Bear

The Bear is the first pet obtained by a Lore-master, at level 1. It has the same level as the Lore-master itself and is summoned with Friend of Bears.

It was originally designed to play the role of a tank, possessing superior durability. These days, it is mostly used in groups for its Shatter Arms skill, which increases the DPS of a group with many ranged and melee damage classes greatly. The bear also has a high personal damage output from auto-attacks.

However, a bear sometimes still can be useful as a tank. A fully traited and fed bear has very high mitigation stats, making it about as survivable as a tanking class. It has more morale and is not affected by dread. The bear's Roaring Challenge copies the threat table and multiplies it with an unknown number, putting the bear on top of the threat list. If needed, Burglar and Champion players can help the bear keep aggro by using aggro transfer skills (Provoke for Burglar; Ebbing Ire for Champion). There are two advantages of using a bear tank above a normal tank in a group setting. The first is that you can fill in the spot in the group that would have been used for a tank with a player of another role, such as DPS, healer or crowd-controller. The second is that, under some circumstances, a bear is more survivable than a player tank due to being immune to specific mechanics. The downside of having a bear tank is that it is hard to control its positioning and movement.

Soloing Lore-masters can use the bear to keep the heat off them. Although Lore-masters are no longer able to transfer threat to the bear with Inner Flame, a strategy of crowd-control and resummoning can be used to keep aggro on the bear: when resummoned, Roaring Challenge is off cooldown.

The bear has the highest flank rate of all the Lore-master's pets (source: https://forums-old.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?659502-Comprehensive-Pet-Guide).

Skills

The last three skills on the Bear's Skill Bar are:

Bear Hug: Stuns target and deals damage
Roaring Challenge: Forces target to attack bear
Shatter Arms: Increases target's incoming melee and ranged damage and deals damage

Traits

The trait set bonuses Bolstered Bond and Tutelage of the Brown Wizard enhance the Lore-master's companion by improving its morale, power, attack speed, damage, critical chance, block, parry and evade chance, stealth and stealth detection, as well as granting it immunity to knockbacks.

Effects

Auto-attacks have a chance to activate Flanked! on an enemy target.
Auto-attacks from the rear have a chance to activate Harried! on an enemy target.

Pet Food

A Bear can eat Pots of Honey & Oats to temporarily increase its combat effectiveness. Pots of Crude Honey and Oats can be bought at any Lore-master class trainer, but higher-level varieties must be crafted by a Cook.

Pot of Crude Honey and Oats (Level 14)
Pot of Honey and Oats (Level 24)
Pot of Smooth Honey and Oats (Level 35)
Pot of Tasty Honey and Oats (Level 45)
Pot of Delicious Honey and Oats (Level 55)
Pot of Sweet Honey and Oats (Level 65)
Pot of Scrumptious Honey and Oats (Level 75)

Ranged Item

A Lore-master can equip a brooch in their ranged slot that grants their pet one of the following:

Up to 656 critical rating, 1156 morale and 997 power;
Up to 630 in-combat morale regeneration, 8000 evade rating, 1156 morale and 997 power.

Appearances

A Lore-master has the ability to learn skills that change the appearance of their pet by consuming talismans. These talismans are crafted by Jewellers or can be purchased at the LOTRO Store.