Path of Anger rage duration increase 1 hour

This has probably been brought up before but I'm proposing an increase to the rage duration timer on Anger zerks by 1 hour.  Zerks are built on rage, it's their signature skill and with all that can happen during a PK with lagging skills I don't understand why Anger zerks get screwed with timer duration.  Rage, take a bash or two, a paralysis, a chii bolt, then try to land a skill enhanced by rage and by the time the command goes in you're relaxed, command fails, now you're lagged two rounds with meager hit/dam waiting to reset the rage only to have the same thing happen again.  Or you land a rage skill (lets say haymaker for example), opponent flees, you chase and most likely by the time you're re-engaged you're relaxed again.  It would be one thing if you could rage mid-round and it lasted until the middle of the next round but that's obviously not how the code works. 

Any thoughts?

It's the price of having a much more reliable haymaker that isn't stopped by shields is how I always viewed it

My two cents: I like the anger path the best, but it feels like a weak warrior that can occasionally dispel.  I'd like to see them get something to up their PvP quality.  

I also think Fury should get fourth attack when using a two handed weapon.  

Devastation I'd like to see have a larger Mana pool to make their berserk reuse a little better.

44 minutes ago, Valek said:

I also think Fury should get fourth attack when using a two handed weapon.

Assault. Not 4th, but extra damage. 

I don't have the help file to hand, so I may be remembering wrong.

1 hour ago, 'tarako said:

It's the price of having a much more reliable haymaker that isn't stopped by shields is how I always viewed it

The stars have to align so perfectly to get a dispel that an Anger zerk can take advantage of.  If I had to guess, I'd say the 0-tick timer was to help mages (3 classes) in PvP against Anger zerks.  But it really screws Anger zerks against anything that can lag (9 classes and every undead).

1 hour ago, Magick said:

Assault. Not 4th, but extra damage. 

I don't have the help file to hand, so I may be remembering wrong.

I'm aware of assault.  It's minor damage on blocked attacks.  Combining it with fourth attack would provide a decent boost.

Every zerker path gets 4th attack...when they are blinded :)

Every undead cant lag though.

3 minutes ago, 'tarako said:

Every undead cant lag though.

They can...

20 minutes ago, 'tarako said:

Every undead cant lag though.

Paralysis is lag dude.

Paralysis us not lag. Being paralyzed causes 0 lag. Entering commands while paralyzed causes lag. By that logic everyone in the game can lag. Lag in fl means not getting to enter commands.

That's your own narrow-minded version of lag.  You can't argue with Google. Why are you even debating me on this, I'm right.

Lag

verb

verb: lag; 3rd person present: lags; past tense: lagged; past participle: lagged; gerund or present participle: lagging

fall behind in movement, progress, or development; not keep pace with another or others.

"they stopped to wait for one of the children who was lagging behind"  <---what paralysis does.

Paralyze is definitely lag. The other player just has a bit more control over it.

Anger gives survivability and utility at a cost of power and consistency.

That rage wearing off is also the key to survival should the battle suddenly turn sour. You can rage and bail in the same fight. That is awesome.

You take a big hit in consistency since you have to put rage up and keep it up, but if you wanted a fire-and-forget rage...well, there are the other two paths for that. Anger lets you skirmish a bit.

The haymaker/shield stuff gives you options in fights, sorely needed for heavy melees, but it also means you have to reset more often to have the 'stars align'. Luckily, since rage wears off, you can actually reset in this path.

--

That said, it is hard to balance zerks. Wildcard classes are not very good in a game system where survival is king. There is an argument to be made how berserkers don't have enough offense/utility to make up for what they lose in comparison to warriors.

I know I'd only want to play a warrior if I were going for pure PK power.

That is a bigger issue than specifically the anger path however and can't be adjusted with tweaks.

Since when are zerks about survival?  Besides, that's what relax is for.  0-tick rage is a PENALTY not a WIN for the path.

There's also a small chance you get permanent rage, which seems to happen 10-15% of the time - so what's the argument there?  You can't have it both ways.

All classes are about survival because if you don't survive, you won't do well in PK. Losing gear, etc., is far more damaging than any class skill set can make up.

Zerks are about survival just like any other class. It is just their path to it is through overwhelming, not outlasting or retreating.

0-1 tick rage is both a penalty and a perk. It sucks a lot; it saves your life sometimes. Ultimately, it results in more resets -- something that zerks do not have much ability to do. Thus it is great for a zerk to have some ability to reset, even it often forces resets when you don't want it.

Except there's no such thing as 1 hour rage for Anger.  That is what I am suggesting.  Make it 1-hour instead of 0-hour.  It still forces resets, albeit 50% less, and adds a better overall playability to the path.  If the setup skills didn't require rage to be effective, this wouldn't be an issue but they do.  You ahve to be raged to land a haymaker or a good headbutt, or cleave a weapon reliably.  All these things get tooled over when you take lag with 0-tick timer.

Maybe I should approach this another way - has there ever been a truly successful Path of Anger zerk?  I'd like to hear from that player.

I'm not opposed at all to 1 tick, 2 tick or 1-2 tick anger rages. I don't think it makes much of a difference to the class, good or bad. If you think it'd help, I'd give it a try.

I'd probably go with 0-1 to fit their wildcard, but like I said, small difference.

Edit: Trying to keep up with your edits here.

1. 10% chance for permanent rage and what is my argument? I guess it would be you have a 90% chance to skirmish normally and a 10% chance to have to treat it like another zerk, i.g. hold something and recall/eat a pill if it goes sour. You just have to do it a lot less often.
2. It used to be that all zerks were only path of anger because skullcrusher was so much better than the other paths.

Exactly - small difference but the fact remains that 0-hour is almost unplayable.

10 minutes ago, Mmm Beer said:

Exactly - small difference but the fact remains that 0-hour is almost unplayable.

To me, permanent rage is almost unplayable, much too risky. I could live with 0-hour myself. I get your point, but I don't agree to that extreme. Skullcrusher is still an excellent skill. Haymaker lands less unraged, but at least it lands.

Zerks have major issues and especially rage has issues. You touched on a big one -- too much reliance on the rage state in general. It goes further though. They were left in the dust when fired weapons came out, among all sorts of other problems due to their age. Some of these, like the proliferation of burn proof shields/weapons, have been somewhat addressed, but there is more to be done.

I hear you, i know you put a lot of work into the current path system.  And frankly I'm not a huge melee player anyway but I had the week off and leveld one up.  It's the only gripe I have with the path.  I also agree that perm-rage is also unplayable.  But relax works fairly reliably for Anger so it's not a big deal when it happens.