So another GU and sadly again nothing in it to look forward to for Berserkers. On paper it may sound nice. The clicky Berserk no longer blocks the Berserk proc, it now even stacks and affects the entire group, the Berserk proc rate has been increased slightly (because the new proc AA has 5 ranks and the old group proc AA had only 3), you no longer need to waste 15 points to spec Gut Roar and after 5 years of everyone being at the haste/DPS cap there is now a secondary benefit for going over the cap. But in reality it changes nothing. You need ridiculous high numbers to gain anything noticable with the new curves for haste or DPS. Provided you are at the cap ~30 haste equals ~0.5 flurry and ~30 DPS equals ~0.1 % more autoattack damage (2.25 multiplicator at 200 mod to ~2.28 multiplicator at ~230 mod). But people are sitting at 300-400 haste/DPS, not 200, so the gain will be even considerable less. Also not only almost every class buffs haste and/or DPS, they also almost all buff more. So Berserk will have the least returns of all haste/DPS buffs. And you could improve the Berserk haste/DPS amount by the factor 10 and it wouldn't be gamebreaking (400 haste to 700 haste = less than 2 % flurry more, 400 DPS (=2.4 multiplicator) to 700 DPS (=2.55 multiplicator) would mean ~0.5 % more autoattack damage). Even if the numbers are a bit off (probably they are), the indication is not. Berserk is and will be meaningless (except for the buffs that depend on being Berserk). There has to be added something to Berserk to give it a reason to exist, something that is not on ridculous dimishing return curves, eg flurry, autoattack modifier, crit bonus, potency, strikethrough, accuracy, hate gain etc. Also all melee stats are now uncapped or have a currently unreachable cap (haste, dps, flurry, multiattack). Except AE autoattack. This stat should be uncapped as well, possibly with a linear gain until 150 % and than a gain like multiattack above 500. If this may become too powerful with Open Wounds, the fluff AE that was put on it with the last GU should be improved by a factor of ~5 and the AE attack chance should removed entirely. Another problem is Destructive Rage. The last GU changed it to buff multiattack to the raid. With new dimishing return you get 5 extra attacks for 500 MA. For the 6th you nedd another 500 MA. This makes a 20-30 MA buff almost completely irrelevant as soon as you reach 500 MA and there are already people in high end gear at 500 MA. So in the very foreseeable future this buff will be as useless as before the change... Even though you no longer have to waste points to get Gut Roar two problems remain. 1st, Gut Roar is still extremely weak (like all the other EoF tree abilities). It will parry an attack, even if you would have avoided it without Gut Roar and you can strike through the parry. Other Fighters have the same type of clicky, but they a lot better because they are eg a stoneskin trigger (so it will actually reduce damage you would have taken otherwise) or they have AE immunity (and can avoid AEs of mobs even when they tank them by walking out of melee range while the mob casts). Gut Roar should either get multiple triggers (~5) or work for limited duration (~5-10s), in its current form it's hardly worth a single AA point. The 2nd remaning problem is, that the useless AA are still there. Enhance Mutilate/Maul/Body Check/Demolish/Head Crush do nothing. They should all increase the damage of the CA by ~5 % per rank, otherwise they remain no enhancement. Also all AA choices that modify recast are becoming obsolete. You can reach the recast cap of Vision of Madness with only 2 AA points and the other (Chaos, Weapon Counter, Open Wounds, Rampage) aren't much better. The should all receive new secondary effects (Chaos: +2s duration per rank, Weapon Counter, Open Wounds, Rampage: +5 % damage per rank, Vision of Madness: + 10 % heal per rank on the initial heal). So none of the core problems were adressed. The offensive buffs are still redundant or meaningless and the defensive buffs are still almost entirely build around direct heals, heroic content and your healer not being a Shaman and don't transfer to a raid enviroment. Some simple fixes would allready help: make the offensive buffs (Berserk, Juggernaut) relevant again with new effects change Blood Rage from a direct heal to a ward. Currently the heal, if it triggers, doesn't help much, because you are at 100 % health most of the time or other effects already healed you (Battle Frenzy, Cleric heals). Possibly the heal should also triggers from all damage, not only melee attacks. It wouldn't change much below raid content, but help somewhat on raids allow Ward of Rage to be affected by potency. Currently the effects doesn't scale at all with the content/gear, a slightly increased ward amount (maybe 400-500) and the possibilty to increase the ward with potency would fix that change Adrenaline back to damage reduction, but only partly. Idealy half half (25 % reduction, 25 % replenishment), but even say 10 % reduction, 40 % replenishment would allready help. For the mana cost of Adrenaline (and the lack of other good defensive abilities as Berserker) it should do more than nothing when you have wards on you.
sadly they just reinforced pal/sk and brawlers. the class defined tanks are useless now. no one uses them and no one wants to roll one. bravo sony! this update was suppsoed to fix the incredible lacking of the actual tank class. instead they did no changes, they made brawlers and crusaders better. and have done zero real change to aa's. i pay them for this oh lord
none of the core issues seem to be getting any attention so i made up a list of suggestions even though i feel they will continue to go unnoticed because STILL, the upgrades are to abilities that do NOT cover the main issues this class faces lately. all you have to do is look at ANY thread in the general fighter forum and you won't even see mention of zerkers at all anymore for anything above heroic content. not that i think we should be ideal raid tanks, but even an option for offtank should remain.. not based simply on being an exceptional player. anyways: so time has come to upgrade the zerk CAs, tweak the offensive tools like juggernaut and open wounds and fix the cast timers on the CAs that define the class to actually be desirable to mash those buttons instead of consider whether they are worth hitting or not due to losing DPS doing so. the current class specific CAs zerks have are below par against any other tank in the game, putting focus on default auto attack from our mythical. this has been an issue ever since mythicals were introduced and every pure DPS class started creeping well out of our ability to hold AE aggro control. insolence is great, except it's not always going to be available to us for getting a jump on holding the mobs. if you cut the 2 blue and 1 green CA(bloodbath, berserker onslaught and stunning roar) cast timers in half you would have fixed them to be usable and desirable and not overpowered because you have not touched the recast timers for them which is fine where they are. open wounds, even if you simply upgraded the AE damage component by either 500% or turned it into a DOT to redefine one of our AE class traits to be superior to basic AE melee auto attack, ticking off what the current damage portion does every 2-3 seconds for a 12 second duration, it helps zerkers have an additional tool for maintaining and getting AE aggro. as i mentioned with the weak CAs, juggernaut suffers because it does almost nothing raising base damage so minimally for a rather large chunk of avoidance and mitigation loss. not that i have actually crunched numbers but when i use juggernaut and am tanking i have always noticed a bit more damage taken(seemingly more than the definition claims you lose), so caps affecting the defensive loss to me, still are a penalty for rather minimal offensive gains. it should be a skill that you WANT to hit for offensive prowess as an offensive tank to be desired. whatever the offensive skill bonus is for the skill should basically be doubled from what it currently is. none of the offensive bonuses are listed, so i have no clue what to suggest for real tweaks as it is a hidden mechanic with a very basic definition one which i haven't tested lately to see what the actual bonuses are and if they scale or not since everything always changes without notice... basically even solo, against white con mobs with average offensive avoidance, juggernaut usually does not do more damage than damage taken in. meaning in its current form it is not a tank skill whatsoever. consolidate unyielding will and vision of madness(both warrior deathsaves) to be a single proc 100% heal without the possible deadly detriment, which additionally requires more AAs after it was "fixed". an AA option for the consolidated spell could be a timer reduction from a 5 minute reuse to cut it down to 3.5 minutes. and if you want to throw us a bone for tank choices, revert adrenaline to 50% damage reduction. but i'm not holding my breath for this one because as i mentioned that i consider this an offensive plate tank class, it shouldn't be as good an option as the defensive plate tank for controlling spike damage. even though leather wearers can outdo any tools we have to offer these days for damage spikes.. once again that makes sense? we don't have some of the abilities they or crusaders have, we have the most basic of tools to do the job compared to almost every tank out there and starting to get close to rounding off the bottom of the barrel DPS wise because of the CAs which are long past due for attention and lacking attention to our ability stats that we buff which are so very anemic now. keep in mind i do not raid any longer(by choice i retired) so this is all based off of perception of the abilities compared to today's averages i see from other classes i group with and tinker with alts on. many of these abilities could be tweaked even to assist make solo play more enjoyable to those who obviously aren't going to be given a fair chance at filling a raid position. i see other classes getting major bumps to abilities in the right areas while i cannot for the life of me remember this class being anything more than the jack of all trades which puts it at best average, an average by which many other classes should (of course this is just simply my opinion) be balanced around. yet many are given attention above and beyond while we remain very close to how we have always been, where sometimes we get something that alters our complete perspective like when adrenaline was introduced and we could step in and tank like a champ if the MT died, or pull massive amount of mobs, then it gets changed for the worse putting us back in our place at the middle or worse(in DoV) at the bottom. zerks have the least health of all tanks, zerks now do not top AE DPS, warriors have poor deathsaves that are at least 2 expansions old, zerks do not even have "fun" tools like feign death/evac, zerk group buffs are exceptionally weak even considering the new over cap system, zerks have average tanking tools even being generous. so what does that say about the class? it's at best average in almost all fields. for about the past year+ i have given up on the class, promoted consolidating both warriors to make a decent single warrior class and even that seems to be unacceptable to sony so even though i still bother to write these things down i have already given up on being heard. why do i bother still? i do not know.
Perseverance should just be a max health buff... Gut Roar should be a passive offensive buff.. like SKs new 15% Strikethrough Chance... Our AOE/Buffs in the AOE line need 0.1 Second Casting Speed Added...
On a side note, they did not only not fix anything balancewise, they also didn't fix any bugs. The initial damage component of Insolence has a cast time and is not a proc, yet it is not affected by ability mod. The fluff AE on Open Wounds is not affected by the CA boost from Juggernaut. Death's Door was supposed to go the detrimental window, instead it disappeared completely from any window (but still kills you).
Bremer wrote: I don't even use that death prevention, sometimes it procs as the same time as Vision of Madness and cancels eachother out. P.S. I love how they fixed combination from monks to make it crit/proc off multiple attacks, but they won't touch even worse abilitys from other classes, monks are fine. :/
They also made combination hit only once instead of 2-4 times, so in the end it's probably a very slight dps decrease, depending on your crit bonus.
xelgad said they werent interested in fixing zerker stuff, so dont get your hopes up for anything good here or any other update.
maybe its time Xelgad gets replaced. if you cannot be bothered to look at the issues of the game then get out of your position. heck this game is so redundant these days, roll a bruiser/monk/sk you automatically overpowered. there are no zerker or guardian MT's sk/monk are MT's bruiser /pally OT's. this is the life sony want, then get rid of the guardian and zerker class this is just silly. even my little nephew under 10 knows this common sense
schizolic wrote: After the last GU, when Xelgad promised fixes and did nothing but putting a fluff AE on a spell, I don't think that anyone hopes that anything gets fixed. There are more urgent matters, eg ensuring Brawler domination for the tank spot. Personally, I only make these posts to increase my post counter.
/e sharpens his claws Aeralik was the first and never touched on anything really related to zerkers(not that we really needed much of a bump at the time, we could have been considered OK at that time and i wouldn't have argued, but i would have argued that SKs needed to be balanced, read as nerfed at the time), just attempted his own ideas on what a tank should be. now Xelgad is doing the same but in a different direction and picked Brawlers this expansion where Aeralik buffed up Crusaders, namely SK(which i'm fine with but they still are superior to zerks if you ask me, in every aspect). i am NOT aiming at nerfs to brawlers, i just would like to see this class get bumped up to be competetive again for at least one area of the game besides perhaps the classfication of "best power leveller" where our next competetitor is conjuror who is AFK standing near aggro mobs that repop. Guardians had a lock on the raid tank spot(still do, just not as solid of a lock where every other class beside zerk has a shot at it). Zerkers have always had to scrap and fight for everything we have. yay, we make for a decent alt character and perhaps an OK instance tank.. beyond that, crickets. even i don't enjoy soloing as much as i used to, when i roll other characters and see that they have other useful tools given to them where the zerker still has it's vanilla ice cream feel. it's just a plain class, i can't flop around a zone like i can on my brawlers, i don't have invincibility like i do on my SK, or superior heals on paladin, even guards solo fine these days and have been creeping up on us in AE ability as has just about EVERY other class in the game with AE attack skills in their trees and placed on equipment now taking our signature ability. this is and has been forever a class based around procs, making it unstable. lately, making it undesirable because even the procs are weak comparatively. perhaps if they would pull their finger out of their rear they will see that they give full servings to other classes but when it comes to zerks they fill up only a teaspoon partially and feed us like babies. at least give us something cool like fighting with invisibility on or something... this is just getting old seeing other classes get attention where we get, again, crickets. brawlers get FD, spike damage control, much better mit(mit for leather that is, as if it makes sense) and health, decent DPS and still have nukes. crusaders get heals, superior deathsaves, superior AE DPS, fun tools like evac and FD, etc. guards still have superior defensive tools and average offensive tools. we have some $hitty offensive tools, $hitty deathsave, no fun abilities, no health or decent stance buffs, the more i play other classes the more i notice how boring my zerk is(the only glimmer of fun i have is gathering up a room of weaker mobs and nuking it, but guess what? i can do that on other classes now too!), while it solos ok it still is a bland class that gets more bland with every expansion where everyone else gets heaps of servings to our partial teaspoon. i mean i just notice it everywhere, i can stun lock mobs with my bruiser and if i happen to get stunned myself i have a self cure... if i was soloing a tough mob on my SK i had a nuke i could save up for it without any penalty and a decent DS along with FD on both... if i am killing something on my zerk i can hit most of my offensive tools which noticably add some DPS, but less as you progress in gear or hit juggernaut and die quicker than the offensive buff assists in killing the mob. eff it, where's that ASCII site so i can add a finger to my disappointment lately. edit: uh oh, i mentioned SK to which i'm sure Breuner will pop his head in here and claim that SKs never got a buff and are still weaker than every other class in the game and whine about needing more buffs. my new quest will be to attempt to get banned from this forum as a show of my disapproval, being that even G rated words are auto modded that could be a challenge. since no one mods these subforums, deletes the 2 year old stickies or takes note of the class issue threads like this one, well, yeah.. why do i feel i have to turn into a d!ickhead to be heard? and probably still not heard. i wish they had a person they could refer to to ask before wasting valuable coding time on changes, oh dammn! wait, they do. instead we get a .05% increase on our group buffs and a 750 AE damage component that does what against a level 90 mob with even as low as 1 million health again? even after modification that is a pittance. so as i said, if the devs think the class is perfectly fine, **** em and just delete the class. they're going to add beastlords anyways which will make 25 classes, drop one and it all evens out again. i have offered my personal time to assist for years but have never been taken up on it, regardless. i don't even know if Xelgad is heading up the class changes still or not anyways, since the musical chair devs rotate every few months i don't even feel like sending PMs to random people in attempts. sadly i know that just about every veteran zerk left is nodding after reading my post. this class needs even a tiny bit of imagination if it is to survive anything more than an alt class for everyone's mains to level more alts with.
Gut Roar could be something offensive and unique... +5% Proc/Trigger Chance to abilitys/items... Perseverance could be something we need greatly... 2500 Max Health at 90.... (so its more in line with other tanks...) Cyclones doesn't do much... it could be 25%-50% Casting Speed to help with out high cast spells and AOEs... The New Berserk Proc looks good on paper as others have said...but its still only 10 seconds and adds only 33 DPS/Haste... for 10 seconds... with the new stat thing its probably worse then it was before changes... I think it would be cool if it instead added 0.025 Autoattack Multiplier to our self and group buff.
gut roar was one of our abilities to block AEs, stuns, fear, whatever if you timed it right. but since it now doesn't do much of anything worthwhile, since we have no way of blocking those stuns or curing them ourself i'd rather see it turn into a stun/fear immunity proc for, say, 10-20 seconds. just about every other tank in the game has the ability to cure themself or have an immunity in some way, generally a way they THEY can control where a proc is still inferior. i'd rather see any health buff that we may see a 5% based buff, i'm tired of dealing with diminishing returns and this class over the years making things obsolete prematurely because as you can see there won't be a developer adjusting it appropriately later on for us.
Lygerr@Mistmoore wrote: Xelgad says we are fine and are overpowered, thats why they are giving brawlers more damage reduction/dps/avoidance.
this is a fine class for powerlevelling. once you reach endgame the vanilla starts to get old. but my alt bruiser and SK level just fine also, so i'm not sure what any dev for the past 4 years has thought that makes berserkers so special that they have felt the need to actually nerf us continually after we were almost competetive yet still had the vanilla flavoring. but this being the worst off class this expac, i'm sure they're all pretty happy with themselves that 5 tanks have a good shot at something in at least one aspect of the game with only one being left in the dust. welcome to the new pre-buff shadowknight class(exaggeration but whatever).
Lygerr@Mistmoore wrote: They are nerfing us again in GU61, soon we will reach MA Cap and be capped at 500. And our Buff won't help scouts or fighters anymore. :/
everything xelgad has done for this class has been a contradiction... he nerfed adrenaline because it was up too often and didnt have enough of a penalty for using it, yet he designed the sf aa that reduced the mana drain and the reuse time. he changed our raidwide dps buff to multi attack, and now is capping multi attack... might as well have been better off leaving it as dps mod, at least that curve isnt so ridiculous. but its okay guys, we can do heroic instances just fine!
the most recent changes look promising but i won't be able to test them for a little while. any feedback on them would be good. as soon as everyone is not a monk, that is.
