Polar Bear

The **polar bear** is a possible brown bear subspecies that inhabits the arctic and evolved to play in very cold environments.

## Overview

Polar bears have mainly spent their points on power. They mainly target Seals as their main source of XP since they have bad matchups against the other builds in the Arctic server. Polar Bear players rely on seal players coming up to the surface to get their stamina gauge up so they can go for an attack. To help them with attacking they spent points on a white fur coat which blends in with the terrain of the Arctic server and increases their stealth stat. Once the seal goes into the water Polar Bears don't have the water mobility to catch up to them. If the Polar Bear gets the kill on the seal it's enough to give the Polar Bear a good health stat for 8 days. They also have the ability hibernate by gathering enough resources which can make them last through out the winter event  by camping in their homebase and sleeping. They than cancel the hibernation when the spring event starts. Some players use this to go AFK and log into another account without having to worry about their Polar Bear account.

## Matchups and current meta

Currently Polar Bears have good matchups. Their whole playstyle relies on seal players which only come into the polar bears striking range if they run out of stamina. Thanks to the global warming patch the ice the Polar Bears spend most of their game time on is melting and they are being forced to spend points on diving to hunt seal players or even beluga players.

Polar Bears have a bad matchup against orcas and walruses since orcas are too far into the ocean for Polar Bears to reach them and Walruses have too high of their defense stat for Polar bears to do any damage despite their high power stat.

As mentioned earlier Polar Bears have to deal with Global warming sending them south and meeting Grizzly Bear players who then perform the reproduction ability with each other and make the Grolar Bear, which is highly effective.

## Species status

Human mains for a long time have considered Polar bears to be their own build. However, several dataminers have analyzed the genomes from both polar and brown bear mains and found them to posses very similar genomes. On top of that they found that polar bears are morphologically extremely similar to brown bears. Dataminers also discovered that Polar Bears where added to the game very recently, and that the possibly where derived from an Irish brown bear playerbase. For a new build to be added, the precursor must be banned, but the fact that brown bears are still playable suggests that polar bears may not be their own build after all. Which would explain why the polar-brown bear crosses are always very fertile. If the dataminers are correct, then the Polar bear will no longer be classified as its own build but as a subspecies of brown bear. With its former scientific name *Ursus maritimus* being replaced with *Ursus arctos maritimus*.

## Tier list placement

Polar bears are widely said to be B tier in the current meta since the amount of luck to keep your playthrough going as a Polar Bear is too much to be in A tier. Their viability is being questioned as the new patch comes out and puts their player count lower and lower as the meta evolves further and further. But the ability that they can have high stealth stat due to their white fur.

## References

-https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1210506109

-https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/arctic-bears-how-grizzlies-evolved-into-polar-bears/777/#:~:text=Over%20the%20years%2C%20scientists%20have,known%20as%20the%20brown%20bear.