I've slogged through tons of posts and couldnt find anything recent about this. I'm getting into doing some lower level raiding and am curious if the Berserker will be able to fulfill the MT roll at least almost as well as a Guardian... Any thoughts?
Yes they do. Im the second tank in our guild and have succesfully tanked just about every raid mob in the game. Tanked Pedistal, POF Barakah, Terror, have cleared poets the return, courts, gates. Guardians have alot more taunts, and some abilities that will make the healers job a bit easyer, but a berserker is very capable.
This question comes up time and time again. In my opinion, zerkers are perfectly capable tanks with the right support group. I agree with what Khalad said, however, I think the zerkers DPS more than makes up for the lack of taunts.. especially against grouped mobs. Message Edited by SugarGirl on 01-30-200611:57 AM
Ya, what Sugar said, zerkers no doubt are the better grp taunters and guardians the single target. In zones like poets return, gates, courts I will tank alot of the grp stuff just for agro reasons. 3 pulls= rampage 1, wounds the next, gibe the next, so 1 is usually up and ready for each pull for agro reasons.
As what Khalad and Sugar said...we are much capable of getting the job done. Don't believe that "More mitigation" crap that you may hear some people say...that's SO pre-lu13 lol Raive Mooshi 60 Berserker Equinox Innothule...soon to be Crushbone
Berserker's MT just fine, as others have said, it's mostly a matter of MT group makeup, and gear/CA's of course. Some mobs Guardians will be a better choice. In other cases Zerkers. In most cases, either can work if they are comparably equipped.
I believe that Berserkers and Guardians are the two most preferred raid tanks in the game. With Guardians still being slightly more preferred than us at the moment. However, like others have pointed out, we just as capable of the job. And most people seem to prefer having a Zerker as their MT for a raid more than either of the Crusader classes.
Just get a Templar, Dirge, and Warden in your MT group and make sure the Dirge has Stone Shield up, and you will be one uber tank. I always try to have a Dirge in the MT gorup now, works really really well. But i have decent gear, 10master 1's (50+) and the rest are all adept 3, We do awsome damage as the MT also and that makes up for our lack of Taunts, but be careful with rampage and open wounds when the MT as this can backfire quickly on you.
Khalad, I have seen many posts from you on the berserker boards and I respect your knowledge and have used quite abit of your advise to help me know my class better. I agree with you about us making very good tanks and I have in fact started tanking much more for my guild, although our gurdian is still our main tank most of the time. I do have a question for you though, if you wouldn't mind answering. I noticed you stated above the you tanked Pedistal. My guild has recently been making a really determined push to beat this zone. We have been using the guardian to tank Barka(sp?) and me to tank Siyamak. My stats are very close to the guardians (my mit is a little lower and my defense is just slightly lower), however, I have been taking twice the auto attack damage then the guardian does. Even when we tried switching dragons (slash vs pierce), I still have taken twice as much auto attack damage. Our group make up is exactly the same, so we are being buffed equally, besides our own buffs. Also, our gear is also pretty similar, except I haven't gotten any fabled boots yet Do you have any thoughts on what can be causing such a huge disparity and/or any suggestions on what I can do to help this situation? As it stands now, I am taking piercing damage on the average of 4k and spikes as high as 9k on almost every attempt. The weird thing is that the damage I am taking is all over the place. As an example, I will get hit for 5k, then 2k, then 400 (yes, you read this right), then block, then 3k, then block, then 5k followed imediatly by a 8 or 9k hit. The healers just can't keep up with the 5k hit followed by an 8 or 9k hit. I have tried to think this out and figure out what is causing the major diffference between me and the guardian and I am just really baffled at this point. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.
Helcat, it sounds like your Guard is absorbing a lot of damage with Tower of Stone. We don't get many damage absorbtion options so it's left up to our group to keep us alive and healthy. One thing I have tried and tried to get some information on is whether anyone has tried getting a Guard in the MT group to cover the zerker. Lots of people disagree with me on this, as they feel that it's pointless to use a zerker over a guard for a tank when you could just have one tank and fill the zerker spot with another buff class. The argument always comes down to the fact that a guard normally has higher HP/Def/Mit stats.. but I think they are forgetting one thing, and that is the Guards protection spells versus the zerkers. We get VoM, which lets us die once without loosing buffs or hate and at Master 1 basically heals 40% over 5 seconds. This spell sucks against raid mobs by itself, but if a guard in the MT group cast sentry when we are in the red, we would gain another 7% health along with intercepts for a short duration, this would essentially take us up almost to 50% instantly. In addition, their Guardian Sphere would help to absorb a lot of the damage you are taking. Furthermore, since the guard is in the MT group, they will have the same group buffs as the zerker + their own defensive buffs, which can keep them alive long enough to take over if the zerk goes down. This buys enough time for the zerk to get back up and rebuff in that situation. At that point the zerk could take over the ST position to finish the mob. I have not yet had the opportunity to raid Pedastel, so I don't know the exact ins and outs of it, but it seems to me that if the tanks are having a problem staying up... then there is probably a flaw in the tanking strat. We can't always blame EVERYTHING on the healers LOL. If you can get someone to try the guard thing, I'd love to hear how it works Oh.. one other thing.... if you have a Temp in the MT group, thenhave them use their Greater Harmony(?) this averages out the HP of the entire group ... which basically means that you are spreading the damage out to your group members. A guard will bring that group average way up and it would be a good way to get you out of the red quick. If the Temp can also manage to land their save from death spell on you for a fatal blow, then you will also get the Mit bonus, which helps out big time. The way I see it, there's a ton of ways to keep the zerker up in the MT spot... I just don't have time to post them all. Let me know if these ideas help at all Thanks Message Edited by SugarGirl on 02-02-200611:58 PM
Halcat an Khalad... Just as a uneducated guess I'd say the Guardian has some defesive buffs that the Berserker doesnt have, and since tanking really is about being able to stand in the jetwash of a 747 for 30 minutes while the rest of the raid knocks it down there may be some difference in the ability of Guardian and Berserker. I do have 2 warriors I'll be playing around with swapping them out in some of the raids I will be doing and I'm sure any difference will show up. Since both are my own characters I'll be able to equip them similarly and keep the playing field level so to speak. I do have a feeling that in the lower end raids it wont make a bit of difference.
Halcat, I think I know the problem you are facing. Unfortunately, my guild has strong rules on posting any kind of strat on encounters, so I am kinda hamstrung here. I can say this. Guardians will absorb blows with tower and such, but that wont effect the basic auto attack damage over the fight. The problem is NOT you, your gear or what your doing. You or someone else should guess what it is pretty fast if you look at it like that. (at least what i believe the issue is)
You're totally right Galn, where zerkers shine is when you have a bunch of grouped mobs.. The aggro they generate across a group sticks the mobs to them, this means the warlocks can go apesnot on them and burn then down quick... end result, we don't have to stand in a jetwash. Zerkers aren't about stamina as much as they are about aggro and damage. I wouldn't say that a zerker is the optimal tank for something like PoS, but I also think that they could do it in the right configuration with a well trained team.
Thank you all for your suggestions. Khalad I understand your situation completely. I am currently talking this over with the raid leaders in my guild trying to figure out what was different in our group make-ups, since I am leaning toward that it was either a buff or debuff that was missing from my group. The only thing that really stands out is we had a mystic in the guardians group and a defiler in my group. Don't know if this is the difference, but we will find out tonight . Message Edited by Halcat on 02-02-200602:39 PM
This is a great MT setup. A very good group is Berserker (MT) Guardian Fury Defiler Templar Dirge This is prolly the best group that we have found. Have the guardian put all intercepts and his vehmnence line or whatever theirs is called on you. Plus this yields just about the highest mitigation of any setup that I have found yet. Have the berserker start the fight with Porcupine and Chaos (should have insane mitigation at start of fight) up. 2 seconds before chaos goes down cast wall of rage. 2 seconds before wall of rage is down have your guardian cast commanding aura. Just as thats goind down Chaos and Porcupine should be coming back up so recast. You can keep insane mitigation through the entire fight doing this. Whenever you get killed Guardian cast intercecpts on you and that usually gives plenty of time for healers + vision of madness to do it's job. Before we knew of this setup we used this, but after some testing it seems we do better on the very hard mobs like Jura'nata and POS, and Black Queen with the Berserker MTing and Guard protecting. Guardian (MT) Dirge Defiler Templar Paladin Conjuror Message Edited by Poochymama p on 02-02-200607:47 PM
Sounds mostly like a debuff problem to me. Seems like Barakah must have an extra debuff or two on him.
