Decapitation Upgrade?

The rogs and rangers got a boost to their similar ability's, would it be fair to ask for the same for zerkers?

Sure, lets make it the same as Headshot/Assassinate : only works on humanoids, replaces an attack, and does a lot of damage.

Decapitate works on *anything* based on level. It will work on raid bosses that qualify, even! HS/A only work on a limited selection of targets, and almost nothing in ToV qualifies (its 99% undead, which means its not humanoid).

Are you sure you want to give up decapitating undead, animals, elementals, etc. just for a damage bump on the one mob classification that HS/A do work on?

No Roth, you are creating your own question from his post and then giving a negative karma response. OP is asking about keeping an already in place and working ability to be upgraded along with the rest of the abilities that you get when you progress. I am not a big fan of developers giving an ability and then abandoning it, and eventually it is kinda useless. Why do that?

I’d prefer they let decapitation die in a tire fire, should have never been a thing imo.

Complaining about an ability not getting upgrades like another classes ability and also complaining when someone points out all the restrictions the other classes abilities have that yours don't?

No. OP referenced HS/A (specifically by starting off with “The rogs and rangers”) and then complained about them getting upgrades. Two things to point out here :
The three abilities (HS/A/D) all got damage upgrades as well as the level cap increase with the ToV ranks of the AA’s.
Decapitate functions differently (more relaxed target restrictions, functions as a proc rather than a replacement hit) from the other two.
Different mechanics, of course they are not going to function identically. Berserkers get the benefit of being able to decap far more targets, at the cost of it being both a proc, and doing less damage.

If you want to complain about an abandoned zerker ability, complain about the war cries (Cry of Chaos, level 65, the highest warcry, introduced when they introduced the class, and the line has been abandoned since then). Not something that saw its most recent upgrades less than a year ago.

If Rogues get an assassinate update (increases level of mobs on which it works) as do Rangers with their Headshot then I feel it is fair that Berserkers get a similar update (increases level of mobs on which it works) for Decapitation.
The lower damage & wider range of targets is already the trade-off no further trade offs are needed.

I strongly disagree with you about this.

Decapitation is definitely something I want to see Berserkers keep & it fits with how I feel the class works from a lore perspective (even if that lore is based more on mythical Berserkers than based on real historical lore about them).

As far as Berserker Battle Cries go, yes some upgrades would be very much welcome, I don't ever see the Hundred Hands effect portion of this getting a boost as it is already a very powerful ability to be able to buff the raid with that, but upping the atk portion or adding some other effect to bring it up to date would be a very cool thing to do. Level 65 was an eon ago in EQ time, and a great many raid-wide effects have seen updates per each level raise.

Both Decap and ACoC were used in the past as an excuse to stagnate the class ... so ya not a huge fan of upgrades to put us on par with other classes abilities that are alike.
Especially since members of those classes are so vocal about how "unfair" it is that theirs have restrictions that ours does not. Yet say nothing of the 10X damage difference but are quick to point out that our dissident does give some parity which is fair enough I guess.

Will admit that both war cry and cry havoc lines have long been almost all but useless. If you are advocating for dps upgrades or revamp of abilities that have stagnated for the berserker class then Decap and ACoC are almost the last places I would look at.

I mean to be fair I’m against headshot and assassinate as well they were all three cheesy abilities when introduced. Nowadays at least it’s not as cheesy. As far as battle cries go, I’m good on that also. There is already enough and way better HHE from bards/bsts to worry about upgrading our battle cry. We are a dps class not an adps class.

Yea pretty sure zerks are up there with necros in the classes that don't need a buff category.

You can live on a very restricted cheese-free diet, but it gets very boring very fast.
Some cheese can be good, if it's tasty cheese or adds a bit of colour to the dish, hell even a fairly terrible cheese would be an amazing thing if you had lived on bread & water for a month.

Abilities like these add flavour, seeing an occasional Ooh big hit is fun even if the overall dps gain is minimal or unimportant, imagine wrapping all your kids presents in plain brown paper next year & ask yourself if Christmas will be just as exiting for them as they will still be getting presents? I think it may feel a little "muted".

I guess if all you care about is how well you parsed you already became a machine, I think that reducing a game to just the most mechanically efficient way to see a better parse loses something of what makes gaming fun, I may well be in the minority on that score these days though.

No Roth, he said similar, not that they were the same. It's just an argument starter for him, like "people's abilities are getting upgrades, why not ours". Btw, decapitation does not proc that often or that hard so for me I almost never notice it going off. For the second argument, war cries. Those were cool. For imagining a real battle og battlefield, seeing the mighty berserker swinging the blood dripping monstrous axe in the midst of battle, were sure to inspire you giving that little extra effort into your fighting. Very cool! Very sad they dropped it like that. Very sad!!

I did not say they were the same, I said that if he wants the same damage, then they’d need to be the same. Then I pointed out their differences.

I also pointed out that all three got the same kind (though I don’t know about degree) of upgrades from ToV : all three got level upgrades, and concurrent damage upgrades.

This is kind of leaving me to wonder what it is that the OP wants. Y’all don’t want HS/A restrictions on D ... so there’s no justification in comparing D to HS/A as the OP indirectly did in the first place. Berserker DPS is overall good enough that, as someone else pointed out above, they’re one of the classes that need buffs the least, along with Necromancers. Plus, Berserkers are one of the biggest classes on getting negatives with your positives (Blinding Fury ... and all those abilities that require <90% HP ... and Agony of Absolution requiring you to lose HP in order to kill whatever ailment you have), so since y’all don’t want the “rogs and rangers” limitations, what additional limitations DO you want? (Not that it will matter any)

For that matter, just what boosts *IS* the OP referring to for HS/A anyway? The only thing we’ve seen in ToV was from new ranks of the AA’s, my failing memory is not recalling anything in TBL, and its rather late to be looking at stuff that happened in, say, VOA(?) when they bumped up the damage but nerfed the firing rate of HS.

OP wants more damage.

In my opinion, they need to redo HS/Assassinate/Decap so that it only fires on light blue mobs about 10 levels below current. Then I wish they would give everyone a similar ability. Levels are relatively easy to get, working your way through 20k AAs not so much.

Roth and Tarves: Why do damage need to be the same"? or "give everyone a similar ability". LOL, you two are more mathematicians than game designers. Skuz is the game designer here. I'd rather have him bring ideas to the developers than any autocrat. Sorry guys, but you are voted out!

Its not the same now. OP is asking for more, because of those two abilities that “rogs and rangers” have. It is not an illogical conclusion that since HS/A have higher damages, that one would feel D needs to have that higher damage as well. What OTHER abilities would the OP be referencing? Throwing/archery? Use of 1h swords? Bind Wound? No, those two specific class mentions make this specifically about the three abilities : Headshot, Assassinate, Decapitation.

OP is asking “since HS/A got bumps, where is D’s bump?” ... to which I want to know, WHAT HS/A bump is the OP basing this upon? I’m not aware of any, other than the ToV AAs that raised the damage and level cap of all three abilities. Since D got those, that cannot be what the OP is referring to for HS/A, can it?

Since HS/A have higher damage potential (with much more restrictive targeting) than D, the lack of mention by the OP of what the HS/A bumps that D did not get were, implies that the OP wants D to be close to (or match, or better than) HS/A. Understandable, if all you do is lump the three together without understanding their differences.

Personally, I’d LOVE to see D go from being the proc it is now, to a replacement hit, in the same manner that HS/A are replacement hits. Fire an arrow at an applicable target, don’t get that 50k damage hit, get that 500k headshot. Take a swing at the mob, don’t get that 70k hit, get that whatever it would be decapitate. Instead of the current ”take a swing at the mob, get that 70k hit, and that 220k decapitate proc.” Devs clearly don’t want to take it in that direction, unfortunately.

HS/A were low light blues/greens only, to start (in addition to their other target restrictions). Then a slew of level cap expansions came along that increased player level by 5 and target level by 6. Damage, however, went from significant to laughable throughout that time, because it had not seen any increases. Personally I ignored HS, except for 6.91 hard’s dracnids, until I started to clear the alarans in Argath’s Landing to work on my stone tear. It just was not something that had any impact upon my play, because I’d not really considered how the target level was creeping up compared to the character level.
IMO going back to light blues only, even if its high light blues (character level - 5 for example) would be a step backwards.

I would give everyone a similar ability at the mob level I specified because it would be far enough down not interfere with recent content and give folks another catch up mechanism. The game is top heavy and I have not seen a whole lot of people consuming older content besides for specialty items on live. To operate efficiently in the newest expansion a lot of AA work has to be done. Giving everyone the ability to knockout 50 - 80 AAs in 30 minutes solo would go a long way towards moving that work along. Plus, it better than just giving people AAs.

I started seriously playing my ranger (44 at the time) at the end of 2008. Headshot was the mechanism that allowed me to level and AA so that I was ready to raid seriously by the end of 2009. I lived at C1 and C2 for a long time after 69.1. Without it, the path I took would have been more difficult. I am actually reliving some of that on Coirnav with a 75 ranger though lower ranks of HS have been neutered because of the lack of HDex. Running around in circle shooting arrows and dotting stuff is time consuming when soloing. I never seriously considered HS worthwhile in current content because of its restrictions which is why I wouldn't mind if it just stagnating back to where it was.

[Mon Jul 13 18:30:33 2020] You hit Combat Dummy Azia for 220839 points of physical damage by Decapitation XV.
[Mon Jul 13 18:30:33 2020] Combat Dummy Azia is hit with a nearly-decapitating blow!
[Mon Jul 13 18:30:33 2020] You hit Combat Dummy Azia for 220839 points of physical damage by Decapitation XV.
[Mon Jul 13 18:30:33 2020] Combat Dummy Azia is hit with a nearly-decapitating blow!
[Mon Jul 13 18:30:35 2020] You hit Combat Dummy Azia for 220839 points of physical damage by Decapitation XV.
[Mon Jul 13 18:30:35 2020] Combat Dummy Azia is hit with a nearly-decapitating blow!
[Mon Jul 13 18:30:36 2020] You hit Combat Dummy Azia for 728769 points of physical damage by Decapitation XV. (Critical)
[Mon Jul 13 18:30:36 2020] Combat Dummy Azia is hit with a nearly-decapitating blow!
[Mon Jul 13 18:30:43 2020] You hit Combat Dummy Azia for 220839 points of physical damage by Decapitation XV.
[Mon Jul 13 18:30:43 2020] Combat Dummy Azia is hit with a nearly-decapitating blow!
[Mon Jul 13 18:30:48 2020] You hit Combat Dummy Azia for 220839 points of physical damage by Decapitation XV.
[Mon Jul 13 18:30:48 2020] Combat Dummy Azia is hit with a nearly-decapitating blow!
[Mon Jul 13 18:30:51 2020] You hit Combat Dummy Azia for 728769 points of physical damage by Decapitation XV. (Critical)
[Mon Jul 13 18:30:51 2020] Combat Dummy Azia is hit with a nearly-decapitating blow!

It appears to proc pretty damn often for me.

I take issue with abilities that turn classes into "flavor of the month". Which usually causes some people to reroll as whatever OP class and then cry their eyes out when it gets nerfed later. And if you let berserkers run around smacking blue con mobs for millions of damage every few seconds (see above) there would be little zerker alts popping up everywhere followed by an influx of crying shortly after when it gets nerfed. Decap works on the same level mobs (114) as Assassinate and Headshot currently it just doesn't do the same damage. Which, in my opinion, it should not since it works on everything and not only humanoid mobs like Assassinate and Headshot.

I don't think that happened for Berserkers, Rogues or Rangers.
When those abilities went in they were for characters at the high end of the game & the damage didn't constitute an enormous amount of their DPS overall, so if no FoTM actually took place for those classes your fears are largely unfounded.

I recall when Decap went in (VoA iirc), in groups I was still getting out-parsed by similarly geared Rogues & Monks were blowing both me & the Rogues away, Berserkers only really outperform the other Melee DPS on raids where they have the full compliment of raid support classes to bolster them at least in the 95-105 range, that may shift in EoK or at some point thereafter but I haven't played beyond TBM as yet..

Yeah we are on the same page on this score.