Beorning – LevelingLast updated: U48
Overview
Beornings can be a tank, dps or healer. As you level you’ll mostly use single target and bleeds. You have access to aoe attacks such as relentless maul or claw swipe. As you get more traitpoints you unlock damage boosts and utility skills.
Leveling is generally done in red. Blue and yellow provide survivabilty in either more tanky or (self)heals in yellow. In harder places (such as skirmishes, Deadly + or instances) these can be quite good to outlast the enemies. You’ll rely a lot more on bleeds and cooldown skills then.
How Beorning plays
Beornings switch between Man and Bear form. Man form skills build Wrath, which lets you change into a Bear and use stronger skills that spend it. The class is tough in every line and has good debuffs such as Armour Crush and Bee Swarm. It is fairly easy once you understand Wrath and the form swap, but you need to time your big Wrath skills well.
Choosing a traitline for levelling
Red (Claw) is the damage line and the usual levelling choice. Finishers like Final Strike and Execute deal big damage, Thrash quickly restores Wrath, and bleeds add more. Blue (Hide) is the tank line with a huge morale pool and passive healing. Yellow (Roar) heals the fellowship and is the hardest healer in the game to play, so it is not a starting choice. Blue and yellow are still useful in harder places such as skirmishes, Deadly+ or instances.
Open a colour below for its levelling rating and screenshots of the trait tree at key levels. When you reach endgame, see the full Beorning build guides. Class mechanics summarised from the LOTRO Wiki.
Red (Recommended)
My preferred leveling. . Mobs are dead quickly enough. Execute has been upgraded in the last patch. Clawswipe, thrash, bees and bleeds are my most used attacks
Focussing mostly on extra damage early on with blue mixed in later on
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Blue
Sturdier then red, and an early boost to clawswipe and recuperate. Mostly for duo, deadly or instances i’d say. Otherwise just use redline
Level 20
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50
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Yellow
Would only use yellow leveling in a group setting with another heavy class such as brawler or champion.
Bees, heals and extra morale from blue is how i would build a yellow leveling bear. This is not an instance or well-educated build.