My Guide to The Whiteout Bear Trap. Alcoth.
OBJECTIVE
I have every expectation that someone in your alliance has talked until they were out of oxygen about what heroes to use during a bear fight, what strategies for troop composition work best, and the like.
This is Alcoth's guide to Bear. Do I know everything? No. Will there be errors? Yes. However, I'm going to write this as though it is the definitive guide. If that offends you, go sit in the bear trap and sulk. Thank you!
Contributions by MARV!, ChiefSittingBull, LadyPantz, Kat, Queen Venoms, Scooby, Taco, MadDog, Snow13 and probably 500 other people over the months. Thank you all.
Bear Details - RALLIES - YOUR RALLY, WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL
Your rally's Heroes
Put the three heroes you have with the most damage (aka lethality) affecting skills at the highest generation, in that order, that you're able. Special weapons are an important part of this equation.
The verbiage in a skill is critical. All troops means every troop in the rally, as opposed to friendly or your troops (or other phrasing). Lean toward All troops skills, even if they have a chance factor.
Look at your own heroes
Look at the ones you have. I'll list what I use in my state below, but also good rally leaders are Ahmose, Lynn, Flint, Molly, or even Zinman is better than Philly. Though most of their special weapons are defensive in nature.
Where I state (avg) below implies a random chance, and this is the average bonus per attack round.
For instance, State 199 is Gen5. I currently use, and their contributing skills. You can skip past these if you like, they're just for reference:
Reina: Contributing skills:
- Assassin's Instinct, "normal" damage +30% all troops
- Shadow Blade, damage + (25%*200%) (avg) lancers by extra attack
- Weapon: Rally troops lethality +15%
Gwen: Contributing Skills:
- Eagle Vision: Enemy damage taken +25%
- Air Dominance: Extra damage + (0.20^100%) (avg) all troops. Enemy damage taken +15% on following attack.
- Blastmaster: + (0.25 * 0.5) (avg) damage increase
- Weapon: Rally troops lethality +15%
Jeronimo (Or Natalia).
Jeronimo:
- Battle Manifesto: Damage up +25%, all troops.
- Swordmentor: Attack up +25% all troops. (Seems to support delivery of lethality)
Natalia:
- Call of the Wild: Damage up +25% all troops.
- Weapon: Rally troops lethality +15%
Curiousity: Why choose Jeronimo over Natalia?
- There is speculation as to this. In my testing the answer isn't clear cut, and is hard to solidly determine based on several factors listed further in this document. But keeping the discussion focused on just these two, there's wording in Jeronimo's ability that states "ahead of the battle" that may imply a bonus before other calculations. He does seem to perform better for me on average. Also, the attack bonus benefit seems to support damage delivery. That's another factor to consider.
HERO GEAR
It's quite simple in this game. Higher is better. If you want to edge yourself up a little on bear, focus on the lethality items first. But ultimately, it's all important. Attention to skills and weapons are most important here.
IMPORTANT: YOU CAN CHANGE HERO GEAR EVEN AFTER A RALLY IS SETUP and JOINABLE. ONCE IT MARCHES, THE HERO GEAR IS LOCKED UNTIL RETURN! This is true for rally leaders but not JOINERS. (they leave your city)
The order of heroes in your rally
I believe the skills trigger in order of the hero from primary slot on. I use the order...
- Reina | Jeronimo | Gwen
...Primarily Reina because of Reina's second skill, Assassin's Instinct, (even though it says "normal" damage which isn't clarified anywhere)
Well, as best I can tell it is just like Jessie, Jasser, Jeronimo's skills, But slightly better (by 5%). That's also why she is still even in gen5 a fantastic rally leader in combat too for damage generation.
So if that's true, then I want that skill to trigger before all other damage types even have an attack chance in the round!
Your rally troop composition
I believe this is universal, but it may vary based on your tech research, war academy research and troop/FC level.
The percentage ratios below are all listed as (xx/yy/zz%). This is (infantry/lancer/marksmen%).
Marksmen are the primary direct damage dealers in the game. They, however, cease to function properly in many cases when they have no support. Crazy Joe is an interesting example of that that I'll go into, in another document.
You want a ratio of troops in your army composition that favors marksmen. There are several schools of thought on this.
- If you are evenly distributed in your research and troop power levels, a level composition is best (34/33/33%). I have found this to be blatantly false. It has never delivered results compared to the following two.
- A marksmen heavy ratio with supporting lancer (mobility) troops. (12/44/44%). This is quite effective. I've seen solid numbers from this. It's also a nice even ratio that works for people with OCD as opposed to....
- My favorite ratio for several reasons. Primarily because I've seen fantastic results with this ratio. (12/19/69%). It seems to have the heaviest marksmen quantity with supporting infantry and lancer minimized to make marksmen function properly. This is my own derivation and I refuse to deviate from the third number. Thanks.
Give them all a try and see what works best for you. #2 and #3 are the most likely.
Troop Tier and FC
The higher the better. These form the foundation of the calculations. Frankly, the better troops the better results. This will be further clarified in an interesting and maybe surprising way below.
Bear Details - RALLIES - RALLY MEMBERS, THE HARD PART
RALly Members. HEROES.
Overview (and a small rant)
People join your rally. They want to benefit, score from it. They should send certain heroes especially at different join phases. This is, for me as a rally leader, a big frustration point. Getting people to join your rally properly is a tall order. Issues range from language barriers to misunderstandings to stubbornness and general lack of caring.
And then you remove people to modify the bonus source, and they get bent out of shape about it. Come to an understanding with your alliance. Set a timeframe to understand documents like this and a date when people will being to be removed from rallies for joining improperly.
Being removed from a rally is not meant to be personal. There's no vendetta against the player joining, they're just trying to get their rally as optimized as possible so it can benefit the most people.
As a joiner reading this, thank you for doing so. Please try to absorb as much as you can and setup your formations accordingly. It will benefit you and every single person in that rally.
HERO Bonus skills - the critical part of proper rally joining
"I'M CONSTANTLY BEING TOLD TO JOIN WITH A HERO 'IN THE LEAD' OR 'IN THE FIRST SLOT'. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN AND WHY?"
When a rally is created, there are four bonus slots available in the rally War screen (partially seen in the image. This is against a terror, but the composition is the same principle).
Tap that yellow button the arrow points to in image (1) and it will open the Rally Bonus Window (2).
Rally Bonus Window
At the top of the window you see the "Rally Captain" block. These are all of the skills your 3 lead heroes offer the expedition (rally). Every one of these triggers based on the individual ability text. Even in bear trap something that "prevents incoming damage" will trigger, though against bear it will do nothing. Which leads me directly to....
Rally Members Section
This is the big takeaway for this section. In the Rally Bonus Window (2), at the bottom you see "Rally Members 0/4". This screen was taken before anyone joined my terror rally, so there are no bonus skills applied.
********If you learn nothing else today, learn this********
The bonus skills in ANY rally, bear or otherwise, are taken from the first four rally joining chief's primary hero's TOP expedition skill in ORDER of skill level.
For instance,
If 5 chiefs join this rally and all send Jessie as their lead hero (number 1 slot) and they skill as follows. First, good for you. Second:
- Chief 1 Jessie, top expedition skill level 5
- Chief 2 Jessie, top expedition skill level 5
- Chief 3 Jessie, top expedition skill level 4
- Chief 4 Jessie, top expedition skill level 5
- Chief 5 Jessie, top expedition skill level 5
Only four skills can be taken. The program looks at all chiefs and iterates as follows:
- Chief 1 will have their skill applied.
- Chief 2 will have their skill applied.
- Chief 3 will have their skill SKIPPED because:
- Chief 4's skill was level 5 (higher) regardless of what skill it is. Chief 4 will have their skill applied
- Chief 5 will have their skill applied.
Why order of joining, and joining with the proper hero in slot one, is so critical for maximizing a rally.
When a rally is created in any part of the game it's immediately able to be joined by anyone for any reason.
Being an effective participant requires recognizing when it is appropriate and not appropriate to join a rally, and how to do so.
For all rallies, but in this discussion for bear trap, if you're going to join and risk being one of the skill bonus sources, you need to be responsible. Your choice will affect the entire rally. The rally leader and all participants will be subject to your success or failure.
Case study:
I put together a rally for a polar terror. The alliance's auto join were setup so most people had the "whatever" option selected, which is fine in that case.
As you can see to the in the image, I'm listed at the top with the "Rally Leader" heroes. That part is irrelevant to this section. Start at Nippon below me (JAPANESE NAME). Skill levels are verified.
- Nippon Man sent Sergei, skill 5
- lorde sent Molly, skill 5
- Papa sent Jessie, skill 4
- Vision sent Lynn, skill 5
- Salsa sent Molly, skill 5
- LadyPants has hers configured to not send heroes. She will be skipped.
- Knez sent Lynn, skill 3
- Kat sent Lynn, skill 5
Continued below...
Why order of joining, and joining with the proper hero in slot one, is so critical for maximizing a rally. (CONTINUED)
...Continued from above
The skills selected were chosen as follows. Remember, the game programming looks at ALL skills available and chooses accordingly. It will change if the criteria or circumstances change. For instance, if someone joins with a skill level 5 after the last person joined with a skill level 4. The bonus rally member skill will change. This is regardless of the other heroes in the rally.
Chosen for our rally, we have:
- Sergey level 5 (from Nippon)
- Molly level 5 (from lorde)
- PAPA WAS SKIPPED BECAUSE HIS SKILL WAS LEVEL 4 AND THE FOLLOWING WAS:
- Lynn level 5 (from Vision)
- Molly level 5 (from Salsa)
- The rest don't have their skill added unless someone above them is removed. That is also important. If you need to change the bonus skill, removing members is currently the only way.
- To avoid being removed send the heroes that are asked for. It's this simple.
NOTE : Even if your hero is 4 star, if its skill is level 5 it will be in the pool for selection against other level 5 skills!
NOTE: RALLY MEMBERS BONUS SKILLS IF CHOSEN WILL STACK. 4 JESSIE SKILLS WILL ALL APPLY.
NOTE: IF YOU HAVE NO OTHER HEROES, A BLUE HERO IS OK TO SEND BUT NEVER EVER AS THE LEAD. The hero will still boost your troops lethality for your army, but not affect the rest of the rally unless you send it in slot one. Then it has the potential to screw everyone.
NOTE: SSR (Mythic) hero weapons DO NOT AFFECT the rally if it is a member joiner leading hero!
WHY SOME HEROES ARE BETTER, AND SOME ARE WORTHLESS IN THE BEAR/HUnTING TRAP
The most important thing in bear trap as a joining rally member is the primary (slot 1) hero's first (top) expedition skill.
And since by now you should know that damage is king in the bear trap, it should come as no surprise to you that those skills should be damage related.
The importance matrix is as follows, numbered from most to least important:
- Damage bonus to all rally members, fixed percentage.
- Damage bonus to all rally members, variable or random percentage.
- Increase damage taken be enemy.
- Everything else. Stuns. bonus health, defense, attack, resource collection. In fact I shouldn't even list them here because they are all inferior to damage for BEAR TRAP.
As this is written, we are on gen5 in state 199, but these principals transfer up and down generations for bear trap. For most rally members they have these heroes fairly well leveled or even maxed ("maxed" is skill level 5, which can be achieved at 4 star).
Preferable heroes in order for joining. First slot of your joining heroes so they qualify for the bonus source skill. Debate if you want, this is my list. Skip those that you don't have for any reason. Expense, difficulty of obtaining, and move on to the next one. Don't be discouraged if something seems unobtainable. This game constantly changes, and what's available also constantly changes:
Bold is an SSR hero (orange). Italic is a SR hero (purple)
- Jessie
- Jasser
- Jeronimo
- Seo-Yoon (Attack bonus to support lethality delivery)
- Reina
- Lynn
- Gwen
- Mia
- Flint/Logan/Greg
NOTE: It is the opinion of many that attack bonus is important. I think that lethality is most important but some testing has revealed that attack bonus seems to support the lethality. Seo-Yoon is a good example of supporting this.
CRITICALLY IMPORTANT: It has been recently revealed that SSR (Mythic) hero random based skills in rally members will not stack with other SSR hero skills. It's not clear if they're skipped or ignored, but it's best to avoid back to back SSR heroes in rally member first slots. SR (purple) first slot expedition skills however, DO stack.
MORE ON THE WORTHLESS ONES
Using your newly found knowledge, can you understand why the heroes listed in the image are not useful in bear trap?
There is nothing attacking you. You don't need to stun them. There's nothing that requires stamina. Patrick gives bonus health, that's not needed in bear. It's a waste of a bonus skill slot in a rally. There are many others to choose from that contribute damage.
If you send characters like this as your lead hero in a rally you are joining and you are removed, you will miss out on that rally if you're not paying attention to how many marches you have out.
But if you have read this far, you understand now why. Don't be upset, just fix your formation and try again. We do bear every 2 days and 90% of the time every person will get into the reward bracket they stay in for some time until they get things ironed out.
I would like to refer all the way back up to the list of scores. RedRose is FC3 and scored almost a billion points by joining the right rallies with the appropriate heroes at the appropriate time.
NOTE: I KNOW SEO-YOON IS A POPULAR MEMBER LEADER. PLEASE SHOW ME DATA AND I WILL CHANGE THIS.
Troop ratios AND HERO GEAR for rally members
See the previous section about ratios. It's pretty much the same. Favor marksmen.
(12/44/44%) or (12/19/69%) or some derivative close are the best in my experience.
Hero Gear
Since your troops stats (damage in this case) affect all calculations for bear, it stands to reason that the gear on your heroes (which affects troop stats directly for YOUR army, not the entire rally) do make a difference. So, consider outfitting the hero leaders you us to join well. Though in all, they eventually all need to have a bonus. It's just nice to be able to have a focus.
NOTE: Do not sacrifice items to upgrade gear for anyone other than your first three primary heroes, and your arena team, if they're not already at 10+ from essence stone mastery upgrades.
IMPORTANT: RALLY MEMBERS JOINING CAN NOT CHANGE HERO GEAR ONCE YOU HAVE JOINED A RALLY. HAVE IT PREPARED BEFORE HAND.
BUFFS - OVERVIEW
BUFFS FROM ALL SOURCES
Buffs from all sources. City, cabinet (presidential), pet, are all modifiers after troop/army calculations
CITY BUFFS
The two city buffs you want to activate benefit you and your rally in different ways.
Deployment Capacity - Your rally
This will increase your army size in deployment. This will benefit your score, as you'll have more troops to calculate against in total.
Deployment Capacity - Rally member
This will benefit your score, as you will have more troops to calculate against. However keep in mind this will make slightly less room for others to join rallies in which you are a member, thus the last person that joins will have a slightly lower score.
Troops Lethality - Your rally
This will benefit your troops and all rally joiners by increasing lethality and therefore damage.. This is evident in that it is listed in the rally's bonuses after resolution for a combat rally. Bear doesn't generate a report, but there's no reason to think it works otherwise.
Troops Lethality - Rally member
This will benefit your troops alone for the same reason as above.
Troops Attack
Add an attack bonus. Attack bonus. This seems to help support damage delivery.
Cabinet Positions
Pretty much the same explanations as above.
Pet Bonuses
Frost Gorilla
This affects your scores in the same way the city buff "Deployment Capacity" does
Snow Leopard
The march speed increase is the benefit here. Especially if you are trying to be able to have a few extra seconds to setup different heroes while joiners return to their cities. It shortens the time to and from Bear Trap.
And of course if you're further from the bear, it will help your army get back to you quicker so you have more options for which rallies to join.
Lion
Attack bonus. This seems to help support damage delivery, also worth triggering with the others.
FORMATIONS
USE THEM
You have 6 to use (reportedly more coming). Set them all up, get the heroes right. The primary hero is the first one it lets you choose. Left side for most and as I understand it, right side for some that have Arabic interfaces.
The troop ratio you need to reconfigure any time you start a buff that affects deployment size.
(12/44/44%) or (12/19/69%) or some derivative close are the best in my experience.
Have fun. Enjoy the game. There's a lot more to learn.
Love, Alcoth, State 199.
Bear/HUNTING TRAP - CONCLUSION
There is no TLDR
I'm not going to write a summary to the above. I think it's important to understand the mechanics of this game if you want to succeed.
A lot of what is detailed above can be extrapolated to other areas of the game. Combat rallies, defensive fortification and garrison.
Is it all 100% accurate? I doubt it. There will be conjecture about my hero importance list. That's fine. Learn, grow, message me and make a case. Shoot, message me if you want to say hi. Alcoth in State 199.
HEROES - THE CLOSEST TO A TLDR
As a rally leader all your choices matter.
As a rally joining member all your choices matter.
Leader, damage damage damage.
Joiner. Hero 1 in your joining army: first expedition skill, damage. The rest of them, gear and good stats if possible. Blue heroes are ok if they're the very last option and NOT in the first slot.
READ THE GUIDE! Thank you.
Love,
Alcoth. State 199