With the betrayal changes coming and guardians (possibly) switching to zerkers, what are the rationales for switching to a zerker from a guardian? Assume 1) reacquiring CAs is not a factor(ie you have plenty of resources to acquire them) 2) your guardian is not the MT but sometimes the OT Your thoughts?
Well zerks get increased DPS (buffs and stances), and a heal. Nothing too outrageous, but for now, better than what we got. Getting to go into the frenzy mode thing would be pretty interesting imo though.
Guardians can raise their parry, defense, crush, slash, and pierce skills higher than a berserker is able to. Mitigation would most likely be equivalent if all things were equal (with mitigation broken down a bit different vs. crush/pierce/slash). Berserkers get a group and self buff that can proc a 'berserk' mode (haste and DPS increase for 10 seconds). The berserkers lack in gaining protection and absorption skills. They get offensive skills instead. Quite a few are AoE oriented and can put up some big numbers. Hate generation is bit different. Damage plays a bigger part in the berserker aggro management. Berserker debuffs are slightly different. There is an attack speed debuff, crush/pierce/slash debuff, focus debuff, and a triggered AoE snare. Berserkers do not get any direct heals. They get two health regen buffs, 1 self and 1 group. The self buff is triggered. Over a long duration, it can restore more health than the guardian stamina boost, but in a short or normal fight they're about equivalent. A few berserkers see the stamina boost as better due to spike damage from raid mobs. Berserkers can use Unyielding Will, too. At level 55, there is a similar skill on a long timer that can also prevent or delay death. It can be useful against spike damage from one attack. Without knitpicking at every little detail, I would say the damage is the most notable difference.
Zerker advantages: Basically more dps Guardian advantages: More short buff mitigation (Wall of Might) at the cost of dps To me, the Berserker grp buffs are more (melee) grp beneficient while the Guardian buffs cater more for the tank's needs.
Thanks for the input. The benefits of more DPS are easy to see, but anyone have any (accurate) ballpark numbers on the dps differences? Guardian DW Off Stance vs. Zerker DW Off Stance dps?
Guard vs. Zerk damage is pretty close, within 5-7%, vs single mobs, in favor of the zerker. The haste proc being the determining factor. However, Zerkers truely shine against multiple enemy encounters, with their DPS easily doubling that of Guardians, sometimes much more. Survivability is very close, with Guardian in the lead in shorter fights (Stam buff, +hp) and Zerk closing the gap a bit in longer fights (2 Regens).
Reading this thread, it highlights what doesn't make sense to me about what the final product of a high level Guardian turns about to be. There's not much of a downside to Zerker or other class abilities compared to what Guardians have to give up for what amounts to a little bit more defensive buffing and damage mitigation. Other fighter and scout classes have self haste CA's, my swashie does, they don't give up defensive stats at all. We have a whole line of CA's that we have to Root and debuff our offense to get a modest benefit from. I like playing a heavy tank, I guess I'll be told to shut up and betray to Zerker by the minority of posters who think Guards are fine (and monk trolls) but it's just such a glaring problem with the class, I don't understand how it has slipped by this long. /rant off
Guardian has Tower of Stone Absorb 3 hits over 10% of guardian's life, Blue AE DPS/Haste reduction, and 1.5k mitigation buff for 30 seconds. That's what makes it good tank, because guardian can survive dps burst when other classes can't. Sirriun - Paradigm - Unrest
Are you comparing that to anything that other classes get? I believe there are other classes that can survive short burst attacks pretty well. They don't even have to repair there shields after every use. Tsunami - 100% riposte on frontal attack, 100% parry on back attacks, 12 sec duration
Tsunami is uber but guardian get that AA now, 12 seconds parry all attacks for 12 seconds AA. Tower of stone is absorb Spell dmg too, tsunami doesn't. I'm not saying it's a uber difference i'm just saying that i have seen other tanks dying on Black Queen dps bursts for example and i those 3 "stricks" made it look almost easy. Saying Guardian don't have tanking advanges is just wrong that's all. Sirriun
not sure what groups you are in or what newb is playing that zerker ..but heres the real deal guardians full out even when not tanking are somewhere around the 200dps ballpark on single mobs zerkers are anywhere from 400-500dps on sinble and can be well over 1kdps on multiple mobs these are from equally equipped / ca levels at lvl 60 weve looked at these numbers on REAL encounters hundreeds of times and not in some math room so thats the REAL deal the notion that we are within 5%-7% of zerker dps ever is not accurate at least not at the higher levels...they bury us dps wise
Yeah, I think it's not an uber difference either. The direction since LU13 has been Guardians = marginally the best raid tank / best situational raid tank. Which is enough for some who are established at MT in your raid guild. If this is the case, DPS needs to be scale up significantly so there isn't so much of a gap between zerkers and guards. (Here's a hint, it ain't 5-7%.) If they address the power consumption problem, most other Guardians would be happy, too. So regarding the OP we are still at: 1) Big DPS difference, 2) Guard has better tanking CA's especially in certain situations, but they are not across the boards a better tank than others. 3) Some of the everyday type Guard CA's are very tortured, Wall line, another costs you gold everytime you use it. You give up quite a bit to be the hands down best tank against heavy nuking raid mobs. PS > New Betrayal system NOT in LU 20.
Have you guys seen this on the Zerker boards...possible nerf or "fix" as SOE states to thier AOE dps due to proc changes. It hasn't gone live yet and there is come controversy as to how it will affect their dps overall (if and when it does). Anyways interesting nonetheless. http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=4&message.id=19525 We will see what the changes mean if they go live with LU20. You have some zerks saying it won't affect them much while others are saying that their dps will be drastically reduced.
Ok, first of all I'm a level 60 raiding zerker with mostly fabled and 14 of my T6 CA's at master. Well your DPS rock as a zerker?? yes. If you are solo, MT or raid MT. As raid MT I can parce in the top 5. But.......you need to be MT because our CA's only proc when hit for the most part. Frenzy, our 30sec haste buff (54% at master 1) well work when not MT. And now with the weapon changes who knows, but I have many weapons that don't proc so I'm not sure its a big difference. So, if not MT your DPS well go way down. Holding aggro on groups is awesome, I can keep multiple mobs busy while our 3 warlocks nuke happily away. Insolent Gibe, a blue back AoE taunt with a 15 meter range is awesome. With that you can pick up adds without even targeting them sometimes. On single targets I struggle. Your mitigation well be the same, avoidence well be a touch higher as a zerk. But HP's well take a hit. Raid buffed I'm only hitting 10k. So for all those thinking of switching. If your guild needs a raiding zerker make sure your MT for groups (taking out the trash mobs) and cold damage mobs. If not MT, have them put you in a scout group with a Troub's DPS modifier and your haste. In that type of group the DPS (group DPS) is amazing. After that your just a pretty face(hopefully) and are just there for moral support and the chance at some loot. The reason I'm trolling your boards is I'm thinking of going guardian because our guild does not have one. But I have really loved being a zerker and well miss it....and my 14 masters (all your CA's go to app1 when you switch) Nishra - 60 Berzerker - Guild Exalted - AB server
I play a lvl 60 berserker. We have cleared all mobs in EQ2 except the Djinn Master. I am MT on 80% of the raids, and our guardian on the rest. We both have fully fabled, I have 6.2k hp selfbuffed, and our guardian has 6.6k. And the extra hp you guardians get makes a huge difference vs orange mobs. They more or less ignore the mitigation (we both have more than 4k mit self buffed). So when we are up against single target orange mobs, our MT is usually the guardian and I am MT on trash/easier named. The extra hp is a huge advantage to you guardians out there! I miss the 1.4k hp buff I had before the revamp...
I am glad guardians have such a horrid time with the other 50% of the game that doesn't include full groups or raids because of an extra 400hp at 60.
Really have to laugh when certain people post on these sorts of threads thinking they know other peoples class because a parser told them so...... I especially liked this one : Not sure what planet your on, but ive been playing a zerker since day 1, and im in a high end raiding guild and i have to agree that yeah we can do 400 - 500 dps on a single target every 3 mins or so.............after that for that 3 mins we are really not that much more then a Guardian, like others have said, with in 5 - 7% of them seeing they have the same DPS CA's as we do without Rampage and Open Wounds. How many groups do you see sitting around waiting to kill stuff just because of Rampage or Open Wounds, hell i dont even always use it, even when tanking, why? Because if for some unknown reason we get adds i rely on those skills to help me control agro, especially if there out of encounter adds which Open Wounds comes in real handy to control agro. Which leads me into mentioning how our Defense lines work, i believe a Guardians is called Inflaming Defense and a Berserkers is called Taunting Defense, Guardians is a 50% chance at procing a threat proc on the target that strikes you and the Berserkers is a 20% chance to proc the same amount of Threat but some minor Damage as well, hence the 20% chance. Let me shine some light here for you guys that want to know real facts. Guardians get Tower of Stone, Guardian Sphere and a few other mitigation buffs that are better then ours and Berserkers get Rampage, Open Wounds and Insolent Gibe. We are desinged to be more offensive orientated and Guardians are desinged to be more defensive. Berserkers are designed to agro and control massive encounters, thats what we do and thats our niche. Warriors in general are group control tanks, but Guardians excel that little bit more on the raid side of things. Rampage, Open Wounds and Insolent Gibe ( which is just a AoE taunt but works on everything in its range, not just the target encounter ) are all on 3 min timers, pretty much making us nothing more then chump change for burst DPS. Sure we can tank almost as well as a Guardian, but they are more defensive then a Berserker and always will be because they are built to do so. In the end of this never ending battle for supremecy which is enviatably killing this game, put the same tanks in the same gear and everyone ( plate wise ) can tank the same stuff with the right set ups, Tower of Stone, Guardian Sphere and a few other buffs that Guardians get make it 1% more easier, which pretty much makes them the prefered tank of choice. EDIT - Let me clarify a bit also here, Berserkers get a Group STR and Beserk buff, Guardians get a group HP and Defense buff, enough said. Message Edited by -Aonein- on 02-20-200609:07 PM
