Yellow Beorning

Last Updated: U34 (22/10/22)

The Beorning is one of the primary healer classes in LOTRO, and is able to fill the healer role in any group.

Beornings provide high AoE healing along with powerful debuffs that reduce the target’s defences. Not to mention their natural sturdiness that comes from their heavy armour.

By swapping between man and bear form throughout the fight, the Beorning is able to heal both their target and the entire raid effectively while maintaining their Wrath resource. Due to their raid-wide healing, Beornings excel in larger group contexts, though the support they bring makes them a powerful healer for smaller group content as well. 

Recommended Build

Below is a recommended setup for Yellow Beorning designed to achieve a variety of end-game content U34 and beyond. As with all our guides, this is our opinion based on a high level of experience, along with advice from other experienced players in the LOTRO Community.

Class Traits

Raid Healing

This 98 Point setup can be used to heal any instance or raid. As with all our trait builds, traits outlined in green are considered ‘core’ to the role, and your fellow group members will expect you are running them. The rest of the build is our recommendation, though there are most certainly other viable builds.

In situations where you’d like to maximise your support, ‘Raging Blow’ can be given 5/5 points, removing points from ‘Recuperate’, ‘Imposing Presence’, and ‘Shake Free’. The use case for this is fairly low, as it requires you to place your Mark of Grimbeorn on a DPS instead of a tank, reducing your healing capacity by quite a lot, not to mention that the actualised DPS increase for that player will be quite low.

Legendary Items

Healing Club (1H) and Carving

The Beorning has access to quite a few good traceries that benefit their healing, though not enough to fill out two Legendary Items. Traceries with an asterisk indicate choices that were made because of their secondary stats.

I recommend using a 1-Handed Weapon to heal with on Beorning as the DPS gain from using a 2-Handed Weapon is not worth the loss of the stats you would suffer if you gave up the opportunity to wield an off-hand weapon.

Heraldries
I recommend using the Heraldry of the Mending Bear, this allows you to gain the benefit of the +3% Outgoing Healing set bonus, as well as to use the highest value Heraldry for the class.

Words of Power
There are many good combinations of Healing Words of Power that you could take. The one I would not give up is Ranged Healing Extension as Beorning healing skills have quite a short default range, making it difficult to effectively heal a tank. I have chosen to take Single-Target Healing Criticals over Healing Over Time due to the way that it interacts with the Encouraging Roar set bonus from the Hiddenhoard Raid gear. If the initial heal from Encouraging Roar scores a critical heal, the entire AoE effect will as well. Since this raid heal benefits from the single target tracery, we gain a double benefit for healing both the tank as well as the raid as a whole.

Words of Craft
It is worth noting that if you do not have access to two Heraldries of the Mending Bear, you should replace the Gundabad Word of Craft: Tactics traceries with two Perfect Healing traceries.

Note: It does not matter in which item you place each tracery as I do not recommend sharing items between builds.

Healing Club

Heraldry
- Heraldry of the Mending Bear

Words of Power
- Area Effect Healing Criticals
- Area Effect Healing 

Words of Mastery
- Bear Form Damage*
- Bee Swarm Critical Defence Debuff*
- Bee Swarm Damage*
- Beorning DoT Pulses & Swarm Debuff Duration
- Bond of Trust Heal Chance
- Encouraging Roar Initial Heal 

Words of Craft
- Heroic Precision
- Heroic Precision

Healing Carving

Heraldry
- Heraldry of the Mending Bear

Words of Power
- Healing Over Time Criticals
- Single Target Healing Criticals
- Ranged Healing Extension

Words of Mastery
- Hearten Heal Strength
- Nature’s Mend Healing
- Recuperate Heal Pulses
- Rush Evasion Bonus & Duration
- Shake Free Cooldown
- Wrath Refund Chance

Words of Craft
- Gundabad Word of Craft: Tactics (Gold)
- Gundabad Word of Craft: Tactics (Teal)

Stat Goals

Beorning Healers probably have the widest array of stat requirements to be effective healers in the current meta.

As a healer, Critical Rating and Outgoing Healing Rating are obviously important, though on Beornings, Outgoing Healing is a lower priority than other stats, and may be left under the cap in favour of more defences.

Since the debuffs a Beorning can apply are so valuable to the group, Finesse is a high priority to ensure that your Bee Swarm does not get resisted.

Beornings also prioritise Mitigations and Morale to bolster their defences, allowing them to make use of Sacrifice, as well as to absorb distributed attacks, aiding the tanks.

The stats listed below can be roughly prioritised in the order shown, though remember that you may not reach both the Mitigation and Outgoing Healing Rating caps.

Note: The values below assume a wide array of buffs are applied to your character, and so when these buffs are not applied, your values will be lower. For a full explanation and list of expected raid buffs, including unbuffed target values, click here.

1,247,000

Critical Rating

700,000+

Finesse

1,250,000+

Morale

1,531,000

Mitigations

2,495,000

Outgoing Healing Rating

Note on Outgoing Healing Rating:
Outgoing Healing Rating is an obfuscated character stat, not shown as a raw value in the character sheet. More information can be found here.
For Beornings, assuming you have the Traits and Legendary Items I have recommended, as well as 3 pieces of the Hiddenhoard Roar armour equipped, the value you should see on the character sheet when fully capped is 88% (70% from rating, 10% from Traits, 5% from armour, 3% from Legendary Items).

Recommended Virtues

Below are the top 8 virtues by stat value for Beorning Healers. Stats used for consideration were Morale, Critical Rating, Finesse, Physical & Tactical Mitigations, and Finesse.

Choose the best 5 virtues for your current gear situation, such that you don’t unnecessarily go over your stat caps.

Loyalty

Vitality, Armour

Score - 5.21

Fidelity

Vitality, Physical & Tactical Mitigation

Score - 5.18

Compassion

Physical & Tactical Mitigation, Armour

Score - 3.93

Wit

Finesse, Critical Rating, Tactical Mastery

Score - 3.59

Confidence

Critical Rating, Finesse

Score -3.37

Innocence

Physical & Tactical Mitigation

Score - 3.03

Tolerence

Physical & Tactical Mitigation

Score -2.96

Honor

Morale, Tactical Mitigation

Score - 2.92

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Vuldyn

About the Author

Vuldyn is long-time LOTRO player, and active member of the community. As one of Redemption's Leaders, and with many high-tier raid completions to his name, he is eager to share his expertise with players new to the end-game scene.