How are Zerkers in PVP

[Warrior Supreme]

Ok so i just hit 80, my question is with the new battlegrounds being implemented, How are Zerkers in one on one PVP, or dueling, I hear alot about SK's being the UBER fighter but how do zerkers compare to.

Im more interested in how Zerkers compare to SK's and the other fighter classes specifically and not so much the other archtypes.

[Kimber]

I play on Naggy and we do just fine in PvP as for on BG well my zerk has been dropping people left and right np.  I played for about 3-4 hours and I am just shy of one of the over all kill things not sure if its 500 or 1k either way does not matter been mowing them down.

[Warrior Supreme]

Thats good to hear, I only got 79 aa's,specs are

 1115 str

10569hp

49dps

48%double attack

58%crit

legendary gear

Anyway i got wiped by my cousins 82 SK with T1 armor and 175 aa, I mean i literally could not even get him yellow, it was as if i was hitting a brick wall, evertime he killed me (about 4 times) he had FULL health, and my 80 Zerker can drop lvl84 ^heroics, so i really dont understand.

Have you had any luck against SK's specifically? 

[Kimber]

In openworld PvP on Naggy tbh it depends on the SK.

On BG's they drop like flies but most of them are from Blue servers and AA specs are diff.  My Zerk is prolly a lil tougher than yours tbh.  I dont have as much Str only 956 but I have 14K hp 56 DA 63 DPS (solo) 60% Crit ( I think I would have to check) 68% Mit against a lv 85 and all my resists are pretty much 8K+ self buff.  It may not look like I am all that tough but I have spen allot of time on my zerk its my first toon and I have some pretty good gear and I have learned how to play him pretty good imo.  I am by no means the best zerk out there but I know the class faily well so I do pretty good.  

[Warrior Supreme]

    I have no problem with you telling me your Zerk is tougher than mine, Im sure he is as ive only been 80 for a week now and you sound like you know what your talking about. I'm glad to hear that your doing well against sk's and the like, and relieved to know that the problem is my Zerk just needs maturing, thanks for the input

The fool is the one who thinks he knows it all and is only interested in the sound of his own voice.

[Halo of G4]

I have to disagree with the fact that we Zerks can kill "anything".

My Zerk has 210 AA and Tier 2 armor, Masters/Experts, and a  Fabled Myth. While in BG (Smugglers) i attacked an SK who was afk. For the next 15 secs i couldn't land a single blow on him. He finally got back and instantly wiped me. Curious to see his armor, i decided to look him up on eq2 players. He has Tier 1 armor and a fable as well.

We're are a very underpowered class. So unless you're in a high powered guild with tier 4 armor, myth, and max AA, then prepare to wait for hours until you finally get a group going for your average instance/contested dungeon.

That's why you hardly see many Zerks, and more so 50 SK's running around on most servers.  We just aren't worth it.

[Warrior Supreme]

What you said sounds like an exact replay of what happened to me when i dueled my cousin's SK with t1 armor as described in my original post.

Wow, this was my first toon, though I Ive taken rather large breaks from the game, the fact remains i created him 5 years ago and really got attached to him, though i can never duel them against each other, i could not help but notice life is alot easier for my 54 SK and contrary to all the early rumors and predictions, now they are even more OP after update with spell and melee being pooled from str , since now you no longer have to divide specs between str and intel. It's just really sad, I love my Zerker

[Kimber]

K you have 210 aa whats your build look like are you DPS or set up for Max Mit.  You have T2 gear I am guessing the shard gear then right?  Are you DW or Sword and Board are you in Off stance or Def stance.

I am going to give you my 209 AA spec

Bind Wound 1

Str 4 10 8 2

Stam 6 10 6 2

Int 4 9 9 2

SF I have 8 in the endline Str and 8 in the endline Wis and 4 in the over all end line for the tree

93 points here

Zerk Tree

 I have Endline Perserverance Cyclones and Zerk Click I have point in every thing here at least 1 or 2 points in every thing any more than 4 points in all honesty is a waste imo but to each thier own only 70 points here

TSO

General 5 in Health 5 in  Power

Figher 5 in Ripost and 5 in Battle Hard and the endlin abilty

Warrior 5 in Rally 5 in Vet Shield and endline abilty

Zerk 5 in Haste Reuse 5 in Gladiators Frenzy and both endlines here as well

and 46 points here

I am in full fabled though so that does help but I put on my T2 gear the other day and still did just as well as I normaly would in BG agains PvE folks that is.  You need to be DW in Def stance and get gear that has + Slash and + Parry on it  In Def stance my Slashing skill at lv 86 is 446 Def Skill is at 508 and Parry is at 511 all self buff.  Keep a shield handy though and macro it so you can equip it for shield bash and to bump your avoidance up if you start getting spiked.  Also use your temps not all at once though use em just like you would in PvE though click one and when its getting ready to run out hit anouther if you are not getting spiked dont hit any save em for when you do get spiked down.  Adren is your friend any time I go below 40% I hit it and it saves my bacon cause I can sit there at 30 some % for about 30 sec due to our self heals and the buff takeing a good chunck of the incoming damage. 

The biggest thing you need to remember about BG's is its not PvE so going in there in O stance full DPS spec will not work.  You need to be tough but able to dish out the DPS.  I generaly come in in the top 10 over all out going damage in Smuglers on my zerk and I am some where in the middle for damage taken but near the top for incoming heals also but my healers are topping the parse for out going heals. 

[Randomaxe]

Im in pvp armor and ditched my fabled 80 jewels for greater adorned 90 legendary stuff--90/217.  One guy I can pwn--the next pwns me.  While gear is a huge portion of it, the player behind the toon is what makes it lethal or not.  Yay, the SK is what everyone rolls because they like to HT to the face, but I find it's easier as a zerk to grab groups because there are so many SK's out there.  With adrenaline maxed on AA, the new berserk ward, and reversal of fortune, the zerker is now a very viable tank.  Power is an issue though, but if you use your CA's properly and rotate your stuns/stifles/interrupts you should have no problem.

[Halo of G4]

Kimber, i had this toon since the launch of EQ2 back in 2004.I'm highly aware of the pros and cons of the Zerker and it's AA system.

My AA has always been the STR/STA/INT line ever since the release of KoS.

And also, although i hardly use this forum account, i always came here for Zerk tips (the RoK guide for example).

Slashing is at 475, Def with Controlled Rage IV (Note: i didn't upgrade this for the sole purpose that the money could be best spent elsewhere. Not much of a huge gain with 78's Controlled Rage V) is at 489 with Parry at 519 all in offense mode with a shield.

To RandomAxe:

I've been on Naga with my other toons (As said above) and I was amazed that WC, Blackburrow, Ant, Commonlands, Fallen Gate, and other zones still had people going through them still. That's enough proof that the population is big enough to support the tanks that require groups

But for Crushbone for example (which is suppose to be one of the biggest servers): LFG 80/90 zerk DD or SF PST. Someone then gives you a tell...but by that time a message of "LFG 80/90 SK PST" comes up in worldchat and all of the sudden you get another message by the sender "Sorry, our group decided that it would be best for an SK to be tank".

Maybe it's my server. I dunno.

[Kimber]

Halo all I can say then is you might not want to goto BG's.  Or you can look at the rest of your AA as they compair to mine and while I mentioned getting gear with + Slash and + Parry on it you also need stuff with + Def on it ( I would think this is a given but who knows )  Also for PvP dont worry at all about O stance in O stance my Slash is at 524 my Def is at 450 and 476 for Parry with Controled Rage on they hop up to 484 and 510 DW if I put up a shield my Def goes up to 490 in O stance with Controled Rage so i really fail to see your point.  As I said earlier in this thread for PvP you dont worry about the O stance it just gets ya killed its all about the Def stance for a Zerk in PvP and being beast but able to put out the DPS ie time your auto attacks ( again I would think this would be a no brainer but who knows ).  Unless you have beast healers that know what they are doing in PvP then by all means go O stance but Def stance will keep you alive longer and 9 times out of 10 the longer you live the more likely you are to win.

[Costa]

Ok i am sorry for this i appeared to send the same message several times and now have about 6 posts deleted. Would be great if a mod could get rid of them

[Costa]

See above

[Costa]

yet another repeat post

[Costa]

Posted the same thing several time and spammed the forum. Sorry

[Costa]

yet another multi post. Sorry

[Costa]

multi posts sorry

[Costa]

Multi posts sorry

[Costa]

crazily posted several times sorry

[Costa]

If you wanna be a little crazy and run into a crusader 1v1 as a zerk then you will have to expect a tough if not impossable fight as a zerk. That is unless you come across one that has no clue what they are doing or have died at the keyboard. The crusaders can match warriors in gear for parry and defence but where we get temp mit and avoidance buffs they get heals. SK's have it even easier as their heals are linked to their spell's so just through dpsing they'll heal them selves. Also Crusaders can buff their shield mods which will in turn increase their avoidance that little bit more. So although it can be a fun fight againsta an SK or Pally unless they are majorly under geared and skilled the fights tend to only go 1 way.

Zerks are great for aoe dps with their myth but not always the most practical thing to have active if there are a bunch of non agro's around your trying not to hit. Adrenaline is a very usefull tool and knowing when to pop it in pvp wil be make or break. Pop it too soon and you'll be oop before life which will result in death anyways pop it too late and you'll be past the point of no return and still die. As for stances i tend to use off stance a lot even in pvp and if i come across a mage then i go full dps and DW also. Against other fighters i tend to keep the shield on but due to the fact i like to hit them and tend to not want to spend 20mins fighting someone other than a healer i go Off stance.

In group pvp i've had success with Def stance DW, Off stance DW Def stance + shield and Off stance + shield. Every situation is different as is the person your fighting against or the healer who's got your back. Having weapons and shields on macro's are the easiest way to adjust to situations as is the ability to switch stances quickly. Prior to the macro changes i had my shield and def stance linked so at the click of a button i would be shield on and ready to take a beating. I then had another macro that had my off hand weapon and off sance linked so i could go full dps at the click of a button. Sadly since the macro changes they seem to be broken so i need to look at them again. As for power issues i am end STA speced so i don't find power a major issue but thats through my own personal choice and i lose 2 points out of the shield block for it. I then have the phantom adorn on my off hand so that if i do go for dps on another player or even in pve i have that stealing a little power back for me.

[Warrior Supreme]

Kimber, Am i to assume you have taken down SK's specifically ?

[Warrior Supreme]

Thank you Bazill, your post was very informative as i can tell you know your game. However i have a 35 paly and 55 SK that are coming up pretty quickly so my question to you is:

Why play my Zerker when my Paly and SK can do everthing my Zerker can do and so much more, am i missing something??

This is a sincere question, not sarcasm, i'm actually hoping you can give me a reason as this is my original character from launch.

PS Just want to clarify, when you say "crusader" you are implying that paladins, are just as formidable as the sk, correct?

[Kimber]

Yes I have taken down crusaders on my zerk.  Not all crusaders are created equal.

As for you other question as to why play a Zerk over Sk or Pally.  I would say its a personal choice as they play differantly.  They can all do the same content granted a SK can do some of it easier than a zerk but a zerk can do it.  Just depends on how easy you want it I guess.

[Costa]

I have a lvl 82 pally and my zerk is 83 at the moment. As for preference to play thats really down to which class best suites you, which is better well it has long been argued that warriors have the slight edge over crusaders when it comes to mitigation and avoidance. The problem is life taps and self heals seem to be a more viable way of getting through mobs at times compared to our temps. To put it into a better understanding i have tanked everything in TSO instances on both my zerk and pally. My zerk could deal with spike damage better through adrenaline and temps better when mobs were not doing that healers found it much easier to keep my pally at full health. I've also tanked everything on my pally that our MT (guard) has in our raid progression and again the healers found it easier to heal the pally than the guard plus the pally held agro better. The one major thing i noticed with my Pally when he went from SK and over and even comapring him to my zerk is his power. Pallies are power hungary and you need to have the gear as well as groups to deal with that. When he was an SK he never really had any power issues and tbh my zerk's power is generally pretty good unless i'm using adrenaline a lot.

When SF came out i started lvling my Zerk but due to me putting so much time into playing my pally at the end of tso i have switched back to him as i enjoy what my pally can do. Thats in pve as well as pvp, the major difference is damage output. My Zerk out dps's my pally on single target as well multiple targets but my pally at lvl 80 could solo to the queen in Chardock killing several named on the way as well as farm Chelsith for wooden chests. In a million years my Zerk would not have that capability and would have to take a healer along. Hell as a 5man group without a healer my pally was able to go and kill all but Pythoness (didn't try her mind you) in Evernight Abbey.

As far as Pally's go in pvp i would say they are harder to kill than sk's as long as the pally has a decent amount of power regen. I leveled my Pally as an SK to 80 but due to the guild lacking any lvl 80 Pally's i decided to betray him and see how it went. Shortly after i got my epic weapon on my pally i was running through SS and i had another lvl 80 SK run over and engage me. I was suprised that my Pally kiled this sk as fast as he did, especialy seeing as a lot of my jewlery was still geared for the SK. When i looked the SK up on eq2players we were both in very similar gear so i can only assume that they were not a good sk.

If your looking for a fighter to pvp with then SK's are by far the easiest to use. They have insane damage prevention temps compared to the other fighter classes and with all the life tapping abilities, which can now be enhanced in SF, they have an incredible amount of self healing power. An Sk's damage output is also incredible if against single people or groups. As for Zerks well my own feeling is that due to us lacking any real healing power (yet to try the new SF aa's) we have to blow stuff up fast. We have our temp mit and avoidance buffs as well as adrenaline so against many classes that will see us through, as long as we can out dps our opponent and prey its not a healer that will just sit and heal through all the incoming whilst slowly taking your life down. The other probably major thing at the moment is that resists in pvp are all over the place at the moment and i'm not sure if they are workin as intended, but is giving SK's a slightly bigger advantage due to them having mostly spells with a few melee, where as Pally is mainly melee with a few spells and zerk is all melee for damage.

Something else i'm not sure if anyone has covered yet is your health. Having a shed load of mit and avoidance is one thing but if you only have 10k health you'll still have some issues. On both of my fighters i pve 1st and pvp 2nd so i try to gear them for that. Genearlly its getting as much STR, STA and AGI on the gear as well as + parry, defence and all the other blue stats on gear as high as possible. In the past i have generally geared my zerk slightly more defensive than my pally so i have the ability to tank whilst DW for longer amounts of time. It may sound a bit daft but my off hand weapon generates a lot more hate so if the healers can take the extra work i go for the additional dps and hate. My pally on the other hand i have geared more offensively. His hate holding abilities and ability to self heal, plus the fact he always has the best shield i can get him equiped means i can afford to try and cranck up his dps to help the group kill stuff quicker.

As for the choice's i made well my Zerk was/is my main, he is after all the one flagged as the guild leader but due to us trying to dable with raiding etc i have found my pally to be a very viable alternative. I find the pally also brings a little more utility to the raids than what the zerk does. I will admit i hate healing on my pally unless it's to keep me alive or my healer's but i do have that capability as well as being able to rez people with full health, increase non fighters mitigation and increase the raids proficiency. When i compare that to what my zerk brings then unless i am in a group with all melee classes his raid wide buff only benefits other tanks, although if he's dpsing rather than tanking he does kick out some nice dps.

I kinda feel bad about posting all this in the Zerk forums as it looks like i'm bragging about how OP my Pally is compared to the zerk but thats not my intentions. Everything i've stated are my own experiences and feelings on it but everyone experiences and enjoys different aspects of their toons. For me at this moment Pally is the tank i enjoy and i bring my Zerk out for the fun of rounding up entire rooms and topping the dps parse. Due to me enjoying the Pally more at the moment i'm probably being a little biased in his favour so take everything i say as a person playing both but enjoying one more than the other

[Warrior Supreme]

  Thank you for taking the time to type out all this Bazill, great insight!  I think whats going on is I am now transitioning to the same page you'er on. Yes after 5-6 years of my life of nurturing, growing and maturing this Character I really love my Zerker. But after getting Obliterated by my cousins SK and now all the feed back on the forums confirming that that my experience was the norm and thats just how one sided fights are between Warriors and Crusaders...........Well I believe im just in denial  thinking there must be something im missing that will level the playing field.

Alas it would seem that is just not the case and i really need to WAKE UP and smell the coffee;

Norrath  is not a perfect world and all things are not created equally.

As a "Fighter" Crusaders are better fighers as heals and taps overtake temp buffs

As a "tank" Crusaders are better Tanks as their self heals make life easier on healers and since "DPS+Heals" generate more hate than "DPS" alone, it makes easier on the rest of the group as the tank can more effectively do his job. (Halo of G4 touched on that with the tells he frequently recieves  "Sorry our group decided it would be better for an SK to tank")

I really don't see any advantage the Zerk has over Crusaders

I hate to say it but it looks I just need to get over it and switch my main.

   And thank you Kimber for all your valuable input, it is very encouraging to hear your reports in pvp, but it would seem your skill-set is above average being the exception rather than the rule, And I think my skills are more "rule" than "exception".

[Costa]

Just a little update i decided to take my Zerk into BG's last night and see how he does. Taking on blubie players who have 0 or very little toughness was probably not the fairest way of testing it but with a load of sorceres and enchanters running around i managed to top the damage output for the zone. We lacked a healer and had someone drop whe the fights started so after seeing how quick the zerk was tearing through scouts, mages and then the opositions tank i dropped the shield and just went DW. The other team had a healer and he was from naggy. He also had the irritating ring of constant fearing but was also really squishy if i got to him. I was the only person on my group from a pvp server as was the healer on the other team so all in all it was a pretty even fight. It was a lot of fun and i can see i will probably keep my zerk for the BG's at the moment and use the Pally for PVE content. Playing a zerk in pvp is a challange but at the same time a lot of fun. Crusaders tend to get a little boring and usually results in people running rather than fighting in open pvp.

I think for me the next stage will to take my zerk in to a BG with a premade guild group and see how he fairs. If it goes well again then he'll definatly be my non op pvp toon

[Warrior Supreme]

Let me tell ya Bazill it gladdens my heart to hear you topped the damage chart for the zone, I was really beginning to wonder there was a reason for my zerker taking a up character slot, so i read your results and decided to do a little parsing, now im sure there is a way to post results but couldnt figure it out, so i'll just tell you.

   I got my SK to 56 now, and my wife got her zerker that she plays with my sk to 56, now i had a 55 bruiser that i quickly lvled to 56 for this test.

  I took an unscientific but consistent approach to this test, I set up the Dummy parsed all three Toon from a full tank of power to empty, then quit parse. All three toons are full mastercraft in offensive stance,  these were the results

Bruiser: str 819, crit maxed 27% through aa's, DW weapons:

Fight duration: 2:36

Outgoing Damage: 88425

DPS: 566.83

Shadow Knight: str 797, DA maxed 23% through aa's, Sword and Shield

Fight duration: 2:22

Outgoing Damage: 81657

DPS: 575.05

Shadow Knight: str 793, DA maxed 23% through aa's, Two handed Sword 

Fight duration: 2:22

Outgoing Damage: 86980

DPS: 612.54

Berzerker: Str 746, DA maxed 23% through aa's, DW weapons

Fight duration: 2:14

Outgoing Damage: 92506

DPS: 690.34

These results tend to reflect  your results in BG's, Zerkers are destructive force pump'n machines

  However that said, in order to see how those numbers translate in to real experience i did one further test.

I took all three (one at a time) to SS and found some lvl 56^^^heroic "Sabretooth Stalkers" my same exact lvl.

Took my bruiser first and found that he could he could take it down without self heal, but he was in the red when he killed it.

Berzerker up next, with all buffs and temp buffs up I was able to kill it, but barely with about 2 percent health at the end, it really could have gone either way, if i did it 10 times i probably would have won 5 times and lost 5 times.

SK up last, but this one got interesting. I started the fight and things were going well, i usually lifetap for the extra damage the spells provide if not to heal, but this time i got a little daring and refrained from using any taps at all, and yes the big triple heroic cat went down with about 5% health to spare (about the same as bruiser)

Now this is where it gets interesting, I thought to myself all this killing power and with lifetaps to spare? So i got really brave and pulled 2 of the triple heroic cats and this time i used the all the taps and without even a challenge, quickly dispatched them both in less than a min with 50% health after hitting "Tap Viens"!

For lvl 56 I was absolutely floored, i didnt think such a thing was possible, these SK's are Way OP, but for now i think Im liken it and im in for the Full Ride.

[ailen]

First let me preface this with an explanation of where i'm coming from.

I played a berserker on kithicor long before nagafen came online. 

When nagafen launched I made a shadowknight.  I played this shadowknight off and on throughout KoS, I went with brigand after a couple days after nagafen came up because scouts were starting to trickle into commonlands *back then nek forest was hard to get through without stealth* and I wanted to pvp right away.  I made a brig because quite honestly nobody I ever knew of played one.  They were one of the least played pve classes so I never even encountered one.  Now to this day I find my two original characters ended up being Overpowered at some point in time.  First my brigand was crazy overpowered with double up... but back then nobody was the wiser.

I actually at one point rerolled my tank into a Berserker, because they were superior pve tanks at that time and had a chance to kill quite a few classes.  I went so far as to delete my shadowknight completely.  

EoF came and the AAs were fixed up on the SK so that they would be tolerable tanks.  Just something about being a magic spell casting melee hybrid who can do good dps and actually tank stuff.  I asked to have him undeleted. 

I played him when the SK started to come into its own...  put the zerker aside.  

Long story short.  In the end I've got an 89 Berserker and an 85 Shadowknight.  I battle every day with this concept.  Why on earth would i play my Berserker if I have another character who can do everything it can, BETTER plus a whole lot more?   I HATE to play the fotm classes.  However, I'm on a pvp server.  If everyone else is playing that class and owning, the only way to counter it is to play the same class. 

Still I can't bring myself to do it. 

The sad reality is that a mediocre SK can  beat a well played and geared berserker at its job...   the only real reason to go berserker is to try and be different and embrace a challenge.  Unfortunately this challenge will result ina lot of frustration as well.

[Kota]

all things being somewhat equal (gear, lvl, aa, etc)  you will probably lose to:

sk, pally, all healers that don't suck, wiz, warlock (i'm half tempted to put coercer/illy in this group too)

you will usually beat:

melee scouts, necros

the rest are tough to call.  based on the individual really

[Naq'Jundax]

zerkers are fun in PvE, and same in PvP... i dont even know if im going to try pvping with my lock or brig in the near future hehe, they just cant be more fun than berserker ))