Review of the Bear Shaman . .

For you people new to Conan you will learn that there are 3 direction attacks. Upper left, Middle, and Upper Right. An upper right attack will hit all mobs in front of you within like 2 meters and a 90 degree cone. Some combos have the Upper Right button as the last move before the combo is started so that will follow the same path as a regular Upper Right attack just with all the special goodies of the combo inflicting the debuffs (if any) on all those targets. I find Upper Left to be the weakest attack, with the Middle attack hitting any mob straight in front of you and up to 2 meters back it seems.

Now I should mention that I played a healbot in WoW and am in no way looking forward to playing a healer in any type of raiding or pvp situation. I realize they are extremely helpful and necessary but that **** got old quick. But if you're interested in maybe taking on a healer class the Bear Shaman might be a possible option for you.

I can say that I did indeed take a Tempest of Set to level 9 and it felt as though he was 2x as worse. I'm not sure how much they improve as they get higher level but I wanted to shoot myself with that character. he does have the added advantage of having ranged spells... but heals only go to 5meters so it kinda defeats the purpose IMO.

When two bear shamans get together (though I suspect it the same with any healing classes) in PvE is crazy. Mobs that take like 4 people can be killed easily.

Feats:
The talent trees for the Bear Shaman consist of a generic healing tree (which all healers get), and specifically for Bear Shamans: Wrath and Spirit. Wrath is a physical, damage based tree, whereas Spirit is more of a protection/buffing tree with feats for absorbing damage and such. Full wrath is amazing, seems like spirit isn't very good. But since you have 80 levels you'll be using more than 1 tree, maybe 1.5

Armor/Weapons:
Bear Shamans *can* dual-wield but all the combos can only be done with a 2handed hammer. They also wear Medium or Light Armor. Fatalities with blunt weapons (such as the 2handed hammer) do not produce the head-chopping graphic, mostly just knock-backs with blood squirts on your screen.

Healing as a Bear Shaman:
Bear Shamans like the other two healers get 2 HoTs (Heal over times) and one nuke heal (Not available until level 30). Those are the only 3 heals you get (at least at level 45). The nuke heal is even broken right now, but when its working it puits a 1 minute debuff on everyone affected (within 8 meters I believe) Meaning that particular spell cannot be recasted with effect until the debuff is gone, which will present real challenges for raiding but that's neither here nor there. Bear shamans get their first HoT called Renewal which is an ability, not a spell.

Renewal - You click the button, then melee something to get the ability active, which stays active for 10-15 seconds until you do it again. It seems the harder I hit someone the more I get healed but thats speculation and hasn't been properly tested. I can say though that this ability affects everyone in the party evenly. Ex: If solo I get healed 50 every 2 seconds then everyone in party gets 50 every 2 seconds.

Blood Flow - The second HoT bear shamans get. A cone-based spell (Line of sight matters) that heals for a certain amount and if you have talents in the spirit tree can provide extra useful bonuses. Pro-Tip: Since this is a cone based spell if you are a healer and grouped with another one, face each other with the mob in the middle so your cones hit each other (these spells stack). I know that 1 out of 2 if not 2/2 of the bear shamans spells stack if you're partied with another bear shaman. I just haven't figured out which one it is because I haven't really looked tbh.

Fighting as a Bear Shaman:
Typically you will want to start blood flow right before you charge into a mob (it's HoT remember). while you're running in you will click Renewal and your first combo (if you have it yet) will be Crush Armor. This reduces the enemies armor increasing your damage. From there you will use one of your bleed combos to put another debuff on the mob (keep in mind the bleed combo is kinda pointless for non-boss mobs as you kill the mobs too quickly for it to be effective). From there you might have to reapply blood flow or renewal (or both) and finish him off with something else if you wanna be spontaneous. But thats all you really have to do.


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