The proposed Berserker: tank, DPS or a hybrid?

[ScrakeMorgendorffer]

Last week we talked about the upcoming Demo and Commando perk changes. Today I want to cover another revised perk before we talk about the Sharpshooter. Enter the Berserker:

The refined Berserker tree has players choose between higher survivability with less damage output or trading that for faster, more damaging attacks and movement speed. This gives the player a chance to focus on their Berserker on being a Tank or high DPS role. The perk passives are now increased melee damage, night vision and the ability to resist clot grabs. As per usual, these values are not final and are subject to change before release.

Level 5:
Dreadnaught - Increased health by 50%
Skirmisher - Move faster, sprint faster, regenerate health every second

Level 10:
Vampire - Heal yourself 4 points of health for every zed you kill with a Berserker weapon, also attack 15% faster with Berserker weapons
Butcher - Attack 20% faster and do 25% more damage with Berserker weapons

Level 15:
Resistance - Gain 20% resistance to all damage, gain an extra 20% resistance to poison and sonic damage
Parry - Parrying an attack will increase melee attack speed by 5% and damage by 35% for 10 seconds

Level 20:
Smash - Hard attacks do 50% more damage, plus an extra 25% more damage on headshots, which have 200% more stumble power
Massacre - Light attacks do 20% more damage and are 5% faster

Level 25:
Spartan - Attack in near real time and gain 25% of your total health
Rage - Move and attack in real time

The sentiment expressed here seems to be that the skills represent either being a tank or being a DPS dealer. I have a couple of points to make here:

• Level 5 Dreadnaught
• Level 10 Butcher
• Level 15 Resistance
• Level 20 Smash
• Level 25 Spartan

I'm now basically a tank that deals almost the highest DPS possible in this equation without having to bother with that pesky parrying business.


Given the amount of times per level that zed time occurs - in conjunction with having a Field Medic pump you full of darts - isn't Spartan really going to simply reinforce the "tank" role if you can, and I quote, "gain 25% of your total health" or 37.5HP if you opt for Dreadnaught? As an aside, my recollection of PvP for the Berserker at level 25 was one of "you can't be killed unless you do something completely foolish". Spartan is well-equipped to simply bolster that further.


The binary nature of the skill tree, and the fact that you can chop and change between tank aspects and DPS aspects to get the best hybrid possible... eh, you figure out whether it's good or not: I just read the headlines.

 

[Oy The Destroyer]

Muh deep combats.

 

[JoelFig]

Some numbers do need to be toned down, like that 25% hp recovery per zed time. We used to just have 10% recovery back before the last rework and even that was insanely good. Attack rate should also be more modest, this tree just hands it out like candy on "tank" skills and "DPS" skills. I'm moving things around and reworking the concept behind some skills for what I consider a more focused skill tree below:


Level 5:
Dreadnaught - Increased health by 50% (as is)
Skirmisher - Move and sprint 25% faster (speed can stand on its own)

Level 10:
Vampire - Heal yourself 2 points of health for every zed you kill with Berserker weapons and regenerate health every second (pure HP recovery skill)
Butcher - Attack 15% faster with Berserker weapons (pure attack speed boost)

Level 15:
Resistance - Gain 20% resistance to all damage, gain an extra 20% resistance to poison and sonic damage (as is)
Parry - Parrying an attack will increase the damage done on the zed by 10% for 10 seconds (made it a debuff skill that would give the Zerk a team benefit against big zeds, the ones you would bother parrying)

Level 20:
Smash - Melee attacks do 50% more damage on head shots, which have 100% more knockdown power (precision skill that rewards you with knockdowns and head damage, no longer distinguishing between light and heavy attacks. Meant for zed decapitations)
Massacre - Melee attacks do 25% more damage and have 200% more stumble power (general damage skill with improved stumbles, also doesn't distinguish between light or heavy attacks. Meant for swinging more wildly)

Level 25:
Spartan - Attack in near real time and gain 10% of your total health (toned down health restore)
Rage - Move and attack in real time (as is)

 

[Tagasaki]

Missed the parry while in zed time for knockdown now. No more Hans/Pat falling down in the gutter. Feels bad man.

BTW, I do like the Dreadnought, Butcher, Resistance, Smash and Rage hybrid skills.

 

[Escadin]

Missed the parry while in zed time for knockdown now. No more Hans/Pat falling down in the gutter. Feels bad man.

BTW, I do like the Dreadnought, Butcher, Resistance, Smash and Rage hybrid skills.

Why don't you just knock them down with smash?

• Level 5 Dreadnaught
• Level 10 Butcher
• Level 15 Resistance
• Level 20 Smash
• Level 25 Spartan

I'm now basically a tank that deals almost the highest DPS possible in this equation without having to bother with that pesky parrying business.

That selection would come close to what berserker currently has in his cooky cutter build but is worse overall.

+ 25% more damage bonus for hard hits (50% to heads)
+ 5% more damage bonus (butcher > furious defender)

~ +40% siren or bloat resistance merged to +20% against both (tends towards being a nerf imo)

- 25HP (weaker fortitude)
- 10% attack speed (missing passive)
- movement speed bonus (missing passive)
- 5% general resistance (missing passive)


Looks like they nerfed having all the defense and damage at once (which is good). There is a bit more damage in your build but we haven't seen what the new damage bonus passive looks like. Parry is must though.

 

[Tagasaki]

Yeah but not in zed time, really like it when they got parried and slomo fall.

 

[Gallic_Taffer]

For historical sake, back in closed beta / super early access, one of the zerk's zedtime skills had him recover 10hp per extension, although it was poorly labelled as a "temporary health increase". Which it did do, your maximum health went up, but after zedtime you got to keep it. I played with a guy nonstop who mastered the old, old zerk, and he said that zedtime skill was the best thing the zerk had going for him, and removing it was a blunder. I had to agree.

And it's taken me until now to realize: zerk must give up movement or health. I did not realize how critical that first skill choice is. Good work, TWI.

 

[Ryno5660]

Seems the unpopular choice but I'm happy being a slow moving dreadnaught! Being able to outlive everything whilst sacrificing some damage is still useful to the team certainly, end result is you still surviving the waves.

I think that's important; Sure I have no doubt that some ultimate build will surface which makes others less useful but I'm probably gonna play as both from time to time.

 

[DBShinigami]

Well, between the regeneration skill, the vampire, the resistance (for siren and bloat), and the zed time skill => you probably don't need a medic anymore.

25 or 38 HP for each ZED TIME ? If you get two/three extensions, you can basically be full health all the time with no medic.

So, basically :

-Skirmisher (it's useless to have 50hp more if you can not escape zed + regeneration skill is more useful in the long term if you don't have medics),

- Vampire (it's better to be full health and running at full speed than doing +25% more damage and dying... If you're getting swarm, it's not this 25% which will save you. And because of the stumble mechanics, even if you don't kill the zed, you should not get hit anyway).


- Resistance (Who can "resist" to have +40% of resistance against Bloat and Siren ? If you want to be able to go near zed and do your work, you need to take less damage, kill them, and gain some life again),

- Smash (of course, how 20% can compete against +50% and Stumble power... this choice is obvious),

- Spartan (+25% of life is amazing, sure you lost the ability to move in real time, and sometimes you'll be full heath... but because you can still attack in real time, you can gain some health back and stumble every zed near you, letting you escape !).

Maybe there is other configuration, but, without testing, I think it's what I will choose when the next update is live !

PS : Also it seems that if you take the speed skill, this time you can also run faster with off-perk weapon... and nailgun *_* running around with it while gaining back some life might be fun

 

[neddie]

It depends on how it plays, but it certainly feels like it will be harder to play the sort of berserker I've grown accustomed to. At present I depend upon my speed to take me to problem areas, and my parry/block (with perks) with additional base health to halt pushes/set up crowd clearing combos. I'm not confident that I can make it in HoE without the health bonus, because I'm precision limited by my trackball. I want to go down a third path, so I can function as an interdictor, which is ideal for HoE since you're seldom camping.

 

[Gallic_Taffer]

I depend upon my speed to take me to problem areas

This is what I do too, it's a hallmark of a good zerk vs. a bad one. Good zerks use their speed to check up on what's going on elsewhere. They act as quality control for multiple fronts. Losing that speed is going to make this perk much more tactical and interesting (read: more effort for reward). If movement speed wins out against the health boost, zerk's role will most likely drift back towards his oldest style back in closed beta when he was REALLY terrible. In those days he cleared trash and only corralled the big zeds, nothing more.

Now that I've been thinking about it more, I'm wondering how zerk will function against a boss without extra maneuverability.

 

[taiiat]

that's a lot of Tank, son.
and you don't really have to actually sacrifice that much to get it.
Lv10 and 15 seem to be the only Skills that you must really choose between 'Tank' and 'Dapplage'.

the concept of choosing between brick wall and force of a thousand suns is alright (though doesn't sound incredibly interesting personally, 'lotta Health' and 'lotta Damage' just isn't that interesting unless it has Mechanics to go along with so that the Player is engaged by them).

Lv5 Skills contrast each other theoretically (no idea if the two sides are 'equal' to each other).
Lv10 Skills seem fine, Life Steal and more Damage seem competitive to me at those values.
Lv15 Skills contrast each other theoretically (though only Bloats or Sirens tend to deal Damage to me when getting boxed in, not both, less Resist to both rather than only to one, meh but w/e)
LV20 Skills try to contrast each other, but the Heavy Swing values seem like the obvious choice vs the Light Swing values.
LV25 - since you attack at basically the same speed (by the wording) regardless of choice, getting buckets of extra Health seems pretty convenient....


but i'm definitely biased somewhat as again, i don't find choosing between generic Damage and generic Survivability a particularly interesting choice.

 

[Scorppayne]

Death of the Zerker.

Death of the Zerker.

I find this new 'balance' idea ridiculous. Why completely kill the bezerker class like this? It was just fine how it was - it didn't need this complete overhaul. Removing all of the passives except flat out damage is a HORRIBLE move...The bezerker shouldn't have to sacrifice the only health buff he now gets (A measly 50 compared to the 75 previously offered) in order to get the same speed he had before. And the health regen that's supposed to compensate for the loss of his previous 175 health cap is shameful. It's a horrid idea that the medic can have a higher health cap than his zerker can. It's a waste of a perk that could've been an original idea. And why give berzerker night-vision as a passive? It's near useless, and doesn't help him at all! What the berzerker needed, was the melee speed, damage, movement speed, and damage resistance he had before. But no, you just have to waste time on reworking what was already working in the first place, instead of focusing ON NEW CONTENT, which is what we lack right now. We haven't gotten a single extra gun for any class since the game first came out. It's always the same 3-4 tier guns with the first two being completely irrelevant later in the match, leaving no real room for creativity. The only new weapons we get are in new classes, which come once every few months. Same with maps. I sound mad because I care too much about the Killing Floor name to see it go down like this. The first game was one of my favorites, but I can't say the same for this one. You're killing this game, Tripwire. Focus on Rising Storm: Vietnam instead of butchering the KF series even more...

 

[infntnub]

I find this new 'balance' idea ridiculous. Why completely kill the bezerker class like this? .

Are the people writing this kind of nonsense even looking at the proposed changes?

You'll realize there is little drop off (and possibly even a buff) based on how these skills appear to be rounding out.

Killing the zerker? SMH....

 

[DBShinigami]

If play correctly, with the choice I posted earlier, you probably will regain so much HP by minute than medic will stop looking after you and learn to solve a rubik's cube.

Even if you don't take the +50HP skill, considering that (approximative value) :
- Regen will grant like 3hp every ten second = 18 hp per minute ; 36 hp to 90hp per wave ;
- Vampire will give you 4Hp for each kill ; Roughly 35 kills a wave = 140 HP,
- About three to five zed time = 75HP to 100HP per Wave.

So, basically : 36 + 140 + 75 HP = roughly 250hp.

Of course, you have 20% to 40% resistance. So, it's more like 300 HP.

Now, add this to your 100hp, 100 armor, you basically have a total of 500hp for each wave, which makes about 530HP (because of resistance). And that's even before a medic starts to heal you.

Now, I'm still nice in my hypothesis : You might have 5 zed times extension, wave can last more than 3 minutes, and you probably can kill more than 35 zed.

So, it would not be an exegeration to assume that your total HP pool in a wave would be over 800HP. Of course, some time you will be full HP, so that will be a little less.

Now, compare "this" to your prior 175HP and 100 armor.... Still a nerf ?

Basically, unless, you're trying to kill 2 FP / 2 SC and 2 Husk at once, you should be fine with this new three.

(now, of course, my goal here is not to be correct in my hypothesis, but just to show the potential regarding regen).

 

[Greenbacks]

I'm curious to see how this rework will turn out. I don't think putting Parry against Resistance was the best idea: Resistance obviously beats it. Something like Resistance vs Butcher would be a more split choice.
You might say putting Resistance vs Butcher weakens zerk a lot because they can't have both and I'd likely agree, but I think skill choices shouldn't be one-sided. If zerk is too weak because it can't choose all the obvious skills then zerk should get more innate power.
So where would Parry go? The problem with parry is that it's bad to begin with and a little boost to it doesn't really help. Random unparryable attacks makes it unreliable and therefore rarely used. Using it every 10 seconds just for a boost instead of what it was meant for (mitigating damage) isn't appealing to me.
So parrying would have to first be made better and then it could compete against Vampire. I could see Vampire vs Parrying working out as trash effectiveness vs big zed effectiveness.
I'm also curious whether Tripwire has data on skill choices to see what is picked most, and if having the community split on choices is something they aim for at all.

EDIT: I also don't like Smash vs Massacre. Aside from Smash being obviously better I feel like this is the same mistake they made with commando and his auto-fire vs semi-fire. This restricts the player from using both to only using one, in this case hard hits. I know they plan to fix this with commando and I'm glad.

 

[DBShinigami]

Parry will always be situational while the other skill will not.
As a result, except if some kind of buff damage would allow to do a quick kill on a SC/FP, the "bonus" from parrying is worthless because you don't need it for trash/middle and it will not change a lot of thing against SC/FP.

(except maybe 5 sawblade from your T4 after a parry... but no one is using anyway).

If TWI wants to makes "parrying" a special skill for "berserker", it should be made as a passive. I don't see how (except two parry skills on the same level but that would be horrible) it can compete otherwise.

 

[Lorkenpeist]

If TWI wants to makes "parrying" a special skill for "berserker", it should be made as a passive. I don't see how (except two parry skills on the same level but that would be horrible) it can compete otherwise.

Rather than just increasing damage for a short time after a parry, I think the skill should do something more interesting and unique with the parry skill. Perhaps add knockdown power. Although it would be OP if it happened every time, but who knows how that will work with the new incap system. I think in general skill choices should offer unique abilities that other perks don't have, not just increased numbers. Some number increases are ok, but there should be a lot of unique abilities like demo's door traps and on contact. Things that make the perk play differently in interesting ways, not just play better. Vampire is another good example.

 

[DBShinigami]

Honestly, regarding parry, I would like to have the ability to do a "special move" just after a good parry... Like you know, something like a quick counter-attack...

I don't know if it's possible... Or if people would like it.

But, even with this special move, it will not be enough against resistance. It's because resistance should not be with a parrying skill which grants more damage.

I think instead of this nonsense of level 20 skill (split light/heavy attack which was also the problem of the lvl20 commando), it would be better to have :

- Hard + smash merged with increase of +25% / Parry and Backstabbing.

I suggested a long time ago something like a backstabbing skill with something like +50% damage if you hit the back of a zed (in KF1 it was +100% of damage).

This way both of them are about dealing damage, but one is more situational (but with more damage) and require more skill, while the other grants you less bonus damage but you can use it all the time.

But, maybe TWI is going to use this backstabbing skill for the martial artist.

 

[taiiat]

I think in general skill choices should offer unique abilities that other perks don't have, not just increased numbers. Some number increases are ok, but there should be a lot of unique abilities.

*throws money at screen*
i concur.

Honestly, regarding parry, I would like to have the ability to do a "special move" just after a good parry... Like you know, something like a quick counter-attack...

could be interesting, a special Attack, that had high Knockback?
so pushes the Enemy back significantly (several Meters?) and always deals full Damage(basically ignoring resistances)? *shrugs*