Is being a berserker worth it?

Discussion in 'Berserker' started by ARCHIVED-Brist, Dec 25, 2004.

  1. ARCHIVED-Jbex Guest

    You are right dirtbeard, we have no numerical information and I am not saying the skill is not manageable with a little effort. The problem is that by comparison to other classes we can effortlessly get agro at will. This is something other classes are in an uproar about. I would rather identify and acknowledge broken abilities so that they can be fixed rather than having sony "fix" something that is not broken in the first place. Like their wonderfull patch in the first eq that made pets incapable of breaking mez making my chanter mage duo a nightmare, just because some mages were incompetent at managing their pet.

    The problem with getting hard numbers is no one is going to reverse engeneer it and post here, since that breaks the license agreement and is grounds for termination of the account. We have to go off the results of tests in a controlled environment. It may be possible to quantify the aggro generated by a buff by locking an encounter and having one person take agro with a buff and do nothing untill another takes agro from them trough small but frequent melee hits. When the mob turns to the damage dealer he would theoreticly do damage equivalent to the hate generated by the buff. It would be intresting to note the difference between particular spells as well as that between a single target buff and a group one. Also weather a group buff generates a fixed ammount of agro or if it is based on the number of group members affected.

    The whole issue people have with bloodlust is derived from their idea of a basic group makeup. You have your healer, your four damage dealers, and a guy who keeps the attention of the mobs and gets pummeled. No one really looks for damage output from the main tank when they set out to make the group. They alreday plan four people for that job. The survival part is (mostly) in the hands of the healer, that leaves the tank primarily with agro controll. Something that is trivialized to the berserker. My point was not that no one can keep agro off a berserker with bloodlust, it is not broken because it generates more agro than we want or can handle. It just generates more than it should to maintain a balance amongst the fighter classes.

    But overall, You are right aggro and damge are not the same thing. It does not affect the game that much, save for a few healers that lived when they should not have, propably just to run out of power and evac in the end anyway.


    P.S.
    I just have to say Your rebuttal was very well written. I just had to 5 star it.
  2. ARCHIVED-Dirtbeard Guest

    Yeah...exactly. Sorry for the sloppy use of terms. I meant player testing, not real reverse engineering. :)

    I agree that everyone should be upfront about what's broken and what isn't and if berserkers have a "nerf" coming then they should accept it gracefully (or as gracefully as you can when you're foaming blood at the mouth and beating small gnoll babies to death with limbs torn from their mommies). And some members of other classes (guardians at least) are certainly in an uproar about it.
    Half of their uproar I agree with, and so should all berserkers: berserkers suffer if berserkers who aren't MT can't lay off the aggro. They may become unwelcome in groups, as they already are to _some_ guardians. That's not good. The solution might be just for berserkers to learn how to use Bloodlust, or maybe it should be changed. Beats me.
    The other half I don't agree with. Even if Bloodlust is broken, the Berserker advantage in aggro doesn't seem to me to be equivalent to the Guardian advantage in damage mitigation.
    Guardians should mitigate damage better than berserkers, but not a LOT better. I define a LOT as being so much that nobody wants a berserker as a tank because they can't take on the same con standard group mob. Whatever amount of advantage a Guardian has, it needs to be off-set by berserker benefits. In a perfect world the berserker DPS increase and aggro increase would exactly balance the Guardian mitigation factor and they'd be equally good tanks.
    In "reality" though, I think damage mitigation is so key to the classic tank concept that a small advantage in that area is equal to a large advantage in aggro management and even a hefty increase in DPS. As a result, I've spent a long time trying to decide if II'd regret becoming a berserker even though it's the RP choice I want to make. That might just be player perception and Sony may have built a well-balanced game that we just don't appreciate yet....time will tell.
  3. ARCHIVED-LumpyDoo Guest

    Just food for thought... The relative mitigation of Guardians versus Berserkers has not been proven or disproven by ANY means whatsoever that I've seen. Concerete analysis must be done.

    At any rate, yes, Bloodlust is borked.. or maybe.. call me crazy here.. they need to give Guardians a new spell that pulses or procs... that causes hate also...

    Lots of ways to solve a problem.
  4. ARCHIVED-YellowSpinE Guest



    Just learn how to play your class. I was in 2 groups last night, and not MT. I did fine not taking agro. Mistakenly did a couple times, but that was due to me not really paying attention.

    Bloodlust works fine, just learn how to use it!

    You know if you hit Bloodlust + Mash Skillz = Huge Agro. So DUAH .... adjust. It's not hard.

    Simple things you can do:

    1) Slow 2hander
    2) Don't mash attack as soon as you possibly can. Give the MT 5 seconds to build a little agro (I use this time to buff the group before hitting attack)
    3) If Bloodlust is up, I just use Mangle and Wound. This seems to work well for not pulling agro
    4) If Bloodlust isn't up at start, I wait until mob is like 60-70% before I activate it

    I'm sure you can get your heads out of your @ss and think a bit and come up with what works best for you. Instead of just crying about it, learn what you need to do in order to fill whatever roll your given in the group.

    And if you still can't figure it out, only join groups where your the MT.