The dire bear Is overrated

[Giamky]

Absolutely weak, hard to knock out, slow on water, High fall damage

[Cotaks]

If  you use it to gather honey, then suddenly it's the best mount ingame.

I mean 15 honey per hive, and you won't get attacked if you are riding it.

[Cinnamongod]

Also the rating of a creature is not based on a newly tamed one but a well breed one.

[Pipinghot]

13 hours ago, Giamky said:

Absolutely weak, hard to knock out, slow on water, High fall damage

They do have problems, like getting stuck on every pebble on the map, but if your dire bear is "absolutely weak" then you tamed the wrong bear. A good bear wrecks things.

[CervantesMor]

13 hours ago, Cotaks said:

If  you use it to gather honey, then suddenly it's the best mount ingame.

I mean 15 honey per hive, and you won't get attacked if you are riding it.

this (Honey and bee immunity) + excellent collector of Organic Polymer + provides some thermal insulation (like Megatherium) + what Pipinghot said

1 hour ago, Pipinghot said:

They do have problems, like getting stuck on every pebble on the map, but if your dire bear is "absolutely weak" then you tamed the wrong bear. A good bear wrecks things.

 

[Rocker323]

The ability to get 15 honey and not have to worry about the bees is huge. It kickstarts the process to getting snails as early as possible.

 

Decent saddle bps drop often. 

Their ability to be beats of burden is HUGE. But the hidden ability? One of the rare Dino’s of its size that lets you dismount and be standing on its back. Now with mods and infinite carry weight perhaps this doesn’t matter but on official rates it essentially allows you to “move” around a base with 2k carry weight.

 

Would take it over a Thyla any day if we are taking into consideration the cost/time to tame and what kibble is needed. Only a Bary compares to a Direbear for the mid game.

[St1ckyBandit]

Who ever said bears were good anyway? They have one purpose, getting honey. 

[SunsetErosion]

23 hours ago, Giamky said:

Absolutely weak, hard to knock out, slow on water, High fall damage

Bears are generally lazy creatures. But they are pretty strong as fighters. But they dont have good attacks in Ark. I think they would at least deserve a AOE swipe or something. Just with the bite is not representitive as a Bear. Thats what I think. They are not THAT lazy fighters...

[CervantesMor]

15 hours ago, SunsetErosion said:

Bears are generally lazy creatures. But they are pretty strong as fighters. But they dont have good attacks in Ark. I think they would at least deserve a AOE swipe or something. Just with the bite is not representitive as a Bear. Thats what I think. They are not THAT lazy fighters...

...not exactly: the bear's attack is among the highest in the game although it is true that its AOE is practically zero and the DPS can be overcome by other creatures with greater base health and therefore with more points added in % of damage instead of health, in fact its flaw is very low basic health, but if we talk about pure damage:

50 PRIMARY ATTACK

65 SECONDARY ATTACK

[Countrydude89]

I think the biggest issue overall concerning creatures, is expecting every single tame, to be good at every single thing. Not every creature needs to be some OP powerhouse wreckingball that destroys everything on site while doing the hula in drag. Some do things amazingly, while being piss poor at others. Its called balance.

 

 

I seriously think more folks would be happier with the tames, if they reel in their expectations, and use the critters for the purpose they were made for. 

[KingOfAshes]

Bears are a solid mid tier tame and if anything they're underrated imo. They shine more in Aberration , no pun intended. Their only issue is movement were they rely on building up speed but get stuck on terrain too easily. Also their animations are way too simplistic and boring, so they don't look cool enough and ferocious. High lvl dire bear saddles BPs have also always seemed amongst the more common ones to find. 

Edited November 17, 2023 by KingOfAshes

[GrumpyBear]

Dire bears are stronger than a spinosaurus on single attack damage.  That’s for both main and alternate attack.

 

they are totally squishy, but once you get north of 4k Hp caught and melee over 400% bred together they become monsters.

[Rashawn]

If you tame a couple good bears and breed them properly they can easily become a powerhouse. They definitely serve the purpose of getting honey though so this would be one of those "eye of the beholder" things. I think they are great.

[SunsetErosion]

11 hours ago, CervantesMor said:

...not exactly: the bear's attack is among the highest in the game although it is true that its AOE is practically zero and the DPS can be overcome by other creatures with greater base health and therefore with more points added in % of damage instead of health, in fact its flaw is very low basic health, but if we talk about pure damage:

Yes, I made a mistake. I know the bear is really powerful. Despite their "low" HP, I always see them destroy whole packs of Raptors and Terrorbirds...
Its just that how they fight looks so lazy. They just stand there and bite... But I guess thats just Ark. But I forgot about the Swipe, that has decent AOE. Though its mobility is still insanely handicapped. But also a LOT of Ark creatures have mobile disfunctionalities...

[sjskdjkfa]

On 11/16/2023 at 4:42 AM, St1ckyBandit said:

Who ever said bears were good anyway? They have one purpose, getting honey. 

Well, I for one have been told on occasion they are decent mounts. And if that is their purpose then it'd be nice if they survived long enough to fulfill it, not everyone wants to put a tame in a cryopod and only pull it for a single job.

Now for my anecdotal two cents. One of the few times I bothered to tame one myself, I kind of wanted to see what it could do so after leveling hp and melee with some notes, and going and getting my apprentice saddle from a box (which is what inspired the tame in the first place as I usually skip this tame)... I proceeded to take him into more and more dangerous situations culminating in him dying - if I recall correctly to a low level alpha raptor and a few other nasties in the swamp. At first I was very impressed with it, of course the death was not so impressive. It kind of left a sour taste in my mouth, and THUS to this day I've never even used one to get honey LOL.

[DrSmithDVM]

Dire bears are my first choice for taming an easy and early combat mount and Alpha Raptor killer on The Island. Gotta learn to dismount to avoid fall damage and tranqing one out with arrows just takes a little finesse to not kill it.

[UnethicalOctopus]

Last time I was on abberation I snagged a 120+ bear in a trap as pretty much my first mount. That netted me a spino a little later. Used that bear quite a bit. Never for honey.

Edited November 18, 2023 by UnethicalOctopus

[Brexit2023]

The bear is fantastic as you can jump of a cliff while on it and dismount midair and you stay on bears back and both you and bear get no damage

[Pipinghot]

On 11/15/2023 at 10:23 AM, Giamky said:

...High fall damage

I didn't notice this part the first time, all standard dinos take high fall damage, which is the majority of dinos in the game. Learning how & when to dismount in order to avoid falling damage is just one of those skills that every player needs to learn. Spinos, rexes, theris, gigas, the list goes on, lots of mounts that "everybody likes" take falling damage. I don't mean for this to sound like I'm attacking you, my goal here is to help you get to understand the game better, it's important for the player to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their mount which is part of the learning curve of the game.

This doesn't mean I'm telling you that you have to like dire bears, they are useful and powerful in some scenarios and have weaknesses in other scenarios. You might become an expert dire bear rider and still not like them, which is fair, I'm not trying to tell you what you should like or dislike, it's just that from what you posted at the beginning of this thread is just sounds like you don't really understand them yet.

[St1ckyBandit]

On 11/17/2023 at 2:28 PM, sjskdjkfa said:

Well, I for one have been told on occasion they are decent mounts. And if that is their purpose then it'd be nice if they survived long enough to fulfill it, not everyone wants to put a tame in a cryopod and only pull it for a single job.

Now for my anecdotal two cents. One of the few times I bothered to tame one myself, I kind of wanted to see what it could do so after leveling hp and melee with some notes, and going and getting my apprentice saddle from a box (which is what inspired the tame in the first place as I usually skip this tame)... I proceeded to take him into more and more dangerous situations culminating in him dying - if I recall correctly to a low level alpha raptor and a few other nasties in the swamp. At first I was very impressed with it, of course the death was not so impressive. It kind of left a sour taste in my mouth, and THUS to this day I've never even used one to get honey LOL.

Decent mounts for what? Certainly not travel.

Combat mounts? Whats the point? There are many other options that do that same job but better and are much easier to move around on.

I don't really see the logic in your cryopod example either as Ark is full of dinos that have 1 job (doeds, ankys, beavers, anglers, stegos etc) and when they arent doing that job, they sit in their cryopods.

And even their honey gathering is borderline inconsequential when you can just pop bug spray and wear ghillie to accomplish the same task on foot, albeit at a lower harvest amount.

That concludes my rant against bears.

[sjskdjkfa]

32 minutes ago, St1ckyBandit said:

they sit in their cryopods

this is one of the main things that killed og ark in my honest opinion. It's why the beginner servers were like crack to me lol, which is where i tamed my few direbears btw

 

On 11/15/2023 at 8:23 AM, Giamky said:

, hard to knock out,

I had implied in my previous post I only tamed the one but thinking back I'm remembering taming one in a trap and taming one out in the open. I actually have a fonder memory of taming the one in the open cause trap taming is all the same, where as that direbear flying around the red woods like a bat outa hell was somethin else lol

[KingOfAshes]

With a lvl45 easy to craft saddle requirement, it's still a solid all round early tame able to also harvest both meat, berries and early honeyX3 ( a bit rare to get access to gillie and bug spray this early) and lastly shooting while riding. I'll stand by the point that it's the animations that let it down for movement&fighting

[Qwertymine]

On 11/15/2023 at 9:23 AM, Giamky said:

Absolutely weak

Fairly strong mount, on the higher side when compared to most other creatures in ASA at the moment, and nothing to scoff at back in ASE.

On 11/15/2023 at 9:23 AM, Giamky said:

hard to knock out

Not really. Their low health compared to torpor can be hard to deal with, but Tranq Guns make pretty short work of them and Crossbows can KO ones with higher health. 

On 11/15/2023 at 9:23 AM, Giamky said:

slow on water

Hardly the worst downside in the game, considering most small/medium creatures don't have very notable water speed.

On 11/15/2023 at 9:23 AM, Giamky said:

High fall damage

Most creatures take the same amount of fall damage, this is not something the Bear alone suffers from. Even when the Giga used to Rage from fall damage it was rare because most people have learned to jump off their mount to avoid fall damage.