Revised Berserker and Skirmisher Feedback Thread

[Fortescue]

Great feedback again Davion. Shibari is aware of the absurd damage output you're achieving, and you haven't even tried Sling Bombardment yet

A popular strategy you don't seem to have tried is Hurricane + Poison because you stack it on so many targets so quickly due to the double hit aspect and how fast you can cool it down with Swift Shot, but then again you seem more focused on one shot killing everything with Vital Shot and Kill Shot

Changes are coming, rest assured. Personally if I could have things my way, right now, today, Mobility would be gutted for Leather mastery (it would go into Combat Training alongside heavy Armor Training). Skirmishers would also not be allowed to "Block" for counter attacks period. It isn't part of their theme to sit still for any length of time. Blocking projectiles is not problematic in itself, the block rate might just be too high. It is hard to get a good balance there between "strong enough that people actually use it" and "too good".

Kill Shot was Shibari's way of breaking the class without talking to me about if it was a good idea first I would not have designed that talent, but now that it exists I can understand why people like it and it does fit the "sniping" theme of that category very well. I wouldn't remove it at this point, but it does need tweaked.

[Davion Fuxa]

Not really much point either in getting AoE ability. Because of my absurd defense and do to the fact I'm playing on Normal, I can simply just jam the 'Shoot' Hotkey a few times to kill off a cluster of trash enemies after their Rare, Unique, Boss, or Elite Boss buddies are killed. To put it to a point, only two enemies gave me trouble recently - I played up through the rest of the prides and mopped up everything in Slime Tunnels (4 Guardians included). Only the Forge Giant Guardian and Grushnak gave me trouble - the Forge Giant just because he's always been tough, and Grushnak because he can take a beating (To the point that my Stamina bar emptied for once) and he has Rush, Giant Leap, and other abilities that can give a Skirmisher some trouble (hit myself with my own Vital Shot due to Battle Call for example).

Actually at this point I think it is more of a problem that Buckler Mastery is a class talent. Remember it is possible for people to get Misdirection from the 'Tricks of the Trade' Prodigy like I have done. When you combine even a couple Talent Points of the Misdirection talent with that of Buckler Mastery or Bucklery Expertise - nothing really hits. It could remain a class talent but I think the numbers will have to be rock bottom low. I also don't think you'll have your way on Block either, simply because that's a mechanism in the game that you get with Shields and it makes no sense that a Skirmisher would be unable to Block with a Shield just because of his class nature leaning him toward being more mobile.

I had a chance to test out Counter Shot somewhat by the way and I have to say it is really detrimental to consider having on. It's damage is very weak and when you use it you are using up precious shots that could have been used for other enemies. I think I suggested it before but it would probably be better to have it so that you hit enemies with your Shield instead of use your Sling - this gives Shields more use since the Skirmisher could use another Shield related talent that actually uses their shield. It was funny though with my damage output to melee guys to death however - I simply just bump trash with death with Counter Shot due to my damage output.

I've reached the doors of High Peak at this point. I'll try to finish my Skirmisher Run tonight - shouldn't be hard since I still have an extra life, I am wearing the Ring of the Dead, and I found a Blood of Life too during my time in Grushnak Pride.

The end of my Skirmisher Run is near.

[Davion Fuxa]

Alright, I've won my Skirmisher. View the character 'Davion Skirmisher Look'. The only thing I'll point out is that I have Pace Yourself at 5/5 - never used it, I just threw the talent points in there because I was level 50.

First things first, he's some feedback on the run itself.

In the Early Game the Skirmisher felt a lot like the Rogue Class - but with talents. Early Game Rogues have access to a Sling and the Shoot talent and they can make some use of it to harry their opponents before engaging them up close. Skirmishers are very similar to this - though obviously with a few talents they can make use of to stay out of Melee range and keep harrying the opponent until it dies under a sustained shower of rocks.

As the game progressed towards the Early Midgame though, the Skirmisher begins to sort of get into a bit of it's own. You don't necessarily have access to a long range sling so it feels unique in a way. You can hit enemies from behind other enemies with Called Shots and if they get close then you can simply escape through several talents at your disposal.

Hitting the Later Midgame though, when you do find that long range sling however, things begins to feel kind of overpowered. The damage really peaked here because I was able to get more and more damage from talents like Sling Supremacy and Sling Sniper; where the talent Kill Shot really just jumps to being insane and Noggin Knocker and Kneecapper aren't that bad either. In many ways because my equipment was good enough and due to my damage, this just felt like a sudo-Archer class with more ability to get out of Melee and with better abilities to kill the enemy you want to target but might not immediately be able to by shooting through his friends.

Past the Midgame and heading toward the Far East and beyond, the class was just a completely overpowered killing machine; and mine specifically also became and overpowered killing machine that had access to the likes of Disengage, Nimble Movements, and Misdirection eventually. On Trash enemies I could just repeatedly hit the shoot key after hitting the autoexplore key to make things dead in a lot of the Trash enemies that would pop up. If a Rare or Boss enemy showed, Kill Shot or Vital Shot were deadly in truly wrecking them; and Kneecaper and Knoggin Knocker would hold them at bay. Finally charging High Peak I felt like I was actually feeling 'some' resistance, but I was still able to clear all the enemies that appeared and kill the Sorcerers just fine.

*******

In regards to talents you've heard pretty well everything already, but here's a few good points I want to note because I haven't stated them yet.

First, Swift Shot was quite useful towards the end because I wasn't killing everything immediately. If I wanted to fire a quick followup shot or if all my other talents were on cooldown, Swift Shot was the goto ability. Against Argoniel I also eventually got into a running pattern where moving around made it come off cooldown quickly too.

Noggin Nocker also showed something that I was quite happy for it to be able to do - increase the Stun Duration on enemies tha Vital Shot Stunned. Every so often when it happened, Noggin Nocker was a nice talent to pair up with it to extend the Stun time on the enemy.

Tireless combatant was also useful as well in the Final Boss Battle because due to all the health Argoniel and Elandar have I eventually did run out of stamina against them. Additionally of note, I took a very hostile approach (not something I usually do) in that fight by actually ripped both their hitpoints a new one. At one point in the fight I had both Elandar and Argoniel ignoring Aeryn to focus on retalitating against me, so I got to see the hitpoint regeneration somewhat in action.

Anyhow, that's my feedback for you on the Skirmisher. I'll try and play the Berserker sometime soon to finish up his run.

[Fortescue]

Thanks again for the detailed notes, Davion. We'll be acting on all the great feedback we're getting.

[Dlightfull]

Thanks again for the detailed notes, Davion. We'll be acting on all the great feedback we're getting.

Just be sure not to act only on the feedback of Davion , since there are other players, that are far worse at this game than him and nerfing the class too much would make it not fun.

[Fortescue]

Thanks again for the detailed notes, Davion. We'll be acting on all the great feedback we're getting.

Just be sure not to act only on the feedback of Davion , since there are other players, that are far worse at this game than him and nerfing the class too much would make it not fun.

Yeah, I'm going to do my own play through in the current form as soon as my Brawler run is over and see if my observations line up with his.

[Davion Fuxa]

I took some more time to try to play the Berserker then. Currently he's reached up to the entrance of High Peak and all but the Orb of Destruction Guardian have been killed (noticed he has Fearscape so I just Warshouted him and ran away). I'm actually holding off on entering High Peak though as I've yet to do the Brotherhood of Alchemist quest. I've gone through the game missing 1 ingredient from an enemy I've yet to encounter - Storm Wyrms....

I'm out of lives on the character so next death is a surefire kill for my run, but hopefully I'll be able to reach the final bosses.

Anyhow, some thoughts:

I took some time to try a niche build out - I invested in Archery. For the most part Archery is mostly 'meh'; it has it's uses and the damage isn't terrible, I usually use it on Cryomancers, Fire Imps, or other 'fleety' type enemies that render my Rush ineffective. Rapid Shot and Aim don't really have much use for Berserkers, but Steady Shot and Releaxed Shot come out decent enough.

Anyhow, I've invested like 11 of 12 Talent Points into the Archery Category. That means I haven't really invested that many points elsewhere, so most of my talents have more or less remained the same. In a way, Talent Points for Class Talents seems a little tight. Obviously my build has gone Niche but if the Warshouts or Superiority categories ever get refurbished there is likely going to a real grapple with what to invest points in and to where.

Berserker Rage has come off to be a bit of a nuisance due to the loss of hitpoints every turn. Sometimes when I hit the rest key or autoexplore, my characters hitpoints will drain to 0 because Berserker Rage isn't going off. I theorize this may be to enemies being inside my Sight Range but outside of my Light/Infravision radius, and being outside of 10 Tiles from my character (so they don't move towards me to alert me to their presence). I can only imagine the horror of playing a Higher character.

1/5 Executioner hasn't really served much purpose since really entering the late parts of the game, and 2/5 Shattering Blow has pretty well just been outclassed by the damage my character is doing - to the point that it's really only a Sunder Armor ability. I use 3/5 Death Dance a fair bit but I'm not really bothering to use it for Bloody Butcher, I'm just using it as I normally do to kill off multiple enemies on all Flanks.

My character has only one weakness, and that's being Disarmed. Being Disarmed is such a concern that even a talent like Unstoppable is now laughably weak and Tactical Questionable to use because of how often Disarm pops up. Simply put, if I have the option to use Unstoppable, I will only use it 'IF I'M SURE' I can handle being Disarmed; else I use other talents and run away, or just run away. Might be a notable idea btw as a sort of penalty for Unstoppable - maybe it should render you incapable of removing debilitating effects like Disarm.

[grobblewobble]

Since I'm also playing the new berserker and my character has reached a similar stage in the game, some additional comments.

By the way I'm playing normal / roguelike. Died once, to a forge giant with cleansing flames who dispelled my Unstoppable. (Resurrected with blood of life.)

Overall, this character is one of the strongest I ever played. For example I was confident enough to rescue Melinda while playing Roguelike (never did that before). Power creep did happen imo.

Or maybe it's just because of the weapon I found. Borosk's Hate, a new artifact 2hander. Pretty amazing weapon. Found it randomly just after the Master. Stats:

Base Power 60-96
+10% crit
+10 str, +5 dex, +15 con
+0.2 technique / two-handed maiming
On hit: 25% chance of a free extra hit (!)

Berserker Rage has come off to be a bit of a nuisance due to the loss of hitpoints every turn.

In my game I barely noticed the drawback. As long as your natural regeneration (from Fast Metabolism and items, including items that raise healing factor) is decent, it doesn't have that much effect, in my experience. Honestly I liked the old talent better, though. A trade-off that is bad in the early game but good in the late game is more interesting.
What was the reasoning behind the change in design? If it was to prevent beginners from using this talent too early, then you could also solve that problem by simply making it the 4th talent in its tree.

1/5 Executioner hasn't really served much purpose since really entering the late parts of the game, and 2/5 Shattering Blow has pretty well just been outclassed by the damage my character is doing

I raised Executioner to 2/5, shattering blow to 3/5 and I'm using both fairly often, also now in the endgame. Executioner deals massive damage on bosses that already have been hurt. Shattering blow is very handy for dispelling damage shields.

One talent I need to mention is Relentless Fury. This talent gives you almost unlimited stamina. It also raises your attack speed and movement speed by 34%, for a whopping 9 turns (at 5/5). That's massive. A 34% attack speed bonus is almost a straight 34% damage boost. One of the major power creeps in the new berserker.
Please reconsider this talent. The stamina boost alone already makes it a very strong talent, better than many existing talents with that purpose. With a 34% attack / move speed boost on top of it, it's just broken. The optimal way to play with it is probably to exhaust your stamina pool and then activate it, before any fight.

My character has only one weakness, and that's being Disarmed. Being Disarmed is such a concern that even a talent like Unstoppable is now laughably weak and Tactical Questionable to use because of how often Disarm pops up.

Disarms from acid runes are indeed a real pain in this version, I agree. I hope that the fact that Disarm Immunity doesn't help against them is a bug and gets fixed soon. Even if that's the case, it will mean that Disarm Immunity becomes priority number 1, 2 and 3 for equipment choices, which still isn't great. Honestly I hope that acid runes are nerfed or at least changed. This just isn't fun.

Although that's a problem for any melee class, not just berserker. So back on topic.. My berserker is still (ab)using unstoppable all the time. But that's because it's a Shalore. Other races really do need to be cautious, I guess.

I'd like to reiterate here that if Unstoppable is going to be changed, it would be good to consider that this talent is currently giving a major advantage to Shalore. Reducing the duration would do no good, because it would only make this advantage bigger. I wouldn't like to see Unstoppable gone, but I think it would be an improvement to make it less absolute.

This is why my solution would be to let Unstoppable temporarily triple your max hitpoints. This would have the following consequences:

1. You could still do crazy things like jump into the middle of a group of enemies (especially when playing Normal mode).
2. It may sound overpowered, but compared to being completely immune to damage (as now) it is still a big nerf.
3. Resistances, HP, armor and so on would all become relevant while unstoppable.
4. Because of that, Shalore would be a little less of a dominating choice. For example dwarves have more hitpoints and that would become a real factor again.
5. The rules could be simplified, as the massive heal at the end would no longer be needed. Also, the special rule for the interaction with the berserker talent could be dropped.

[Davion Fuxa]

Actually I was referring to Berserker Rage not going off when no enemies with inside your Light Radius. It's a nuisance because if you rest your going to be losing 2% hitpoints the entire time, which may be more then you regenerate (like on my character). End Result is that my characters hitpoints drop like a stone to 1% until I cancel the rest and move out of sight range of the enemy I can't see.

Anyhow, I'm playing the character some more currently. I did some Farportals to find a Storm Wyrm and then proceeded to fill out all my Alchemist Potions. Trodded off to High Peak and Carefully skirted the Fire Giant, and climbed 5 instances. I am now at Level 50 and I've taken Executioner up to 5/5. I also put Relentless Fury up to 5/5, due to the glowing recommendation it seems to havebeen giving.

I'll see how things stack up as I climb higher and higher.

[Fortescue]

Combo Response!

Things I would like to change:

Death Dance on use damage lowered, in exchange for cooling down faster if you hit more enemies
Death Dance giving armor shred instead of bleeding, at all levels, for boss utility

Execute losing free crit, instead, cooldown is reset if it kills the target, and base damage increased slightly for boss utility

Fearless Cleave returning to intended design of requiring movement to function

Unstoppable I'm not sure what to do about, possibly nothing I suggest will get past DG. Experienced players would riot if it lost its "complete invulnerability" functionality which is silly imo. Unstoppable is how they beat Madness and +300% HP won't do diddly there.

Bloodbath losing stamina regen (as you pointed out, Relentless Fury does the job just fine), but being allowed to stack as high as 10 for the hp regen in long fights (and help handle the flat 2% hp loss from new Berserker Rage)

Relentless Fury's speed buff / duration will likely be tweaked. I might change the speed buff into something else, we'll see. You'll be a lot more reliant on it for Stamina though without Bloodbath also giving it, so I'm not going to nerf the Stamina regen on it without testing.

New Berserker Rage has a problem with Vitality currently, if not for that the new drawback would be less of a big deal. I would like to experiment with boosting the crit for missing life ratio at ranks 3 and 5. The 1:0.5 ratio was just being cautious, I don't think anyone is actually fighting at low HP to take advantage of it.

Disarm: it is a bug that acid wave ignores disarm immunity, but all the same this is such a devastating condition to Berserkers that I am offering the ability to combat it with class talent points in a new locked category called 2H Weapon Superiority. The new sustain will cost extra Stamina per attack, but raise accuracy and if you are disarmed, it will deactivate the talent for 10 turns and let you keep your weapon (once time per cooldown).

Shattering Blow I'm not sure what to do about, I like the design personally, but as a lot of people have pointed out your damage output tends to be so high you don't need the shield breaking aspect of it. Perhaps DarkGod put it in as a means to make Berserkers more threatening to him personally when he is playing his Archmages with their multiple 1,000+ hp shields I would suggest to DarkGod that it breaks shields BEFORE it deals damage and then people would probably like it more.

I can confirm Archery and Shield Defense are going away regardless of whatever other changes I make. That they haven't already is just accidental because DG is so busy in general and didn't bother yet as far as I can tell.

grobblewobble: that weapon is bananas and I'm jealous and I want one I found The Ultimatum on my run which was almost as good

[Davion Fuxa]

DavionBerserkLooks has fought up to the Sorcerers and won the battle, and sacrificed himself to close the Portal. The Battle is won, the game is done, and now it is time for the final feedback review.

In the End, My Berserker was a beast. This was the very first character on which I felt strong enough that I actually went straight at the bosses - AND I killed Elandar first instead of second; which is notable since Argoniel was actually more threatening. I also only closed 3 of the Invocation Portals instead of closing all 4. I will admit that the fight was slightly unnerving at one point due to how reckless I was being - but not really, I had the Elixir of Invulnerability handy.

As a whole, in the end my character was doing 400-500 damage normally with just the basic bump attack - over 1000 when doing criticals. Even though I had Archery Talents I really didn't use them in High Peak - simply put there was no need to switch to Archery, I was pretty well instantly killing anything I touched (or touched twice) that wasn't a Bone Giant or a highly Armored Orc Berserker. Uniques also went down easily as well. What's more, Attack Talents were sort of useless in High Peak; Berserkers pretty much still are 'Bump Attack' centric characters and this gets heightened to an extreme at the end of the game.

In terms of talents:

Stunning Blow was still quite a bread and butter talent due to its quick cooldown and Stun. Whether early in the game or later this was my best Single Target ability for dealing with opponents.

Fearless Cleave was mostly just used to chase opponents in the end game - Elandar in particular gets a big mention because he tried being fleety and I got 5 consecutive Fearless Cleave hits on top of him. Before the end game I also used it as a weak Sweep attack for dealing with adjacent enemies while Death Dance was on cooldown - in the End Game I didn't bother using the talent at all, I just bump attacked everything except the Final Bosses.

Death Dance was useful for the additional Bleed effect it now has - along with its extra damage. I could pop a Death Dance and the Bleed Damage would finish off weaker enemies in combination with Damage Retaliation Talents or a following up Fearless Cleave. End Game I only used it a couple times when I had Necromancers spawn crap around me or something came up on a flank; or for extra Bleed damage to kill Argoniel or Elandar.

Executioner, whether at 1/5 or 5/5 was kind of lacking for use on the Berserker. During the Mid Game I used it sometimes to kill the 'THAT ENEMY MUST DIE NOW' target but past that into the Late and End Game there really isn't much use for it as bump attacks were more then sufficient usually to kill everything that might be a threat. I did manage to unlock the 'More Then 3000 Damage Achievement' with the use of Executioner on one of the Uniques guarding a staircase but I rather would have perhaps spent those Talent Points elsewhere.

Warshout is still awesome, it was good early game or late game, it was good on the Master or on Elandar - it was just always good.

Berserker Rage has issues with HP Regen but the main reason for it's use is to increase Physical Power and Accuracy. Immunity was fairly useless, though this is an issue for all Immunity talents as each update gives us a new roster of Immunity helping gear. I was also a Dwarf, some of the Fixdarts like the Weapon I am using give 100% Stun Immunity to Dwarves. The Increased Critical Chance saw a lot of use whenever I was planning to use Unstoppable, wouldn't be able to recover health immediately, or was close to finishing off an enemy; even if not used purposely, Berserkers are going to lose a lot of health anyways so this component of the talent is fine.

Shattering Blow was extremely underwhelming. Before my damage went insane it was potentially useful for taking out a Damage Shield on a Bone Giant but overall the Berserkers damage output just renders this unneeded. Sunder Armor and Reduces Saves were never really all that useful by themselves. This talent was mostly just rendered as an extra attack to use.

Relentless Fury wasn't really used a lot. Since I didn't really use Unstoppable that much due to Disarm and because a Berserkers bump attacks are so strong, I almost never had the option of using Relentless Fury. I'm sure it would be ridiculously in use but as it stands I never really needed to used it.

Mortal Terror is still awesome. Dazing Enemies is very strong on common rabble, but upping Critical Chance is spectacular.

Bloodbath was capable of boosting my Total Heath over 2000. The Stamina Regeneration was also enough to ensure I never had to used Relentless Fury.

Bloody Butcher adds Physical Power. I probably would have maxed this talent if this was a more serious play through just for that alone. I'm not sure Physical Damage Penetration would every be useful though, outside of perhaps on Elandar and Argoniel as they have massive All Resistances.

Unstoppable was rendered ineffective on this play through. While it is nice as a big heal (and I did use it for that in the Final Fight), Disarm was such an issue as stated that I was really hesitant to use it on a whole. This talent was a lot weaker in its use for this update as a result of the potential handicap showing up so damn much.

[Fortescue]

Bloody Butcher is bugged right now and actually doesn't add physical power. It just makes the tooltip look better and better...

[grobblewobble]

Won too, killed Atamathon for the first time.

Bloodbath losing stamina regen (as you pointed out, Relentless Fury does the job just fine), but being allowed to stack as high as 10 for the hp regen in long fights (and help handle the flat 2% hp loss from new Berserker Rage)

Please keep in mind that Marauders have this talent too. And they really need it for their stamina management, they consume more and they don't have Relentless Fury.

So I think it would be better to keep bloodbath as it is and redesign Relentless Fury.

that weapon is bananas and I'm jealous and I want one I found The Ultimatum on my run which was almost as good

In fact, I found the Ultimatum as well and tested both on a practice dummy to see which one is better. Borosk's Hate had a higher average damage score, although not by much.

A nice little combo I found was this miscellaneous artifact The Bladed Rift. It makes enemies bleed when you hit them. Combined with Bloody Butcher that's really good.

[Fortescue]

I'm not changing Marauders in any way. They are keeping what they have now.

[grobblewobble]

Marauders have the Bloodthirst tree. So any change to Bloodthirst carries over to them.