Are Maul Bears PvP viable?

[Lycanthronick]

Focusing on malee PvP, is a Maul Bear with a 6 frame attack (the max it think) viable? If he maxes Bear, Lycanth, HoW and Maul, he would likely 1-2 hit kill many people. And his initial 6 frame attack is faster then 75555 zeal's initial hit. Smite of course would wreck a Mauler.

If you could pull a 6 frame attack with max block and 50%dr, would this charicter kill anyone who knew what they are doing? IE: Barbs, Wolves, WW Sins, Zeal, Charge?

Damage on one hit of Maul before Hell/Dr modifiers would be astronomical, far far beyond that reachable by Fury. But is Maul just too slow to ever be PvP viable?

[Verashiden]

Maul can hit 5 or 4 frame IIRC. Also, Maul can be viable. It takes ALOT of gear though to compensate Maul's horrid AR.

[aznbboi16]

Maul isn't as powerful as you make it sound, especially if you are using a weapon that reaches the 4 or 5 frame speed.

I personally don't think a maul bear will compete with any of the builds you've listed who know what they're doing, but it could be fun. The biggest drawbacks to the maul bear are the hit recovery, block rate, and interruptible attack. The damage isn't that great when using fast weapons and the defense/ar are underwhelming, so the only thing really going for the bear is it's high life.

And a correction to your frames: Most zealots hit 8/4/4/4/4 frame attacks, but they are uninterruptible. Being faster than their first frame is hardly an advantage. Of the builds listed, I'd say you have the best chance against a fury wolf.

It will be an expensive build, yet still struggle to compete.

[Lycanthronick]

I did some research on the wereform calculator here http://home.comcast.net/~thedragoon/wereformadvanced.html and found that 4 frame Maul is indeed possible, but you would have to use a 5 Shael+15ias/ed jewel in a Phase Blade to reach it. This would nuke your damage and fireclaw is definatly more effective at those speeds.

You can reach 6 frame Maul with a Botd Phase Blade and 20 off weapon ias.
6 frame Maul with noneth Tombreaver with 3 Shaels and 35 off weapon ias.
6 frame Maul with Azurewrath with a 15ias ed jewel and 15 off weapon ias.
6 frame Maul with Oath Phase Blade and 15 off weapon ias.

While this may be cool for PvM, I will answer my own question that I just don't see Maul being viable vs capable pvp'ers. You could definatly down some public players and that would be funny tho. :tongue:

Fireclaw is just the only viable pvp Bear option and that sucks. So expensive. :sad2:

[nickedoff]

Never tried one in HLD, but they kick *** in LLD...six shael'd naga, damage jewel/life armor, damage jewel helmet, whitstans, et cetera.

[superjayson]

a gris caddy with +3 40/15 jewels + shael is about as much damage as an ebotd pb and 5-frames.

Maulers can pvp but its a downhill battle. They are quite expensive as well, more so than an FC Druid.

I have a pretty good kodiak bear, but he didnt fare so well in PvP so I just used him for DvD duels which was alot more fun.

[MrGoth]

The only really good thing about a mauler in pvp is that you can laugh at hammeradins. A maulers hit points will be up there with really good barbs and wolfs without using perfect +hp gear/charms. But if you do use perfect +hp gear/charms, then you can literally walk threw a hammerfield and you probably wont go into hit recovery or flinch much.

And even though you can do that with a handful of other characters, maulers naturally have shockwave at hotkeyed, so something like a summoner is also bumfuzzled {as long as they don't have a second offense}.

[Lycanthronick]

What gear would I need to make highlvl pvp Maulbear viable? I would imagine something like this...

110ias Phase using 2 ed/15ias jewels
Ber'ed Stormshield (switch to Pheonix Mon vs Casters/Smiters/Hammers?)
Fort
Dungos
Bloodfists or Dracs?
Gore Riders or Treks or Waterwalks?
Angelic Amulet/Ring (to compensate for lack of ar?)
RFrost
Jalals? Cerebus?
max/ar/life mod'ed charms or SS lifers/fhr?

[MrGoth]

I would suggest something like this;

A few weapons {keep all in stash}
~110%ias phase with 30% res all, and a second 110%ias phase with 80%ed in a 15%ed superior phase blade
~tweaked out griz caddy for when you can afford to attack slower but need more damage
~greif phase blade or ebotd zerker when you really need damage and speed doesnt matter.
~2handed x of crazy speed {eth tomb reaver comes to mind, possibly sacrifice etheral for the zod to give more speed}.

Now that the weapons are out of the way, deeply consider if you want an all around dueler or someone focused on only melee.

Go with either jalas + storm, or coa + crazy block shield with alot of shield switches {sanctuary for casters, whistans, ect}.

Also alot of jewelery switches for specific duels {absorb setups, angelics, prebuff +skill stuff like +3 shifting & +2maras for cta, but you will most likely want a ravenfrost on at all times}.

For dueling casters, shifting gc's with +hp and +res all/frw sc's are best, but for melee, max/ar/hp are best, and its impossible to keep both setups in your stash if your going to keep all of the switching gear in your stash too, so you will have to compinsate.

Fort is good for some melee, but the damage is iffy, i'm not sure how it will work with maul. Definatly keep a coh in stash for stacking res & prebuffing. Possibly a shaft stop for the 2 hander when you duel smiters.


Of all the gear, the only specific items that I can suggest that you will most likely want to keep on at all times would be like bloodfist and verdungos and gore riders {even then you might want to use t-gods or hotspur for resistance...}




Maybe a good mauler would be more viable if you had 3x the stash space.

[aznbboi16]

The only really good thing about a mauler in pvp is that you can laugh at hammeradins. A maulers hit points will be up there with really good barbs and wolfs without using perfect +hp gear/charms. But if you do use perfect +hp gear/charms, then you can literally walk threw a hammerfield and you probably wont go into hit recovery or flinch much.

And even though you can do that with a handful of other characters, maulers naturally have shockwave at hotkeyed, so something like a summoner is also bumfuzzled {as long as they don't have a second offense}.
This is simply wrong. Yes a mauler can have a good amount of life, but I would disagree that "you can literally walk threw a hammerfield" and not "flinch much."

I assure you, unless you have 18k life, you will be put in hit recovery by most hammerdins. Anything that does more than 1/12 of your maximum life will put you in hit recovery.

[Lycanthronick]

What about using unsynergized fireclaws after charging Maul, to compensate for the lack of ar?

Build something like...

20 Maul
20 Bear
20 Lycanth
1-10 Fireclaw
Rest in Oak

The idea is that you use Maul to charge up your phys damage then switch to Fireclaw for the ar. Could charge up on minions/monsters. Would this work? I'm thinking of going with full Shael'ed Griz Caddy to balence speed and damage.

[Verashiden]

You could, in fact I think a lot of people did it in the past. Problem is you still ned to hit five times with Maul before switching for maximum effect and those five hits will STILL take forever to connect.

[Jary]

There's only one good Mauler build, and that's the Kodiak build:

-jeweled Griz Caddy or w/ 'Lo' for 6 frames (azurewrath comes in 2nd)
-Fort
-dracs
-dungos
-SS
-Cerebrus

Phase blade does absolutely jack sh#@.

High lvl character with open wounds and the high lvl stun w/ speed from maul evens the score and makes this build work. 1 point in shockwave is there when needed. If you build your char perfect and know who you can and can't mess with, you'll still have a lot of fun dueling