The feat that allows you to wear heavy armour transferred it's +1 to strenght to your wildform in patch 8. So your bearform would max at 20 strenght. With the right armour (17) and shield (3), you would also have 20 AC unboosted.
I didn't know flaming sphere wasn't just a really bad fireball, though, so that's really good to have handy in patch 9!
