Talk:Bear Club for Women

Is this the first time GW actually paid any attention to your gender? --StelardActek


 * No, Student Jin and a few other quests also change slightly based on gender. This one is definitely more obvious than any of the past though. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 22:59, 8 September 2007 (CDT)

so this one is for female character only? I wonder what quest you will get if you play as a male character

Male chars do Bear Club for Men which you get from Olrun Olafdottir in Varajar Fells.

walkthrough plz this quest is driving me up the wall

Fun fact: You don't have to kill the bear with the club. I killed it using a dagger build and then I switched to the club during the wait and the quest updated anyways as if I had killed the bear with the club Ekrin 01:52, 1 September 2007 (CDT)

I dont know how to make templates but as a warrior I killed the bear with: 13 strength, 16 hammer, enraged smash, flail, dolyak signet, "For Great justice" and lions comfort (the rest were just random adrenal skills to fuel enraged smash. You shouldnt use anything but the skills I mentioned, just leave the other skills nice and charged. It takes quite long but it's easy. Good luck!

Lovely. Is this quest even possible for those of a ele primary who haven't spent oodles on useless (for them, normally) warrior skills? Not having fun, either dying in 15 seconds, or living forever with my earth spells, but completely unable to damage the stupid thing.

For ele: I did it with Meteor Shower, bed if Coals, Mystic Regeneration, Flame Djinn's Haste, "You move like a dwarf",Phoenix, and Ursan Blessing (level 3). Took a few minutes but worked. Watch out for the Troll urguent and try to interput it with Ursan' knock down or "You move like a dwarf." Mystic Witch

The weapon switching "after" u killed the bear is not working anymore For ele, just keep blinding the bear, and bring skills that can interupt bear's troll unguent(like psychic distraction, or bring a bow for distracting shot then switch back to the club) For ppl who dont have enraged smash, this is my war build to kill the bear(but u do need a high level pet) Warrior's Endurance, Poisonous Bite, Disrupting Lunge, Feral Lunge, Predatory Bond,Feral Aggresion, Doylak Signet 222.152.146.181 19:53, 3 September 2007 (CDT)

Hah, in the Preview Weekend the "Rabid Bear" dealt like 10 or less damage each attack to my Ranger using Druid'd Armor (70AL). I thought he was rather easy for a Level 20 Monster. Guess ANet changed this in the real release, oh well. (T/C) 19:55, 3 September 2007 (CDT)

I found a way for anyone to beat the bear. Use Ursan Blessing-elite skill, and keep kiting with Ursan force. Keep spamming Ursan Strike from range. When Bear uses Dolyak Signet, you can kite nearly forever with Ursan Force, and keep DPS up with Ursan Strike. At the time when Bear is on low hp, you can get to melee, and spam Ursan Strike and Ursan Rage. Remember to wait enough time to bring bear's hp down, because when kiting the bears adrenaline gain is minimal, and it cant use Defy Pain well.
 * Nice try, but the area is not large enough for kiting. Before you say this works for everyone, please actually try it on all characters. Maybe this works, for example, on warriors, but it does not work on monks.

A nice build to defeat the bear as a Dervish primary: go ranger secondary and bring Avatar of Lyssa, Eternal Aura, "I Am The Strongest!", Ear Bite, Apply Poison, Mystic Regeneration, Heart of Fury and Shield of Force, and the bear will go down fairly easily even with the club. --Bonjela 08:23, 5 September 2007 (CDT) This Dervish build works quite well. Just keep degening and keep your health up. Takes about 8 minutes.

The Rabid Bear actually has skills now? o_O Well that explains a lot... (T/C) 00:22, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

Besides that the bear has skills, it has health regeneration and permanent halved skill activation and recharge as well. Basically, it's a HM boss. After noticing that as an elementalist I couldn't outdamage the healing neither consistently interrupt fast cast Troll Unguent (I think that I whittled the HP down to about 25% in 10 minutes before hitting a brick wall - the bear would concentrate on healing himself and whatever progress I made would be instantly negated when I had to recast enchantments that kept me alive) I got fed up and loaded my E/Rt anti-Bison spirit pooper build. The bear dropped in 5 seconds and I claimed my reward, cursing stupid quest designers who force people to use stupid builds--Tmakinen 01:46, 7 September 2007 (CDT)

This quest is a pain for melee characters since you now must be holding the club when the bear dies. But with no investment in hammer mastery, the club only does about 2 damage to the bear when it doesn't have Dolyak Signet or Defy Pain up, and Troll Unguent can easily outpace the club damage. It seems about the only viable option is to try to keep the bear perpetually blind or crippled so it can't build up adrenaline for Defy Pain, and degen it to death, which will require stacking conditions or hexes that can overcome its natural regeneration plus Troll Unguent. I'm with you Tmakinen -- why are all these solo quests seemingly designed to force us to use a spirit spammer build? I thought just figuring out how to kill the bear was a fun challenge -- finding out it had to be done with the club in hand ruined that. -- bcstingg (talk • contribs) 14:22, 7 September 2007 (CDT)

Can't you just do Weapon Swap right before it dies? Or use non-weapon-specific skills? Or spells etc? It shouldn't be too hard to get around the Club's low damage with a decent build anyways, for a Warrior or Assassin...Azn, you can run a full Deadly Arts/Shadow Arts build. War, you can get enough damage through Attack skills I'm thinking...And, how about using Beastmastery? I dunno though, if people are having so much trouble I'll need to get some other char and test this again for myself. Hopefully, this quest won't become so hard that we need to add dumb Strategy notes and stuff... (T/C) 17:31, 8 September 2007 (CDT)
 * You can do a weapon swap right before it dies, as long as you have enough degen on it to overcome its natural regen, it doesn't use Troll Unguent or you interrupt it, and it doesn't use Defy Pain. It's certainly not impossible, but it's very tricky. I left a note about this on Linsey's talk page on the official wiki, and she did not intend the natural regen. I think the simple removal of that, even with no other changes, would restore this to difficult without being frustrating. -- bcstingg (talk • contribs) 09:40, 10 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Beastmastery does indeed work. Even though I lack the majority of those skills, I was able to beat him into submission using basic skills including disrupting lunge, throw dirt and never rampage alone. I suppose I would have ended up with more than 200 health if I had more choice in that matter, but I did not want to go buying skills for one quest. -- Yu 18:32, 10 September 2007 (CDT)

The bear does not become an enemy until you step a bit a ways into the ring, so I decided to switch to the standard echo trapper build on my ranger when I did this mission. Was a bit difficult finding the right way to lay the traps(ended up using the rocks to the left as a sort of wall), but the traps took care of the bear pretty easily once I had everything down. It can take more punishment than an Aatxe though =.= 68.13.199.181 22:20, 9 September 2007 (CDT)


 * I wonder if that means you could cast something like Life Attunement on it, the same way you can for some other solo quests. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 22:22, 9 September 2007 (CDT)

Ranger primary, took Ritualist secondary and put 12 in channeling, 12 in communing. Carried +27 energy/-1 energy regen offhand and a Totem Axe. Before aggroing the bear, cast Pain, Bloodsong, Vampirism, Anguish, and Agony. Switched to the club, walked in and aggroed the bear. Cast Painful Bond on the Bear, Nightmare Weapon on myself. Between Nightmare Weapon and the spirits, took the bear down in under 30 seconds. Should work for any primary -- just get an offhand with +27 energy, primary weapon with +5 energy, load up on the spirits, and have at it. Wajones67 21:21, 19 September 2007 (CDT)

How much 'natural regen' does this thing have? I had it bleeding, poisoned, and diseased, and STILL it's health didn't go down.. so that's -11 degen (capped to -10). I'm starting to REALLY HATE this quest.. no matter what I do I just can't kill the damn thing. P.hilling 15:07, 20 September 2007 (CDT)

As a necro, I beat it easily by stacking Spiteful Spirit, Insidious Parasite, and Pain Inverter, plus Enfeeble to keep it from doing me much harm, and Signet of Lost Souls for extra health and energy boosts. Copperthorn 06:52, 21 September 2007 (CDT)

I just used a solo trapping build (Arcane Echo, Echo and Dust trap) with the usual trapping spirits and barbed trap for the heck of it i killed the bear in less than 6 seconds. It's fun when you see something like an Ataaxe die in 5 secs.

I spent an hour fighting a war of attrition using my Warrior, never being able to finish him off because of his defy pain signet and troll unguent. Then I took Ursan Blessing and took him down in a few minutes (I had 8HP left!)

Incredibly easy as a Warrior primary. I set Hammer Mastery to 14, wielded the club, and used Ursan Blessing (Norn rank 4). Just pound on the bear until it dies, which doesn't take long. Dixon, 27 September 2007

This strategy for Ranger primary worked on the first try: Get the club, map out, customize the club, and restart. I set Hammer Mastery to 12, I equipped Apply Poison and Ursan Blessing, and brought my level 20 pet and Call of Protection. I used Apply Poison and COP, entered the ring and activated Ursan Force. The bear ignored my pet so I got free damage from it. The hammer and Ursan skills did the rest. Dixon, 29 September 2007

I used a touch ranger build. Originally I used my 2 touch health steals, plus blind and whirling, but I realized blind and whirling were useless. All I needed? 12 expertise, 12 blood magic, vamp touch, vamp bite, and offering of blood. He didn't hit me for much damage, and what he hit me for was negated. Took FOREVER but it still worked. Just make sure you have the club equipped. 74.67.244.214 06:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I ended up using 3 skills on my bar as an E/N (mostly because I made a mistake) -- SS, Insidious Parasite, and Ear Bite -- don't really even need Ear Bite, but the degen makes it faster. Curses and Energy Storage up at 12 and it goes down. 71.146.90.229 07:34, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Solo Quest
This is a solo quest. you can't have hero's/hench in your party, and if you do they'll be removed when you do the quest. Also you do not accumulate DP on this quest. If you fail, you are warped back to the outpost, which automatically removes your DP, before you try again. For these two reason's, I changed the last edit on the page to remove both these incorrect facts. P.hilling 02:33, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Weapon swapping doesn't work
I just tried fighting the bear by mostly killing it with a sword, then switching to the club shortly before it died. Even though I switched several seconds before the bear died, the game said the quest failed.

On my warrior, it was easy enough to just switch to a hammer build with a couple interrupts and kill it (though I had to get the critter well below 0 health several times before it finally died), but some martial weapon classes won't have that option. Quizzical 00:57, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Upon further review, weapon swapping can work, but it takes a while for the game to realize you've swapped weapons, so you have to give it adequate lead time. If you switch to the club a couple seconds before the bear dies, the quest will fail.  Quizzical 02:46, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Any/R
Although this is any/R, my method does necessitate PvE skills. But when done right, it is very easy (and it took me a few runs to tweak the build to this).

The skills I used are:

Apply Poison, Ursan Blessing (I'm rank 5), Black Powder Mine, Radiation Field, and Trolls Unguent (with the obvious max Wilderness survival)

So, what I did, was lay two black powder mines on either side of the entrance (by each of the side rocks), and used Apply Poison* and Trolls just before aggroing the rabid bear (I had the hammer equpped, too). When he ran to me, I used radiation Field, and immediately used Ursan Blessing to damage him, with intermittent attacks to poison him. After blind from the trap wears down, I waited for about 3 hits, then moved to the other trap. (This prevents him from gaining adrenaline) I continued to attack him, and from there, it was just brute force. I had plenty of HP to have enough time to kill him.


 * I found that poison does cause negative degen on him, however slow it is.

Mesmer build
It's probably not the best build, but it worked for me (I am just Slayer of Giants (4)). Since we have to wear the club, we don't have the energy bonuses our usual weapons give us. So at least I upgraded the club with a "I have the power!" inscription. I was secondary Ritualist and my attributes - 9 Fast Casting, 14 Illusion Magic, 13 Domination Magic. Here's the build: The other spells I've brought are: Conjure Phantasm and Mental Block. Maybe someone will find this build useful. The Masquerader 13:38, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Vampirism (Sunspear skill) (it was the only healing element)
 * Ineptitude (dealt damage & blinded the bear)
 * Cry of Frustration (interrupt the Troll Unguent and dealt some damage)
 * Cry of Pain (Sunspear skill) (same as above)
 * Soothing Images (prevented the bear from gaining adrenaline)

My build (mesmer/necro/vanguard): 1 Signet of Illusions, 2 Insidious Parasite, 3 Enfeeble, 4 Auspicious Incantation, 5 Soothing Images, 6 Empathy, 7 Barbs, 8 Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support; screen:. Cast in that order and recast things if needed. I used sword and focus and switched to the hammer when the bear had 10% hp left and cast the assassin before who finished him off. Took only one try, my health was always max and it took only a min. --Birchwooda Treehug 09:28, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

You will be teleported to Olrun Olafdottir...
Isn't that a bit of a mistake? Don't you get teleported to Olaf if your character if a female? The Masquerader 13:47, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

How to win as any class
Any class can win just fine using only skills linked to the primary profession. Some of these fall under the category of "well duh", but just for completeness, let's start with the easy ones. Equip the club and use a build relying heavily on:

Warrior: Hammer mastery/strength

Ranger: Beast mastery/expertise

Necromancer: Curses

Elementalist: Probably lots of choices; I used burning and earth stuff

Monk: Smiting/divine favor

Mesmer: Just about anything

Ritualist: Spirit spammer, including shadowsong

The others are harder. You won't do much damage while wielding the hammer. Instead, you have to use a normal weapon, mostly kill the bear, and switch back to the club before finishing it off.

The big complication is that the bear uses defy pain. If you can bring its health down to zero while defy pain is still active, it dies, but this takes quite a spike of damage--and isn't practical to do without wielding a legitimate weapon. Otherwise, you kill it from it losing a bunch of health from defy pain ending, before it can be cast again. Note that if the bear had more than about half of the health that defy pain adds when the skill ends, the skill ending won't kill it, even though the bear's health bar will be completely empty (and indeed, negative). If it has less than that, it dies when defy pain ends.

The strategy is thus to ignore defy pain starting and ending until you get it to just above the threshold at which the end of defy pain will kill the bear. Ease up as necessary to hold steady at that health level, wait for the bear to use defy pain (meaning, the very start of a time period where it is active), and then spike the bear down as fast as you can. Switch to the club before defy pain ends (note that the game sometimes takes several seconds to realize that you've switched weapons, so allow time for this), and then when defy pain ends, the bear dies with you holding the club, so you win.

Assassins can spike damage against single targets pretty well, and thus have a fairly easy time doing this. Dervishes are slower, but have some skills like balthazar's rage or mystic twister that can continue to dish out damage without needing a viable weapon, which can be useful in finishing off the bear. Note also that a number of scythe mastery skills are melee attack skills, rather than scythe attack skills, which makes them useable while wielding a hammer.

Paragons have it the hardest. I'll give the full skill bar I used, as there probably aren't too many fundamentally different tactics that work without relying on non-paragon skills.

13 spear mastery, 11 leadership, 11 command

vampiric spear

Keep Focused Anger up as much of the time as you can. Use the adrenaline from that to spam the next four spear attacks. Use Never Surrender whenever it's available and you're under 3/4 HP. Use Anthem of Envy whenever it is available. Don't use Merciless Spear until the bear is nearly dead, as earlier, it will only waste adrenaline. Toss it in as part of the final spike to try to ensure that defy pain ending really does kill the bear.

Having sufficient energy and health is not much of an issue with this build, allowing you to focus on watching the bear's health bar and trying to time the final spike. Don't try to produce a big spike while Focused Anger is inactive or about to wear off, as it won't work. Instead, just ease up enough to keep the bear's health bar stable until you can activate the skill again. Quizzical 04:18, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

That build for paragon doesn't work at all. I can't go lower than 50% HP. I'm going mad. 83.2.142.155 13:24, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * That build is from July, it worked before the defy pain buff but may not work anymore now. Ezekiel  [Talk]  13:31, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * In my humble opinion... Anet needs to just go back and nerf this TANK BEAR right in the ass because he's actually harder to beat than the Griffon now. Plus it would give them a good excuse to close any of the Ally-Shadowstep exploits.  ...Bonus points if they could add a "+500% dmg against animals" Modifier to that stupid Club just to piss off the ASPCA and let us 1-shot rats and crabs and whatever else when boredom sets in. (which is happening more and more frequently lately) --ilr[[Image:Ilr_d-small.png]](03,Jan.'09)

Well...
After beating on this bastard for over half an hour and "killing" him about 10 times, I finally got completely PISSED about that stupid club and decided to BS the bear. Made a quick trip to Kaineng, grabbed an elite, and got angry. It worked.

I tell ya, it was so gratifying to slaughter the bastard in under 3 minutes after all that trouble. It's also horrifying how much DPS that does --Gimmethegepgun 06:37, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

bah
After Defy Pain got buffed, this got "a bit" harder. >.> Surprised no one mentioned it yet. Couldn't outdamage as an Ele...Fire Magic would go down to single digits for pulsing AoE and other things were simply ineffective because of high armor and Defy Pain, Air didn't get good enough DPS to get around all the defense (well...it MAY have, but the battle would have gone on for like an hour), Earth could last forever but lacked offense, Water...nah. (Mirror of Ice would have been an idea though...?) Didn't have any secondary skills to fall back on. Air was closest to success so I was running typical Dual Attunements Air Spiker, with Blinding Flash and Enervating Charge, but still couldn't kill. The one thing was Troll Unguent - he would undo any progress that I made unless I interrupted it. But because he also gets 1/2 recharge time (I don't know how), he would just cast it again in 5 seconds. And no hard interrupt in the game recharges that fast...

Eventually I took advantage of the fact that I was wielding hammer at melee and came up with some Good Synergy(TM):

You don't even need Blind or Weakness - he does not cause much damage, and AoR heals you enough from your expensive spells. Thanks to Cracked Armor from Lightning Orb, I could now disable Troll Unguent for 20 seconds, and Distracting Strike recharges in 15. So after one interrupt, wait till it recharges, cast Lightning Orb/Hammer once, wait for a little until he casts it again, and interrupt. You can interrupt every single usage of Troll Unguent this way. So as long as you do that, you can win. You may have to use Shock Arrow occasionally to regain energy, as the battle carries on for awhile. (Nice skill for Optional is Deft Strike if you have it, long lasting Bleeding will cancel some of his Health regen)

If you were desperate you could probably still go Ursan or whatever. (T/C) 06:18, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Deft Strike is a ranged attack, so you'd have to weaponswap. And besides, you never thought of trying to melt the bear's face with radiation while you're conveniently shielded from it? --Gimmethegepgun 07:14, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think you can win with just degen. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 18:20, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, you get Radiation Field much later in EotN. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 18:48, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Lies. You can start off with Asuran if you want. I usually leave Norn for last, myself. It's almost as boring as homework. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  18:52, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Imho the canonical order is Vanguard, Norn, Asura. That is also the order of difficulty and decreasing order of fun. Either way I want to know how much regen the bear has exactly, because otherwise I feel dumb. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 18:59, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Either 3 or 5. I bet 3. His Troll is unmatched, I bet he has 20 Wilds in both NM and HM. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  19:03, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Any/Mesmer or Mesmer/Any
220.245.180.137 23:37, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't know how you managed that, because when I tried Empathy at 12 Domination it was never enough damage. Troll Unguent is only 5e and monsters have retarded energy max/regen... [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 01:47, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * ....Confirmed. I tried multiple energy & adrenaline denial skills but energy denial never stopped it from spamming Troll Ungent.  I eventually won by spamming Diversion, Empathy, & Radiation but it still took forever b/c DefyPain is so hard to overcome now... ...Also, Signet of midnight is a waste of an Elite if you already have Sneak Attack. --ilr[[Image:Ilr_d-small.png]]