Berserker Changes

This is a very much needed thing. @Trick @Celerity I ask that both of you weigh in on this post.

First things first. Rage. Rage needs to be looked into heavily for the anger and fury path. The simple fact that it can last 0 hours destroys your chances in a fight. Every berserker skill is buffed by rage, and your rage is a berserkers end. Change the rage hours longer, allow anger to be able to relax during a fight and make fury have a 50% chance to relax in a fight.

Roar is almost useless, unless your devastation.

Why cant headbutt be a battle opener?

And here is one of my biggest questions. Back in the day, a lvl 25-30 berserker in normal gear would be hitting DEMOLISHES and OBLITERATES in Everald, what in the hell happened to all the damage output of a berserker? Why did bards become the new berserker?

Let's not forget that if you ever want to counter a zerk, you just wear a shield. Even without shield block. Except one path that -might- go through the shield... Only to miss or fail to drop anything. Or how headbutt has very limited use against the main group of classes it is meant to combat.

4 minutes ago, Enethier said:

Let's not forget that if you ever want to counter a zerk, you just wear a shield. Even without shield block. Except one path that -might- go through the shield... Only to miss or fail to drop anything. Or how headbutt has very limited use against the main group of classes it is meant to combat.

Thought that haymaker being stopped by shields used by people who don't have the shield block skill was fixed years ago.

Headbutt can both drop and go through protective shield, but often failing a 2 round lag skill for a 0 tick effect makes it not always the best option. Extending a no-cast period isn't really feasible, so maybe the skill could be redesigned from the ground up. Think about what class dominates zerks the most and orient headbutt to help balance it out.

Rage is very hard to rebalance because it is so integral to everything a zerk does. You'd almost have to redesign the entire class, so I think that is why rage hasn't really been touched much. Maybe the no-fleeing/no sleeping part could be looked at---it isn't really balanced to our skirmishing style of PK that we have today. It doesn't need to be allowing the flee command...roar already causes enemies to flee under some circumstances, so our answer may be in that direction.

Damage tapers off at a certain point, and since melees (and ninja/bard) now have gotten generally very large dps boosts over the years, the berserker is less attractive as a result. It has always been the case that a warrior or ranger will deal more damage than a berserker in straight melee. I don't think increasing the output of zerks is the answer (or the answer for any question...damage output is way overboard across the board as it is).

I don't think that zerkers need a large boost, but they could use a bit in survivability. It is fine to encourage a highly aggressive strategy, but they need the tools to stay alive at a ratio of other classes. Perhaps some ability to overcome the affects that often slay other melees (a way to regen their moves suddenly, some kind of malediction resistance, stuff like that). I think the real solution lies in taking a serious look at dps across the board, esp. concerning high end equipment.

With the diminishing returns of higher hit/dam after a certain point(which Anume has hinted to), what's really the point of playing a berserker?

I'm not sure if this is how the game works but... I know we have a tac0 that grades your defense, is there something like this for offense?

Or maybe based on balance and the abilities of a class we could have the diminishing returns come in at different hit/dam?  Something like clerics taper off at 30, hybrids at 40, rangers 45, warriors 50, berserker 65.  I don't think the fix is to just boost the damage of the berserker I think it's to lower the damage of melees to an acceptable level and then give berserkers the ability to deal more than other classes in melee while having less defense.  Isn't that what a berserker is supposed to do?

Berserkers really need to shed the perception of being only comparable to other pure melees with "huge HP and output". That's a really flawed method of building them. Just about every game with a truly successful "Berserker" class achieves it by making them more. They are strong, durable, and rely on intuition over discipline. That's the direction we should be taking as well. Rather than conflated numbers that are lost on diminishing returns, they need a real way to distinguish themselves that isn't countered easily, and unreliable even when not countered. They don't have that now, no matter the path.

I have said it before, the most defensive Berserker is also the most offensive. That's just plain awful, and i think it really underlines just how badly they need to be redesigned.

Headbut is not only 0 hours. I been headbutted a lot longer. It's great vs non protective shield classes like DK's and Paladins.

Haymaker might not work well vs classes with shield block, but I recall it being completely OP some time back. I had a pre 50 gnome BMG that was being knocked around by a medium sized berserker, just because he couldn't keep the spells up.

I agree that Zerks need something, but I don't think that it's completely redesigning the class. In the old code, Zerk rage damage increase was hardcoded separatly from damroll. From my experience, this still happens. I can still get DEMOLISHES and OBLITERATES, not in Everwild whose critters have resistence to magic weapons, but in other places, AT 50.

But I agree the Zerk deserve to have some small bonus that increase survival rates. Small things that add up.

For one blindness. The first thing I do when I fight a zerk is blind. Zerks deal massive amounts of damage, but only if they can hit you. Dirting a zerk should truly be a Armageddon. Haste is great, but they need more. I would suggest giving them the high weapon of Blademaster bonus to offense, without the penalty to defense.

Rage should totally prevent disarm. Ever. Fighting a monk, you rage, he dirts, disarms. Game over.

Zerk regeneration should totally be awesome. Not what we have now. Non raging zerks should have something akin to Ogre regeneration.

5 minutes ago, mya said:

Headbut is not only 0 hours. I been headbutted a lot longer. It's great vs non protective shield classes like DK's and Paladins.

Haymaker might not work well vs classes with shield block, but I recall it being completely OP some time back. I had a pre 50 gnome BMG that was being knocked around by a medium sized berserker, just because he couldn't keep the spells up.

I agree that Zerks need something, but I don't think that it's completely redesigning the class. In the old code, Zerk rage damage increase was hardcoded separatly from damroll. From my experience, this still happens. I can still get DEMOLISHES and OBLITERATES, not in Everwild whose critters have resistence to magic weapons, but in other places, AT 50.

But I agree the Zerk deserve to have some small bonus that increase survival rates. Small things that add up.

For one blindness. The first thing I do when I fight a zerk is blind. Zerks deal massive amounts of damage, but only if they can hit you. Dirting a zerk should truly be a Armageddon. Haste is great, but they need more. I would suggest giving them the high weapon of Blademaster bonus to offense, without the penalty to defense.

Rage should totally prevent disarm. Ever. Fighting a monk, you rage, he dirts, disarms. Game over.

Zerk regeneration should totally be awesome. Not what we have now. Non raging zerks should have something akin to Ogre regeneration.

Your talking about DEMOLISHES and OBLITERATES at 50. They used to do that at like lvl 25, with normal gear and a normal weapon. Zerks were friggin awesome to have in your group back in the day, now, they are subpar to every other class. In fact, many classes outdamage zerks. Its ridiculous. Yes, zerks may not hit often, they made up for that with their insane damage. They were the invokers of melee, now they are just... well... no one plays them.

Herald ogre avatar zerk. Roll for a good time.

Outside that anamoly, and one or two werebeast forms, they're in desperate need of work. There are a few players out there that can whip the crap out of other people, but those people do the same with every class they play. And it seems like they do it better with every other.

If memory serves, damage was capped across the board for low levels, not just berserkers though it would have affected them the most, with the cap being lifted more or less past 30.  Possibly to prevent semi-decked qrace wannabe's from steamrolling everyone in that range.  But that was a long, long time ago and the details might be a bit fuzzy.

I've test a few zerks over the past bit of time. Anger and fury zerks are completely useless due to their rage timer. Maybe they shouldnt lose the amount of hp when rage wears off. Minotaurs get horrible hp in comparison to warriors. I can admit, I've never played a non-giant zerker, but that doesnt change the fact that zerkers definitely need attention.

Perhaps for Anger path, the rage skill lag could be made zero. Since their rage is so small, it's natural to be faster to attain. You still get 0 hours rage, but you don't lose that initial round time to rage.

25 minutes ago, Zhurong said:

Minotaurs get horrible hp in comparison to warriors.

What?  That honestly makes no sense.  It looks like you're comparing a race to a class.  If you're comparing mino warriors to mino zerks, minotaur warriors get 741-1035 health while minotaur berserkers get 790-1084 health, at 50 and before trains/equipment.  They're comparable.  If for some reason you got fewer health on your mino zerks than your mino warriors, you can chalk that up to RNGesus.

Just let them rage outside of combat.

All of them.

Then see what happens.

Letting them rage outside of combat wouldnt do much with the rage timer for both anger and fury.

And as for the Minotaur hp, all of my warriors have had over 1000hp prior to hp trains (which I usually put quite a bit into movements) and my zerks usually end with 900-1000hp prior to trains. I've had numerous to make this comparison.

17 minutes ago, Zhurong said:

And as for the Minotaur hp, all of my warriors have had over 1000hp prior to hp trains (which I usually put quite a bit into movements) and my zerks usually end with 900-1000hp prior to trains. I've had numerous to make this comparison.

That's great.  It would mean that RNGesus loves your warriors to be in the top 12% of minotaurs' health each time you roll one while your mino berserkers were pretty well at the 50% mark (937 avg).  Entirely within the realms of possibility.  You're still falling within the coded parameters.  But what do I know, I'm just pulling my numbers straight from the source.

I do not have access to this "source". Teach me Neo. You are the one.

It's too bad minotaurs are limited to like 2 classes.

For good reason too. Balance.

On 10/15/2016 at 6:43 PM, Zavero said:

With the diminishing returns of higher hit/dam after a certain point(which Anume has hinted to), what's really the point of playing a berserker?

A less defensive melee with dispel and some more utility...its meant to be attractive but is so only on paper for right now apparently.