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

EQ1 Berserkers being DPS machines? Are you out of your mind? They were a **** piece of s.h.i. t that took a whole nother expanion before they got their class AA's and even then you couldt do decent damage till you have Time + gear ..... un yeah what ever ( trust me i had one of the first 10 lvl 65 and 70 zerkers in eq1 )

Dont't even get me started on eq1 zerkers....

Now for the current situation.... If they make us Heavy DPS WHILE tanking then i can live with that..... give them Guards all the defense they want, i didnt sign up for that.... But to have overall better agro then me is just plain stupid Zerkers might be good at snap agro but in the long run guards will win... Ggroup agro control, guards are better as well ....

Hopefully SoE will truly give us or spot in the revamp....

this game has one expansion for it to shape up ...... too many good MMO titles are comming that can potentially rip EQ2 pieces and i hope they are listening

You misunderstand what I meant by the eq1 berserker, I didn't say that they was successful but that a DPS machine was their intention in eq1

In EQ2 it is their intention that we are Tanks, and I for one am very thankful for this because it's about time a MMO comes out with a MT that just looses it and goes crazy with rage while trying to kill a mob, or what we like to call going "berserk"

I have to disagree with you on the taunting issue as well Styker on guardians having better taunts. In all my 50 lvls of play I have never had a guardian out taunt me. Not a single time, never not once in any situation. I think guardians have 2 maybe 3 aoe type taunts (I'm counting group hits in this as well) at lvl 50 they can cycle while fighting. Berserkers have 9. We have 9 combat abilites that we can hit 1 after another that hits the entire group either AOE based or group encounter based.

If someone playing a berserker knows their class they can and will pull agro from guardians everytime. A smart Berserker can and WILL have the ability to control any situation, we can HOLD agro forever accross a raid environment, group environment, duo environment. The only classes that has ever given me trouble with agro are the scout and mage classes. Even then if they give me time to set up (establish hate as I like to say) then they can cast/hit at will without fear of pulling agro. A guardian will never be able to make this boast. It all goes into knowing your class, not just us but everyone with you; and if they don't know their class it's always good to have the MT know some background on them to make suggestions ( stop breaking my INC HO!!!, don't open up the fight with Ice Comet!).

Sorry, forgot we have 9 total counting reactive procs not 8.
Message Edited by Memmoch on 07-28-2005 12:46 AM

Um, I don't believe anyone is arguing about =current= berserker capabilities. It's the intended changes, one of which was giving Guardians better taunting abilities.
Fact is, we don't know anything about the upcoming combat revamp other than what Sony has told us. Unfortunately, some of what they have told us has given a few people serious concerns about the future of the class. If they reduce our damage and give Guardians better taunts, that may or may not be a good thing. But if they make our damage output primarily determined by whether or not we are tanking, we will end up being the -only- tank class that does less damage when not MT. That means we will -only- be desired as MTs, and maybe not even that if Guardians prove to be better at it.
Now do you see my concerns?

As far as DPS goes, i sort of have to agree with the poster. When I come to play an mmorpg I LOVE the look of full plate armor and a awsome looking sword or axe. However, what annoys me the most is that the developers of this game cookie cut things down sooo much. If i want to be class that can give me the full plate armor and awsome looking sword i want, i have to resort to basically being a meatshield. I ask why? Know that I am not asking to be the ultimate warrior that can mow through any mob I want. Nor am i asking to be at the tip top of the DPS chain 24/7. However, its annoying to play these games as a warrior and get turned down by a group when they tell you "sry we already have a tank, would add ya but u cant do enough damage". Wheres the fun in that? Wheres the fun in having to have the PERFECT group in order to go through things instead of being to interact with your fellow players in ways u want to. I dont want the best damage, but why cant you just leave us fighters dps alone so atleast we can do enough damage to make a significant difference that a group wont mind having there.

Well, the point of this thread was to tell everyone that bezerkers did not want to lose DPS in the combat revamp. But at the same time to understand the community's concerns about an unbalanced class. The fighter class has 2 main attributes to balance: tanking and DPS.

All i wanted to say was that I think bezerkers just like bruisers and monks should be balanced more twards DPS and a little less twards tanking ability. I think they should be in group 3 not group 4, per the orginal weblink i posted. I do not want to be a second rate guardian. I DO STILL WANT TO MAIN TANK GROUP ENCOUNTERS, I just want to let the notion of main tanking raids go.. so that we might have another role in the raid: DPS

the orginal post was trying to come up with a way to balance the DPS many bezerkers want, and to STILL KEEP GOOD TANKING ABILITY. I suggested many routes, which may be taken to achieve this goal.. which is balanced? well only testing will tell that.

What i want the bezerker to be is the damage dealin warrior that can slay is foe's on the battlefield, not a meatshield. If SOE wants us to be meatshields, please change the class discription to : fearsome warrior that can take alot of hits and shouts really well. Instead of explaining our class as one that "deals great damage", because i am just about fed up with being lied to.

Well i hope i answered everyone's questions. If not i will try again tommorrow.

I think I understand what you was saying Vatec, aye I don't want to be the only choice of MT at a raid, and it wouldn't be any good to have our DPS reduced from the combat changes if we did not get more mitigation ability in exchange for it. If they **** our DPS, increase the guardians offensive cabilites and taunting cabilities....well that would just suck lol.

I agree with you on the point that Berserker's shouldn't loose too much DPS ThePhoniex but your views on us NOT being a valid choice for RAID TANK is false....I for one want to be my guild's Raid MT. So by you saying berserker's in general want to be more DPS and less tank is not accurate, Berserker's want the cability to be Either Raid MT OR DPS.

I suggest you read my response to Eukatae's post "Walking a mile in a monkeys shoes" I give SOE's exact discription on our class straight from their Website and their Guide. Very cut and dry we are Offensive oriented Tanks, designed to buff offensivly and be that meatshield. If this wasn't what you was wanting sorry, should of read the full discription before you invested time into being a Berserker. But don't give up hope, I for one don't think this combat change is going to ill effect berserker's that badly. It said it was giving us offensive and defensive skills and slightly reducing our standing DPS....which I think means probably just reduce the total dmg per swing of our weapons when we just stand there with atk on. This last part though is just my interpetation of the changes...we won't know for sure until it hits test.

I'm concerned about the combat changes from a slightly different perspective. My concern is that we don't seem to be gaining any extra ability in tanking/taking damage. These changes seem to be purely focused on damage dealing potential, which, for an offensive oriented class like us, only means losing utility. Don't get me wrong, I love my Zerker, he is an immensely fun class to play. But sometimes I feel that since only a Guardian can tank the high tier raid mobs (and raiding is the pinnacle of EQ2), I'm just a sub-par Guardian with a little more damage.

I know that sounds like I'm selling the Berserker (well, the Berserker at present) a bit short. We are definitely the second best tanks in the game, and we have wonderful group buffs. But do any of you ever feel like you would give up some of that dps (and come on, it's not THAT great!) for the ability to tank like a Guardian? Hey, if you are reading this and saying "Well maybe you should have rolled a Guardian then!", you have every right to think that. I think that myself sometimes too. But the thing that makes me STOP thinking that is that we are both Warriors. There shouldn't be only -one- class in the game that can tank Vox, Darathar, etc... I think that Berserkers should be able to MT them, just with large negatives to our offense (effectively making us equivalent to a Guardian). Why not? We are from the same Warrior class, can anyone give me a reason as why NOT to have that equivalence? I would be happy for a Guard to buff their offense for the sake of their defense, making them equivalent to Zerkers. Sure, it blurs the lines a bit more between the sub-classes, but so what? If people understand BEFORE they chose to be a Warrior that Warriors are the premier tank class in the game, then they should just deal with the fact that our DPS is low. But what would counter that low DPS is the ability to tank any raid mob in the game. That would make me feel like I play a class that really shines in something.

It seems we are 'almost-Guardians' with more damage. However, with the looming combat changes, we will lose some of that damage. I ask - where does that leave Berserkers then? And furthermore, where does it leave Shadowknights, Monks and Bruisers?
Tukaran
50 Berserker

Tukaran i think were u went wrong here is assuming you as a Berzerker cannot tank as well as a Gaurdian. YOU CAN! All you need is a gaurdian in your group for the group def and hp's . Sure the gaurd may have more total hp's but you have every bit the same Def/Parry and can keep aggro much better than the gaurd. The problem is finding a situation where a Gaurd is willing to back off and let you tank for the better of the raid force. Berzerkers also make the best tank imo because if for some reason the Zerker whom is main tanking goes down the gaurd is right there to pick it up, the only think lost from the zerker going down would be the hp's lost to gaurd . This is huge cause if your doing it the other way around Gaurd tanking goes down and Zerker picks up slack he will be without the Def he needs and falter quickly. Imo this was the way SOE initally intended people to tank raids , due to the amazing DPS/ aggro zerkers do while taking damage and the amount of "Gaurding" spells Gaurdians have that they NEVER EVER USE. Problem is now its come to be common knowlege that Gaurds are better tanks , and Zerkers have insane DPS. So w/o trying to speculate on changes one thing we do know is Gaurdian grp buff is gone , and tanks are moving down in dps and b ecoming more balanced.. Here is the problem , Your getting a dps downgrade and your current best way to tank (gaurd grp def buff) is being taken away also. Basically you MIGHT be able to buff yourself now somewhat close to a gaurdian w/o a gaurd in your group. There will only ever be 2 good tanks with this new system ( based on DPS changes and current roles) imo it will be the best Tanks and best DPS of the tanks thats is the only option really .. Gaurds will get a huge upgrade in these changes thru removing the rest of the tanking classes roles , cause even if Zerkers become as good of tanks as gaurds it wont matter due to the fact Gaurdians are already established as the RAID TANK and thats never going to change on any high end raiding.

personally id suggest the following method of dps working
dps would be calculated based more on stats each combat art / weapon would have a base damage, each point in strength would affect that damage for a certain ammount per class, Zerkers could have 3% per str point so a 100-150 damage attack with 200 strength would deal 300-450 damage where a guardian with a modifier of 2 would do 200-300 with the same. each ability would have to have a seperate base damage rating assassinate for example would have around 1.5-2k with a modifier of say 1.5
same would go for tanking abilities, currently all STA affects is how much hp you have why not have it affect mitigation buffs aswell? a person with 200 stamina using a +100 mitigation buff only gets 100 why not modify it to add the stamina to it for 300 total thus making stami more saught after.
a third thing would be armor why not put a strength requirment on armor instead of a skill? why can a mage with 150 strength only use cloth armor when a zerker with 90 can use a full plate mail? strength should affect the armor types one can wear and if being under the ammount one would be affected by a slowed attack speed or slower walking speed and higher power drainage.
stats currently do about jack squat in this game i dont notice a single difference in my damage output with 90 strength or 230 that coming from a level 42 berserker froglok. all it affects is my power and how much junk i can lug around. the only stat that makes a significantly noticable difference is agility.
as a berserker who likes to go all out on str with no respect for armor (i generally use medium or even light for higher STR boost) the method of having statistics affect damage output or defense is more appealing. the group wants a tank? then ill just use stamina. they want dps let me switch to strength the simple thing of playing a class how you want to play it becomes so much easier when you add a simple thing such as statistics into the formula. some thing (in the zerker forum test announcements) on abilities have been released which pretty much cripple 2 of the berserkers most favouvered abilities, tides of war (group haste now becomes a group chance for berserk) and some other one which i havent achieves yet which is simple referred to as the +1k health buff which becomes a measly health regen buff. a big loss i dont like makes tanking easier sure but when i chose this class the npc said you will cause havoc and destruction in your path. standing infront of some dopey dragon trying to eat me doesnt seem like causing destruction id much rather shove my pike up is rectum and make it raor in pain as i rip it out sideways