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.

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 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.

“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.

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.

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

I hope that Blizzard either gets to nerfing or buffing the tank pets soon though, otherwise it will be too late.

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…