I think berserkers should get weapon/shield rake instead of weapon/shield cleave. In my experience with berserkers, as soon as your enemies realize you are going to cleave, they grab burnproof sockets, etc. and the cleave is useless. At least with a weapon rake, it gives you a temporary advantage, but your opponent does not loose the weapon.
Berserkers Weapon Rake
I like this a lot. It's been a pet peeve of mine for quite some time how some staple skills are so easily negated - Praetorian Styles, for example. (T skill, not illegal to mention, right? And I know it isn't completely negated, but shields do hurt it quite a bit and it's the only Praet. skill that does damage to all of your enemies). A weapon deflection would, in my opinion, be a great substitute. Maybe make it last 2 rounds? Then.. maybe not. Or just give them disarm. (also easily countered.. ironic?)
I like this idea a lot.
I've played some berserkers and never even bother practicing weapon/shield cleave, because they are useless against enemies that matter.
Cleave is a good balance to haymaker IMO.
What would the rake skill do?
What would the rake skill do?
Something like the crusader deflect, if I understood correctly.
[edit] Actually, cephirues didn't mention at all what the skill would be like, spark mentioned something about deflect, so I have no idea either 
Haha!
I don't think Zerks need anything now.
They been recently upgraded, and are quite powerful atm.
In my experience with berserkers, as soon as your enemies realize you are going to cleave, they grab burnproof sockets, etc. and the cleave is useless.
In my experience with most classes, as soon as your enemies realize you are going to disarm, they grab a cursed weapon/socket, etc. and the disarm is useless.
I just don't think they need to be able to remove a defense.
In a class that can remove your sanctuary and get a HUGE damage boost bonus this would be overkill.
There is a reason everyone runs for the burnproof socket. It's suicide otherwise.
Also this has a minor benefit for the Zerk. Burnprof weapons or socketable weapons are normally sub par.
After all this IF you really want to give them something, make a weapon cleave give a penalty on the receiver. After all, if you grab a buddy and try to swing two iron bars at full strength against each other, both of you are gonna get numb arms.
Since the zerk is a insane he won't feel it. But perhaps the non zerk could get a -2 STR penalty for 0 hours or 1 hour at max.
We've been toying with the idea of making the cabal burnproofine non-permanent (long timer, but it does wear off eventually). If / When we put that in, I think Serks will have more of a chance to catch someone with their pants down 
To be honest, I rarely bothered using cleaves. Not because they are not valuable, but because zerks have so many options for pk actions, that cleaves end up really low on the list. Not sure that zerks need any kind of assistance.
I didn't realize the burnproof cabal option was permanent.
That's awesome.
The owner-only cabal thing has a timer though. Kinda short too, right, 100 IG hours or less no?
The permanent affect of burnproofing from that cabal service is news to me as well. I am sorry that I did not clarify things, I think I just assume most players have played on AR (showing my age). Weapon rake would be similar to what crusaders have, for one hour the weapon is pushed out of the way and lowers your opponents defenses. I am not sure if it is the same as what the saders get, but my guess is that it is fairly close.
You can now weapon cleave burnproof weapons, in turn breaking them. They must be repaired before they can be re-wielded.
Beastly
You can now weapon cleave burnproof weapons' date=' in turn breaking them. They must be repaired before they can be re-wielded.[/quote']
Now THAT is a powerful idea.
I haven't played a zerk in years, but from what I remember that makes them SIGNIFICANTLY more viable in terms of survivability (is that a word?). No more easy-as-pie formula to get a burnproof weapon, wait for the rage, blind, and laugh.
On the other hand, I think that might make them a bit OP depending on the success rate of the cleave. It seemed pretty high on non-burnproof weapons. Even warriors exotic mastery can't totally cripple their opponent (because they can always immediately re-wield the noremove weapon), whereas Zerks can now eliminate ALL weapons from their opponent no matter their prep.
That seems perhaps a little too strong? Automatically breaking burnproof weapons makes RAGE an incredibly powerful tool, because now you can rage and if things go south just spam weaponcleave .
What if it worked in degrees,
Example 1: one cleave did something negative to the weapon and two cleaves broke it.
Example 2: one cleave lowered hit/dam, two cleaves lowered avg. damage, and three cleaves broke.
Something like this would allow the person with a burnproof weapon a better gauge of if they wanted to gamble or not. "Do I wanna stick around even though it's been successfully cleaved twice, or do I wanna retreat?" Also prevents the zerk from having a "get out of my stupid move free" card.
On the other hand' date=' I think that might make them a bit OP depending on the success rate of the cleave. It seemed pretty high on non-burnproof weapons. Even warriors exotic mastery can't totally cripple their opponent (because they can always immediately re-wield the noremove weapon), whereas Zerks can now eliminate ALL weapons from their opponent no matter their prep.[/quote']
This statement here isnt entirely true. Exotic mastery vs a cursed weapon still holds a very high failure rate. And honestly, as having played 2 exotic masters, its a little more annoying actually taking weapons that are no_drop and having to spend gold to uncurse and drop them. I'd rather it just disarm no_drops to the ground and cursed to the inventory. Either way, unless your opponent is not kicking your *** and have good defense, then I'd feel more willing to waste attempts trying to disarm a cursed weapon.
What on earth are you saying?
I'm saying weapon cleave is now > than even warrior exotic mastery lore because you can COMPLETELY cripple your opponent, whereas even with exotic mastery lore you can't do that because they can always immediately re-wield the same weapon if not lagged or blind.
You can now weapon cleave burnproof weapons' date=' in turn breaking them. They must be repaired before they can be re-wielded.[/quote']
HALLELUJAH!
This is pretty exciting.
Quite the power-up especially for Anger zerks.