Werebear and Gear/Stat suggestions.

TrinityPower

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Mar 10, 2006
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Werebear and Gear/Stat suggestions.

Hey all.

I wanna make a shock/mauler, and here is what I have thus far..

20 HoW
20 Lycan
10+ WB (rest of my skill points will go here if I lvl very high)
1 Carrion Vine
1 Bear summon
20 Maul
10 Shockwave
1 in each prerequisite
------------
89 = finished by late 70's or early 80's

As far as gear is concerned, I don't have much, but this is what I have so far...

Helm: "Um"d Jalal's
Weapon: "Shael"d Ribcracker
Armor: Nothing set yet, may be able to get a Duress AP if I'm lucky
Ammy:currently Angelic's ammy
Ring1: currently, Angelic's ring
Ring2: Ravenfrost
Gloves: Drac's
Belt: nothing yet
Boots: most likely Gore Riders

And stats are where I am most stumped, as I know WB's suffer AR issues.

Current Plans:

Str: 85 = enough to wear a good AP after str bonus from Jalal's
Dex: base?
Vit: Rest

As you can see I have a lot of holes in my gear and idk what i should do as far as my dex is concerned. Can someone please give me some advice? It will be and is much appreciated.

Thanks!
 
Re: Werebear and Gear/Stat suggestions.

I also plan on making a hardcore mauler once 1.13 releases. Need help aswell :)
 
Re: Werebear and Gear/Stat suggestions.

I'll give an overview.

WBs are pretty easy to make and don't require amazing gear (stuff like Jalals, Ribcracker and Shaftstop are pretty cheap and will do fine). But they're melee and don't have a great skill like Fury or Zeal; one click kills only one monster. 2 main attacks are Fireclaws and Maul. Fireclaws requires investment; with 20 pts in synergies (+ 20 in FC itself) it does fine, with 40 pts in synergies it does great. Maul actually does pretty well with only 1 pt invested, at least if you have enough crushing blow. This is easy with Ribcracker + Gores. But 20-pts in Maul is a big improvement. Hunger only needs 1 pt to be effective; you switch to it shortly (2-3 seconds) when your life is getting below 75% to get it back to max.

You can go for:
- Pure Mauler: great survivability and lots of physical damage. But problem dealing with PIs (luckily there aren't that many)
- Summoner: your 1-pt Maul will do good damage and so will your wolves. Tough monsters you will just shockwave-stun and let your wolves kill them. Possibly more fun than pure melee.
- Maul / Fireclaws hybrid: no problem with PIs. FC will be your main attack because it's faster, but Maul works fine for FIs.
- Armageddon Bear: novelty build mainly for looks, but still good enough to solo Hell.


In all variants Shockwave is important. It doesn't do significant damage (even after boost in 1.13 I think), but it offers great crowd control.

Pure Mauler

Skills
20 Maul
1 Hunger (switch to this for 3 seconds and your life is 100%)
20 Werebear
20 Lycanthropy (for all builds: you can get by with less than 20, even 1 with the right gear, but I prefer the survivability)
20 HoW or Oak (damage vs survivability, both work fine)
1 Shockwave (no need for more unless you don't have any skill bonuses on gear)
1 Carrion Vine
0-1 Grizzly (you'll kill monsters before your Grizzly gets close, but it's only 5 skill points so who cares)

Gear

Note: A great choice is to go with the partial IK-set (weapon, gloves, belt and boots). And very cheap.

Helm: Jalals
Weapon: upped Ribcracker / IK's
Armor: Duress, Stone, Fortitude, Shaftstop, Duriels
Boots: Gores / IK's
Belt: Verdungo's / String / IK's
Gloves: upped Bloodfist / Dracs / IK's
Rings: 2xRaven, or Raven+Dual-leech (angelics combo is fine too)
Amulet: Highlords (angelics combo is fine too)
Inventory: torch + SS skillers + AR/resist scs

Werebear Summoner
20 Lycanthropy
1 Werebear
1+ Maul (dump rest here)
1 Hunger
1 Shockwave
20 Grizzly
20 Dire Wolves
20 HoW (don't go for Oak this time; you want to your wolves to kill)
1 Carrion Vine

Pretty much the same gear, but go with Summoning skillers

See guide in stickies for Town Dump Bear.

FC / Maul hybrid
skills:
20 Lycanthropy
1+ Maul (1 pt is enough if FC is main attack (which I recommend)
1 Hunger
20 Fireclaws
40+ Fireclaws synergies
1 Shockwave
0 Oak / HoW (HoW doesn't boost FC and Lycanthropy gives you enough survivability)

Gear: Same as above, but use Ribcracker not IK weapon (faster - better for FC). You can also use a 6-Shael phaseblade (and have Ribcracker on switch for Maul); this will give you fastest-possible FC which is awesome. Never use shield because block rate for WB is horrible; better take the hit and leech back. Chains of Honor becomes a good choice for +2 skill bonus to FC.

Armageddon Bear
A playable WB that looks really cool though it looses in effectiveness. Still good enough to complete Hell solo, but more challenging than the ones above.

20 Lycanthropy
1 Werebear
1 Maul
1 Hunger
1 Shockwave
9 Armageddon prerequisites (this really sucks though 4 points are also synergy points)
20 Armageddon
(20 Fireclaws) - optional; it reduced the strength of armageddon but benefits of same synergies).
rest in Armagedon synergies (only 5 in Fissure for enough duration, rest to boost damage)

gear: same as other builds. More focus on skill bonuses so for example Chains of Honor becomes good choice.
 
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Re: Werebear and Gear/Stat suggestions.

Thanks for the guide. Im going pure mauler for hardcore 1.13 ladder.
 
Re: Werebear and Gear/Stat suggestions.

Sweet write-up.. thanks for taking the time to type it up! Quite helpful.
 
Re: Werebear and Gear/Stat suggestions.

There is one more werebear type - my personal favourite - lazymans version of FCs/Maul hybrid

20 Lycanthropy
20 Werebear
20 Fire Claws
20 FCs Synergy nr 1
rest in FCs Synergy nr 2

Skillpoint in werebear give you 7% damage boost and 5% defense boost, while points in maul give only 10% damage boost, but force you to charge it up in order to use it. The defense boost is mostly negligable, but it will amount to some +150% defense, which is always something.

I find charging maul up tedious because of two reasons - a) it's slower, b) it has much lower AR than FCs, c) the boost isn't constant, and AFAIR each charging up hit only boosts your damage by 10(or was it 20?), so if you have 20-300% maul, you need 30 charge up hits(15?) in order to recieve max bonus. The problem is maul wears off too often for my taste, effectively making average damage bonus from it much lower than the constant one I get from Werebear skill.

Not to mention that lazy bums like me do not need to switch attacks;) You can single right-click through whole areas without any problems;)

And there is also one piece of gear that Ed from Russia didn't mention that I find great - Treachery. Bears hit and get hit a lot, so Venom and Fade are constantly on(45% res all, 15% physical res, cool looks, and some cool poison damage). With upped, shaeled ribcracker werebears need 50% oIAS to reach 7 frame FCs, so with this armor we only need 5% more, which you will probably get anyway from Highlords, unless you go with Angelics. Jalals+Treachery+Ribcracker also get you more than 86% FHR which is all you'll ever need.

Another fun thing is that with Ribcracker + maxed Werebear you'll get some +250% enhanced defense, which still won't be enough to make a noticable difference:p
 
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