Are Berserkers broken or is it just me?

[cripk8]

<p>Okay Ive tried the WW channel, I've tried Flames and I can't seem to get any help from anyone...as a last resort I'm coming to the offical forums /sigh</p><p>Here's my problem...</p><p>About a year ago I switched mains to my defiler, but I'm back now and raiding again.  Ive been gearing up and got my myth, but I'm experiencing a HUGE problem...I can't hit mobs.</p><p>I run a parse everywhere I go, every instance I tank and I can't hold aggro.  The source of my problem, I believe is my inability to hit a mob.  In offensive stance I run about an 80% hit rate ( i take a dirge with me everywhere I go, btw) and in def stance I hit for an abysmal 40 - 60%.  Ive been getting every piece of loot I can with +slash on it, but it doesnt seem to help.  So I'm going to ask my question again...are Berserkers broken or am I missing something huge? I never had this problem back in the day, but now, I dont even wanna tank instances for my guild because I'm embarrased at how poorly I hold aggro.  All my spells are ad3 or better, I really believe I'm doing everything in my power to actually land swings, but nothing is working.  Can ANYONE offer some insight into this problem?</p>

[Bremer]

<p>That you can't hit mobs in def stance and your hate generation sucks because of this is normal. And this will become even worse with the upcoming fighter changes because they didn't even attempt to fix it. Instead they'll force us to tank in def stance and furnish us with inferior taunts because we can hold so great aggro with our autoattack dps in off stance. And this will probably break the neck of the class turning it into pre TSO SKs.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p>I think your problem is that you tried Flames. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /> There hasn't been anything useful there for Berserkers since the RoK gear thread.</p><p>I was surprised in the instance I ran last night (Evernight Abbey where I was in Off Stance) to find that my hit rate was 80%. I thought with a Warden and Dirge it should be much higher, but no. Autoattack To Hit was 80%. Wacky. I still accounted for the largest portion (40%) of the parse and had no aggro issues at all, but it was odd that it was that low.</p><p>Anyway that doesn't help you. I think Berserkers are fine. Not great, but fine. Particularly given the content.</p><p>I don't know what other gear you have besides your Mythical, but I never am lower than 3rd on the parse in groups and never have aggro issues. I have VP / early TSO gear. Does the rest of your group have a lot more raid gear?I assume you're some combination of Int/Sta/Str specced? Tell us about yourself. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /></p><p>I think it's going to get better with the fighter changes, not worse. These taunt amounts are huge. What makes it even better is, it will be substantially less gear dependant. So even if you [still] can't hit the broad side of a barn, you have hate to compensate.</p>

[Xalmat]

<p><cite>Bremer wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>That you can't hit mobs in def stance and your hate generation sucks because of this is normal.</p></blockquote><p>QFE. The problem is Defensive stance, which means, unfortunately, you can't hit the mob due to the hit to Slash/Crush/Piercing. Until the fighter changes go live, try to tank in Offensive stance, or always group with a Dirge or Warden.</p><p>After the fighter changes go live, you're just going to have to suck it up and tank in defensive like everyone else.</p><p>It's not a Berserker problem, it's a Fighter problem.</p>

[LygerT]

<p>zerks have always been broken in dealing damage in defensive stance.</p><p>to me it almost seems as if our innate ability to hit mobs regardless of our attack skill is lower than other melee. perhaps this was a hidden nerf to us that was never told to anyone and i am just a conspiracy theorist or my testing has some severe flaws. in defensive this is easily noticable, i also have stacked on as much attack skill gear as i could, begged devs for more attack skill bonuses than the measly bit we got on our vp set and it all makes little difference.</p><p>throw in a warden, it helps, slightly but there is still a noticable difference i see between us and other melee while we are both supposedly at cap in attack skill.</p><p>in certain zones against certain mobs (guk frogs or RE2 goblins for example) in defensive you are almost crippled in your ability to hit a mob. if you need to tank in defensive because of gear or group makeup then be ready for a rough trip.</p><p>no, i don't think it's you and some of these problems haven't gone away. some are fighter issues, some are zerk issues, some are mob issues and some are all of the above. they are mechanics that were put in place to try and balance things out from a hidden perspective(my guess), things that i feel should no longer apply to mainly us once the fighter changes are made.</p><p>if i'm not going to be allowed to use the abilities that defined this class to an acceptable extent before all of this then what is the point?</p>

[Obadiah]

<p>Speaking of "Broken"...</p><p>Anyone else find this Perseverance thing a bit goofy? I bugged it when it was still on Test, but nothing changed.</p><p>So I add the icon to my hotbar next to my other buffs. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Gee, if only I had fewer buffs to cast so there was more room on that hotbar....) </span>The icon doesn't gray out. I thought that was the only problem ... but no. Click it again, it doesn't TURN OFF, and THEN the icon grays out and stays gray until I zone no matter what I do. The only way to turn it off is to r-click & cancel in your spells list.</p><p>Back on topic, I've always thought we were SUPPOSED to tank in offensive because that's "who we were". And that's where our lesser survivability came from - the fact that we were in Offensive stance. Obviously that's not the case. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /> I still think in your case though that it has to come down to your gear/CAs vs. that of your mates. Only a well-geared Brigand has ever given me headaches in these instances, many of which play to our strengths. Sure, I may have to pop a positional increaser on a Ranger or something, particularly if I'm stunned for a bit (did I mention I hate KorSha?) but it's not a constant struggle or anything.</p>

[Bremer]

The problem with off stance tanking is , as Aerilak has stated several stimes, that they SOE doesn't want us to do it and they want to stop it. I could live with that, if they changed stuff to make us a good tank in def stance. But they did absolutely nothing like that, they didn't even remotely attempt to solve the problems. Beserkers in off stance are doing good DPS for a tank class and can tank almost all heroic zones entirely in it. In off stance, not in def stance. In def stance Beserkers are doing anything but remarkable DPS, don't have superior hate gain and of course not superior defense. And if you now tank a TSO raid mob (Switchmaster, whatever) in def stance with these combat changes with a Beserker and a Guard: - the Beserker will have at best the same DPS of the Guard with a melee hit rate under 50 % - the Guard can generate ~50 % more hate with taunts (educated estimated guess based on a calculation with the single and encounter taunt, which are the main source for taunt hate, calculation somewhere in another thread here) - the Guard has as defensive tank a superior survivabilty - and the Beserker survivability will even decrease because less hits equals less Beserk procs equals less time Adrenaline working The best about this is this great comment on eq2players, that you can of course still use an AE tank as MT (or shoot yourself in the leg before running a marathon). You just have to read Aeraliks comments on the dev tracker. The only thing he does is ensuring that single target tanks will have superior single target hate gain, that will have great AE hate gain and of course that they will be the best defensive tanks. He is only insuring everyone that you don't want to have any other tank but a single target tank because they can handle every situation. Not one single comment stating that AE tanks will be worth a **** as MTs or anything after the changes. Because that would be a lie with the current state of the fighter revamp on the test server.

[LygerT]

<p>i'm going to be going super emo when the guards start doing more damage than us in defensive and still have superior survivability. even on AE fights my dps output goes into the toilet in defensive so most of our utility is going to be gone as offtanks and it will hinge solely on how well you can maintain aggro, to which SKs can dps and hold better aggro than we can now.</p><p>so pretty much, i'm not too happy with how things are unfolding for berserkers yet again.</p>

[Bremer]

<p><cite>Lyger@Mistmoore wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>i'm going to be going super emo when the guards start doing more damage than us in defensive and still have superior survivability.</p></blockquote><p>You can allready start with it because it will happen when they patch the changes.</p>

[Bremer]

<p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Speaking of "Broken"...</p><p>Anyone else find this Perseverance thing a bit goofy? I bugged it when it was still on Test, but nothing changed.</p><p>So I add the icon to my hotbar next to my other buffs. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Gee, if only I had fewer buffs to cast so there was more room on that hotbar....) </span>The icon doesn't gray out. I thought that was the only problem ... but no. Click it again, it doesn't TURN OFF, and THEN the icon grays out and stays gray until I zone no matter what I do. The only way to turn it off is to r-click & cancel in your spells list.</p></blockquote><p>Feedbacked it as well several weeks ago and Kirstie said they are reading all feedback, so this must either be a very unimportant issue if a spells behaves completey broken or the report fell of her (?) table.</p>

[Elanjar]

<p><cite>Bremer wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Lyger@Mistmoore wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>i'm going to be going super emo when the guards start doing more damage than us in defensive and still have superior survivability.</p></blockquote><p>You can allready start with it because it will happen when they patch the changes.</p></blockquote><p>/sarcasm on "We got a month or two of gettin to flaunt our skills!!!"</p><p>/sarcasm off</p><p>le sigh. Back to working my butt of just to be considered second rate. EQ2 may be reaching the end of its days as a useful time-sync for me. They've already given guards practically the same dps as us. These changes are just an even bigger insult to injury.</p>

[Gisallo]

<p>Never thought I would say this BUT I am glad I finsihed leveling up my Mystic.  I finally realized that Rangers would always be 2nd class until Aeralik stops playing a 'Sin or gets fired (which ever comes first) so I focused on my zerker.  I sucked it up in RoK and then when I saw some of the stuff coming in 1.0 I was like "finally!!!! a class that won't be completely gimped.!!!!"  I even had hope looking at Aeralik's spin pieces.  Then I saw what 2.0 actually was on test and I jsut lost it.  At this point I feel cursed.  I'm actually afraid that Mystics will send a hit squad to kill me to be sure my mere presence in their ranks doesn't get their class "balanced". </p><p>I am trying to be upbeat, thinking that the delay in the fighter push to live is because they realize it will not fix things they way they thought it would.  Right now the only thing that its going to do is make DPSers, who never learned to play, feel better about themselves when they can A) find a group since there won't be as many tanks to go around and B) when they can actually kill the named because their gimped butt isn't being made up for by the tank contributing to the overall parse.</p>

[Chalysa]

<p>disregard</p>

[Hardkatt]

<p>I've been playing around with my zerker. I am using Myth / Greenmist combo and doing 3.8k on the training dummies. I hotbutton my Magmatic Blocker from Deep Forge, and the Greenmist to my offhand on seperate hotbuttons. I also have offensive and defensive stance hotbar'd as well. I liberally switch between shield/DW and off/def stance as I see fit. It is super quick and will save you and your group's lives if you have the situational awareness. TSO Raids and Namers in VP are the only place I only use a shield and def stance when tanking. The other time is when I pull every mob in befallen caverns to the respawn guy, my healers love me <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" />.</p><p>Anyway, as I tell any zerker, grab stuff with agi/def/parry until you can tank nearly everything in offensive stance. Play around with your jewelry between fights to balance your survivability/agro/dps.</p>

[Windowlicker]

<p>I leveled my Berserker, from creation to around 70/71.  Annoyed, I betrayed to a Guardian.</p><p>I've run my Guard for the last 9 levels, and had him at 80 for the past year.  And truthfully, both classes play very close to the same.  On the Guard, you'll even have problems with single target hate in some group or raid configurations.</p><p>What most of it boils down to is an absolute requirement for a hate transfer and/or dirge.  If not that, several variations on classes that buff outgoing melee damage or hate mods.</p><p>I've just recently betrayed BACK to a Berserker again, and will be playing the toon as my new main.(Shut-up Lyger <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> )</p><p>So far, aside from the need to re-do my mythical again the class has been playing fairly close to the same as my Guard did previously.  Of course, aside from the fact the Berserker has zero problems picking up multi's.  The Guard?  I usually has to chase the adds around constantly.</p><p>When I switched from my Mythical Guard back to Berserker, I lost around 1300 HP and several points of avoidance.</p><p>So I think the answer to the question in the topic: "All tanks are broken, in completely different ways.  They will be breaking them in new and interesting ways with the next LU"</p>