With a nod to dear Alamo, I begin this next post on pets. The first which looked at the raven should have taken you up to level 14. At this level, you will get your next pet – the bear! His summoning skill is called Friend of Bears.

On first appearance, one thinks he is a tank. Solid, sturdy fellow with more morale than a raven and he has a nice Taunt ability (Roaring Challenge). Unfortunately, dear bear is not 4 tank. At least not for very long. His aggro-holding skills are mostly non-existent so as soon as you hit the mob with a spell or hit yourself or Mr. Bear with a heal, the mob will run over to attack you.

So if he is not, in fact, 4 tank, what is he 4?

A solid question with a solid answer. He is for support. One of the best uses I’ve found for the bear is as a kind of secondary CC. Say you come up upon a group of 3 mobs. One you can Blinding Flash, one you can set your bear on, one you can handle on your own. When the first is dead, recast Blinding Flash, toss your bear a heal, and kill #2. He dies, kill #3. Voila.

This is not to say the bear can never tank. He can, but in situations where a tank might be handy, I actually find the Raven to be more useful.

Let us imagine you are facing an elite or signature mob in these lower levels where your only options for a pet are the bear and the raven. You can set your bear on the mob while you debuff and start casting. Fine. But, you could also set your raven on the mob who can put his own debuff up and likely have a flank waiting for you when the mob gets close. The bear just does not flank very often, and it’s usually more useful to have a handy heal than it is to have a sub-par tank who loses aggro and has very low mitigation. (We discussed flanking and it’s friendly heal in the post about ravens).

I hate being so negative toward the bear because he’s quite the cute, though fat, creature. I haven’t mentioned his Taunt much yet and this perhaps can help him regain his honor. Although he doesn’t hold aggro for very long when attacking the same mob as you, his taunt can be extremely useful when you need time to either get some distance to kite or when you are desperate enough to need to use Inner Flame (a channeled and small heal you get at level 16). However, even with this Taunt ability, I still think you would likely have been better served by the high frequency of flanks the Raven can provide.

This is simply my own playstyle however, and I tend to play dangerously, courting the low end of the morale bar. If you are more of a defensive player, the bear may work for you. If you keep your dps slow and easy, he will hold the mob for a little while.

At higher levels, the bear has another kind of support use. Rather than serving as another form of CC, he provides another debuff for our arsenal. At level 20, he receives the skill Shatter Arms. This debuff makes the target more vulnerable to ranged and melee attacks. In a raid setting, this debuff can be a great help though you must make judgments about the highest needs of the particular encounter (we’ll get to the benefits of the Eagle later on, but remember that the Raven also provides a passive Shadow mitigation bonus). In a 6-man, if your group is very melee/ranged-heavy, the debuff can help, but it will likely not be a huge difference either way.

The bear’s third skill is Bear Hug. It stuns for 3 seconds and does a small amount of damage – not a game-changing skill by any means.

If you really want to use your bear…

…there are some things you can do to help him out. At level 6 and 8 you received your two pet buffs: Sign of the Wild: Protection and Sign of the Wild: Rage.  I tend to use Rage most often unless traited a certain way to allow both buffs to be present at once (normally, you must choose one). Rage will make your pet’s attacks cause more threat and also make him attack a bit faster. This is good for both the bear and the raven – for the bear, he causes more threat and thus can hold aggro longer; for the raven, he attacks faster and thus can flank more often. However, if you are attacking a mob that hits quite hard or is a signature mob, you may want to buff your pet with Protection. This will help them avoid attacks more often and thus hopefully stay alive longer.

Your bear is the only pet we have that can benefit from delicious treats (this may be because he is the only fat pet we have). Have a cook mix you up some tasty Honey and Oats. The crude version of these tasties is available at level 14 and will increase your bear’s threat even more as well as his armour value and fire/shadow defense.

There are also two traits you can get at this level to help your bear’s abilities. Hardy Bear is acquired upon completion of the level 15 class quest “A Well-ordered Mind”. The other is Beast-lore. You can start earning this one at level 8 by casting Sign of Wild: Rage 60 times a day. Do this for 5 days and you will have this lovely trait.

So then

Think of your pets as added skills available to you. You may find that the raven and the bear have their own places to shine and find yourself dismissing and summoning more than once a play session. This is perfectly normal! Do not get caught up in thinking that the newest is the best. It is not. Do not shelve away your raven and forget about her once you get the bear. You will find she is still very, very useful.

What have we learned then?

Bare is 4 fat.