Am I missing something?

[Kro]

<DIV>I'm about 10 percent from 26. I see folks complaining about this and that, mainly bloodlust. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Let me explain. No, is too long. Let me sum up. I usually group with a templar and defiler. We fight yellow ^^ giants and such. Skillwise I pretty much just use focus rage along with my damage powers. I use a sword and shield and have completed all of the armor quests. (I dual wield if we are hunting blue ^^ or something in that range). All of my talent and skill choices have been defensive. I've only rarely had problems keeping aggro or with taking damage.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Should I be using more abilities? (Occasionaly I use fury and bloodlust (both pre and post patch) but they really don't appear to make a huge difference to me). It appears that most of the abilities sacrifice one thing for another, offense for defense, etc., so I haven't bothered with them. I mainly want ot make sure I'm not missing some big, obvious tool that would make life easier.</DIV>

[tarasl]

<DIV>Sounds like you should have picked the guardian class chief, not to sound like a jerk, but zerkers are suppose an offensive tank, which they are not now (where the complaining is coming from). And right now you are probably playing your zerk the most viable way. Like a gaurdian.</DIV>

[Kro]

<DIV>Well, I should probably elaborate a bit more.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I use the shield for harder stuff. (Even cons or higher) because my extra damage isn't enough to counteract the increase in damage by dropping 300ac. Of course, in this situation I'm grouping, so my DPS isn't as important as soaking up the damage. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For blue ^^ or lower, I dual wield. At that point the 300ac drop isn't as big a deal, as they aren't hitting me too much anyway. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>My question is, what abilities should I be using more? I like being an offensive tank, but most of the abilities seemed to not add anything, only sacrfice x for y. For example, if I sacrfice defense for offense, I haven't really added anything at all. I've only changed the speed at which the encounter will take place (and used valuable power). However, if I use damage abilities like maul or knee break, then I've added damage without losing damage.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Really, I'm curious about other berzerker tactics in both types of groups.</DIV>

[tarasl]

<DIV>Well you should be using every offensive buff you have and throw away the shield. From my own testing of shields, it really won't save your healer that much more mana if any. With the dps hit we took, really using a shield is not an alternative because our defence buffs are pretty [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] sucky, except for havoc which you'll be getting real soon now, and get it upgraded.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Even on tougher mobs using a shield cuts way to deep into what dps we can muster with dual wield or 2 handers.</DIV>

[Padi]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> taraslar wrote:<BR> <DIV>Well you should be using every offensive buff you have and throw away the shield. From my own testing of shields, it really won't save your healer that much more mana if any. With the dps hit we took, really using a shield is not an alternative because our defence buffs are pretty [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] sucky, except for havoc which you'll be getting real soon now, and get it upgraded.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Even on tougher mobs using a shield cuts way to deep into what dps we can muster with dual wield or 2 handers.</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>Actually there is very noticable improvement tanking with a shield.  More with our many defensivebuffs.  He's not doing anything wrong, infact he's doing it very right if he's using his defensive stuff.  At 26 at least, you go from mana sponge to hardly needing any heals stacking on a shield, stoldiers stance, and stifle range.  Havoc adds to that even.  When I go from all out offense to all out defense mode, my dps drops from 35 to 25.  Considering I'm grouped with 5 others, 3 of which are doing 35 or better DPS, it's an aweful waste of power to go offense if the healer is struggling.  That 10 DPS lost while grouped is maybe 10% loss of group DPS, but the extra 50% your healer is using in power forces you to wait between pulls.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>My gauge is how much power the healer has in comparison to the group.  If he's not using much power (usually if we have 2), I'll dual wield, if we have 1 healer that struggling (shaman normally struggle a bit more), I use a shield. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Zerkers might be considered more offensive than a Guardian, they might even be considered an offensive melee, but they are also a tank and when you tank your job is to absorb damage so that your group can kill as fast as possible with as little downtime as possible.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>EDIT: I wanted to add, this is more geared toward the 20-35 crowd.  Later in life, particularlly 40+ a freaking caster can play tank and I have with my illusionist before.  Assuming a shaman healer is present and someone who can stifle/drain power (which my illusionist can)</DIV><p>Message Edited by Padien on <span class=date_text>01-13-2005</span> <span class=time_text>09:44 AM</span>

[Grimgo]

<DIV>I hit level 30 last night. I wanted to test my defense and was tanking for a group in RoV.  Fighting yellow ^^ mobs using sword & Board my DPS was 32.54 using skullcrusher <blue weapon> .  I wasn't getting pounded as bad as i was 2 weeks ago so the changes for beserk must be in place.  my AC when buffed was over 2200.  I was using every skill i had and was pretty much fighting at 40% power all night. my parser doesn't pickup the blood rage proc so I might have had a tad more DPS. Can we tank, sure, but we are still a lower echelon tank in the scheme of things.  Sword & Board make me a weak guardian which wasn't what I signed up for.  Berserk Proc rate was very sporadic and even Enrage only proc'd Berserk about 80% of the time. < seemed like it never failed me before> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I would love to get one of those parsers that shows all damage output for each member in a group. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[tarasl]

<DIV>Think what the parser would tell you would make you sick :oP. I haven't tested with a shield since the big patch, supposedly they tweaked up the usefulness of shields, but then again if i wanted the sword and board route, i would have picked guardian.</DIV>

[Padi]

<DIV>My parser shows my damage as about the same as our brawler and monk of the same level and as high as our assassin on any 4+ group pulls (blood rage is very nice).  I had one fight where my dps was 65 at level 25.  That was a group of 6 white con wolves.  My blood rage proc'ed for about 1000 damge.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Another very nice skill we have is Fury.  I see that add quite a bit of extra damage to my char and it doesn't lower your defense one bit.</DIV>

[Kro]

<DIV>Hmm... some good information. I'll try Soldier's Stance a bit more, and I'll start going a bit more offensive, especially when we fight blue^^ MOBs and lower.</DIV>

[Reol]

<DIV>I know people are trying to adapt...but it doesn't change the fact...we are not guardians...we are berserkers...we do damage, whatever another player says or soe says, we according to what was intended originally..anyways....we are a damage dealing...ill hand over your head after i beat you to death with it... melee class. This stuff about damage mititagation and stuff is all nice.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>However I said it before...If i wanted to be a tank and full out tank...I would of been a Guardian. </DIV>

[Kro]

<DIV> <DIV>Last night I duoed with a 27 Templar. I am a 25 Berzerker and we fought Level 25 ^ ^ giants in TS. We both wound up using up all of our power every fight. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The strange thing is, I tried using a wide variety of tactics. But the result was pretty much the same every time. If I used a minimum of skills, I wound up having to spam damage toward the end as the healer got low on power. If I spammed abilities early, I would have to scale back toward the end, and the healer would use his power up at the end of the fight.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The XP was great, and with T3 regen, there wasn't a lot of downtime.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But I must confess the abilities are a bit disappointing. Everytime I zig there's a zag waiting to bring me back in line. Maybe when I upgrade the newer skills it'll be a bit more promising.</DIV></DIV>