LOTRO Beorning Builds in Shroud of the Avatar

A skin-changer who fights in man form or as a great bear, fueled by Wrath. Rebuild the LOTRO Beorning in Shroud of the Avatar: one deck per trait line.

This post is for Beorning players from The Lord of the Rings Online who are curious about Shroud of the Avatar, and for SotA players who miss the class. You get three builds, one per trait line, on one character. It is part of every LOTRO class rebuilt in Shroud of the Avatar; if decks are new to you, read the deck building guide first. SotA has no classes: with 21 skill schools and two specialization slots, a "class" is a deck plus a specialization pair (see the classes explainer).

The Beorning rates a fair fit. Each trait line rates good, since almost every strike, heal and debuff has a plain SotA counterpart, but the signature system, the bear form and the Wrath that drives it, has none. These builds rebuild what each line does in a fight; none of them turns you into a bear.

The LOTRO Beorning in brief

The Beorning is a skin-changer that fights in Man form or Bear form and switches between them in combat. Its vital is Wrath, which replaces Power: many Man-form skills build it, and Bear form unlocks stronger skills that spend it. Bear form also adds a Wrath point every 3 seconds, and Wrath resets to zero at every login. In Man form you swing a weapon; in Bear form you maul with claws and roar. lotro-wiki calls the Beorning tanky in every specialization.

The Hide (blue) tanks: it holds groups with Menacing Maul and Thunderous Roar, saves itself with Hurricane, blocks without a shield and gains Wrath when hit. The Claw (red) deals damage with bleeds and with finishers that consume all your Wrath, which Thrash refills fast. The Roar (yellow) heals with Wrath-funded group heals such as Rejuvenating Bellow, debuffs from melee range, and puts the Mark of Grimbeorn on one ally so your heals stack extra incoming healing there. lotro-wiki calls it the hardest healer in the game to play. The lotro-wiki Beorning page has the full trait trees.

Damage

• Slam and Slash: Man-form weapon strikes that build Wrath.

• Bee Swarm and Armour Crush: debuffs that lower the target's mitigation or raise the damage it takes.

• Bash and Serrated Edge: hits that leave an 18-second bleed.

• Execute and Final Strike: finishers that need 50 Wrath and consume it all.

Defense

• Thunderous Roar: all nearby enemies must attack you for 5 seconds.

• Thickened Hide: incoming damage x0.4; each hit heals 1 % of maximum morale.

Healing

• Hearten: a Man-form heal plus a 14-second heal over time.

• Rejuvenating Bellow: heals a target and their fellowship within 20 m.

• Bear Up and Overbearing: revives, out of combat and in combat.

Control

• Grisly Cry: a 12-second fear that breaks on harm.

• Takedown and Levelling Roar: 5-second knockdowns, the second from range.

• Vicious Claws and Rending Blow: strikes that interrupt inductions.

Beorning trait lines as Shroud of the Avatar builds

The main build is The Hide, in the Tank archetype. You specialize in exactly two schools; slotting a school and training its Specialization skill are separate steps, and only the slotted pair pays out.

Every line can use SotA's one stand-in for the form. Treat the line's deck as your Bear deck and build a short Man deck from the Man-form stand-ins in the table below: Body Slam for Slam, Healing Touch and Healing Grace for Hearten, Thrust for Slash if you carry a blade. Link the same armor to both, because Heavy and Light Armor buffs end when a swap takes that armor type off. A built deck can be equipped mid-fight for Focus, and the innate Efficient Swapping lowers that cost. The swap changes your skills, not your shape.

The Hide: bare-handed tank

Primary schools are Heavy Armor and Earth Magic, with Subterfuge for Pugilism and Opportunity Strike, Light Armor for Dodge, Fire Magic for Immolation and Focus for Efficient Swapping. Specialize in Heavy Armor and Earth Magic. Heavy Armor holds both player taunts: Taunt, an area aggro pulse, and Provoking Shout. Heavy Armor Specialization gives Taunt a chance of a second pulse on up to five targets, 25 % at Specialization 80. Earth holds Stone Fist, a close-range hit that scales with Strength and can stun several targets. Earth Magic Specialization adds up to 16 Earth attunement at mastery 80, and hostile spell damage scales with the attunement gap.

A starting deck; more copies unlock as each skill levels, and the last copy needs the school specialization.

• Stone Fist x3

• Taunt x2

• Provoking Shout

• Earth's Embrace x2

• Glancing Blow x2

• Absorb Impacts

• Shield of Crystal

• Dodge

• Opportunity Strike

• Knight's Grace

• Immolation

That is 16 glyphs, with no maximum deck size and a minimum that rises to 23. Glancing Blow and Earth's Embrace, which raises damage resistance, stand in for the hide. Dodge is your Counter, and a dodge arms Opportunity Strike, which then avoids most armor. Shield of Crystal and Immolation are both shield spells, and only one can be up at a time. Train the innates Pugilism, Bulwark of Earth, Sympathy of Stone, Deflection, Hard Headed and Efficient Swapping; innates are always on and never go in a deck.

Link heavy armor with Link What I Am Wearing and fight bare-handed: Pugilism is SotA's bare-fisted combat skill and also adds to Stone Fist. Plate costs Earth spells nothing; Immolation, a Fire spell, pays half of the penalty armor puts on Air.

The Claw: bleeds and finishers

Primary schools are Blades and Heavy Armor, with Tactics for Reckless Stance. Specialize in Blades and Heavy Armor; Heavy Armor keeps you tanky and stays slotted when you move over from The Hide. Rend deals damage over time and cuts the target's healing. Coup de Grace is your Execute, a big hit on a target under 20 % health.

• Rend x3

• Double Slash x2

• Thrust x2

• Whirling Blades x2

• Coup de Grace x2

• Body Slam

• Glancing Blow

• Inner Strength

• Reckless Stance

That is 15 glyphs. Leave combos out of the list: Whirling Blades and Rend form Sawblade Sweep in your hand, an area hit with a chance of damage over time (Serrated Edge), and Double Slash and Thrust form Quadruple Slash, four quick hits (Brutal Maul). Inner Strength raises your Strength for a while, close to Blood Prize. Train Vital Points, the Blades innate for critical chance. Link heavy armor and a blade; the deck casts no Air, Fire or Death spells, so armor costs it nothing.

The Roar: melee healer

Primary schools are Life Magic and Bard, with Moon Magic for Fireflies and Earth Magic for Stone Fist. Specialize in Life Magic and Bard. A roar that heals the fellowship plays like a song: Melody of Mending heals every ally near you, and matching unlocked glyphs stack, so three in hand make a much stronger song.

• Melody of Mending x3

• Healing Burst x2

• Healing Grace x2

• Healing Ray

• Healing Blast

• Purify

• Resurrection

• Refrain of Resistance

• Psalm of Stagnation

• Fireflies

• Stone Fist

That is 15 glyphs. Refrain of Resistance, a group resistance song, is your Piercing Roar; Psalm of Stagnation slows nearby enemies, and Fireflies raises the critical damage your target takes. Life heals gain a bonus from the time since you last harmed a target, and every Stone Fist resets it, so hit while the group is healthy. Resurrection has no description in our skill database, so we could not confirm it works in combat. Train Beneficent Blessing, the Life innate for heals on others. Link your armor to the deck; Life, Bard, Moon and Earth glyphs take no armor penalty.

Each deck carries its own linked gear and can be equipped in combat for Focus or out of combat for free. The specialization pair changes at any skill trainer or Oracle Confirmatory, with no lock-in and no experience cost. The Hide and The Claw share Heavy Armor, so moving between them changes one slot; The Roar changes both.

No deck code yet. Codes are generated by the game (Share Deck copies one, Import Deck reads one); we will add them when the site's deck planner ships.

Skill-by-skill: LOTRO Beorning skills in SotA

LOTRO systems with no SotA equivalent that touch the Beorning: mounted combat and mounted skill variants, weapon and armor proficiencies, travel skills such as Wanderlust, the Fellowship Manoeuvre wheel, Legendary Items and virtues, and armor-set skills such as Reckless Slam.

Leveling path

Start with The Hide, the Beorning's main build; its Heavy Armor half carries into The Claw. In SotA a skill levels as you use it, spending experience from your adventuring pool. You start with 25,000 experience in each pool, experience is permanently doubled, and no hourly ceiling limits what a kill pays. Right-click a skill to set Training, Not Training, Train to Level or Unlearning; a skill that is not training gains nothing. The XP planner has exact costs per level.

First, Stone Fist, Taunt and Glancing Blow, plus the Pugilism innate. Stone Fist is your main hit and Pugilism adds to it, Taunt holds the group, and Glancing Blow is your first layer of hide.

Second, Earth's Embrace, Provoking Shout, Absorb Impacts and Knight's Grace. They cover Guarded Attack, Menacing Maul, Thickened Hide and Shake Free.

Third, Dodge, Opportunity Strike and Shield of Crystal, for Counter and Counterattack. Then buy Heavy Armor Specialization and Earth Magic Specialization from a trainer and slot both; they cap at 200, and a realistic target is 100. Add Efficient Swapping when you build the Man deck.

Later, add Rend and Coup de Grace for The Claw, or Healing Grace and Melody of Mending for The Roar. Unlearning returns 100 % of a skill's experience, and dying never removes experience from a skill. Battle Fatigue starts at adventurer level 80.

What Shroud of the Avatar can't match yet

The bear is the gap. In LOTRO the form and its Wrath drive the class, and SotA has none of that. No glyph changes your body or gives you a form's stats, and no glyph builds a pool that another glyph spends. Focus is your only pool, and its nearest refill, Tap Soul, is a Death spell that drains life. Shapeshift, the nearest skill SotA ever had, is removed from the game.

The two-deck swap is the stand-in. It lets you carry two sets of glyphs into a fight and equip the second mid-fight for Focus, a cost Efficient Swapping lowers, and if both decks link the same armor, your Heavy Armor buffs stay on. It does not change your shape, stats or defenses, and it builds nothing: no glyph in the Man deck makes the Bear deck stronger, and the Bear deck works from the first second without it. The Wrath finishers lose their spend-everything cost too; Coup de Grace wants a target under 20 % health, and Earthquake and Knockdown spend nothing. If you want to play a bear, this post cannot give you one.

Four more rows map to nothing. Grisly Cry has no match, since no SotA skill causes fear. Nature's Vengeance has none because nothing strips a corruption or buff from an enemy. For Mark of Grimbeorn, no glyph marks an ally for your other glyphs to read, and no skill raises the healing an ally receives. Nature's Bond passes your incoming heals to an ally, which nothing in SotA does; Valiant Warden, the only ally link, moves their damage to you instead. Vicious Claws and Rending Blow interrupt inductions in LOTRO; Body Slam's stun chance is the nearest tool, so both rate partial. No glyph channels a moving melee attack, so the three Mauls become single hits, combos or a Sun beam.

What SotA does give a Beorning player is the rest of the kit: 39 rows in the table rate close, one is exact, and all three lines fit on one character.

FAQ

Can I switch between trait-line builds on one character?

Yes. You hold two specialization slots and change them at any skill trainer or Oracle Confirmatory, with no experience cost and no lock-in. Each build is its own deck with linked gear, and a built deck can be equipped in combat for Focus or out of combat for free. Unlearning a skill refunds 100 % of its experience.

Can I turn into a bear in Shroud of the Avatar?

No. Nothing in SotA changes your body, and Shapeshift is not in the game. The closest you get is a Man deck and a Bear deck with the same linked armor, swapped mid-fight for Focus. That changes the glyphs you are dealt and nothing else.

How does a Beorning hold aggro in SotA?

With the Heavy Armor taunts. Taunt is an area aggro pulse, and at Heavy Armor Specialization 80 it has a 25 % chance of a second pulse on up to five targets. Provoking Shout is the second aggro skill, with a Focus cost. Half of each threat event you make also lands on every other hostile that can see you.

Does plate slow Stone Fist or my heals?

No. Worn armor slows Air spells and raises their Focus cost, Fire and Death spells take half that penalty, and other schools are unaffected. Stone Fist, Life heals and Bard songs cast the same in plate as in cloth; in these decks only Immolation pays a little.

The hub has every LOTRO class rebuilt in Shroud of the Avatar. The other LOTRO tanks are the Guardian and the Warden. From the Monsters & Memories series the closest match is the Druid, whose wolf and jackal forms have no SotA counterpart either. Mechanics verified against Catnip Games' work log and patch notes as of October 2026; the balance pass across 200+ skills is still running, so numbers can move. LOTRO skill details are from lotro-wiki as of Update 50 (October 2026).