Giant vs dex race

I've been playing alot of ogre/giant berks/warriors/rangers for most of my fl time, and I'm starting to notice that no matter what high dex race I fight, (some examples: feral ranger, feral cleric, halfling warrior, slith thief, just to name a few) I seem to be facing the losing end. I've tried using weapons they do not know, and vuln weapons as well at times, I switch it up if things aren't going well enough. But its even gotten to where I don't even hit them, 40hit/40dam, non raged and a weapon they do not know with a shield, and I'm only hitting them maybe once every 4 rounds. They smack me a least once or twice every round though, and considering there are plenty of magical weapons out there, its easy enough to exploit my vuln, and take me down with descent speed. Had plenty of things up to say I was prepared for the fight numerous times, and still the outcome is the same. Dexterity must play a great deal part in whether or not you can hit your opponent, having low dex = no hits, no matter how much hit/dam you have for me.

To say in my defense, yes I have also played a couple of dex race combos as well (slith/warrior, elf/pali, feral/thief), and play far better with them low hit/dam and have won and a few and lost a few. Although, in another veiw I did fight a fire warrior a few good times, with my elf pali and the fight did seem to go in his favor for most of it, with him dual weilding exotics, and myself weilding a good polearm, with nicer eq than him. Once I get a flame/blind off, things start to ripen him up for me. I don't know what to make of it. Another time I can think of my ogre/berk vs. drow/cleric weilding a whip, and thats was just a ripe #$% wooping for me! Whip+dex=dead/berk! Well, I guess its just mostly my oppinion on the matter, though I hope someone has a bit of input to some things that might change my look of it for giants/ogre/minos. Guess I'll be checking the pk logs for some giant fights against some dex races.

You have a giant warrior with 40/40 hit/dam ?

Are you sure you are not using saves equipement to fight meale classes ?

Want a tip, disarm bash, (more latter9

haha, you act like I should have at least 60-70 hit and dam non raged or something, if I don't then, I'm guessing I'm still a newb, but I am posting in the newbie section, and I am just giving an oppinion which ask for inputs not sarcasm. And, also you say try dir/disarm? Its not like I don't have a pin, and most of them, like myself, carry those nondisarmable weapons, also a berks don't disarm. Please don't act like I haven't played before, and offer useless things that are common knowledge. I'm not talking about skills here, just what I've noticed from playing the giant classes, especially berks.

With a berserker it's super important that you get your weapon cleave off, I've found. Otherwise just about anyone can ruin your day. And I haven't seen this result myself, personally, but that's just me.

Str: 23(23)^2 || Level: 47 Sex: M Age : 49(39h) |

| Int: 19(19) || Class: berserker Ethos: ------ |

| Wis: 15(15) || Race : [edited] Align: -------

Dex: 18(18)^2 || Hp : 1379/1332 Exp : 17631/497559 |

| Con: 24(24)^3 || Mana : 356/430 |

\ Lck: [||||--] / Move : 366/461 +Hit: 34 +Dam: 39 /

/---------------/------------------/--------------------------\

| ARMOR || SAVES || Deity : ------- |

| Slash : -133 || Spell : -5 || Faith : ------ |

| Pierce: -129 || Afflictive : -7 || Weight: 386/517 |

| Blunt : -126 || Maledictive: -9 || Items : 32/36 |

| Magic : -68 || Mental : -2 || Prac : 12 Train: 8 |

| || || Gold : 15k

two handed100, parry100, shieldblock100, dodge100, all weapons100 and handtohand100.

new guy I've been working on and he is wearing some very nice eq with high hit and dam, and still only 34/39 hit/dam and your asking me if I'm focusing on saves? I've got at least 6 peices of eq that give me high hit and dam, and medium hit and dam on the rest of my eq, granted their not certain rings, or special bracers, that can only be aquired you know where, or from killing someone, but their descent. and you think 40/40 is low? I don't see how any of you get up to 60/60 without the hardest to get rare eq.

Personally I feel serks are much harder to survive with than warriors, they are better against mages however. At 50 you should have ~45 / 35 Hr / Dr without rage. You will have to get a couple nice shinies to get those but it is not that hard. The guys who tell you they have 60/70 hr usually talk about caballed chars, with some cabals that is "easy" to get (cabalskills + herbs).

Ahk, I didn't even think about cabal skils, just been playing this guy by the book, well at least I feel I'm playing by the book, keeping plenty of stock on vials, herbs, pills, recalls, and whatever else, I'm probably just not playing my fights correctly, I try to keep a good changing of strategy often, but it pretty much the same end fight ratio for me. I'm not gonna delete him or anything, I'm just gonna roll with the punches, and hopefully learn how best to play one if nothing else. I'm thinking a good investment would be to go with alot of challenges. I don't usually fight challenges, do to past experiences, but it seems like the best way to learn at this point.

Are you fighting pinned chars? Those 3 ranks might not be much, but will help a bit.

Most of the time, I've been fighting others that are close to my range, I haven't actually fought a pin char with this character yet, I'm sure that would be an easy run for the pin that came after me heh.

Im sorry Polk, completely disresgard my post above, i was 15 sec creating the post when i had to drive 40 km in 3 sec notice. So insted of canceling it, i "wrongly" decided to post it with a quick "(more latter9" flag and edit it latter.

Sometimes you just make the wrong decision... ;(

Anyway back on my advice.

I was asking if you are full hit/dam on that because i "personaly" think that with 40/40 you should have saves. "I" think that hit/dam is not enuff to go skip saves.

I think your character benefit from lets say 30/30 hit/dam and average saves.

Something like 40 mal and 25-30 mental so that you can hold your own against clerics. It will not make things easy but if they take 2 rounds to land mals insted of 1 it will help a bit. If they take 2 rounds to dispel your santuary insted of 1, it will also help a bit. Its just that with a bit less hit/dam you can get a lot more saves.

Now on more (or less) specific strategies.

Clerics have insane armor from spells. And if you use a two handed weapon you are opening yourself to many attacks from whips.

But on the other side a Good Polearm on a ogre with a strong grip with a raged devastation is insane.

If you are cleaving use a good heavy 2 handed weapon. And Rage enhances it. At least acording to the vets.

Dirt is you main weapon against a cleric, and any oponent that does not has blind fighting.

You cannot imagine the pain that a cleric feels when he is blinded.

On option you can toy with is the use of a shield. It will help with whips.

IF they are using whips they are probably fully prepared, you should only fight on your terms. Fighting a fight you did not start is a bad idea.

Especialy if you got caught by surprise.

A great strategy is to get a detect magic potion and evade them untill they protective shield falls and then lag them.

Also do not neglet berserk.

Bah, im selectively reading you post.

On giant vs dex.

Giants have the uper hand. Trust me STR is the best stat. Just along with Size.

And ogres have the best of them.

I wonce taught that the best defender was a halfling because of their huge dex, but now i know that a ogre with a staff will defend a lot better.

I hope this helps...

PS... the Disarm bash, i was thinking dirt bash, but dont know where the disarm came from.

That was the favorite strategy of giants against my pals.

My experience with zerks, is that you're going to have to use your skills to win. Its a losing battle if you try to outmelee them without them. I remember getting senrails eq when I was a fire berseker, and he came at me almost naked, just with a ranger staff and I could barely hit him. That was totally unfair in my opinion, though the point is not to shy you away from zerks. I think they can do well to cover up there weaknessess with certain cabal skills.

Yeh I agree with the above, having played a few zerks myself I know they depend alot on their skills. What I would suggest to really be successful is to make a fun char to play with that you can learn how to fight with them taken their pros and cons. I suggest you don't choose an ogre as well, try a stone zerker and take to the top. With my experience with those pesky dex halfers/ferals I tend to go all out and rage from the start and hope for the best. You should be hitting them then from there it's up to your skills boost to give you the upper hand. Its risky... but then again zerks are meant to be risky all the way.

Yeah, its gonna be hard to shy away from the ogres regeneration bonus and high hp. I know stone giants get a nice big bonus and bout the same stats, cept for the training part, but I love ogres mainly for the regen. Even with my zerk, if I get one dirt off, and am on the losing end for the first couple rounds, I can still flee and get a nice heal off, its so nice!

I found with my last couple of Zerks (NOT including Faerie if anybody points that out) that in a good few fights, rage rarely made much difference. I remember trudging through posts on forums from WAY, WAY, WAY back FL and to a lot of people mentioned that if you were losing by a little bit, or winning by a little bit, it might be a good idea to rage because you can start laying it on a little thicker. There were only a few times where that was true for my couple of Zerks; I remember one time fighting a DK with my Undead Zerk. Both wielding two-handers, and we were hitting about the same hits per round, consistently . I raged, and damage-wise, he was above me, because even I started hitting harder but he started hitting more. Problem was? EQ difference. Lesson learn't: if you're poorly dressed (in comparison to your foe) then don't expect rage to automatically win you battles, because losing dodge can be a killer. If you're talking about hitting once every four rounds with 40/40 hit/dam then I would suspect you're fighting a pretty decked out/defensive player.

The lack of dodge is an absolute pain, so depending on your path, it is absolutely critical that you learn when to rage and when not to. ESPECIALLY with Path of Devastation. Now I hate training, and try to avoid training where possible, but with a Berserker, you should really master the typical stuff, as well as Weapon Cleave, Haymaker, Headbutt, Bodyslam and Trip at least. You can't afford to be piddling about missing important skills with a Zerk; they aren't underpowered, they are just tricky to play with their fight-to-the-wire style. Battles are going to get hairy and if your entire life depends on landing one skill, you better hope you've mastered it.

I was asking if you are full hit/dam on that because i "personaly" think that with 40/40 you should have saves. "I" think that hit/dam is not enuff to go skip saves.

That is true in my opinion. If you have 40/40 hit/dam then I'd expect that you have some saves behind you, especially if you're an Ogre. There are two main method IMO that can work for a Zerk, depending on who you're fighting. Melee classes? Hit/dam/ac gear. Casters/communers? You can either take the full damage route, sacrificing saves for pure hit/dam. This, with rage, will certaintly overpower casters/communers in terms of melee damage, but if you're going to take this approach you'd better hope that you're decked out in hit/dam gear; you need to be hitting the big-daddy numbers. This route doesn't work with a few ponsy bits of hit/dam gear. The other route is the avarage between hit/dam and saves, where you ensure you have sufficient saves to fight the caster/communer you're fighting, and the rest goes into hit/dam. This way you have the saves to battle them properly, and you have rage to help with that hit/dam boost that's missing from sacrificing hit/dam gear for saves. For this reason, it helps to have EQ to switch between, to boost hit/dam/saves in different areas.

I agree with the rest of Mya's advice too.

In my opinion, Berserkers are the most EQ-reliant classes in the game, because unlike a Warrior, they can't defend that well. And without the good EQ, their offensive power won't be the best unless they rage, which comprimises your defense further. But they're the most fun of any class I've played in FL, and PK-wise, my two Zerks I've had (again, excluding Faerie) at pinn have been my most successful PK class so far. Stick with it, you'll have a ball.

EDIT: But before you start thinking about fighting, pinn.

Dey

i agree that playing zerks is difficult against high dexers. i must admit tho, my last zerk was in 1.0, i have a really hard time with them.

some things to keep in mind - always keep handy a means to enlarge yourself, if you're at half hp and you haven't landed any skills then it's probably time to flee and regroup, what deykari said about knowing when to rage is very very important, sometimes it's way better to not rage (if you can)

zerks for me are probably the hardest class to play, that may be because i'm more accustomed to casters/communers but i think they might just be difficult to play

Only thing zerks are good for is destroying a particularly pesky savant temporium fire giant battlemage. Other than that...warrior and rangers rule the world!!! Muahahahahah!

Only thing zerks are good for is destroying a particularly pesky savant temporium fire giant battlemage. Other than that...warrior and rangers rule the world!!! Muahahahahah!

Yea, gotta love those uber-powerful fire giant battlemages.

Dey

He has been gone for awhile hasn't he?

My advice is weapon cleave, flee, heal up, repeat. Does wonders.

I wasn't around in your time, but weren't you the one who could cleave anything, with say, a practice staff?

Dey