funny thing is, if a monk could use a two handed sword I could at least sorta imagine it was what i wanted to play. but I agree, i'm not a kung fu type. Too bad sony is so totally against any DPS class using a two handed sword. Or axe for those of you who liked that.
I'm mainly disappointed because I had a real hard time deciding between guardian and berserker, and as I'm L21 now it wasn't long ago that I made that choice. I'm wishing I could revisit that choice now. [Rolling again is NOT an option - I'm not going to throw away all of those hours of work in adventuring and crafting - it's not fair to us to have to make that decision.] So, why did I choose Berserker? Well, because I was supposed to go berserk, right? And then I'd do all kinds of great damage and such - especially with 2-hander or as dual wielder. Kind of a barbarian rage thing - would be really fun, right? Now it seems it isn't going to work well very often, and I'm going to be forced to carry sword and board anyway for "damage mitigation." When I am main tank, I guess I'll carry sword and board to help out the healer, and try not to use the cool AoE berserker skills in order to cut down on my aggro. So, I'll become pretty much a Guardian without defensive buffs, right? OK, that's the way it goes, I guess I can live with that if I have to. But I generally end up as main tank, so without effective berserking procs why did I choose Berserker over Guardian? As for the rare times when I might get lucky enough to group with a "true" sword-and-board tank - i.e., Guardian - am I still going to pull aggro if I use my berserker skills at all? In which case, again, I won't be able to play my subclass as I thought I could. Again, I'll be a Guardian without defensive buffs. I hope that at least in this limited circumstance I'll be able to play my character with all the bells and whistles, but if I don't go berserk more than rarely... So, why did I choose to be a Berserker if I can't BE one? My cleric alt is looking kinda good right now. Message Edited by Raybourne on 01-13-2005 01:15 PM
Yo StAng56k When I wrote that blurb it was because our skills referenced a reduction in Defense for improved offense. Bugged or not that was the general conception of our class. I read through all our abilities i currently have at lvl 30 and those references to lower defense have been removed. It must have happened in one of the many recent patches.. Shoot me but don't call me a noob.. As for our class defining ability to berserk. Until they get the myriad number of skills that are suppose to get us in that state fixed, we are less effective and therefore not balanced. Guardians can complain all they want but there class defining abilities to reduce incoming damage work far more reliably than most of our skills.
Gilmore: When I wrote that blurb it was because our skills referenced a reduction in Defense for improved offense. Bugged or not that was the general conception of our class. I read through all our abilities i currently have at lvl 30 and those references to lower defense have been removed. It must have happened in one of the many recent patches.. Shoot me but don't call me a noob.. I was just really frustraded cause page after page people kept saying that. Then i posted that everyone was wrong and no one belived me.. i guess i finnaly got my point across ; ). Also...ever since ive beed a zerker i have carried a 2hd, a set of duel weild weapon and a 1hder and sheild.. A berserkers using a shield is nothing new.. you just have to know what situation to use the differnt weapons in ... like me.. i use a shield when going up against hard named mobs or when theres not enough healing power in the group.. I go 2hder dw mode when im in a grind group fighting easy mobs. This is prolly pretty obvious I realize that, but using a sheild isnt degrading or anything Its just an element to the game that you have to know when and where to use it. BUT the majority of the time im 2hding my EBBC=) Allannah 45 Zerker Permafrost Message Edited by StAnG56k on 01-13-2005 02:29 PM Message Edited by StAnG56k on 01-13-2005 02:30 PM
I agree with some of the others-i didnt go monk because the kung fu style and look wasnt for me, looking at descriptions i figured the berserker would be the big hard hitting version of monk, he'd be there with the large axe and heavy armor making 0 effort to avoid being hit and just doing his best to kill all in sight, you have pally sk and guardian for the typical tanking style, you had the monk who was damage and avoidance tanking style with bad mitigation, whats wrong with a damage and mitigation style tank with poor avoidance?
Lock this thread already , seems like most people dont understand why a majority of Berserkers are #$# off about the offense nerf.... OK ONE LAST TIME.... BERSERKERS ARE IRKED BECAUSE SoE in all its infinite wisdom lied to a majority of the Beserker community when giving us a class description.... We are not balanced as a class since we gain too little offense in return for loss of defense vs Guardians loss in offense for their gain in defense..... Enough said Now lock this thread pls
Moorgard, you are completely out of touch with the reality of the product you are selling. How you can make a statement like this TWO MONTHS into a live game (after several months of Beta) is just astonishing. Dont blame the players; "prone to emotional interpretation" indeed. SOE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS DEBACLE.
Wow Umm guys... Moorgard is just the messenger. And he was nice enough to post a explanation to begin with. Instead of personally attacking him, why don't you do something constructive and get some raw data for him. That way he can go back and say " I think we have over adjusted a few things, here is the info."
ROFL this is SOE were talking about, didnt anyone bother to read about Planetside, SWG or anything else these people have gotten thier hands on? Theyre the kings of rush a product, introduce it with bugs and then nerf the hell out of anything that moves.
I do agree that testing should have been done via the test server first. Not push it to the live servers and then if we think changes need to be made then we'll make them later.
Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight! *throws some meat at a zerker* *slaps an assasin * *and outruns a palladins horse* Well u got nerfed rangers did too a while back and probably will in da future, for the guy who said. This is still beta U ARE FREAKING RIGHT!. Can we say That The Expansion pack with its "new content" wont destroyed the game like eq1 got destroyed? Does anyone remenber how many ppl quit eq1 after one of the expansion packs came out *thinks* help me out here . As far as i know we are heading the wrong way , read the class descriptions in the manual and u;ll c a lot of "typos" or maybe just the fact that they didnt develop any character enough? HOW CAN A FREAKING GUARDIAN OUTDO A RANGER IN BOW DAMAGE? thats insane ranger=range attack [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] soe needs some counceling. Lets hope the next patches dont make another class be farther from their description, "Beserker Is a Warrior who inflicts damage upon itself to deal the most possible damage" *cough * cough* BS _________________________________________________________________________ Landacet ~Wow i think we are going down down down......10-9-8-7-6-5-4 Someone read the new eq2 reviews?
Not to derail the thread but Ranger:Rangers are natural outdoorsmen and trackers, masters of stealthy movement in the undergrowth. They use perception and cunning to gain the advantage over their adversaries. Predatorredators are relentless hunters who use stealth and cunning to stalk their prey. At home in the shadows, predators use the element of surprise to give their allies the upper hand. Scout:Scouts use stealth and cunning to explore the unknown. Highly skilled at detecting and disarming traps, they are experts at infiltrating the lair of the enemy. In combat, scouts rely upon the element of surprise to inflict opportunistic damage and gain an advantage over their opponents. Not a one mentions Rangers as being the best at Ranged damage. In fact only the one line in scouts use damage at all. The Range part of Ranger does not come from the fact that they use ranged weapons, but that they range over an area. From Hyperdictionary:\Ran"ger\, n. 1. One who ranges; a rover; sometimes, one who ranges for plunder; a roving robber. 2. That which separates or arranges; specifically, a sieve. [Obs.] ``The tamis ranger.'' --Holland. 3. A dog that beats the ground in search of game. 4. One of a body of mounted troops, formerly armed with short muskets, who range over the country, and often fight on foot. 5. The keeper of a public park or forest; formerly, a sworn officer of a forest, appointed by the king's letters patent, whose business was to walk through the forest, recover beasts that had strayed beyond its limits, watch the deer, present trespasses to the next court held for the forest, etc. [Eng.] So even given Sony's definition and the real definition there is no reason to believe they would be given realistic Bow damage. Arigorn, who many of us would recognize as the first fantasy ranger in print was not a bow specialist, but a sword specialist. Interesting also is that he didn't dual wield, that wasn't popular for rangers till ADnD. Why do I bring this up at all? Well because Berserkers were given a description by sony that states Heavy Damage. The Berserker description, the Warrior description, and the Fighter description all mention damage. Berserkers WERE led to believe they were some form of High Damage class. Moorguard's statement totally contradicts that, as well as every definition of Berserker in EQ2,EQ or pretty much anywhere. That being said rangers should be the best with a bow. GL getting that fixed.
["... Well because Berserkers were given a description by sony that states Heavy Damage. Th ..."] Well yeah... Among other tank classes..
well given that all of the previous descriptions for fighter and warrior mention doing good damage, and say almost none of the scout descriptions mention damage at all. If you read those and decided to pick a heavy damage melee class, the obvious choice by description and definition of the names used would be Berserker. If on the other hand you were say wanting to be a tank, somewhere around the bottom of your list would be the guys who ignore their own safety in combat.
Aragorn. As a side note, the ranger was only a title. Ranger as a class was introduced in fantasy as a protector of the woods. They would often be seen using a bow, and in most games, do get bow specific specs. But are not inept at using blades. And also, the rangers *are* supposed to be ranged damage, hence most every single one of their skills are bow skills and are given bonuses to ranged attacks.
I was just thinking about the different branches of each class and I am trying to find out why you would want to have a Berserker and a Guardian in the same group, just for comparison I will list off a few of the other classes.. Priest class, you can have a Templar/Inquisitor and Mystic/Defiler in the same group and gain a great bonus, they both add totally different things to a group through abilities and buffs as well as share some similar abilities. Mage class, you can have Illusionist/Coercer and any of the other mage classes bring totally different things to a group Scout Class, you can have a Troubador/dirge and Assasin/Swashbucker/Brigand in a group and you get either great DPS or great group buffs Now we look at the fighter classes Berserker/Guardian there is no benefit from having an extra one of either in group as the only thing they bring to the table is either marginaly better defensive ability or marginally better DPS than the other. Where are the class defining abilites and characteristics to make it more beneficial to have both in a group at the same time? I left Paladin/Shadow Knight off this list because they are in a similar boat as the berserker/guardian, it may be that Berserker/Guardian is like Templar/Inquisitor in that they are the same pretty much except for alligment except allignment doesnt apply since both can be either good or evil. Also left out Bruiser/Monk as I dont know much about them as I dont see many of either around.
Ok, wanted to clear up a few things, especially for those who seem to be a bit confused about why we SHOULD be mitigating damage through DPS *waves hi to Camden* I think the point people are missing is that we are, as people have stated before, the flipside of the Guardian coin. Guardians have extra defense, Berserkers have extra offense, and we are both tanks. When we talk about mitigating damage through DPS, we are not talking about 'instead of armour', we are simply talking about closing the Guardian vs Berserker gap. In order for us BOTH to be useful to our chosen group, we need to be equally effective as MT, just in different ways/situations. The Guardian survives an encounter by mitigating damage through the use of armour, and defensive buffs. The Berserker previously survived an encounter through the use of the same armour, and providing enough EXTRA offense that the encounter was killed quickly enough that the mobs output less overall damage. This worked - The only thing broken was aggro, and if the Devs are insistent, arguably OTHER (non Guardian) class balance. However, to fix the aggro and balance us vs scouts and mages, we have now had the thing taken away from us which actually kept us balanced vs the Guardians (ie, our DPS output). As stated many many times before, slight extra damage mitigation will always be greater than slight extra DPS. Why? Because the main tank is always the center of defense for the group, therefore a 10% bonus to defense for HIM means a 10% bonus to defense for the group. The tank however is only a fraction of the damage output - a 10% bonus to offense for him means less than a 2% bonus to the group. I posted this example in a different thread, but it serves equally well here: Arbitrary numbers here, cooked up for this, but consider what it means... Take a Guardian who can mitigate an extra 5% incoming damage (receives 95 DPS vs the Berserker's 100), and a Berserker who can deal an extra 10% damage (50 DPS vs the Guardian's 45 DPS). I'm giving the berserker more here, just to show how out of whack this *really* is. Both join their chosen groups (average 50 DPS per player), and take on a mob with 40k (yep, just one). Berserker group (300 DPS) defeats mob in 133.3 seconds, and takes 13333.3 damage. Guardian group (295 DPS) defeats mob in 135.6 seconds, and takes 12881.4 damage. So, even in this example - heavily weighted towards the Berserker, the Guardian wins by a heal, for the benefit of less than 2 seconds speed for the Berserker. And that is in one fight. Now call me a pessimist, but I'd say the Guardians have more extra mitigation than we have extra DPS now, meaning the picture is a lot worse than I have painted it. Sure, take the group dynamic away and things turn in our favour - but how many of us signed up as tanks for the solo game? Jherad 31 Berserker
Fellow Zerkers, I think there are few aspects of the game that not many of you have taken into consideration but lies at the very heart of this discussion: 1) Fighting multi-enemy ecounters, 2) shields, and 3) the general archtype balance in the game. By the time any zerker reaches lvl 25, he would've understand how the group aspect of EQ II revolves around the four general archtypes. Fighters are tanks, scouts are melee damage dealers, mages are casters, and priests are healers. No matter how far the class trees branch out in future lvls, these four archtypes are the primary foundations of most EQ II groups. Thus, Berzerkers are not damage dealers, they are tanks. This is how the class system in EQ II works, and SOE has done a decent job explaining to the players from the very beginning. Similarly, by the time any zerker reaches lvl 25, he should've understand how important shields are for warriors-- either for a berserker or for a guardian. Unlike EQ 1, shields makes a huge difference in the tanking ability of any warrior. With a decent shield, any berserker should be able to handle the tanking duty in your everyday xp group just as fine as any guadians in similar lvl and gear. Guardians tanks a little bit more efficiently, but us berserkers have our own moments as well, which will be explained in the following paragraph. I believe that the true moments for the berserker to shine is when fighting multi enemies encounters. If one looks closely to our combat arts, one would see that most of our offensive combat arts can damage more than one enemies. Barrage, WW, Stomp, the encounter-wide scream, and the good old BR. Granted, although some of these combat arts has a rather long cast time (the WW line in particular) that limits thier effectiveness, most are extremely useful when fighting an encounter with more than one enemy. With our multiple lines of AE damage, we not only do more damage then guardians, we also control argos better in these situations. Thus, I'm one of those odd berserkers that aprreciate SOE on a somewhat succesfully fix on the previously overpowered and bugged zerker. Don't get me wrong, i still miss my glowing red zerker dwing fast daggers; yet, this last patch opens up other aspects of the game for zerkers, and i do appreciats this added fun. (Minor petition: Stomp needs to be a green colored CA, not a blue one) On the side note, I believe that with the new beefed up group enconters, the balance between solo and group playing experience is somewhat skewed atm. Previously, soloing a green double arrow up mob was still an viable option to gain xp and loot. However, under the new system, only those labeled with a solo tag (which yields less xp and less loot) are efficient targets for soloing. I do understand that EQ II encourages grouping, but under the current system, the gap between the reward for grouping and soloing is too big. >>> Even more importantly, it makes most of the guild adventuring writs impossible to finish solo. status system in the game. Best, Xenorak 35 zerker on Faydark
