42 replies to this topic

[Leokimah]

As either an off tank or main tank there is no reason to not max fury strike. It builds threat the quickest and is spammable more than the other skills because of animation delays. Less points = less threat value. Also fury strike has 3 damage ticks one at the beginning one somewhere in the middle and at the end all of which builds threat. Also each individual strike has a chance to crit so it will out dps rage smash by a ton.

Cruel Bite's tool tip is bugged. It heals you for 10% of YOU'RE MAX health not off the damage you done. So there is absolutely no reason to go beyond level 1 on this since it's not spammable.

I've went almost entire RHD's without using a single mana potion that's hardly an issue.

[Finraziel]

Oops, didn't see your reply yet when I edited my previous post because it wrapped to the next page.
Thanks for your insights, that does sound like it changes things, and it suddenly makes cruel bite sound a whole lot better.
Cool, more motivated now to level up my archer ;-)

[Finraziel]

Okay, well made it to bear, so I guess I'll be answering a few of my questions myself, for anyone else that might have them

First off, this class is hilarious!! The class change quest itself is already funny with people going "wtf are these bears doing here?!" and then walking around as a huge bear ripping everything in your path to shreds is just awesome. I'm constantly laughing my head off

So far I've maxed bear form, survival and wild crush, and put one point in brutal strike (along with the skills required to unlock the others of course). This still leaves 6 points unspent at 25 because I wanted to test some things out first and retain the option of maxing grizzly (without gaining 6 levels first). This is more than enough to easily take out outside monsters my level, though I find myself using cruel bite quite a lot against same level monsters.

First off, yes, cruel bite and brutal strike do use up your beast power, so you can't spam cruel bite.
With that, I don't think cruel bite's worth maxing. If you do nothing but rage smash and cruel bite, that will on average be 3 rage smashes to 1 cruel bite. With rank 5 rage smash, rank 1 or 5 cruel bite comes out to 81% or 87% damage (per rotation), or a 7% increase in damage output. You'll probably want to use your other skills as well, so it will come out to less than that. Adding wild crush will favor cruel bite a bit, but it wont make it much better.

I've also tested how long 10 rage smashes take and how long 10 fury strikes take. This comes out to 1.4 second per rage smash and 2.4 second per fury strike (without any haste). Not accounting for beast power, that would come to rage smash outputting about 13% DPS and fury strike about 15%DPS, but if we factor in the average 10 BP you gain with rage smash as 7% damage that you can later add to fury strike, rage smash is raised to 18% DPS. So yes, max it. If you factor in brutal strike the picture just gets better for using rage smash to gain BP all the time.

Also, I think someone (in some other thread I think) said they thought tiger was actually faster than the description says, so I timed myself running a fixed distance. Compared to regular walking speed, the peco and lvl 1 tiger were pretty much spot on 140% and 110% (well within the expected measuring error). Running around as a tiger is awesome though and I only switch to peco if I really have a long distance to run now. It's just annoying to have to switch out of animal form before you can mount your peco, and the tiger is very convenient as you can activate it wether you're in a fight or not. I'll restrain myself and not put points in it before skills that will actually help me in combat though.

As for maxing fury strike, what do you mean about building threat the quickest? Do you mean that the damage starts coming out sooner? Threat built is equivalent to how much damage you do isn't it, so then it should simply be about putting out the most damage you can. If rage smash + fury strike do more damage than fury strike by itself, then it should also build more threat, or am I wrong in that? As far as I understand it also shouldn't matter if you do 3 hits of 100 or 1 hit of 300 for how much threat you build, so the 3 damage ticks shouldn't matter either.
The same goes for the critting, if you do 1 hit of 300 with a 10% chance to crit or you do 3 hits of 100, each with a 10% chance to crit, the average damage output would be exactly the same. The spread out hits will be more consistent though because it's less likely for all hits to crit or for all of them not to crit.

Not having a reason to not max fury strike depends entirely on if there are skills that will be worth those skill points more than fury strike. Right now I have 6 points left in my planned build and the only things competing with fury strike are beast charge and wild impact. I hate PVP (in any game), so if that's all beast charge is good for, then I guess it's out... which leaves me wondering how much you actually need wild impact. The OP maxes it, which only brings down the cooldown, suggesting he thinks it's quite valuable. I guess it's used when adds are harassing your healer/DPS party members and you need to give them a breather and start to collect threat on all of them? Anyone who tried it care to comment on how much it's needed?

Currently I have this planned:
http://ro2base.com/b...1.1.1/0.0.0.0.0



TL;DR:
How much use is wild impact? Can you cut it out? And is beast charge only for PVP?

[Zede]

omg why so many noobs skill Tiger form???its just a skill for runing you can skill so many better skills with this 4 skill points....

[Finraziel]

OMG why so many idiots feel the need to call people noobs? Especially without specifying exactly what would be better then...

[Leokimah]

omg why so many noobs skill Tiger form???its just a skill for runing you can skill so many better skills with this 4 skill points....

omg why so many noobs think that is all tiger form is used for??? It's not like it is used for kiting bosses or anything....

[Aperture]

Ive been using wild impact to gain aggro/threat on adds who spawn near me and melee. A quick HP pot after WI should do the trick. Being able to spam that skill faster, imo is very important for tanking.

Beast charge isnt "only" for pvp. Ive used it many a time for stunning mobs who are threatening the healer.


Going full tank, you should probably not have any attack skills maxed. Pretty much like going full support. Ive thought about cruel bite, for a better heal, as ive also thought about skills like frenzy, which would be super nice to have so you could keep yourself healed by spamming CB and RS. Having a spammable taunt is nice, but it seems at times it doesnt even work correctly, so i duno what ill do with that.

[Finraziel]

Thanks for your insight
Would you say you use beast charge just incidentally or quite often? In other words, would you advice to level it up to lower its cooldown? I'm guessing you'd probably use wild impact more often so 5 in WI and 1 in BC should probably be enough (also because wild impact's cooldown goes down more by leveling it up)... That still leaves enough to max rage smash, wild crush and put 4 in brutal strike.
Do you use taunt to get adds off support team members? Just been using it to pull monsters out of aggro fields and for that the 20 second interval seems fine usually.

[Aperture]

Using beast charge for a gap breacher, or even a pause/break in damage are just a few of the reasons why i keep mine maxed atm. Im like, learning whats good and whats not. So right now im really just messing with skills and figuring out tactics and how the class works before i decide whats actually important. Skills like BC and WI can all be used effectivly at a low skill level, but it takes a long play period to obtain the knowledge of bosses and DNGs, so where you would know and have expectations of when adds are coming, and when a boss rages, ect..

So for the moment, to be safe, i find having BC and WI maxed allows me to make mistakes and not cost my teammates their lives.

Taunting seems alright in most DNGs, but the ghost ship i really seemed to have problems with getting a good taunt on an enemy who was targeting the healer/ranged dps. Multiple times i felt like i had to do taunt the enemy before i would get the threat. So having an 8 sec CD on that def helped out. Sometimes, i didnt even get the threat and they luckily killed the mob before it did any damage to the team, as a whole.

Anyway, im constructing a guide atm, but i dont see it being done to soon. Ive still got a reskill left to mess around before i sit down and figure out whats proper, so for the moment all i can say is use your best judgement. I took the word of most guides on the net for BMs on my first run, and ive reskilled since, and im still hitting hiccups, enough to prevent me from doing my final reskill.

[Canasaurus]

No offense to the OP, but I am not a big fan of his build.

I leveled a BM to 50 here, in iRO2, and searched the internet for information from Korean and SEA servers before resetting my skills to this build: http://www.ro2base.c...1.1.1/0.0.0.0.0

This is a main tank and off-tank (for raids) build. I will try to provide some insights on each Beastmaster skills.

Rage Smash (5): Your main Beast Power builder. You will be spamming it whenever everything else is on cooldown. Even though the damage increase is low per rank, it is recommended that you max this skill in order to maximize your damage and therefore, threat.

Cruel Bite (1): I leave it at lv.1 because the healing doesn't increase per rank, only the damage dealt. The tool tip is misleading as the skill heals 10% of your MAX hp in reality. This means that you will regen approximately 30% of your MAX hp with a fully charged Beast Power. You will not be spamming this skill for damage, only to sustain yourself in case something bad happens, hence why lv.1 is sufficient.

Fury Strike (5): There is a debate about whether Brutal Strike is useless or not. Fury Strike provides 19% less damage at max rank compared to Brutal Strike. However, it has no cooldown and the animation is shorter during its execution. DPS-wise, it is clear that Fury Strike offers more damage because of the lack of cooldown. The only downside of Fury Strike is that it offers no burst damage, which is handy in the Colosseum.

Bear Form (1): As your role is that of a tank, you will never be using this transformation. DPS Beastmasters are lackluster anyway, so you may as well not get this skill at all. However, if you plan on resetting eventually, this form can help you kill quicker while soloing.

Beast Roar (1): BM's Provoke. Even Swordsmans leave their skill at rank 1. 20s cooldown is plenty sufficient. Knowing how provoke works in this game is the key to understand why we leave this skill at 1. (Do your own research here)

Survival (5): Not much to say here, staple BM skill. We make up for our lack of defensive abilities by healing the damage done to us and it can lower the burden to healers by providing some regeneration after a bosses's AoE.

Feral Defense (5): Personally, I have not encountered a need to use this skill yet other than PvP. Using this skill requires communication with your raid group in order not to lose threat during the activation of this skill. You can cancel this stance by right clicking the buff icon on the top right any time. In PvP, it's great at buying time in order for your other skills to refresh. It's hilarious seeing the whole Colosseum attacking you with Feral Defense activated for 0 damage only to find out the round timer is finished by the time the duration is over.

Grizzly Form (5): Must max. You will forever stay in this form pretty much from level 25 onwards. (Unless you're a DPS Beastmaster, in which case I'd kindly ask you to re-roll to another class)

Tiger Form (1): Gimmicky utility skill for your soloing pleasure. Useless in actually combat/dungeon. "Kiting" bosses is usually done when your party turn bad, in which case activating your Guardian or drinking a Wind Potion will have the same effect. 150% movement speed isn't worth 4 of your skill points.

Wild Crush (5): Your other form of building beast power and threat along side Rage Smash. Being a DoT, you will steadily build threat even when you are using other abilities. In PvP, this skill can also keep Assassin/Rogue from hiding because of the ticking damage.

Brutal Strike (0): Don't get this skill. I explained how Fury Strike can deal more damage over time due to its faster animation and lack of cool down. If you want more mathematical proof as to why this skill isn't worth while, search the internet. It's only strong point is its KS potential in PVP.

Beast Tornado (3): I max it to gain as much AoE threat as possible, however little. Beastmasters are just bad at keeping AoE aggro compared to Knights and Warriors.

Frenzy (5): I don't get why people don't max this skill. It's great if you want to gain a burst of threat or heal. Doubling your ability to gain Beast Power enables you to almost cast a 50BP Fury Strike with only 1 use of Wild Crush.

Beast Charge (5*): This is mostly preference. Since the best gear obtainable right now is through PVP, I might as well rank a skill that helps in the Colosseum. Range attackers dominate PVP and Beast Charge is your only gap closer for you to chase those Ranger, Sorcerer, Wizard and Priest (not recommended). Lowering the CD from 60s to 20s effectively makes you a bigger threat in Colosseum. Feel free to move 4 points from this skill to any other skill you may want (such as Tiger Form, Bear Form, Brutal Strike, etc...)

Wild Impact (5): Your AoE CC, stunning 10 targets around you. Useful to control adds and giving a breather to your back line. I suspect this skill to become very useful when WoE comes around. Cooldown value lowers by 20s each rank, making it more worthwhile over other abilities.

Edited by Canasaurus, 29 May 2013 - 06:38 PM.

[Sera]

I started a BM a few days ago, and I agree with a lot of the corrections this build offers over the first one posted. I'm not 100% on the brutal strike/frenzy thing yet, but hard to see a better use of the points and definitely a nicer final build than the first imo.

What did you do for stats btw? 51 str rest agi or 40/40/8?

Edited by Sera, 29 May 2013 - 06:25 PM.

[Canasaurus]

My current stat is 40str/40vit/8agi.

To tell you honestly though, I'm not entirely sure if this was the best thing to do. I'll have to test it out in raids to see if I need more damage to keep threat. I made it to lv.50 agi-less without any trouble though.

To add on to the Fury Strike vs. Brutal Strike debate, ideally you'd want to have both maxed if you want to maximize your DPS. However, you shouldn't sacrifice Rage Smash, Wild Crush or Frenzy for it.

Edited by Canasaurus, 29 May 2013 - 10:29 PM.

[Aperture]

Pretty close to what im doing right now, even stat wise.

Altho, im full tank so all my atk skill are lv1. No trouble keeping threat so far, if i do in raids then maybe ill change it up.

[Sera]

I'm not max level yet, do you have any issues pulling large add groups at all? The skill that's supposed to do it is a little sluggish and I haven't gotten to try it out on anything "real" yet.

[Canasaurus]

For normal dungeons, I haven't had any issues. Going through any dungeon, you will typically grab 3~6 mobs at a time. When there's more than 3 mobs, I will usually attack one until I apply the bleeding effect from Wild Crush and switch to another target in order to grab threat. Using potions can also help you grab aggro on nearby mobs. From what I read, controlling a large number of adds is usually the role of the Warriors or Knights in raid. Together with DPS, they will take them down.

[Aperture]

Wild Impact followed by a larger sized HP potion is what i do to grab threat of more than 3 mobs(up to 10) then i just do BT 3-4 times in and around the area of the 10 mobs to make sure i got em. Eventually, dps will wipe them.

I think WI does a very small amount of threat itself, plus a potion to make sure it safe for dps to attack early. Taunt/Roar every 8/sec if you have it maxed to get the attention of mobs on the healer, and a gap breacher with Beast charge, which stuns and allows the healer to get away if the roar didnt work. Quickly use a potion, and tiger run back away from the party, back towards melee dps. I normally dont need to use tiger form to run back, but i have used it once or twice in tight situations where the ranged dps and healer kinda freaked out at the mobs running towards them(they were aggro'd to me tho) and they backed up almost to far into some other random trashies.

If the ranged dps right next to the healer would notice the healer getting beat up, i would not have to leave my post to gain threat on it, or if Roar would work the way its meant to, or or or or. Meh, we won still.

[Puub]

For normal dungeons, I haven't had any issues. Going through any dungeon, you will typically grab 3~6 mobs at a time.

What is your take on the stat build? Mine is currently str agi. vit. I was thinking of resetting (again) to str vit. As I am a tank build, skill wise I have no issues lving solo. But in pvp I get owned. anything u can think of to help us bears in pvp. I mean, have u seen the list of top bears!? 5 PPL!!!??? I do my best to ks in pvp but that 4m for pvp points is looking further and further away.

[Canasaurus]

40str/40agi/8vit builds are fine for BM. Honestly, the stats you can choose yourself are insignificant compared to the stats you get from gears. Since you get so much vit from equipments, having 40agi can be justified. Don't worry about resetting your stats.

PVP is very harsh for BM. We are the lower if not lowest tier class for Colosseum. I summarized what you should be doing in another thread:

1) Always stay at full health, use potions if you must. No one wants to hit a bear with 15k HP, it takes a lot of effort to take you down.
2) Try to stay at the edge of the map. The middle attracts too much attention and you can get assaulted from all angles.
3) Before 30s has passed (mobs spawn after 30s), TAB switch to find someone with low HP. Once you do, use Beast Charge to gap close and Wild Impact if you must. Then proceed to attempt a kill steal.
4) After 30s, focus on killing mobs. One mob kill is around 50 points, one player kill is around 100 points. Focusing on mobs is a lot easier for Tank classes.
5) This does not mean that you shouldn't go after players however, if you happen to TAB onto a low HP target, by all means go for it.
6) Use Beast Tornado to kill Porings. They can give you +ATK which will turn you into a DPS machine. If you do get the +ATK buff, by all means go 100-0 some squishie classes.
7) Don't chase. Never chase a target that is running, it's a waste of time. Chances are, they'll get sniped by a Ranger before you can get a hit on them.

8) If you somehow got #1, RUN and HIDE in one of the rooms until you rank down. Having a big 1 over your head basically means "Hi guises, kill me!"

Watch this guy, he does it using a Knight. It's very similar for us BMs too.
http://www.twitch.tv/spsdebo/c/2372848