. She was great bear, loved by many, feared by most. Hel hath no fury as a scorned bear woken in the middle of her winter sleep. She was buried as all good Valkyrja’s should be… a ship in flames with enemy at her feet. I’ll miss Hildr.
My bear was a great companion. She took on mobs after mobs, and after the changes, she was loved that much more (Charge! Oh yeah, FTW). The many talent changes made a slow moving ball of fur into a “fist of fury” (can I say that, lol). But even with that, “swipe” just wasn’t doing it’s damage, I let her slip away to the blessfulness of the dark sleep we will all have to exeprience.
I believe it is because of the Mobs AI with mobs atttacking from all directions, where swipe wasn’t effective.
I took my new bear into Stratholme to kill some time while I’m waiting for Wrath. Admittedly, he was only level 65, but Brandur was having all kinds of problems holding aggro against the skeleton pulls. I had to switch out for my raven, Kvasir, whose AoE screech made it a breeze.
One minor detail I wanted to add on this – yes bears now close their mouths when not in combat … sort of.
Their dewlaps remain raised in a permanent snarl at all times, so while they don’t look as bad as before, they still look kinda silly if you take a close look at one standing idle.
My first pet was an Ice Claw bear I tamed in Dun Morogh. I had originally wanted a snow leopard, but was surprised by how well my bear performed. I kept him and became quickly attatched. He did great until I got to Loch Modan, where I began to notice he had occasional “issues” keeping the attention of mobs. By the time I reached the wetlands, it was over. Luckily, this was shortly after the time I discovered Petopia. So I put my bear in the stable and quickly set out to tame a ghost saber. I loved my new pet but occasionally missed my old teddy.
When the new patch came out, I decided Luckytom should pull old Morrus out and see if the changes had made any real difference. I was very happy. Morrus holds aggro like a champ and seldom dies unless I do something stupid (or have some kind of lag issue because of my addons or crappy router). I have even goten pretty good at moving him around for the best position when attacking multiple mobs to make sure they are in front of him. I seldom attack single mobs now and often fight mobs a few levels higher than both of us. I’ve even bold enough to try to fight mobs 5+ levels above our level. We have won more than a few and the times we have lost, Morrus has been great at keeping their attention long enough for me to make a quick retreat.
That being said, I will most likey be taming a gorilla soon. As much as I Love Morrus, the numbers don’t lie. Gorilla’s rock. It makes me sad, because I would love to be able to do with my bear what I know I can do with a gorilla.I have never been all that impressed with any gorilla skin, but it looks like they are a “must have” pet now. I am only in my mid-forties currently, so i will hold off until I get to Un’goro for the rare one. At least all my pets will be roughly the same color.
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.
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