Revised Berserker and Skirmisher Feedback Thread

[Fortescue]

Bash and Smash taking two turns eventually removed it from my main toolbar, though it saw use on a nasty Mindslayer unique at endgame.

This is not intended and should be filed as a bug report, along with how someone reported Fearless Cleave taking 2 turns. Thanks for pointing this out!

[Fortescue]

Lots of stuff about Skirmisher

Excellent feedback! I started with Berserker and am feeling that out at the moment.

It doesn't sound like anyone has tried Traps and the combo that has with Vault yet. It was meant to be an optional path to develop your character with, I'm curious how it will work out!

[Fortescue]

I completed a normal Skirmisher playthrough yesterday and overall I think it's one of the more cohesive classes in the game, so kudos to the designer/devs.

Loved the emphasis on movement, found myself vaulting and tumbling to gain max range for Kill Shots (which I massively overused contrary to one of the earlier posters!)

The buckler was underused on normal difficulty - there simply weren't enough situations where a block was more effective than a 1-shot kill - kill shot was dishing out 2000+ damage to ranged opponents. I could see this being much more useful on higher difficulties.

Trained Reactions seems like an odd talent to me:

There's a tradeoff between the increased damage mitigation and the decreased damage threshold that makes levelling it to 5 questionable. On one hand, you'd like to keep it at a low rank so that it doesn't go into cooldown on insignificant hits, leaving you open to big burst damage. On the other hand, you want to rank it to 5 to get the max mitigation, and the max use from the +global of Superb Agility - I think this might need a rethink, but happy to be persuaded otherwise.

One consequence of the "arcane resource burn on hit" items that are available now is that the plethora of multi-shot abilities (Noggin Knocker, Bombardment, Hurricane Shot) make previously powerful enemies such as the "Crusher" orb guardian, Atamathon, High Peak stair bosses, enemies with bone shield etc laughably easy, but that's more of an observation of the current game mechanics than Skirmishers specifically.

Overall I think this is one of my new favourite classes, and will be trying out Berserker and the new Sun Paladin next.

Glad to see a report from someone who finished the whole game, and really excited to hear you think it is a favorite! The shield skills with their 100% mitigation capability were indeed intended to scale into the higher difficulties, no doubt you will find them more useful there when getting killed in 2 hits is a much more likely possibility. The thing you already considered with Trained Reactions firing more often with the +global 20% for 2 turns, that is a HUGE speed boost and should be worth the stamina cost by itself I would think? The cooldown might need lowered, I originally intended the on-activation stamina price to be the main deterrent to over-relying on it to keep you alive after getting in over your head.

If you want to keep testing Trained Reactions out be sure to check out Rogue! That class needed some better mobility and defensive options, so I convinced DarkGod to give them Acrobatics as well

[Fortescue]

One little thing I have to say about a zerker as I try to run one through for a victory is that the berserk rage ability has been changed to be more "newbie" friendly without the -10 debuff it suffers the same problem with the hp degen effect. Having you put a couple or more points into it and never using the ability until you can afford to take the degen because it gets deadly if your fighting alot of monsters early game or can't quite go toe to toe with a boss that could end up being more deadly then the -10 but late game is hardly noticeable like the -10. It needs a downside that you need to be mindful of but not one were you can't use it in most fights because it hurts you more when you don't need it.

Second is the entire zerker early mid to mid game is trying to get as much crit running as possible and killing stuff asap. There isn't a "tanking" zerker tree that makes you more powerful the more damage/attacks/enemies your fighting at once/receive or like a dual wield zerker that goes crazy with attacking as much as possible. It feels they should play like they put themselves at great risk for great reward but that isn't the case since you just play until all of the downsides aren't impactful. They lost unstoppable which made them really good at doing the former, while they aren't bad now they don't really have the "berserker" feeling.

I think you didn't read the tooltips very closely, maybe. Losing 2% hp / turn is a very predictable cost that is not going to lead to spike damage deaths on newbies like old Berserk could when they lost all their T1 armor value. You said there is nothing that makes you more powerful while tanking, and that makes me think you didn't read ALL the things new Berserker does... Each time you lose 2% hp you gain 1% crit, which is exactly the type of thing they need to stay in the fight, especially once Bloodthirst is going. There is even a tooltip that pops up and shows you how much critical chance you've gained based on your missing hp.

Oh and nobody lost Unstoppable... It is still right where it used to be, but the skill directly before it is a lot better now and works great in conjunction with the new Death Dance! We also swapped the positions of the first 2 skills because you needed the crit from the 2nd skill to activate what used to be the 1st

[Fortescue]

Maybe it's kinda off-topic but first : get patchnotes straight please! Those you have are not specific enough. For example I still have no idea what have you changed in each class. Not everybody is expert so will remember every talent and every tree. Why don't have detailed patchnotes like :

- xxx skill is now 30 CD (was 25)
- replaced xxx with yyy
- moved xx skill to yy talent tree

That would make judging changes much more easy. I know it takes some time to do it butt compared to effort you put in this game overall it's not so much.


Sorry for my English I try my best

Unfortunately the change list is so massive and so many people were involved in it that I don't think it is possible to compile an accurate one without going and comparing the code changes line by line. Feel free to do this! ToME is an open source project Most of the changes to Berserker and the creation of Skirmisher were my ideas, but a few were not, and I'm finding out as I play that some things are even better than I had designed them thanks to insightful changes made by whoever actually coded all these things.

[Jurriaan]

I'm playing a lvl13 berserker in 1.2.1 (linux) and I'm having a lot of fun.

Since Fearless Cleave as 0 cooldown, I'd like to use it as often as possible. However, I can't understand why the targetting doesn't select a default target. Shooting a bow or wielding a sword is much easier, since ToME selects a default target if possible.

I would suggest something like

- if the last attacked enemy is in range, target that one
- if multiple enemies are in range, target the direction where we hit the most enemies
- if multilple directions attack the same number of enemies, target the highest level group

[Arsonius]

I'm actually trying Acrobatics+Traps combo, but on my rogue along with Stealth and sling+dagger combo. I'm already lvl 17 on nightmare and died only once to the Worm that Walks at Lake of Nur (but I still managed to kill him afterwards). Goes pretty good so far. Thanks to the high Cun I almost never go out of the Stealth and my sling deals nice damage. The main problem for now is I can't deal enough damage to kill the Werdling Beast - I lose all my stamina on traps and Vault and than he just heals it all. I guess I'll have to get Combat veteran or go AM for stamina regen.
Also I like Vault more than Tumble, not only it can move you through the crowd and far away, but it also acts as small movement infusion. Trained Reactions can really eat your stamina fast so I left it at 2/5 on both rogue and skirmisher.

Haven't tried new Berserker yet. So far I like the Skirmisher overall. Good to know that Bash and Smash taking more than 1 turn is a bug because I died thanks to this (or maybe I should always avoid the Withering Thing on nightmare).

[Fortescue]

I'm playing a lvl13 berserker in 1.2.1 (linux) and I'm having a lot of fun.

Since Fearless Cleave as 0 cooldown, I'd like to use it as often as possible. However, I can't understand why the targetting doesn't select a default target. Shooting a bow or wielding a sword is much easier, since ToME selects a default target if possible.

I would suggest something like

- if the last attacked enemy is in range, target that one
- if multiple enemies are in range, target the direction where we hit the most enemies
- if multilple directions attack the same number of enemies, target the highest level group

I have found the easiest way to use this skill is hotkey + numpad direction. The problem with auto targeting like a bow is that this is also a movement skill. You really don't want to use it standing still unless you've got absolutely no other choice (Death Dance is on CD and didn't kill everything, for example). I wouldn't trust the AI to move me... Also you might want to hold off on it until the 2 turn bug is fixed :[ I'm really sad that bug is a part of the skill right now since it is so dangerous to use it.

[Fortescue]

I'm actually trying Acrobatics+Traps combo, but on my rogue along with Stealth and sling+dagger combo. I'm already lvl 17 on nightmare and died only once to the Worm that Walks at Lake of Nur (but I still managed to kill him afterwards). Goes pretty good so far. Thanks to the high Cun I almost never go out of the Stealth and my sling deals nice damage. The main problem for now is I can't deal enough damage to kill the Werdling Beast - I lose all my stamina on traps and Vault and than he just heals it all. I guess I'll have to get Combat veteran or go AM for stamina regen.
Also I like Vault more than Tumble, not only it can move you through the crowd and far away, but it also acts as small movement infusion. Trained Reactions can really eat your stamina fast so I left it at 2/5 on both rogue and skirmisher.

Haven't tried new Berserker yet. So far I like the Skirmisher overall. Good to know that Bash and Smash taking more than 1 turn is a bug because I died thanks to this (or maybe I should always avoid the Withering Thing on nightmare).

Great! Glad to hear it works, I just realized last night the tooltip does not specifically mention you can jump your own traps I would like to change that so it isn't "hidden knowledge".

[Salo]

Hello, well done, you made a nice new class.

I played a skirmisher on nightmare difficulty during the beta, I got to level 43 before I stopped playing out of boredom. It's a viable class, even on nightmare difficulty and even though there was a bug that made sling mastery not work when I played. In general, I like the class design but feel that a lot of talents are poorly balanced. edit: note: all of this is assuming there weren't any changes after beta1.2.0 version 14.

By far the biggest problem was that I ran out of talents I felt are worth investing in around level 40 or so. But I ran out of talents that I felt made a noticeable difference long before that. Honestly, I just wanted 5/1/1/3 traps, 1/1/1/0 called shots, 3/0/0/0 tireless combatant, 5/1/3/0 skirmisher-slings and 5/0/0/0 poisons, all the rest hardly improved me anymore. Some reasons for this:
- it's great that many skills, breathing room and traps especially, encourage a certain playstyle: to always stay away from enemies and make sure nobody is adjacent to you. However, when you use this playstyle buckler expertise becomes kinda useless since you never should get hit by melee attacks. As such, even though buckler mastery is a great tree on paper, it's suboptimal to rely on it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as you can use this fact to make 2 possible ways to build and play skirmishers, one that relies on breathing room and one that relies on buckler expertise (since you can't combine the 2 without running in the above problem). However, this would require more trees (at the very least one more tree that synergises with buckler training tree and the tanking playstyle it promotes). Either way, as it is now this resulted in me finding buckler mastery not worth putting points in.
- Kill shot is a really cool ability but there's no reason to invest more than 1 point in it, the scaling is very bad. Kneecapper is the same (wow, 7% more weapon damage for 1 class point is not a fair trade). I also liked the old scaling of kill shot more (30% extra damage per tile) but I understand why you changed it.
- Sling sniper and the way quick shot interacts with hurricane shot makes you want to spam special attacks all the time and hence I feel bombardment is a bit of a weird ability: it drains all the stamina you need for those abilities and doesn't improve them. Since I had so many other attack skills and traps to use I didn't autoattack and if I did, it was because I wanted to regain stamina, so bombardment was useless for me. I don't like the design of bombardment tbh and feel there are not enough other talents that have synergy with it.
- In general there are not enough trees. I mean, none of the above would really be an issue if there had been other things to invest in since one-point wonders and talents that don't work well together are not a bad thing by themself. The only reason these things are a problem here is that you simply have too many class points.

Some other comments/issues:
- Vault and tumble let you jump through walls, this is extremely easy to abuse.
- There's also an issue of having too many generic talents, but this is fine since you can get extra generic trees elsewhere. However, have you considered giving them the mobility generic tree (locked)?
- The description of trained reflections would be clearer and more obvious if you remove "would" and "instead" in the second sentence.
- The Eternal Warrior is kinda boring. A capstone ability of a tree and requires a lot of investment in it and other talents to work and also encourages a certain playstyle is a great design that can reward the player for planning ahead and encourages synergy. So I really like the cumulative bonus for every turn using stamina idea. But while it useful already now, I think it should be made more interesting (i.e. make it do something else as well). Now it's just a bad wanna-be thick skin (still worth getting late since you have too many class points, but meh).
- I really liked the negative fatigue of Pace Yourself in the beta and I'm sad you removed it.
- The increase in physical crit chance of tumble isn't that noticeable and the 8% => 9% benefit isn't enough to merit getting it to talent lvl 5. Tumble is good anyway, but this bonus is kinda silly as it is now.
- Have you considered unlocking Trapping by default? It is a known issue that archer type classes are boring to play on low levels and this would greatly help. You're pretty much forced to get it anyway, since lure+vault is too good to pass up (nice design by the way).
- It was the first time I had vulnerability poison (picked the mystical cunning prodigy, mostly for gravity trap) and it's very underwhelming. Obviously not a problem of the class itself.

Uhm, let me reiterate I enjoyed playing the class and really appreciate the work you did! Let me know if you need more insight on the class on higher difficulties.

[Fortescue]

Hello, well done, you made a nice new class.

I played a skirmisher on nightmare difficulty during the beta, I got to level 43 before I stopped playing out of boredom. It's a viable class, even on nightmare difficulty and even though there was a bug that made sling mastery not work when I played. In general, I like the class design but feel that a lot of talents are poorly balanced. edit: note: all of this is assuming there weren't any changes after beta1.2.0 version 14.

By far the biggest problem was that I ran out of talents I felt are worth investing in around level 40 or so. But I ran out of talents that I felt made a noticeable difference long before that. Honestly, I just wanted 5/1/1/3 traps, 1/1/1/0 called shots, 3/0/0/0 tireless combatant, 5/1/3/0 skirmisher-slings and 5/0/0/0 poisons, all the rest hardly improved me anymore. Some reasons for this:
- it's great that many skills, breathing room and traps especially, encourage a certain playstyle: to always stay away from enemies and make sure nobody is adjacent to you. However, when you use this playstyle buckler expertise becomes kinda useless since you never should get hit by melee attacks. As such, even though buckler mastery is a great tree on paper, it's suboptimal to rely on it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as you can use this fact to make 2 possible ways to build and play skirmishers, one that relies on breathing room and one that relies on buckler expertise (since you can't combine the 2 without running in the above problem). However, this would require more trees (at the very least one more tree that synergises with buckler training tree and the tanking playstyle it promotes). Either way, as it is now this resulted in me finding buckler mastery not worth putting points in.
- Kill shot is a really cool ability but there's no reason to invest more than 1 point in it, the scaling is very bad. Kneecapper is the same (wow, 7% more weapon damage for 1 class point is not a fair trade). I also liked the old scaling of kill shot more (30% extra damage per tile) but I understand why you changed it.
- Sling sniper and the way quick shot interacts with hurricane shot makes you want to spam special attacks all the time and hence I feel bombardment is a bit of a weird ability: it drains all the stamina you need for those abilities and doesn't improve them. Since I had so many other attack skills and traps to use I didn't autoattack and if I did, it was because I wanted to regain stamina, so bombardment was useless for me. I don't like the design of bombardment tbh and feel there are not enough other talents that have synergy with it.
- In general there are not enough trees. I mean, none of the above would really be an issue if there had been other things to invest in since one-point wonders and talents that don't work well together are not a bad thing by themself. The only reason these things are a problem here is that you simply have too many class points.

Some other comments/issues:
- Vault and tumble let you jump through walls, this is extremely easy to abuse.
- There's also an issue of having too many generic talents, but this is fine since you can get extra generic trees elsewhere. However, have you considered giving them the mobility generic tree (locked)?
- The description of trained reflections would be clearer and more obvious if you remove "would" and "instead" in the second sentence.
- The Eternal Warrior is kinda boring. A capstone ability of a tree and requires a lot of investment in it and other talents to work and also encourages a certain playstyle is a great design that can reward the player for planning ahead and encourages synergy. So I really like the cumulative bonus for every turn using stamina idea. But while it useful already now, I think it should be made more interesting (i.e. make it do something else as well). Now it's just a bad wanna-be thick skin (still worth getting late since you have too many class points, but meh).
- I really liked the negative fatigue of Pace Yourself in the beta and I'm sad you removed it.
- The increase in physical crit chance of tumble isn't that noticeable and the 8% => 9% benefit isn't enough to merit getting it to talent lvl 5. Tumble is good anyway, but this bonus is kinda silly as it is now.
- Have you considered unlocking Trapping by default? It is a known issue that archer type classes are boring to play on low levels and this would greatly help. You're pretty much forced to get it anyway, since lure+vault is too good to pass up (nice design by the way).
- It was the first time I had vulnerability poison (picked the mystical cunning prodigy, mostly for gravity trap) and it's very underwhelming. Obviously not a problem of the class itself.

Uhm, let me reiterate I enjoyed playing the class and really appreciate the work you did! Let me know if you need more insight on the class on higher difficulties.

Wow, lots of great feedback! I will definitely look at the numbers. I did not implement the code for the class, so the scaling is probably not what I would have wanted on some skills. I'm glad you like the Swift Shot / Hurricane Shot synergy! Sling Barrage is intended to be something you use instead of your basic attack when other things are on cooldown, but I could see it being redundant if you had high move speed for spamming Swift Shot more. The stamina cost might be too great as well.

I should probably also look at the melee block skill since as you pointed out it is very easy to stay outside of melee range. Perhaps I should revise that into exposing melee enemies that get blocked, turning it into more of a shield-parry. The thing it has going for it is that it enables Counter Shot, so I can't do too much to it without making it too good. Perhaps it isn't necessary to split them and I could combine the melee and ranged blocking into that one skill, then revise the ranged block skill into something more interesting.

RE: Pace Yourself, I never intended for that to be tied to fatigue because this is a light and mobile class that should not feel the need to wear heavy armor in the first place, thanks to Buckler Mastery providing 100% mitigation on success. It was always meant to be a straight discount to ability costs.

As far as needing more class categories, I agree. I tried to have one more ready when this went live and got shot down by DarkGod He said no grenades allowed

Fun note about Kill Shot - I did not actually design that and I don't know who did! I like it though!

[Davion Fuxa]

OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH - And I didn't just say Ouch five times for effect, that was the number of deaths I just experienced in the Dark Crypt.

Anyhow, I completed the Dark Crypt and saved Melinda. It was an excrutiating experience - but I don't believe it was entirely due to the Skirmisher class - rather I think just poor RNG as this screenshot of entering Dark Crypt (4) shows along with one of my deaths being partially a result of my own actions.

I didn't really get much experience obviously since I only did one instance. I did put a point in Indomitable and Sling Sniper but I more or less drop those in as I was exiting the dungeon and never really had a chance to use them.

Not really much of a feedback comment as more of an update on the number of deaths I suffered. I have 1 life left on the character currently, so I'll have to tread more carefully now.

I will say though that Vault saw a lot more use here - since Dark Cultists pull you all over the place, even the 1/5 Vault can be slightly useful. In some cases I wish I had 2/5 Vault for a little extra range due to some events of heavy enemy clustering. Tumble was also useful here but since Dark Crypt is a lot of small levels initially, its longer cooldown actually saw me making a bit greater use with Vault to preserve using it after when I needed too.

I'll try to look into Dreadfall, maybe clearing the Elven Ruins and possibly the Mark of the Spellblaze later. But after so many deaths I will take a break from ToME for a while.

[Salo]

I should probably also look at the melee block skill since as you pointed out it is very easy to stay outside of melee range. Perhaps I should revise that into exposing melee enemies that get blocked, turning it into more of a shield-parry. The thing it has going for it is that it enables Counter Shot, so I can't do too much to it without making it too good. Perhaps it isn't necessary to split them and I could combine the melee and ranged blocking into that one skill, then revise the ranged block skill into something more interesting.

I don't understand? None of what you say would change the problem/situtation I described. If you make the melee block better, you encourage skirmishers who position themself in the middle of a group of enemies to get counter shots of and never using breathing room. If you make it worse, you encourage skirmishers who position themself away from the enemies to activate breathing room and never benefiting from the melee block. Ideally those two playstyles should be balanced in such a way that both are viable (it's always neat if one class can be played in multiple ways). I think this is not the case yet, because there are not enough other talents that have synergy with buckler expertise, i.e. talents that benefit from being in the middle of a group of enemies and too many other talents that are only good when you're far away from your enemies (besides breathing room also kill shot, traps, lure, hurricane shot, quick shot movement thingy). If you don't want this "stand in the middle of a group of enemies to get counter shots" playstyle, you should probably remove the melee block talent and replace it with something that does have synergy with breathing room.

RE: Pace Yourself, I never intended for that to be tied to fatigue because this is a light and mobile class that should not feel the need to wear heavy armor in the first place, thanks to Buckler Mastery providing 100% mitigation on success. It was always meant to be a straight discount to ability costs.

I'm very confused here. If I remember correctly, the skill gives about 35% fatigue reduction. In one of the betas, it allowed you to have fatigue below 0%, i.e. make it so all your skills cost less stamina than normal. Now, it still has the same reduction, but doesn't ever reduce your fatigue below 0%. So while before it was equally useful on skirmishers with light armor as on skirmisher with massive armor, now it's only useful if you have a lot of fatigue. Why was this changed if you didn't want it to (because it seems like it was working as intented before)?

[Ragnarok]

One little thing I have to say about a zerker as I try to run one through for a victory is that the berserk rage ability has been changed to be more "newbie" friendly without the -10 debuff it suffers the same problem with the hp degen effect. Having you put a couple or more points into it and never using the ability until you can afford to take the degen because it gets deadly if your fighting alot of monsters early game or can't quite go toe to toe with a boss that could end up being more deadly then the -10 but late game is hardly noticeable like the -10. It needs a downside that you need to be mindful of but not one were you can't use it in most fights because it hurts you more when you don't need it.

Second is the entire zerker early mid to mid game is trying to get as much crit running as possible and killing stuff asap. There isn't a "tanking" zerker tree that makes you more powerful the more damage/attacks/enemies your fighting at once/receive or like a dual wield zerker that goes crazy with attacking as much as possible. It feels they should play like they put themselves at great risk for great reward but that isn't the case since you just play until all of the downsides aren't impactful. They lost unstoppable which made them really good at doing the former, while they aren't bad now they don't really have the "berserker" feeling.

I think you didn't read the tooltips very closely, maybe. Losing 2% hp / turn is a very predictable cost that is not going to lead to spike damage deaths on newbies like old Berserk could when they lost all their T1 armor value. You said there is nothing that makes you more powerful while tanking, and that makes me think you didn't read ALL the things new Berserker does... Each time you lose 2% hp you gain 1% crit, which is exactly the type of thing they need to stay in the fight, especially once Bloodthirst is going. There is even a tooltip that pops up and shows you how much critical chance you've gained based on your missing hp.

Oh and nobody lost Unstoppable... It is still right where it used to be, but the skill directly before it is a lot better now and works great in conjunction with the new Death Dance! We also swapped the positions of the first 2 skills because you needed the crit from the 2nd skill to activate what used to be the 1st

My point was 2% hp cost doesn't change the mechanics behind zerker because using it is still a newbie trap since extended fights with large crowds of monster will do more damage to you then the benefits of rage, having lower hp while critting doesn't make you more tanky or encourage you to tank (Like a cauterize ability that takes spike damage and spreads it out over time and buffs you if you fight enemies while receiving the damage). It encourages you to charge in and finish people off with one shot blows as oppose to running away, early game your going to just movement infusion/run away and heal up then risk being spiked to death.

The point was the change to berserk rage making it more viable then put alot of points into it and wait until your ready to use it haven't changed, it's still more effective to play that way and only pop it early game to rush down a boss and then gets to the point of having no downside at all like the old beresker rage when you can outheal the degen (like having enough armour removes any downside from the old rage) and you have it perma on 24/7. If anything all you really did was make rage more powerful in return having a much more powerful negative effect to it, not really doing the intended change of making it "less" of a trap for new players to return on pre-level 20 for general usage. (Because like I said like the old zerker rage it's still more effective to put a few points into it and wait until you can handle the side effects and only pop really fast to rush down something until you get to the point were you can have it perma on. As oppose to being something like shield wall.)

My bad I thought we lost unstoppable, must have been just changed some.

[Ragnarok]

One little thing I have to say about a zerker as I try to run one through for a victory is that the berserk rage ability has been changed to be more "newbie" friendly without the -10 debuff it suffers the same problem with the hp degen effect. Having you put a couple or more points into it and never using the ability until you can afford to take the degen because it gets deadly if your fighting alot of monsters early game or can't quite go toe to toe with a boss that could end up being more deadly then the -10 but late game is hardly noticeable like the -10. It needs a downside that you need to be mindful of but not one were you can't use it in most fights because it hurts you more when you don't need it.

Second is the entire zerker early mid to mid game is trying to get as much crit running as possible and killing stuff asap. There isn't a "tanking" zerker tree that makes you more powerful the more damage/attacks/enemies your fighting at once/receive or like a dual wield zerker that goes crazy with attacking as much as possible. It feels they should play like they put themselves at great risk for great reward but that isn't the case since you just play until all of the downsides aren't impactful. They lost unstoppable which made them really good at doing the former, while they aren't bad now they don't really have the "berserker" feeling.

I think you didn't read the tooltips very closely, maybe. Losing 2% hp / turn is a very predictable cost that is not going to lead to spike damage deaths on newbies like old Berserk could when they lost all their T1 armor value. You said there is nothing that makes you more powerful while tanking, and that makes me think you didn't read ALL the things new Berserker does... Each time you lose 2% hp you gain 1% crit, which is exactly the type of thing they need to stay in the fight, especially once Bloodthirst is going. There is even a tooltip that pops up and shows you how much critical chance you've gained based on your missing hp.

Oh and nobody lost Unstoppable... It is still right where it used to be, but the skill directly before it is a lot better now and works great in conjunction with the new Death Dance! We also swapped the positions of the first 2 skills because you needed the crit from the 2nd skill to activate what used to be the 1st

My point was 2% hp cost doesn't change the mechanics behind zerker because using it is still a newbie trap since extended fights with large crowds of monster (early game) will do more damage to you then the benefits of rage, having lower hp while critting doesn't make you more tanky or encourage you to tank (Like a cauterize ability that takes spike damage and spreads it out over time and buffs you if you fight enemies while receiving the damage). It encourages you to charge in and finish people off with one shot blows as oppose to running away, early game your going to just movement infusion/run away and heal up then risk being spiked to death.

The point was the change to berserk rage making it more viable then put alot of points into it and wait until your ready to use it haven't changed, it's still more effective to play that way and only pop it early game to rush down a boss and then gets to the point of having no downside at all like the old beresker rage when you can outheal the degen (like having enough armour removes any downside from the old rage) and you have it perma on 24/7. If anything all you really did was make rage more powerful in return having a much more powerful negative effect to it, not really doing the intended change of making it "less" of a trap for new players to return on pre-level 20 for general usage. (Because like I said like the old zerker rage it's still more effective to put a few points into it and wait until you can handle the side effects and only pop really fast to rush down something until you get to the point were you can have it perma on. As oppose to being something like shield wall.)

My bad I thought we lost unstoppable, must have been just changed some.