Berserkers

:confused: ' date=' Dam you, for you are correct. I shall edit it.[/quote']

This thread alone gives everyone hope on this the most black and brutal day on the calendar. A woman who admits she is wrong...and even goes back and makes corrections herself.

On top: Zerks really make me snicker generally when I face them. I think the only times I've honestly be "afraid" or as close to true fear as you can get from threatening-fonted letters were when I had to spent a full tick or more preparing for a fight from no affs to full-prepped...I'm not too concerned about zerks. What are they gonna do? Rage and flee-countered a billion times? Get blinded and chopped to pieces? Get blinded and whiff on a bodyslam or 3 and be chopped to pieces? It could just be we've all learned simple counters to zerks more than they are completely broken.

A-G: is that supposed to be different from your normal giggle???

Krins, you have fought the wrong zerks then.

Ototh made it a point to fight just about every warrior around during his time. I had a winning record all in all against counterable classes. Almost any c/c was basically a walkover. Ask Scorvale/Aelleor/Malagas/etc.. I do admit that fighting warriors and crusaders is an "Oh **** me!" moment often but it can be done with some thought. Ask Muahran/Elshan/Grizmaw/Iniari/etc about fighting Ototh. I bet they would not say that it went as smoothly in their favor as they expected it to go.(NOT a knock on those chars at all.)

Truthfully one of the most annoying things that I found was even with 110in berserk for a time I failed at least 50% of the time and that lag was wicked during a pk when you were hoping for that extra hp/hitdam boost. I would have liked to have seen the lag knocked down on that OR the reliability boosted. Although it tends to fire more successfully if you are already engaged in combat, but what zerk in their right mind uses up precious mid-combat commands on that unless they are going for a hail mary anyhow?

The only other thought that I have is that vs a defensive warrior/sader it is absolutely painful and the fact that they can and will often just stand there and outmelee you made me think of this: Perhaps ONLY when raged they recieve slightly less lag(READ SLIGHT;"Puffs their chest braces for your blow" kinda thing) from bashes/bodyslams/Crusader/vamp skills. A zerks only option sometimes vs a full melee type is to flee and use regeneration to outheal them and whittle at them bit by bit. If they cannot do that they are often SOL. And do not say enlarge/fly/crap, Akomak managed to hold me for a good 10ish rounds or so completely as an enraged minotaur vs fire giant.

Just my $0.02

Serious question now.

What about Roar(fear) and Haymaker ?

Are they usefull ?

To be honest, I don't even think Ototh should be a benchmark. You were DECKED. Absolutely Decked. You had just what a zerk needs. Not only that, you were a Minotaur. Minotaurs are like, the race zerkers were designed for. Even with that, you say you had a tough time with warriors. I don't think any class should have to get decked to the teeth in order to just stand a chance.

Had you pulled off the same with a human zerk, I'd let you rape me now.

zerkers at 50. you're gonna die and get FL'ed. guaranteed. but you'll kick *** on the way if you looked at cabals . who's going to spend 3 hours with you to suit up in Winter gear and maybe some other stuff if it's around? answer: only a cabalmate who's interest is that you the zerk is suited. whatever cabal is running the support the zerker guy paradigm thing is the place for a berserker at 50. that's how a pinnacle berserker gets use and used for what it's for: an attack dog with some fire support.

basically you should want to be playing a pinnacled zerk with the race/align of opportunity. otherwise you could forget reality and have fun. the berserker build right now is plenty fun if you arent worried about the fact that the game is almost private.

to condense, i wouldnt be a new person in this game and roll a berserker and expect to maximize my fun being any independent person, unless my motivation is RP-only. this has nothing to do with the actual berserker build, which is quite fine and really needs no more tuning.

a typical 3+ hours a day berzerker character playing a MUD, actively PKing under all circumstances, expecting continual PK competence would rely on a cabal, a cabal that is actually functional at the time. the mutual support of a shock-troop with a general support class or all around melee is invaluable to a berserker player planning on spending a lot of logged hours as this character in this game under ideal competitive environment, no matter what anyone else tells you. it lets you get back on your feet with the highest frequency and doesn't waste so much of your time. the berserker class doesnt need anything. it really needs a cabal to be viable to be valuable for your time as player, unless you're hardcore RP (which is fine).

Re Mya: fear was not as useful as I'd hoped, but haymaker is really great under specific circumstances.

Re the rest: Ototh was NOT in a cabal and did manage to get where he got due to I would say partially bullying people into doing what he wanted(rp AND pk bullying) and general pk'ing. Remember a just beginning melee is often meat to most other classes and zerks are no exception. It took planning and execution to get the primary pk's and equipment that made it possible to even think of pulling off my first point.

Finally I would add that I could see a great deal of power added to zerks when caballed but still believe that there is a HUGE curve on which a zerk will succeed in general pk based prmarily on equipment.

(If my post seems offensive/poorly spelled, yes I am under the protection of the 7/7's law:p

general uncaballed Pk prowess until you're ganged. by ganged i only mean an attack carried out by a simple cleric/melee duo. or other combinations. and becoming such a dominate indepedent zerk implies in itself that you know a lot about the game in the first place.

And remember people...the question isn't: CAN zerks become powerful?

The question is:

Are they balanced with the other classes? (ex. take about the same amount of skill/eq balance/adaptability/power peak/etc)

i think the only problem with zerks is they cant hang with counter classes. Not just warrior.... warrrior, monk,blademaster,paladin ESPECIALLY the ones who can charge you and you cant charge them back.

Main problems i see with zerkers..

no blind fighting

no real way to keep weapons in their hand (unless you pick a horrable path.)

melees can charge you , you cant charge back.

i wouldn't really call a berserk a melee class...

its more of a caster that relies on weapons the way it does damage.

alot of the good weapons in the game cant be cleaved which means your usually fighting someone with a weapon.

so that leaves you with ummm dirt,roar... and haymaker... considering most melee's can negate bodyslam and trip easily.

Actually, zerkers are supposed to be the BLM counter class.

I always thought zerkers have charge? Or is it only Mino's? :confused:

The bigger charge related problem is that they don't have counter.

I couldn't agree more with your vision of zerkers as a mage class though... after all they have haymaker, their most useful skill.

Zerks get charge, but vs a blm it is useless since you can only keep them blind 2 tics at the absolute most, and that is under ideal circumstances

you can only keep them blind 2 tics at the absolute most' date=' and that is under ideal circumstances[/quote']

Care to explain this?

I cant since it involves a select few weapons, and a weapon socket item.

Sure you can...I don't think that fireblind from flaming weapon flags is exactly RESTRICTED information...just don't name the actual names of the rare objs..

But that isn't a class skill...that would be due to weapon flags...

Zerks have less melee/offense than warriors/rangers(A HYBRID), less defense than MANY classes, and a lot less survivability than nearly all classes (if not all?).

Zerks DO have the wildcard status (irregularly landing skills and rage)....for the skills, they rate among the worst (other staple class skills do NOT fail as much as headbutt/haymaker do...imagine if critical strike/throw missed that much). Rage is as penalizing as it is helpful. All of these are INCONSISENT (a lot of OOC luck involved)...and we all know that consistency (predicting and controlling the flow of the battle) is one of the two primes of PK skill (the other being player typing speed/trigger setup).

Add in equipment and you have the most important traits for PK. Consistency and equipment are both big failures for zerks, creating a generally subpar class. Sure, a superior player can play a zerk passably, but these are the exception, not the norm (and typically require trusted cabal skills) (and once again, that same player using a warrior/ranger in the same setup would do BETTER).

i agree about serks. every time i come back i make one and then abandon it because i wonder wtf i am supposed to be doing.

Meh, I never had a problem with how Lmathr worked. It is not so much about the skills not working every time, hell, haymaker and weaponcleave SHOULD land less than disarm and dispel magic, nothing else deals the damage a zerk does. Can you imagine if they could also drop your spells at will? As lmathr I would actually land the haymaker, and sometimes drop like armor, or something just as not helpful. Zerks can be played very well, as far as not having the melee output as ranger/warriors, that is not true, Look at some of Lmathrs pk logs, I had 1000 ish hp and fought alot of ogre wars, not many of them beat me without being at pretty hurt/awful. I know in the log I fought kalvidar he had 30 hp left. 30. Zerks are not just rage; bod; bod; bod. They require alot of Finesse. If I knew the class better (not the class needs to be better) I prolly could have done MUCH better. But I was trying to grasp pinned zerk PK, I believe I got a handle on that. If you have trouble with a class, it may not be the class needs tweaked. It most likely means you need it. Perfectly examples ;I can play invokers rather well I believe, I cannot do **** with a bmg. I can play pallies rather well, I cannot do **** with DKs. I do not think Bmgs need changes, I think I need to learn how to play one.

Also note that as a caballed zerk, you lost both of those fights to uncaballed warriors...

But in those fights, there were A LOT of mistakes on both sides, so they aren't very good indications for the warrior vs zerk matchup (which nobody would argue against the warrior, who SHOULD win the melee game). I'm sure many, many, many more zerks were steamrolled by warriors than have results that are as close as your handpicked logs, much less actually getting the kill. In my experience, non-trusted (large-sized) WM/REAVER zerks were free eq for my warriors...

Looking at the logs, your MELEE was much lower than a warrior or ranger would have been in a similar situation...a lot of your damage is from cabal skills (disarming/unblockable damage) and negating defense (aka haymaker due the warrior's tactical mistakes).

If you have trouble with a class, it may not be the class needs tweaked. It most likely means you need it.

There is no reason to make this personal...

nothing else deals the damage a zerk does.

In straight combat, I'd say AT THE LEAST, invokers, necros, warriors, rangers, DKs, blms, and monks all can 'outdamage' a zerk in pure melee. Classes like thieves (enhanced damage, third attack--same as zerks) can match the damage output, but usually focus on different strategies (due to much lower HP and smaller races than the ideal zerker races).

Like you said yourself, you couldn't even maintain magical weapons (due to savants killing you)

Again, zerks can work, with good equipment, a giant-sized race, and a strong cabal choice. Does that mean zerks are balanced? Not at all...it means that the benefits of the eq, race, and cabal more than make up for the deficiency of the zerk (other classes would do BETTER with the same race/eq/cabal combo)

as a side note...basically, zerks rely on the other player's MISTAKES more than the controlling player's SKILL, which is fairly unique to them (akin to assassination)

The logs I posted are losing logs, I rarely post win logs honestly. The main thing is, my logs usally show mistakes I made, that are correctable, in both cases it was weapon choice, I should have been using a magical polearm in both instances, instead of the choices I took.

I never meant my comment to be an attack at anyone, more of a suggestion that if you do not like the way a certain class works (by you I mean anyone) then maybe you need to rethink the workings of the class, not suggest changes to the class.

Zerks are an extreme finesse class, I see them very similar to BMGs. YOu can either play them, or you cannot. Warriors can only exceed damage if the zerk is auto raging, or using whips. Most of my losses came to people exploiting zerk vulns (panic, lack of whip and staff, or FG vuln). Dks can only match the damage output if prepped, have good malforms, and a mean charmie, even then it is not a guarantee. Necros rely on pets, and again unless you have 3 strong pets, your not doing it. Rangers can potentially deal the damage, however it is not as reliable. Monks and Blms both require prep for the situation, catch a monk or blm who is prepped wrong, you have found a dead man walking.

As far as maintaining magic weapons, I was having a hard time, but that is my fault. I was unable to deal with the Savant clerics, and it was costing me. Once I got a grip on how to use skills, I did MUCH better.