Berserkers - Health Limiters

Discussion in 'Melee' started by Zerkini, Dec 15, 2020.

  1. Zerkini New Member

    So as CoV raids are getting close to going live, I wanted to bring up the health limiters for the berserker class. Where I am referencing the Ritual Scarification / Open Wound series of abilities which limit player health so that they cap at 89%, allowing for several of our abilities to be used, which cannot be used unless our health is under a certain value.

    It was an issue in the past where the gap from Open Wound to Ritual Scarification had players with health values far lower than 89% because there's "hidden" spell data which also sets a maximum value for your over health. In the case of Ritual Scarification it's 357k health. Currently there is a magelo for a berserker with 392k health (using it as an example), provided buffs etc, that means the health limiter is already at a tilt and players are digging into their health cap before the raids are for CoV are even live.

    Roughly calculated a player can have as much as 401,123hps (+1 if rounded up?) before the health limiter starts eating their health away beyond the 89%. I expect without a new variation of this ability that we'll once again be faced with the issue we faced with Open Wound.

    Is it possible with the changes for CoV's raid content we also get an upgrade to this ability? I honestly expected it to be part of the abilities already when CoV was in beta/went to live.
  2. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I stopped using them as they block the Shaman "Roar of the Lion", I use bloodfury to drop HP anytime I need to for disc firing and incorporate that into macros for the skills that require lowered hp to trigger.

    Not sure if that stacking issue remains beyond RoS and the later lines of those but I would expect them to be the same.
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  3. Zerkini New Member

    I'm not personally sure of the stacking issue. With all the buttons I gotta hit, having an ability that puts me at 89% for 3 minutes, and then randomly between some expansions not having the ability to use it is disheartening. Seems like an ability like this would be a constant once incorporated or have it's max total health restriction removed if they're not wanting to update it every few expansions.

    Neither bloodfury or Ritual Scarification are merc friendly, at least with Ritual Scarification a merc can't actually heal me over 89%.

    Either way, it's pretty ingrained into the way I play, and an upgrade to this particular ability doesn't seem like a big ask.
  4. Zerkini New Member

    As a follow up. Just tested with my friend just did Composite Roar (CoV) and it stacked fine with Ritual Scarification (RoS).
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  5. Sokki Still Won't Buff You!!

    As a Shaman, I hate when Zerkers use any of the abilities that cap their HP. When I'm playing my Zerker alt, I do like Skuz suggested and just use Bloodfury (guessing this is the one I use) that just temporarily drops his HP for those discs that require it. I have it tied to the macro's so it fires first and then the ability I need to be under 90% for.
    Skuz likes this.
  6. Zerkini New Member

    As a berserker, I hate it when shaman's heal me over 89% health. When I'm on my shaman, I won't heal my zerker if it'll put them over 89% health.....two can play that game :p
  7. Sokki Still Won't Buff You!!

    Try doing that on raids when you got an entire group of melee taking AE damage :p
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  8. Zerkini New Member

    Well the whole game isn't a raid. Pretty well just sidetracking the issue, as "use something else" isn't the right answer.
  9. Firepawz New Member

    I had asked for this in beta, just remove the limiter and lock at 89%. I use bloodfury on a multi-line key bind and set those skills on my spam key so they go off on ae spell damage, ramp hits, or any other forms of damage I may incur. When I use it, it tends to illicit a response from the healer.
  10. Slasher Augur

    What I don't get is why they cant just make the ability you're using take you to 89% when you use it instead of needed a secondary ability to do this for us. These abilities shouldn't have hp limits to begin with anyway.
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  11. Kuaamil Elder

    I don't see any problem multibinding Bloodfury to any of our <90% health abilities. As long as they are multibound, they work every time for me. I started doing this at the beginning of ToV when Ritual Scarification started capping me lower than 89%.

    As far as healers complaining. I haven't heard any complain when I use Bloodfury, since that is almost instantly healed via splash or heal over time spells anyway. The only time they really complained was when I was playing on my laptop and hit Rit Scar and dropped to 72% and stayed there.

    Personally I prefer being able to mash Bloodfury+my HP limited ability and then being instantly healed. Especially during heavy AoE fights.
    Skuz likes this.
  12. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    That would be the preferred solution but it might have been too tricky to code it like that perhaps.
    The limited HP part of these abilities does actually fit in with EverQuest Berserker lore in them pushing beyond normal physical limits & that having a price to pay in that they hurt themselves to do that extra damage, hence abilities that blind us, or root us in place or as with this one cap our hp in order to use abilities that give extra damage or bloodfury which eats some hp to let you use them.

    Bloodfury or the Ritual Scarification types are just 2 different paths to the same outcome, I prefer not locking my hp lower though I did use these until I found it was blocking Roar of the Lion, if that stacking was fixed later on that's good for those who choose to use these capped hp abilities.
    There's enough group healing & HoT flying around in groups to top you up & on nasty AE rampage you want your hp as high as you can get it so you have at least a slim chance of not taking a dirt nap in one round.
  13. Bigstomp Augur

    It would be nice to have any hp cap things just lower zerkers max hp's, much like a cleric aura raises them.

    Then I wouldn't have to look at life bars that aren't full when I'm playing a healer.
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  14. Kuaamil Elder

    If they multibind the way I laid it out, you don't! But some people don't want to go through the effort, and I agree it would be nice if the abilities just decreased out hp to 89%. Really though, you shouldn't see anyone at our stage of the game using Ritual Scarification.
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  15. Bigstomp Augur

    I rarely end up with a zerker and when I do it's often a less experienced one on casual/open raids. (the more experienced ones would obviously get the shaman healer).

    I guess I should just assume this is a teachable moment then and tell them to talk to the other zerkers about those buttons.
  16. Zolav Augur

    I NEVER Bother with Ritual.. its a POS pain in the azz.. bloodfury serves its purpose just fine.

    RS when originally implemented was good in theory BUT a total pain in the to lock you in HP..

    Do as Kuaamil says and multibind it into a hotkey, It always works (ok ok 97.5% of the time) and be done with it.

    As far as healers go, just explain it to them, communication is key and that is your responsibility. If they complain then.. well they will at least understand. TBH I haven't found A SINGLE healer complain about the use of bloodfury.
  17. Zerkini New Member

    Again, while I appreciate the feedback in regards to bloodfury, that's not what the question was about.

    So while some who don't know about bloodfury can hopefully learn something from that portion of the conversation, I'd prefer that the issue of these abilities, now for the second time, have fallen to the side and have lost their usefulness yet again.

    As others have mentioned, even before CoV made it through to the public eye users were already seeing their health being limited to less than 89%, and by a fairly large margin. Which begs the question, is it the intention of the dev team to continue to neglect this ability by design, or is it just being overlooked. If not by design, when can we expect a replacement.

    Clearly as others have mentioned there are times when you don't want to use the ability because the extra hps are nessesary for staying alive, such as during AoE heavy encounters. But for every other situation this ability is perfectly fine. Through-out all other content, this is one less thing to concern yourself with, and your healer (through communication) would know that you can't be healed beyond that value.

    I rarely get aggro to justify needing health to stay at 100% for any duration of time. Additionally the health limiters currently provide an increase chance to avoid incoming damage by 3%, and riposte by 22% - 23% as well in the event I do get aggro (which again is rarely).
    minimind likes this.
  18. minimind The Village Idiot

    Lots of interesting discussion here, but I will focus on the OP since Zerkini is making such an earnest effort to focus on this issue. This is the first I have heard of the problem (probably because I'm not bleeding-edge geared). I would like to see the HP value removed and just to have a flat "89%" HP lock (and keeping the other benefits of the buff). I don't know why the HP value was set, though, so I don't know if just a "89%" lock is possible without it.
    Zerkini likes this.
  19. Zerkini New Member

    I seen the HP max limit set as a reason to justify upgrading to a new variation of the ability as opposed to continuing to use a lower level variation of it. Which I'm okay with as the additional plat sink, as well as the requirement to get a higher rank of an ability through raids/named kills.

    Those seem like reasonable requirements and are keeping with traditional expectation of other classes to upgrade to better variations of their existing abilities. But that would of course assume that these were being maintained the same as the other abilities to keep the line of abilities relevant for the current content.
    minimind likes this.
  20. Behelit Augur

    Ritual Scarification (as well as Open Wound for that matter) should really never be used unless you wanna be super lazy and the content is easy enough that it doesnt matter giving up the extra HP. The idea behind them is admittedly interesting and tempting but it has a ton of balancing issues attempting to make it worthwhile.

    Considering the THREE downsides of an HP cap, self DoT, and cannot remove restriction, you'd think that the upsides of this ability would be equally strong. Unfortunately we have an unparsable mod on Melee Avoidance and Riposte. And considering on raids the most likely thing to kill us in the first place is a DD or DoT, capping our HP makes us that much more vulnerable to dying to Spell Damage (further negating the would be benefit of the defensive mods). There's several ways to address this (again all balancing concerns though):
    1. Remove the Melee Avoidance + Riposte mods and replace them with a 20% Spell Damage mitigation effect on hits over 200k(SPA 452)
    2. Remove the Melee Avoidance + Riposte mods and replace them with a 10% DoT mitigation (SPA450) and 3% Lifetap from Weapon Damage (SPA178)
    3. Remove the Melee Avoidance + Riposte mods and replace them with a melee proc with 200% rate mod (SPA 419) that triggers a 45k rune (SPA 55) and 15k heal.

    Granted I dont think Zerkers should really get any of those things, lol but it would take something that beneficial to justify giving up an 11% HP (assuming a best case scenario where we arent hitting the hard number cap) and a self-DoT, being unable to click it off.

    That all said, IMO the easiest solution is to kill the spell line... let it just die its ok. And in return we FIX Bloodfury as should've always been the case. Bloodyfury should be changed from a self DD and follow up DoT to a simple 89% HP Lock while the debuff is active (keep the current duration). The rune recourse should be baked into the "debuff" so that you have the small rune effect while you're capped at 89% and finally give it a recast of 30sec so that it can't be spam-abused for the rune*.... problem solved and it realistically never needs upgrading again. Also frees up a tome-slot for a more desirable spell.

    *note: the rune would need to be tweaked slightly to have no dmg total and instead a be a smaller % absorbed so that it runs the duration without getting popped off immediately by incoming damage before you can activate said abilities. and the recast would still prevent abuse (perhaps even up it to 45-60sec recast if need be).
    Skuz likes this.