State of the Beserker class thread (last updated 17th November '08, TSO launch)

Lol. If you try to argue versus Beserker problems with the fact that Brawler have problems there is absolutely no point in arguing with you because you don't care anyway what I'll write. And Lyger said quote: "Beserkers are Swashys in plate". Does that sound like a TANK class in a healthy state?

Bremer wrote:

Actually being a swashy in plate would be overpowered in the extreme. T2 DPS with T1 tanking with T1 utility (hate transfer and debuffs). Besides I am sure he was joking.
BTW Lyger said this:
stop, just stop...

first of all, zerkers are the most superior DPS tank both on single and multiple target encounters. second, adrenaline is one of the best abilities in this game.
now stop cherry picking and misleading people into thinking this class is broken when it is not, further causing reason for raid leaders to not want to bring berserkers along on their raids because they read too much into things because of posts like this.
yes, there is a few things that we could use tweaked but mainly the issue isn't with us, it is in how far along guardians have come in this expansion to surpass other tanks in many ways.
His words, not mine.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=426834

His opinion, not mine

Bremer wrote:

Well some of his opinions are not just opinions, they are facts.
The part about zerkers being the best single target and aoe dps tanks is 100% irrefutable fact.

I don't disagree. Berserkers aren't in such bad shape. And personally even though that one guy is still responsible for a lot of ability design, I'm cautiously optimistic that the expansion may hold enough multiple mob encounters and neato cool AA stuff to make us happy as clams. Although, admittedly I've no idea how one can tell whether clams are happy or not. And the neato cool AA stuff will probably have requirements that aren't actually in the ability description.

But yeah, Guardians are overpowered. That's the real problem. I was only half joking when I suggested the way to bring balance would be to take ToS and Reinforcement from Guardians and give them both to SK's.

But here's the thing: Very few people are saying that Berserkers ARE broken. Even looking at the thread you linked, most people are saying "Yeah, Zerks are OK". So what's your point? To come into this thread and pose the question as you did was just masterful baiting. Since your issue appears to only be with Bremer, why not take it to PMs?

Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:

I just saw alot of people here and there hating on zerkers and I could not understand why.
They are a good class and the best offtank in the game imo. Not to say they dont have their issues, and could use some tweaks. I think main issues is gaurdians are just so overpowered atm and a lack of snap aggro.

It is extremely shortsighted to say the class is fine because of its DPS. SOE allready said they want to shift tank dps to taunt power and when this happened and you were only relying on your dps, then what? The classes's job is tanking, not DPS. And when it comes to tanking there are way too many shortcomings for Beserkers. Adrenaline might be powerful, but only to a certain degree. It just sucks that we this spell is so heavily penaltilized, as if tanking is not the main job of our class and we have to pay for being kindly allowed to tank at all. The spell doesn't even work guaranteed for the full duration and when it is down then what? There is nothing else we have for taking damage better. You can also let a Brawler MT VP or a SK an avatar, but would you say the classes are well balanced tanks? Would you take a Beserker, SK, Brawler MT when clearing a tier for the first time if you have a well played Guardian? For almost every raid force on any server the answer will be "NO". Noone will say that a Beserker is doing more DPS, so he'll be MT, they'll always take the Guard because the DPS/hate gain difference is so insignifcant, but the tanking difference is not. So as long as not either a) all Fighters are so more or less equal in tanking and hate gain(/DPS) that you can take any class you want as MT (played by a skilled player of course) and won't hardly notice a difference or b) classes are so differnt that eg a Guard tanks far better than else but can't hold aggro much as he would like so people would switch tanks depending on situation because one tank can't do everything, so long the class is not fine.

Okay here's the thing with Lyger. He is a darn good tank with darn good gear, who was LUCKY enough to find a raid guild that would give him a shot. The guild I'm in, while thinking I am darn good at being a zerker has made it clear they are running a 3 tank setup Guardian,SK, Monk. Most other guilds I know do something similar though usually Guardian, Pally, Monk.
Now why is this? Well first, a Zerker on full burn trying to keep aggro through his dps (which is MATCHED by Guardians single target, I challenge anyone to show me parses otherwise) will be going through power as quick as a fury healing and nukeing. In return he takes more power to keep standing from the healers due to his lower survivability, so thats a power hit on multiple characters due to the short comings of one. In the OT position the same applies, especially with a Pally just slapping Amends on someone, far more efficient. A raid, especially tier 2,3 is all about power management so why in the world would you want a class that is less efficient and thus providing a smaller margin for error? The fact that warrior dps is going to be reduced and taunts increased I think is only going to make the issue worse because if they decrease a Zerker's dps (which was ALWAYS dps based aggro), the taunts a Zerker gets will have to be OP'd. A blanket dps reduction is only going to break the zerker and perhaps all other tanks except the Pally (helloAmends again) and the Guardian because of the Guards current OP status.
The snap aggro ability is acknowledged by many, but I still think to say the mythical fixed it is junk because that applies to less than 1% of the zerker population.
All in allthe Zerker does a decent job in instances, butonce out of that environment while they can do the job, their are clearly other classes that are better at it. When you take into account SOE's original concept for the Warriors "Guardians better survivability lower dps, Zerkers doing the SAME job but with lower survivability balanced by better dps" you have to say there is a problem. And getting back to the idea of of reducing fighter dps. Unless they make the guardian even more OP relative to the other tanks I can't see this change working balance wise. Half the reason guardians are slightly OP now is that people who played guards were complaining it took so long to solo because of sub par dps.
How can they fix the issues? I have no clue. Reducing tank dps certainly isn't on my list to fix tank balance, but I am guessing its on someone elses because they felt a MT fighter was to close to their assassins place on a parse at some point.

Im in the same boat kinda. I am in a guild that runs Guardian, Pali, Monk and even thought the reckonize I play my class very well, too well, but because the core of the guild is a grp of friends I wont ever see a tank slot. And in fact due to my aggro Generation I really cant run in the raids anymore because I pull aggro off the MT and OT and it has gotten to a point where I either have Link, Down play my classm, or dont go.
I agree with you on the point that Zerker tank inefficiently compared to Guardians, but that is the way our class has always been and IMO should be. We are offensive tank, the only reason this seems like a short coming is because guardians are OP and do near the same single target DPS so there is no variant between the classes. This combine with several other factor such as guardian rolling down the agility line getting a 40% open wounds and can use reinforcement to effect up to 4 targets when clearly AOE encounter are supose to be our Forte. Adrenaline being so heavily penalise and may or may not work when Tower of stone is just a drop in the bucket shield damage. FAR Less Health, Less hit rate, less mitigation, less avoidance.
However, I disagree with your comment about power. I never have an issue with power as long as I have a good enchanter in my group and in every raid every group should have an enchanter. With Mythical equiped enchanters power is never an issues as long as they do their job even running adrenaline none stop and burning all my CA's i have never run out of power in a normal fight. Guardians burn through just as much power as Zerkers do, minus Adrenaline obviously, as well as brawlers.
As for the upcoming Tank Revamp. I have a feeling that they "ARE" Going to severally break the Zerker class. We have always been a DPS oriented aggro class and in that aspect I think that our class has no need for change. Guardians are supose to be the the Taunt Oriented class as well as Palidins. I have a feeling they are going to just do a blanket DPS nerf and keep the DPS diffrence between our class an the Guardian the same and we will be worst off than we started.

A zerker only starts to shine from the second he's getting equiped in the best gear in the game. In an avatarguild a zerker is actually a very nice tank to have, at least when there's an uber player behind the keyboard. I've seen our previous zerker MT the tangrin and MT pretty much everything in the game, but that's because he also had the skill and uber gear to do so (with all the blocking and parry gear that's at hand). I don't see a normal zerker pulling that off cause he'll get slapped down too easily for having to be in offensive for holding aggro (unless you give him a warden, but if you do, you loose some hatetransfer aswell for moving out the assassin or swashie).
So to summarise, a zerker is a good tank, as long as he's equiped like a MT/OT of an avatarkilling guild.

This one may have been stated already, but I would like Goading Gesture to NOT take the same recast timer as the Mock line of single target agro. This wouldn't be difficult, give us the possibility of 3k hate, and would not give us an imbalance. Thanks!

Zhon@Lucan DLere wrote:

Yes in the right group our personal power cost isn't that bad BUT thats when we are placed in the right group. Far to often we are placed in as a filler or after thought, and then its the luck of the draw that you end up in the right group.
As for your last point I fear the same. It really doesn't look like they are looking at the problems of the various tank classes. First you need to look at the class via Warrior, Brawler, Crusader NOT "fighter". It is as foolish to say that Brawlers should be able to do the same thing as Warriors, as it is to say bards should be able to do the same as predators. I think there is a reason why this is not happening though. I think what changes are going to be made have NOTHING to do with balance with the Fighter "schools" and rather the fact that certain scout classes are complaining of being equaled or out parsed by certain fighter classes. Looking at it from this perspective though is going to CRUSH the fighter classes that always have been and SHOULD be at least partially dps based. Example. Brawlers should come close if not enter tier 2 dps. why? because to my mind their job is to bring utility and more durable dps to a raid, not maintank it. Zerkers also need to be doing more dps (not as much as brawlers), but only enough to balance their lower durability. As a Warrior and thus "main tank" class, they need to be able to help burn down the mob faster to make their lower durability less of an issue. However this kind of holistic approach to the fighter house is not being used. Instead it appears they are saying "hey on that parse the brawler came close to my scout. So I'll turn them into taunt bots, forgetting about the other underlying issues of each class, nerf their dps and call it a fix" when in reality its a nerf for just about every fighter in the game.

Yeah I hope that fighters do not loose their dps. I hope that the entire fighter catagory isn't totally messed up beyond oblivion come next expansion. Fighters are suppose to "fight" which to me means dealing out impressive damage. If fighters loose the ability to "fight" then what fun will it be to have a fighter with an epic fabled or mythical weapon but is only capable of parsing 500-1000 dps full buffed?? Sorry I don't want any of my fighters or any other peoples fighters loosing dps, but in return being able to "yell", "scream", "wail", and "holler" so much that this would be the "new" way of keeping aggro. If that happens will the catagory of "fighter" be changed to "screamers" or "yellers"?
All fighters should be able to do good dps. Maybe not as strong as scouts or mages, but still all fighters should have the ability to fight. On the flip side the more survivability and/or group utility that a particular fighter has the less dps that fighter class should have. I think that SOE just needs to offically state what fighters are better or best dps and what fighters are more defensive this way there will be no pondering or debating who is who amongst the fighter classes.
I can't really comment on the guardians are better than/equal to zerkers dps on single target damage. If a similarly buffed guardian is even remotely close to a similarly buffed zerker's dps yet the guards still have the nice snap aggro abilities and defensive abilities then to me that means zerkers should be getting some attention in the dps department.
I do hope again that fighter dps isn't lowered while taunts are increased. If so that just doesn't seem proper.

Aull wrote:

For the first point I am hoping the dev's comment about "its a long term project" means just that a long term project. I suspect since the new expansion has been in the can for a bit that there will not be any changes in november. If there is I just wasted the last month leveling a Zerker to tier 8.
As for Guardians vs. Zerker vs single target dps that is a very nebulous subject. If you have them wearing identical gear most parses I have seen put the guardian if not equal, close enough that it does not make up the difference. Where the zerker finally starts pulling away is when they have equipped "zerker only" or dps gear, then the zerk is where they should be but I have always been one to say that one shouldn't have to be in a raid guild to see the potential of a class. Itemization is a band-aid. If a class has issues you should fix the class by tweaking CA's, maybe abilities in an AA tree or even a nerf if a class is op'd. Just throwing some items out there that only those is good raid guilds will see is just bad management and lazy coding.

Gisallo@Lucan DLere wrote:

Nicely stated.

I updated the list based on my beta Beserker one day before launch of TSO. Certainly in a few weeks some things will become obvious as new or more/less important problems, I'm going to update the list then.

I agree with just about everything you have in the current list as of TSO launch.
The ones that I could care less about are perserverance refreshing since I'm not paying attention to my buff window usually.
Intrusion and bloodshower are still more efficient in situations where you have more than 4 mobs. It happens often enough in new heroic instances but not so much in raids. That's why I'm speccing for them in groups and swapping specs out of them for raids. But, if the casting time on those were reduced a bit more, there's no need to change the epic delay to 4s. 3s would be fine.
VoM is absolutely useless.

Heya fellow zerkers! I have to say, after many hours soloing, grouping and raiding TSO, I think the changes to the zerker class has been awesome! With alot of TSO jewelry, full tier 2 armor, and the magmatic blocker from Deep forge, I tank as well or better than most similarly geared Guardians. The 192 aa's help as well, I am over 13k hp and can offtank TSO raid namers easily.

I was wondering if anyone was experiencing holding agro problems on test server? I see the new way threat is going to be built and I am a little ho-hum about it because I tank the majority of the time in offensive stance. I realize the guardian class got slapped with the **** stick, I was wondering if sony was going to **** the newly dominant zerker class?? At least it was fun while it lasted.

SKs are the new dominant class, actually.