[b40] Higher Berserker(AM)-No deaths

[SageAcrin]

http://te4.org/characters/10195/tome/35 ... 0e9afb27da

Very interesting run. I don't need to comment on the general playstyle of Berserker, or that they're a strong class, and I got very insanely good weapon luck(Greatmaul with a 44-66 range and crippling very early, a Stralite Greatsword with about 25%? critical rate added from the Fargate disturbance before Dreadfell, early Gaping Maw when I hit East, amazing merchant weapon), so that's why there was no deaths in large part. (Using Rarer Rares also helped, obviously.)

The interesting thing is the AM element. Before b40, I had a relatively low opinion of Antimagic-Good for Summoners, okay for Wyrmic, not worth it for most people. With b40, however, many elements of Antimagic now appealed, and I decided to give them a spin on a class that was clearly good with them.

The results were rather impressive, without being broken-or even necessarily better than non-AM, though I suspect it is(and that suspicion is that they'll be better in b41, with the changes to the Combat Training costs.).

The most notable changes were:

A: Ego refinement. Weapons generally aren't Arcane. There are some, but it's not nearly as common as it used to be. AM egos exist a little more commonly as well. The net result is mostly that AM doesn't matter much for weapons, except in the sense that you take a larger risk ordering a weapon from the Merchant(and you do that anyways, thanks to the aforementioned AM weapons). I got lucky and got a fully non-AM, non-Arcane weapon that would have worked for anyone. But in general, you don't suffer much on weapons.

B: Fungus. Obviously, Fungus is good, but how it's good is a little odd. Wild Growth is excellent, but at the same time, if you have five Infusion slots, it could mostly be replaced with having two Regen infusions instead of one. (If you have a 12 Cooldown Regeneration, it mostly stays on all the time, so it's hard to stack that.) Then again, an extra infusion slot, for say more Healing or Wilds, is pretty good for a 5 Generic investment. Sudden Growth is a very good emergency heal at any level, and is probably crazy if capped out, and Ancestral Life is great.

Ancestral Life, in fact, is very great, because it allows you not only to use your AM skills more, thanks to the Equi healing you have a hard time getting any other way, but also gives you a way to use AM Shield practically. Towards the very end of the game-when I had a large Will buffer before failure-I would often use L3 Ancestral Life and just keep the Shield on. This did very well against low end DoT from one or two sources, failed against a lot of them at once, had an okay impact on big attacks, and had a very impressive impact on a few specific spells, like Flame. Normally, the Shield is just iffy, but here it was a solid upside without ever feeling major(The 30 Equi cost keeps it in check, in part, especially since you need another 15 to be taking advantage of Ancestral Life.). I really liked it.

C: You can teleport without investment now. Granted, it means you won't, say, be using the Pick of Dwarven Emperors, or another highly useful charm, unless you like having five turns or so before you can teleport(You don't like that.). Also granted, you may not get that Psychoportation charm early. I happened to-like I said, great equipment luck. But I saw four? or so of them throughout the game, and I don't think that was just luck. You're probably going to get one.

The net result was weird. It sounds like it was fully upsides, but several excellent equips weren't usable-Guidance is a good substitute for the Eldritch Pearl, but Dak'thun's Gauntlets are lost to AM(Along with Harkor'Zun's gauntlets), as were Threads of Fate, the Crown of the Elements, and probably some other standout equips-and this was just in my run. (To say nothing of the Tome of Wildfire, but I never could have used that well anyways. The game's given that to an AM Berserker and a Cursed that dualwielded AM weapons for me, now. Sigh.)

The game's fairly kind to Berserkers on this, right now, though, I think the only artifact weapon I missed out on was the odd Flameshock hammer whose name escapes me. No Shielding Runes and no Teleports is fairly significant too.

Still, overall, I think if you can mesh with the downsides of AM-watching some bits of good equipment fly by, and having a weaker teleport, and a few other niggling issues-Antimagic is overall better for Berserkers, right now, than not being AM. It's still basically playstyle oriented, but feels pretty balanced all told. I'm impressed.

Of course, I think there's more Arcane singlehanders, so this probably mostly reflects on Berserker/Wyrmic. Bulwark is probably going to have more downsides, for instance, and I wouldn't really want to run an Archer as there are, I believe, some quite solid Arcane arrows/shots. And for classes like Cursed and Doomed, it still costs a lot to get going, which makes it very much a sidegrade playstyle, more than anything you can directly compare. But, still, I think AM's in a good spot overall now.

[MisiuPysiu]

Great Character, grats!

Can You tell me how You got the Wild-gift/Fungus tree? Im trying to get the right escort but its not working.

[kazak]

You don't get it from an escort. Even better (since it's guaranteed), you get it from one of the guys in Zigur after saving Derth and taking down the Tempest guy (that is, talk to the head guy in Zigur rather than Linaniil in Angolwen to complete the quest).

[MisiuPysiu]

Ok, i missed that change completly. I was trying to hunt the poor escort guys for the fungus tree. Now I know better...
Thanks for the tip.
cheers