What do we have to give up to get the DPS we WANT sony?

:smileymad: Evac is sprinkled around a little too much in this game. It is useful in that long run from cazic to the docks however. It was funny the first time I used it to save my group I fizzled like 15 times in a row. My advice to everyone stock up on rares and adepts you may need for your alts cause prices will soar. Who knows things might not be that bad I still ahve all this y2k stuff I didnt use.
Terrorcon 49 ogre shadowknight
There is no light that can end all darkness

Okay... I'l admit I didn't read this WHOLE post, but I read most of it. I agrre with some points, but not all. First, I picked a Zerker cause, other than suiting my RL personality, I wanted a good rounded class that could tank small groups and MA raids. It would be SOOOOOO wrong to nerf the armor on Zerkers as I have a whole lot of time and GP invested in armor and I don't want to trade it for anything.

My big concern is this... guards get huge defense buffs, pallies get heals. Zerkers WERE supposed to get DPS to balance it out, however, My 48 Zerker using 2 Imbued ebon axes, Master 1 Mutilate, Master 1 Rage, and every buff available... with Unflinching will and controlled rage OFF can not not best a lvl 45 Pally. We put this to the test if EF on 06/23/05. Using Combat Stats, the Pally consitantly outperformed my Zerk by 1,000 points (Zerk ~4,000 Pally ~5,000 on Single and Group encounters). That's just plain freaking ridiculous.

I picked Zerker from the get go, and within a week they had totally nerfed them. I think it's about time SOE un-nerfed them. Zerkers can not defend as well as Guards, and have NO heal capabilities.... and yet, can not outperform either class in DPS.... this just seems wrong.

If nothing else.... give us a kick [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] ward spell. Historically, Berserkers ran into a battle, and no matter how hard the were hit, they would keep fighting. That sounds like a ward to me. Berzerkers survive by sheer will alone on the battle field and feel no pain. I say, ward the Zerks and nerf the pallies.

No offense, but if you can't out damage a Pally at any level, let alone one who is 3 levels below you, you're doing something very wrong. And you were duel wielding? I think the weaponsmith pulled a fast one on you, he obviously sold you two pristine rubber axes, not ebon.

Yeah, find and kill your weaponsmith (get some npc vendor weapons on the way). I'd expect to out dps a pally with my fists.
anyway..
I don't want to loose our heavy armour (cause i look so good in ebon!) or our tanking ability. I don't wanna be top tank and MT raids like a guard - if i did i'd have made a guard, but i do want to be able to group tank well. That's what zerkers are supposed to be in this game, we are tanks, we're not a dps class. However, i DO expect to do decent damage. I didn't make a guard, i made a zerker and i made one because i wanted to sacrifice some defence for offence and i expect to see the results!
We have no utility like the crusaders so we should out-dps as pally and out-tank a SK.
That list doesn't look very good, I'm but not panicing quite yet - there are no figures with this. I don't think our position on the list is particularly unjustified - can you really argue that we should be out damaging a monk or bruiser?
And the groups may even overlap slightly for all we know. Even if they don't there may not be a lot of spread between these groups, so the difference between from 3 and 4 may only be a few extra dps.

I'd expect to see a big jump from the dps of group 3 to group 2. You'd expect a swashbuckler to do a LOT more dmg than a bard or monk for instance.
What you might find is the groups 1 & 2 are similar and 3 & 4 ar similar with a big gap between 2 & 3. In that case it may not be as bad as it seems...

The main thing i find worrying is MG's statement that a guard focusing of offence will be able to out dps a zerker focusing on defence.... This could mean so many things. Does it mean 1H + shield vs 2 hander? does it mean that and the guard has master 1 on all his attack spells while the zerker has left them all at app 1? what?
I hope it's a pointless statement, designed to try to point out simply that your position in the list is not fixed. Which is re-assuring for us - most zerkers carry around a lot of gear to tank/dps as needed, but i wish he hadn't used us and guards for an example if that's all it was!!
It's way too vague, and i suspect that's because SoE doesn't really know themselves yet.

/rambling_ideas on

I propose a comprimise based on skills, forget armor, weapons, whatever, zerkers and guards are warriors, we use anything we want (cept monk fist weapons). At the basic level we should be the same, we were both level 19 warriors at one point, level 20 should be no different. All that should define the subclasses imho is skills.

So what should the skills do to define the classes, well, it seems SoE doesn't want to define one class as the greatest "tank" but at the same time want guardians to be the best tank, basically I think the horrible concept of "balancing" is destroying the glorius concept of "uniqueness".

Anyways, to the point, skills, what if zerkers and guardians had basic skills that swung either one either way, skills that are fundamentally warrior skills (thou using our subclass abilities for unique extra effects)

Examples (the names and actual values are irelevant, just the idea behind the skills)
-Defensive Buff:
--Guardian: +10 def, +500hp, -8 CPS (crush pierce slash), -5%dps, -5% atkspd,
--Berserker: +8 def, +250hp, -10 CPS, -10%dps, -10%atkspd
-Offensive Buff:
--Guardian: +8 CPS, +5%dps, +5% atkspd, -10def, -250hp
--Berserker: +10CPS, +10%dps, +10% atkspd, -8def, -500hp

Scale, tweak, etc this as you will, but you can see these allow either to outdo the other on the flipside, and you can see berserkers sacrifice more offense to increase defense, while guardians must sacrifice more defense to increase offense.

I think shields are overrated, perhaps I am wrong since I don't tank much, but if they are so good, then 1h weapons should be half of a 2h or 2 dw's, i think it is ~75% thou. Perhaps the type of shield should have a detrimental effect to damage, like bucklers have no change to dps, round shields have a -5% dps modifier, kite shields have a -10% modifier and tower shields are -20%. (or a scale similar to that).

On top of this armor may need melee dps modifers (possibly even skill/magic as well) such as
VLA gives +20% magic dps, +10% skill dps, +50% melee dps (increase mage magic dps, but also dps variant for other classes at massive ac loss)
LA gives +10% magic dps, +15% skill dps, +30% melee dps (increases monk melee dps, good variant for priests)
MA gives -10% magic dps, +35% skill dps, +10% melee dps (increases scouts skills (i.e. burst damagers), good skill vairiant for HA wearers and magic variant for crusaders/priests)
HA gives -20% magic dps, +10% skill dps, -20% melee dps (highly dibilitating for dps)

Now the only off thing is the drop off on skill dps for the HA, this is to make HA debilitating so that it is worn for def over off.

/rambling_ideas off

I don't mean to suggest these ideas are exactly how it should be done (numbers and all), but just a rough idea, basically that pretty much any class can drastically increase dps at the cost of offense, OR perhaps that should be the very definition of the berserker class, that we can benefit with a increase in dps from wearing non-HA armors in which case maybe all this should only refer to the berserker class. I think I like this conclusion the best, but will leave my rambling to show you how I arrived at it.

P.S. I posted a follow up explaining just this conclusion that is on the next page of replies.
Message Edited by Ralluwen on 06-27-2005 10:06 AM

I don't mean to fall into the "responds to his own posts, and is talking to himself and self admonishing" syndrome, so yes, I am the same as the previous poster ^^

This is a summary to the previous post's conclusion.

I suggest the berserkers new class definition be: "Warriors capable to greatly increasing dps at the expense of mitigation." Thus we can compete with scouts offensively if we choose to match them defensively, but likewise we can remain nearly the same as guardians. This would be THE berserkers capability in the game (besides berserking for more damage).

Ok I just wanted to stop by and clear up some confusion.
YES bezerkers are tanks, no one said that they were not. My ideal image of a bezerker tank would be one that does great damage and has great taunts ( by great i DONT mean how high it is now, yes we need some kind of nerf.. but NOT to group 4, we should do similar damage to monks/bruisers in group 3). I am willing to give up the defense side (just like scouts and monks/bruisers do) to get more offensive powers.
Just a quick word on raiding. In the endgame raid situation, you always want/will have the BEST defensive/survivable tank. That tank is NOT a bezerker, nor should it be, a Guardian who goes max defense SHOULD be better at surviving against a raid mob. This means that the endgame raid MT will be a guardian and not a bezerker. Unless they change it so that bezerkers are randomly better at defensively tanking than guards in the combat revamp this is our role. And yes without good DPS that means that our role in raiding will be reduced. Because from a game mechanics position we are not the best, and if raid mobs are that hard you really do have to have the best.. accept no subisitutes.
What i do not understand is what role a zerker has to the people that do not want us to do DPS? I mean did you guys not read the class guides/notes when you decided to play a zerker like me? I mean do you just want to be an inferior meatshield? I can understand not wanting to give up heavy armour.. or whatever, but why are you so eager to give up the DPS that well, by everything SOE put up ( and STILL has up) about the class, should be the major role of the class...
Ok the bezerker i envision can tank normal group mobs fine and assist in killing them quickly, the only real change would be accepting that we wont be MT'ing a raid mob ( WHICH IS EXACALLY THE SITUATION 95% OF ZERKERS ARE IN NOW). For that i am willing to give up something.

Personally, I chose berserker because I wanted to be the kind of warrior that deals alot of damage even if I have to put myself in a low defence way to get increased speed and damage from anger where as my friend chose guardian to be a defensive wall but at the expense of having about as much offencive capabilities... of well, a wall. I'm rather happy with zerkers as they are (boy was the old bloodlust spoiling), I out tank and out damage my paladin 3 levels higher than me, course his heal spells save my [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] on a regular occurance. When I have to I can tank great, or I can just be dps; I dont damage like an assassin and by no means do I think we should, and same goes for tanking like a guardian, but we definately should be like the name implies, a brute that will do anything it takes to see his enemy decimated even if he has to take alot of hits.

Oh, and I prefer a sword over an axe, keep those [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] things way from me, let the eq1 zerkers have em.

I agree with the OP, I don't understand why we see heavy armor tanks and light armor tanks but never see medium armor tanks. I think it would be great to remove our heavy armor abilities and make us more of an offensive tank like a monk. :smileyvery-happy:

No morw whining is my vote. Let SOE make changes to their game as they please and if its not loved by all may they lose sales and accounts.

How foolish is this thing!!!

Ah, and so the anti-whining begins. It's one of the most ironic things I've found about message boards: there are always people who whine about the "whiners."

Yeah, sure, some of it is whining or wishful thinking. But some of it is constructive criticism.

And I find the whole defeatist attitude of "Let SOE do whatever they want, then vote with your wallet" to be, well, defeatist. I would rather be proactive and derail SOE's bad ideas BEFORE they get to the stage that customers start bailing. YMMV.

I kind of like where we are right now. In my humble opinion Berserkers make the best group tanks while Guardians make the best raid tanks. Fine with me... /shrug

Wow that dps chart was well, interesting. I play a troubador and can remember being in a group in rov in their upper 20's. There was a person putting out a damage chart after every battle and do you want to know where yours truely was. I was right above the healers and well below everyone else. But hey that was fine with me, I am a bard. I sing wonderful songs to inspire my groupmates to greater deeds. Any dps that I do is just a bonus. I think moving our dps up that high, thought it would be fun, is definately not the right solution. If they have that concept mixed up I don't want to think about what else could be flawed on that chart.

Vatec - Barbarian - 20 Berserker / 18 Craftsman
Beldacar - Wood Elf - 20 Ranger / 14 Outfitter
Kiri - Gnome - 13 Bard / 15 Scholar
Krusk - Dwarf - 13 Cleric // and others
Living and dying on OASIS since 11/09/04

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No offense, but you not creeds that are better to carry someone of your characters to a decent level before advising to SoE what to make or not to make?
How you can say what would be better to change in a class when the your maximum level is 20?

Just a heads up guys. First Moor said that our auto attack damage will take a hit but our skills should keep our dps up. Second Moor also was quoted in another post talking about how zerkers in the MT position will still deal great damage. At this point they seem to have picked how things will turn out, now it's time to ride the wave and see where we end up.
Crazylabrat

No offense intended, but read the bio: I've been playing MMORPGs for close to seven years now; I've played Asheron's Call and Dark Age of Camp-a-lot, as well as beta-tested or open-betaed every major release since then. So I think I have a =very= good idea how these games work. More to the point, I have a very good idea how I want =this= game to work.

Remember, achieving high levels in a game is as much a matter of time spent as it is an indicator of competence or comprehension. I read each post for the content. There is a reason the sig is at the BOTTOM of a post: because it is not particularly relevant to the subject....

So I shall kindly request that, if you don't have anything constructive to ADD to the discussion, you please refrain from dragging it down to a comparison of l33tness ;^)

I will happily admit that many, many people have more free time than I do, so many, many people have higher-level characters than I do :^D

What do we have to give up to get the DPS we want? You should change that title to what do you have to give up to get the DPS you want....


I don't want to give up ANY of my tanking abilities. I think we do just fine in the DPS department as well, when you proc berserk and use your abilites AFTER your done berserkering you will find we have AMAZING DPS. That's why if a zerker goes all out (one that knows his class that is) he WILL pull agro. Someone that knows his class will have to tone back his DPS some in order to NOT pull agro.

So my response to your question is what do we have to give up to KEEP the DPS we have? Also when will we be getting the adjustments inorder so that we can have the SAME mitigation as guardians have? And finally if we have to give up the ability to TANK RAID mobs in order to keep the DPS we have or improve it then.....nevermind Sony, up our Defense and lower our DPS....those rogues should be able to turn auto atk on and walk away from the computer and out DPS us hehe.

Sorry had to add, please those of you wanting a Berserker to be a DPS machine get the concept Sony introduced in EQ1 out of your heads, EQ1 Berserkers and EQ2 Berserkers are NOT the same creature, if they was I wouldn't be playing and loving mine!
Message Edited by Memmoch on 07-27-2005 03:37 AM

Great post, I'm totally agree with that.
And btw Berserker class in Eq2 is very loved, instead in Eq1 that was a failed class.