Berserker Class Modification Priority Discussion

This is a general thread and discussion for people to chime in on where and how they believe the berserker class can be modified to improve their quality of life in gameplay and adjust their place in the balance of classes in Everquest. I'll start the discussion with some topics and based on either likes or my own judgement as the OP and thus controller of the top post (POWER!!) summarize popular opinions below. Suggested Discussion Topics---

DPS

• Burn Discipline (uses Combat Ability timer) power
• Burn Discipline duration
• Burn Discipline reuse timers (see thread here)
• DPS from spammable abilities

Spammable Abilities (short reuse)

• Procs - Does everything need to proc? Would we be better off with burst weapon damage? (ie. Instead of the chance to proc a 2000 base damage frenzy hit multiple times over 30 seconds, would it be better for an ability to just flat out make 10 frenzied attacks of 2000 base damage?)
• Is it OK to have so many spam abilities? Do you think there should be a grand consolidation?

Survivability

• Does what we have do what we need (acknowledging the need to balance)

Quality of Life

• Spammable Ability Naming (see thread here)
• Stinging Incision Endurance Cost (see thread here)
• Summoning Axes - Too much work? Is it just fine?
• The "<90% HP" mechanic. Is it fun? Fine? The worst thing in the world? Do you have a better idea to implement the role-play mechanic of "able to put out more damage, but only when damaged one's self"?

AA Abilities/Disc Stackers

• Any changes you want here? Why?

Common Themes and Opinions (Updated 3/02/22)
Burn disciplines (listed in rainbow colors in a post below) need to be re-evaluated in light of modern developments and raid events. (Priority: High)

1. Mangling Discipline - Reduce reuse timer so that it can be used at least every raid event in a night.
2. Disconcerting Discipline - Sufficient, but would be nice to improve power to augment sustained DPS.
3. Brutal Discipline - Sufficient power, but could use further extension so that it lasts a full minute (additional ranks of "Improved Berserking Discipline").
4. Cleaving Acrimony - The crit rate modifier is literally worthless to the many berserkers who have attained 100% crit rate. The only benefit comes from turning crits into crippling blows which isn't a major improvement when you consider that our synergy AA line provides a significant amount of crippling blow time. Moreover, the reuse is way to long for its minimal benefit (Needs more ranks of "Improved Cleaving Acrimony Discipline").
5. Frenzied Resolve - Sufficiently powerful (?). Root is annoying, but that's part of the give/take.
6. Avenging Flurry - (Parse below.) The low Hundred Hands (delay reduction) value is nearly obsolete with a bard or beastlord in group. The Flurry mod is very low. In fact, despite the variety of mods, it only provides only a 31% in hit attempts and only for 30 seconds and a 15 minute reuse without a brd/bst (lower boost with). Increase the hit attempts via a massive flurry mod, extend the duration to one minute, and drop reuse to 10 minutes.

Sustained DPS is Harder to Increase Due to Crit Rate Ceiling (Priority: Medium/Low)

1. Many berserkers are hitting with a 100% crit rate and have been doing so for the last few expansions. At the same time, more and more hDEX on gear is helping other DPS crit more frequently (good for them!) thereby boosting their DPS. If berserkers DPS cannot be increased by crit rates, then there needs to be another way: Weapon ratio, crit power, or greatly enhancing decapitation.
2. Decapitation (Parse) - With all AAs and the (nearly) best raid focuses, decapitation from auto-attack only does around 15k DPS and procs every ~30 seconds from auto-attack/auto-frenzy. Modifying Decap can be a very controlled way of increasing sustained DPS. More parsing needed.

Stinging Incision (Priority: Low)

1. This line of abilities holds berserker HP below 90% for certain abilities to work and is cool in concept, but the endurance cost on the newest version has gotten extreme and the benefits are only worthwhile if tanking (when one would likely be <90% HP anyway). Re-evaluate the endurance cost and provide an offensive benefit to encourage use. Note: Priority is "low" only because we have a work around to get below 90% HP.

Ability Names & Ambiguity (Priority: Low, Barrier to Entry & Improvement)

1. Berserkers have 4 abilities currently called "frenzy" which makes it difficult to discuss the abilities with... anyone. Consider renaming some of the lines. See proposal here: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...r-disc-combat-ability-rename-proposal.280933/

Berserker Burn Disciplines @ level 120 (Base Time | Max Modified Time)

Timer: 21 - Mangling Discipline (~4.5x the power of Disconcerting)
Duration: 1 minutes | 1 minutes
Reuse: 26 minutes | 26 minutes
Power: Strongest burn discipline we have.

Timer: 21 - Disconcerting Discipline
Duration: 1.6 minutes | 1.6 minutes
Reuse: 3 minutes| 3 minutes
Power: Nice group grind booster.

Timer: 4 - Brutal Discipline
Duration: 0.5 minutes | 0.8 minutes
Reuse: 25 minutes | 10 minutes
Power: 2nd strongest burn discipline.

Timer: 3 - Cleaving Acrimony Discipline
Duration: 1 minutes | 1.2 minutes
Reuse: 22 minutes| 19 minutes
Power: Increases crit rate and crippling blow rate. If you're crit rate is already 100% (most if not all raiding berserkers), then it's only a benefit to increase the chance to strike a crippling blow.

Timer: 15 - Frenzied Resolve
Duration: 1 minutes | 1 minutes
Reuse: 10 minutes | 10 minutes
Power: Alright if you don't mind being rooted (or using your two leaps and Drawn to Blood)

Timer: 6 - Avenging Flurry Discipline
Duration: 0.5 minutes | 0.5 minutes
Reuse: 15 minutes | 15 minutes
Power: (See post below)

I have noticed as a Berserker that there is some "Give and Take" features tied into our makeup. They give you something good now and then, BUT add a negative to it's formula that hinders the player some. I understand the need for this formula.

I suggest a reduction of some reuse timers of certain disciplines in order to extend our burn cycle window further than 14-16 minutes, in order to bring Berserkers in line with the current top ranking dps classes.

Don't you think its about time?

Someone mentioned in a separate post about the reduction of the reuse timer for Mangling Discipline and I agree and further would like to expand that idea to following reductions in reuse timers:

o Mangling Discipline - reduced from 26 minutes (absurd amount) to 17 minutes (more easily managed).

o Cleaving Acrimony Discipline - reduced from 19 minutes to 13 minutes.

This would adjust our inability to burn more often while maintaining a higher sustained dps for longer periods of time, which is what we should be doing in the first place. There is no reason why Berserkers cannot be in top 5 dps raid parses. It's a battle!

Lets look at Savage Spirit AA. Its a good AA; it grants 295% non-cumulative of your critical melee attacks for 0:01:06 BUT, (what I like to call...) the 'punishment' for it is the large amount of 25% of your total hps in the dmg it causes the user. Couple that with our need to maintain 89% health for some of our offense abilities, and we can drop dangerously low and require a large heal. More so than any other class.

I agree with Minimind that our need for reduced health in order to use some offense AA's/disc is alluring factor of our class and should be continued, but if you want us to use "Stinging Incision", a slight adjustment should be in order to make it more appealing to use.

Given the current state of the dps in the game Mangling should be reduced to match the other burn disc so it can be used multiple times like other disc. The damage increase from mangling no longer justifies the long timer. As other classes have caught up and passed us. Every event is long and sustained locking out a classes best dps tool for 26m is absurd.

I'd be happy with mangling being 20m to sync up with our big burn aas.

Cleaving and avenging are not nearly good enough to justify their rediculously long cooldowns and short uptime in avenging's case in today's game. Bring them both down to 10m cool down and 1m uptime for avenging. Bring brutal up to 1m uptime.

Side note: I've never had an issue with savage spirit's nuke as it fades in raids and unless your boxing or in a lazy, safe environment, using stinging is kind of a noob move imo and especially on raids.

I agree. They were a more significant boost in the past, but passive increases to the berserker have nullified much of their value.Taking a look at Cleaving Acrimony...

Cleaving Acrimony (rk I)
1: Increase Chance to Critical Hit by 270%
2: Increase Chance to Crippling Blow by 215%

A group geared berserker (Cleave VII is standard on base-level group gear since Underfoot) with Cry Havoc running, buffed with Shammy focus, all Combat Fury (crit rate) and Planar Power (stat cap) AAs, and a modest amount of hDex type 5s will be criting 75-85% of the time. There is still *some* benefit from both modifiers.

A raid geared berserker with a full set of hDex type 5s from ToV+ will very likely be hitting critically 100% of the time without disc'ing. Thus the only benefit from Cleaving Acrimony is turning critical hits into crippling blows.

In regards to Avenging Flurry (below), I subjectively notice little increase in DPS (ie mob kill speed) and that might be because it's only 30 seconds in duration. I think I'll parse it out over the weekend. Does anyone else get the same feeling?

1: Increase Chance of 1 Additional 2H Attacks by 100%
2: Increase Chance to Double Attack by 10000%
3: Decrease Weapon Delay by 18%
4: Increase Chance to Flurry by 15%

Berserkers are complaining about dps now? What happened, two seconds ago, everyone and their brother were making zerker armies.

Berzerkers have been at the crit cap for the past 3 expansions, not including ToL. Other melee classes are still gaining on crit rate from Hdex each year, thereby catching up in dps and some classes surpassing zerkers.

This right here people. The devs see increasing hdex every expansion as a dps boost but its not for zerkers and is for rest of melee. So they have been getting the normal weapon increase boost + crit increases and we just get the weapon boost. Over time that as led to the situation we're in right now.

How did I miss this! sigh I work too much.. anywho!

Great post Mini.. you rock and thank you for taking the time.

Where I see Zerkers are lacking the most..

Our main Disc timers..
-Mangling, its long timer made sense at one point but in the current game (ToL) it is much too long at 26 minutes. It needs a drastic reduction. HECK if it was on a 10 minute timer it would still keep us behind casters but improve our quality of life greatly. Currently I can use it once an event IF I am lucky.. I would be happy if it was reduced to 15-18 minutes.

-Disconcerting.. needs a boost, hasn't scaled well to do what it was intended to do.. boost sustained dps.

-Brutal Discipline.. TBH I like it in its current form. BUT it is only 48 seconds long.. uptime needs to be 1 minute.

-Avenging Flurry disc..15 minute timer for 30 seconds of BLEH.. substantially a useless disc. The double attack chance of it is useless, the other aspects of it are nice. TBH this needs to be 1 min long on a 5 minute reuse timer and needs to be removed from being put in a Combat Ability timer to the Buff window for it to be of any real use.

-Cleaving Acrimony disc.. a dang near obsolete disc.. Its crit component is obsolete and its crippling blow chance is nice BUT our synergy also does this (a 34 perc chance to cripple) TBH I don't care if this disc is changed BUT the timer on it with current reductions is 19 minute. MUCH to long for a near obsolete disc.

-Reckless Abandon.. I am happy with its current state.

-Savage Spirit.. I am very happy with this disc also.

-Frenzied Resolve-I mean.. its not dumpster trash and definitely click worthy but that root is a bit much.. BUT you can always find times to use it.

Spam-able Combat abilities
I feel they are in a good state. Upgrades this expansion were nice BUT they are such a small part of our dps they really didn't help us much.

Survivability
We are in a fair position here.. You need to watch what you doing out there in Norrath but once a zerker is well geared he won't be tanking anything for a group but he can survive some OH SHEET situations if he can click fast enough.

Overall Quality of life
I would give zerker QoL a B+ ..I enjoy raging.. In fact I feel ragey right now!!!! Just kidding. Thank you if you took the time to read.

this does not comport with the parsing I have done.

I use Disconcerting. Its 1:36 duration and 3 minute refresh is helpful when I am not using Mangling.

Let me be a little more clear about disconcerting it was pretty late so I was half asleep and I realize Battle leap buff and Disco are two diff things.

I realize disco is "something" but its not much and hasn't scaled well since its introduction. I will run some parses and check it out. Pretty sure I know the outcome though

I've done a pair of parses (both over 8 hours) to see just what Avenging Flurry (rk. 3) is doing today. Both run the discipline "bare" with no stacker discs or short duration buffs (A:CoC, Quick Time, etc.).

• AA: Max AAs, minus a couple irrelevant things
• Gear: Ferocity XIII
• Weapon: 32 delay
  • Slashing weapon damage only. Frenzy hits are NOT included in the parse.
• Target: Level 120 Target Dummy
• Buff: Enchanter Haste (+22% triple attack rate) - Yes
• Buff: Shared Merciless Ferocity (+triple attack rate) - Yes

Results (Base)
Parse: 32,486 seconds (9.02 hours)
(hit attempts/second, proportion of parse)

• 1: 149 (0.67%)
• 2: 2,147 (9.67%)
• 3: 7,620 (34.32%)
• 4: 5,704 (25.69%)
• 5: 5,241 (23.60%)
• 6: 1,341 (6.04%)
• 7: 0 (0.00%)
• 8: 1 (0.00%)

• Overall Hit Attempts/Second: 0.6835

Results (Avenging Flurry Rk. 3)
Parse: 31,471 seconds (8.74 hours)
(hit attempts/second, proportion of parse)

• 1: 125 (0.44%)
• 2: 57 (0.20%)
• 3: 10,189 (36.05%)
• 4: 3,735 (13.21%)
• 5: 8,832 (31.25%)
• 6: 5,085 (17.99%)
• 7: 31 (0.11%)
• 8: 73 (0.26%)
• 9: 63 (0.22%)
• 10: 37 (0.13%)
• 11: 30 (0.11%)
• 12: 8 (0.03%)

• Overall Hit Attempts/Second: 0.8981

Conclusion: Avenging Flurry increases hit attempts per second by 31.41%

Avenging Flurry parse above, I don't think that's a sufficient boost for a disc with 30-seconds duration and 15-minute reuse particularly since there is no opportunity to affect either of those times. Furthermore, given the prevalence of Hundred Hands Effect (reduced weapon delay) from other class buffs (Quick Time, Ruaabri's Fury, Composite Fury) which are ubiquitous in a raid setting and at least common in the group setting, the value of Avenging Flurry is watered down.

• 1: Increase Chance of 1 Additional 2H Attacks by 100%
• 2: Increase Chance to Double Attack by 10000%
• 3: Decrease Weapon Delay by 24.8%
• 4: Increase Chance to Flurry by 17%

Lastly, is there anyone here who can say whether the Flurry boost from Ruaabri's/Composite Fury stack with Avenging? Or, if either are active, is that part of AF negated as well?

My Suggestions -

1. Massively increase the flurry attributes of the entire line. Guaranteed flurries for 30 seconds would make it a GOOD disc and would stack with other buffs. Less than 10000% Flurry rate would be acceptable, but focus on Flurry.
2. Add AAs to extend duration.
3. Add AAs to reduce reuse.

I've begun summarizing opinions in the OP. Start getting your major statements in!

Another topic for discussion: Bandoliers.

No, not the thing that makes it easy to swap between weapon sets. The container that holds only throwing items which, in a patch a few years back, was changed so that the container weight reduction would benefit throwing in the same way weight reduction on quivers benefit archery-- provide a haste.

The change was made, but there are only a couple such containers. Only one can hold our throwing axes (Crude Fur Bandolier) but it no longer drops. I think it's time for us to see "Lilbraen's Big Axe Bag"-- a 40+ slot container with 50% weight reduction that only holds throwing items.

Short Decapitation Parse

It has occurred to me that parsing Decap accurately over long duration probably requires an auto-key program because it's supposed to be able to fire off of any of our weapon, throwing, and frenzy attacks. The results below used the following methodology:

• ATK 8509
• Haste: 217%
• AAs: Max except for ToL Distraction Attack ranks
• Crit Rate: 100%
• Dex: 4275 (2588 heroic Dex)
• Weapon: Luclinite Coagulated Maul (895/36 with augs) - ToL Raid 2HB
• Parser: EQLogParser
• Auto-attack, auto-frenzy
• Target: level 119 combat dummy with humanoid model. Hit from the back.

Results

• Parse time: 1.55 hours
• Decapitation Procs: 193
• Decapitation Frequency: 1 proc every 29 seconds.
• Avg dmg/proc: 479,375
• 16,673 DPS for decapitation
  • Compare to auto-Frenzy: 15,083 DPS
  • Compare to auto-primary attack: 128,010 DPS
  • Compare to weapon proc Perfusion of Plague): 3,474 DPS

Note: I also inadvertently did the parse against a level 120 target dummy (showed "nearly-decapitated" emote, but didn't fire Decapitation XVIII) for 8.45 hours and got 1 proc every 31 seconds. So the proc rate seems pretty consistent.

Update - Faster Weapon

• ATK 8703
• Haste: 217%
• AAs: Max except for ToL Distraction Attack ranks
• Crit Rate: 100%
• Dex: 4275 (2588 heroic Dex)
• Weapon: (651/30 with augs) - CoV Raid 2HP
• Parser: EQLogParser
• Auto-attack, auto-frenzy
• Target: level 119 combat dummy with humanoid model. Hit from the back.

Results

• Parse time: 9.19 hours
• Decapitation Procs: 1,197
• Decapitation Frequency: 1 proc every 27.6 seconds.
• Avg dmg/proc: 471,679
• 17,071 DPS for decapitation

Huh... it seems like weapon delay has an effect on Decapitation. Just looking at the 8.45 hour parse (36 delay) vs. the 9.19 hour parse (30 delay), there looksto be a correlation. The 2hp is 17% faster than the 2hb and produced 11% more procs per minute.
I need to try something extremely fast next... the Crow Footed Lance (20 delay)...

Update - FastEST Weapon

• ATK 8620
• Haste: 217%
• AAs: Max except for ToL Distraction Attack ranks
• Crit Rate: 100%
• Dex: 4180 (2493 heroic Dex)
• Weapon: (32/20, no augs) - Crow Footed Lance (Plane of Air)
• Parser: EQLogParser
• Auto-attack, auto-frenzy
• Target: level 119 combat dummy with humanoid model. Hit from the back.

Results

• Parse time: 21 hours (well, 30 seconds short of 21 hours)
• Decapitation Procs: 4,251
• Decapitation Frequency: 1 proc every 17.777 seconds.
• Avg dmg/proc: 464,648
• 26,141 DPS for decapitation

Some updates to our discs are gonna be needed with HDEX allowing the other melee to close the gap some on effective crit rates & surpass us on overall dps.
Some good suggested changes posted & I agree with most of the conclusions presented this far.

Personally I would like to see the class move far away from multiple Procs & remove swarm Pets more than other classes even & see our spam abilities reduced in number and upped in impact a lot more.
As the swingers of >insert huge weapon here< I think abilities that impact the damage our weapons do should be our focus, our hits should be nasty.
Hotkeyed activated abilities should feel more weighty & impactful than they have been for a while, combat (for any class) is too diluted across too large an arsenal of tools.

I think that 20 things doing 5 damage each feels less "Berserk" than 5 things doing 20 damage each, were we a dual wielding type zerker that might be different.

Updated Decapitation parse(s). Very interesting results.