[CC] Honey, can we break the bear? A beorning revamp tale

The bear is solid, we’ve got monumental dps and are fairly effective group members. Vastin might be coming for my critter comics soon. If the current bear, outside of anything but landscape, only needs a few quality of life fixes. Please break my bear.

Incase you want to skip to a part.

Index
1 -Current state of an unfinished class + examples
2 -Beornings overlaps in playstyles and trait lines
3 – Core changes to a beorning for a successful revamp
4 – Obvious bug fixes (aka betabear)
5 – Putting back the pieces for beorning 2.0
6 – Mighty morphin power beorning, the 6-form dual armor bear

1 – But everyone says the bear is broken
The beorning isn’t broken. The bear is just so bogged down in unfinished and counterproductive mechanics. Any time you are in human form you want to be in bear form, but to do too many activities in bear form you’re back into pants. This is best illustrated just with some examples, but isn’t limited to just these.

Tanking
Being a bear gives you the morale and critical defense you will need to be on par with other tank classes. While other classes can now start using their skills to get aggro. You kinda don’t want to use skills cause they cost wrath which you need it to stay in bear form. Any time spend in human form opens you up to dying a lot easier.

The trick to to being a better bear-tank is to know when you can do nothing. It’s counter intuitive to being fun, engaging and protecting your group. The best time you tank isn’t when you tank.

2 – Skill rotations are filled with do nothing moments
While other classes have a double set of skills that build resources in all sort of moments. A hunter can use interrupts, long cooldown skills, short or long inductions to build up focus. Any attack by a warden will get him further in his gambits. How many times as a beorning have you swing your club into the air to just get the wrath? Or used hearten while you didn’t need a heal to just get that 20 wrath over time before switching to bear? It’s not like the class is flushed with skills at any point.

Even skills that are supposed to provide a positive boost to switching between forms are losing most of their boost by shifting. The skill Expose provides two different buffs when used in both forms. But with the skill, a cry, one of two wrath builders, switching to bear form, expose again you’re already down 6 seconds of the 1st skill boost. Hit thrash 3 times, cleanse or some healing roars to get them on cooldown and the human form boost is already gone. Just by keeping this skill up you’re losing another 5 seconds of skills you’d in other cases don’t use. It’s just not worth it.

3 – So how do we fix the beorning?
Not with some light fixes. Nearly every part of a bear is missing it’s identity for that part cause it overflows into their other trait lines and forms. A blue guardian is a tank, that can get extra tricks from red or yellow. While a dps guard is red with extra defenses from blue or aoe from yellow. Or he goes yellow and mixes up red and blue to suit his playstyle or instance. same with any class that has had their class balance already. Each line had his identity and just got them more emphasized. A  beorning has 3 lines and 2,5 forms that all interact and conflict with each other. Even more in any specific situation.

The best times a bear has is in those moment he gets a chance to align 3 strong points while the negatives don’t mind. No dps, no aggro, but all the healing in the ettenmoors (just don’t expect to do anything else). Take hits and just survive without needing to protect or attack in Aom T2C on boss 2 only.

Break the current class and rebuild it with the pieces you’ll get
All the parts of a great beorning are already in the game. We just need to rewire the bear. SOme of which are already taken a look at by Vastin, but i’d like to take it even further.

1. Remove survivability as a core class mechanic
   1. the survivability costs us options to excel due to balance issues with other classes
   2. Lower personal healing and remove the need to keep hearten up
2. Rework the roles that shapeshifting has
   1. human and bear form feel like a 2ndary traitline  that counteracts the reason you’re are in your main traitline often.
   2. The reason to shapeshift shouldn’t be to not be in the other form. Provide a positive effect instead of making it feels bad to be in human form while tanking.
   3. Provide a positive reason to shapefist or allow us to be in our desired form for the occasion. Longer bearforms or not make us regret being in human form.
3. Make each traitline feel more unique in more situations by adding more risks and rewards to each
   1. It’s ok to be a bad dpser in a tank spec, but blue feels like a selfious yellow line.
   2. Yellowline is a bad redline if you’re not in a party that needs healing
   3. Redline is a squishy bluebear that can’t heal other far too often

4 – The bear necessities bug fixes
Beyond the underlying issues the bear has plenty of bugs and no beorning comment is complete without it ofcourse. So i’ll give you the bear minimum of these

• A combat ress that can rez in combat
• A healing legendary carving that actually boost healing
• Cooldowns that show the correct cooldown such as relentless maul
• A healing skill that actually gives healing aggro
• A Rush skill you actually use when you need to rush (not waiting to build up wrath before the fight to do be in bear form any use bearskills)
• Roar skills you use. Nearly every yellow background skill has such a limited use.
• Either give us more legendary traits or make agility better for a bear so i can use might, vitality, fate and agility on my legendary weapon

5 – The right to arm bears with unique playstyles
Make the bear a true hybrid class that comes close to the others. Use all the pieces available in lotro to make a class worth paying and playing. Feel free to use any parts of this in the beorning revamp.

The first 6 traitline dual armour class

Step 1 remove build in sturdiness from bearform.
Step 2 Add heavy armour and critical defense to Might
Step 3 Lower or remove tactical mastery boost from might and add it to will. And add a slight boost to physical mastery to Will
Step 4 Replace the wrath resources with a calm/rage attunement style mechanic

Create 3 separate traitlines in each of the trifecta and supplement them with the human and bear form. Make each of the 6 parts a building block in the glorious beorning empire and have them supplement instead of counteract the player in what he wants to do.

• Blue line – Tanking
• Yellow line – Healing
• Red line – neutral base dps
• Human form – calm minded nature class
• Bear form – berserker class/crusader thorn

Human form a calm minded form with its roots in nature. Squishy in it’s light armour relying on its knowledge of its surrounding with its tactical mastery.

• A light armour class that depends on tactical mastery  to be attained from will
• Provide better tactical decision in single target such as healing and use of CC and bees on specific mobs
• Removes sturdiness, aoe dps and raw power in favour of above par single target skills

A beorning forced to fight for it’s survival slowly succumbing to its natural rage. Fight and punish enemies for harming him and the world around him.

• A heavy armour class depending on his physical prowess from Might
• Provides a better physical experience in reflecting damage, raw power in the form of conal frontal attacks
• The more it get attacks the more it strikes back. Add a release mechanic for build up warth in execute.
• Remove single target healing and cc in favour of reflect and aoe damage. Added sturdiness from heavy armour, parry and evade from might.

Instead of a wrath build mechanic use a runekeeper style attunement mechanic with Calm vs Rage instead of DPS vs healing

• Nature minded from human form adds boost to healing and tactical damage.
  • Providing a pay off and positive reason to stay in human form in for example yellow line, but only provide short term boost in blue line
  • Adds single target dps to a single target focussed red line build.
• Enraged attunement provides raw power in bear form, but no bonus to human form skills
  • Aoe healing power in yellow line while in bear form
  • Extra reflect or resources in blue line
  • Raw power in redline, but without the reflect from blue you take more damage
  • A release mechanic for full rage such as Execute in red line
• Add a “payload” to bees, make bees an expert player skill by make them lower defenses or a small morale leech for the party.
• Add a small timed boost to skills after shapeshifting like a the hunterstances provide. A 10% boost to healing or bees effect in human form or 10% more reflect or damage when switching to bear form

6- A unique bear that can morph into anything you or a your group needs
Each of the traitlines in blue, red and yellow provide the normal with rank, heal and dps. But with the options players get in with both form and the positive effects that each has to their effects an average beorning will still remain valid in normal landscape. While at the same time allowing players to provide an enhanced boost to whichever role they desire to take in a group or higher difficulty.

A blue bear in heavy armour will be the best option to tank, but a mixed blue human/bear might be a better option for an experienced player that knows when and where to use the human form to get the extra boosts.

Single target healing and other “in control” skills such as CC are the best in human form with full tactical mastery provides by will. In emergency situations the aoe heals will still be there in bear form, but never as good as a raw raged filled bear.

While in redline will give you a good baseline dps, but enhanced by either choice to go for ST or aoe with either side slightly better if going focussed on one type. Or a median with a combined armour package.

All in all, a class package that runs the easy to play, but hard to master line to the max. Opening up the way to customise your playstyle without interfering or overpowering other classes. A true hybrid class build for the future. Even beyond the revamp the developers don’t have to worry about gear, set bonus or mechanics open to exploits. As the Beorning is now build on a solid foundation the game is run on. With boosts that come from traits and gear that are easy to expand, limit or change. Reign in the beorning healing compared to a runekeeper? Change the single target traits. Self-heals too strong in tank stance? Lower tactical mastery gained from might etc etc. 

It may take some time to get the numbers right, but please break the current lump of bear traits down and rebuild a Mighty morphin power bear.