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Ok treading on a sensitive issue here... The Medic & The Zerker.

If you nerf Zerkers, people are gonna cry about medics again. It's a neverending cycle.

No they aren't, where did you even get that from?

The Medic is fine right now, Berserker is a tad overpowered.

The biggest problem is the Fp rage abuse, fixing that alone would prevent Zerker rambo'ing to some degree, on the later waves at least.
 
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@Undedd Jester:

You can have those 5% if you want them even though I do not quite understand why the medic needs to be at least as fast as the zerker or how those 2 perks are even supposed to be related to each other in the first place.

So while I wouldn't be particularly opposed to a medic speed buff or a zerker speed nerf, is there any actual reason for it?
You don't need to outrun zerkers to heal them you know. If they know what's good for them, at least.

The 5% speed drop is just for a start, I don't know how big or little of an effect this will have, but something pretty drastic needs to be done about this kiting problem.

The reason for the Medic comparison is their abilities are very similar. Speed and high damage resistance is what makes them such a problem to balance. And the issue now with the Zerker is very similar to the issue we had last year with the Medic, which has been resolved for him but the Zerker has now taken over this issue.

The Medic now is fine as he is, eliminate him from your head. Back yesteryear everyone was moaning about the Medics kiting abilities and the fact players had to wait ages for him to die or finish the wave. Now that weapons are balanced the Medic lacks a truly powerful weapon to do this anymore, and the clot grab is truly punishing.

The Zerker however is immune to the kite breaking clot grab (plus he can beat them off efficiently), his speed is even faster than the Medics (which 30% was a major gripe last year leading to the Medic getting nerfed to 25%), and lastly his damage resistance is constant, whereas the Medics only last as long as the Medics armour lasts.

If I'm honest I never knew why the Zerker even got his higher damage resistance, I didn't feel it was needed. But I reckon a level 6 Zerker should have this at absolute maximum:

Melee Damage: 100%
Attack Speed: 25%
Melee Movement Speed: 25% (poss 20%)
Bloat Bile Resistance: 80%
Damage Resistance: 33%
Immunity to clot grab
4 Zed TIme Extensions

My goal is to make dodging the Fleshpounds attacks at melee distance impossible. As SMIFF pointed out this should be the Zerkers weakness. People might be finding the Zerker more fun now, but thats exactly the arguement that went against nerfing the Sharpshooter.
 
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something pretty drastic needs to be done about this kiting problem.

Do you know what's left if you take the kiting away from the zerker?
Not much.
Kiting is kinda the ability of the berserker.
Even a 40% damage reduction (which you'd now also like to reduce specifically by 7%... why again?) doesn't make him a tank.

And since when is it a "problem" anyway? I do not comprehend.
Then again I could never understand why people kept and kept saying the medic has ever been the "better zerker" at any given moment in time.
It has always been blatantly untrue and completely asinine.

Such things should not inform changes.

My goal is to make dodging the Fleshpounds attacks at melee distance impossible. As SMIFF pointed out this should be the Zerkers weakness.

That's just dumb.
I'm sorry but the real problem are the rage mechanics then.
Not the runspeed.
Set the timer from 2 seconds to something like 2 minutes or completely remove it and the problem does not exist anymore.
Why would you meddle with the whole perk to work around this one very specific problem/exploit?
 
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Firstly, lowering speed to the point of not being able to kite fleshies is dumb. That's all I'm going to say on that matter.

Second: I guarantee that if anything is done about fleshpound rage timers, berserkers will just take LONGER to solo waves. It's entirely possible to leave fleshpounds for last, killing everything else in the wave. You're going to see berserkers purposely raging 1 fleshpound at the very end of the wave, soaking the hit, healing, and repeating until they're all dead.

You CAN'T avoid players with maneuverable perks out-thinking bots. Kiting is here to stay.
 
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Second: I guarantee that if anything is done about fleshpound rage timers, berserkers will just take LONGER to solo waves. It's entirely possible to leave fleshpounds for last, killing everything else in the wave. You're going to see berserkers purposely raging 1 fleshpound at the very end of the wave, soaking the hit, healing, and repeating until they're all dead.

You'd think there would be a point at which it's so utterly impractical that it's just not worth it anymore.
Also to be so terribly bored by seeing them evil zerkers kiting you first have to die. Food for thought.
 
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Everything you just said is under the assumption that you can get 100% consistent headshots.
That was kind of my point.
The attacks are so weak now that hitting the head is more important than ever.
That kind of means more skill is required, doesn't it?
You can't just bodyshot-bumrush a siren or husk blocking your way with the katana, you need to hit the head now and you need to do it with altfire.
If you can't do that, you have a problem. And a lot of fun with scrakes.

So on the one hand, we have this, which makes the zerker harder to play, and on the other hand we have more movespeed and damage reduction which gives more room for error and makes it a bit easier.
The OP only mentions one side of the trade and makes it look like it was only buffs and buffs again which isn't quite the case.

Sure getting head shots consistently requires more skill, except it isn't that hard to learn. The only problem zerkers have at the moment is getting an alt fire axe head shot on a scrake that's right up in your face. That issue is more to do with faulty hit boxes than skill and can be avoided entirely by getting down the timing to land a head shot on a charging scrake. Once again, not much of a big transition for me or any other zerker than ran with katana/axe/lar pre balance patch.

------

As far as the meleeing fleshpounds goes, I have posted why it works during the beta testing. I even pointed out flaws with the rage accumulator that Xienen took the time to fix. TWI is fully aware of why a zerker can get away with meleeing a fleshpound and chose to leave it in despite fixing a flaw that allowed a perked lar to land 2 head shots on a FP without raging it.

Really the root problem behind all of this is there isn't anything that will slow down a zerker. A medic's speed can be instantly negated by a clot grab and a siren will punch right through his superior armor. The only way a zerker's speed can be negated is to physically block him with a specimen. Unfortunately, if that specimen isn't a scrake or fleshpound, the zerker will simply cut it down. If a zerker is at 100 hp, the only attack that will OHKO him is if an enraged fleshpound does that double drilling attack and the zerker stands still taking every hit of it.
 
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@ 9_6

I didn't say lower the speed so they can't kite fleshies, I said lower the speed so they can't dodge his melee swing.

If a fleshy takes a swing at you then you or your team have made a mistake. This whole problem is born of the fact that Zerkers can pretty easily dodge this swing once they know how. Even if his speed is only taken down enough so that the window to dodge his attack is much smaller that would help cure the problem.

The Zerkers damage resistance should allow him to survive this hit even without armour. Bear in mind no other perk would (including the Medic), however hopefully this fleshpound infinite kite becomes a thing of the past, but even these alterations wouldn't be guaranteed.

Whatever we do, you have to admit being able to solo wave 10/10 on HoE with 160 specimens left should be very hard or near impossible for ANY perk, not every perk but the Berserker because "he is a solo class". Something needs to be done to make him a class good at surviving, but not unstoppable.

I wonder if the KF beta is still available to test new ideas with.
 
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Whatever we do, you have to admit being able to solo wave 10/10 on HoE with 160 specimens left should be very hard or near impossible for ANY perk, not every perk but the Berserker because "he is a solo class". Something needs to be done to make him a class good at surviving, but not unstoppable.

But that already is the case.
Are you seriously saying that this is not the case?
Do you really want to devolve into the usual "zerker=god mode" dogma now with no regard to how mistakes actually do get punished pretty hard already?
Do you even know what you actually mean when you say "unstoppable"?
 
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But that already is the case.
Are you seriously saying that this is not the case?
Do you really want to devolve into the usual "zerker=god mode" dogma now with no regard to how mistakes actually do get punished pretty hard already?
Do you even know what you actually mean when you say "unstoppable"?

I'm not being an *** here, but can I ask you a question dude? Are you seriously saying the a Berserker should be the only class that can consistently and reliably solo a HoE 6 Man fleshpound?

No other perk can even come close to surviving like the Zerker can, not even the Medic. I mean I watched a total of 6 waves in 3 seperate games yesterday where a solo Zerker has clutched the wave in this manner (Waves 7 and up). Its hardly an uncommon skill. In maps like Biotics Lab I'm sure it is near impossible, but in a map like say West London, Foundry or obviously Farm it seems quite easy.

My point is the whole goal behind the Beta was to make KF once again require teamwork to beat, which is why the Sharpshooter was so badly nerfed.

So why may I ask is it fine for the Berserker to be able to solo everything and not the Sharpshooter?
 
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But that already is the case.
Are you seriously saying that this is not the case?
Do you really want to devolve into the usual "zerker=god mode" dogma now with no regard to how mistakes actually do get punished pretty hard already?
Do you even know what you actually mean when you say "unstoppable"?

No other perk is as potentially unstoppable as Berserker with the same level of ease.

May I ask what "mistakes" you are refering to? Give me some examples.
 
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The real problem isn't the berserker, it's the fleshpound's rage mechanic. Just change it so that it will enrage after a certain period of time regardless of whether it attacks or not, and just put the timer on pause when it breaks LoS instead of resetting it. That will go farther in balancing the berserker than anything you can do to it's stats imo.
That idea wasn't originally mine btw, I saw someone else post it on the forums but can't remember who it was. Tried to find it so I could give them credit but couldn't. :(
 
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The real problem isn't the berserker, it's the fleshpound's rage mechanic. Just change it so that it will enrage after a certain period of time regardless of whether it attacks or not, and just put the timer on pause when it breaks LoS instead of resetting it. That will go farther in balancing the berserker than anything you can do to it's stats imo.
That idea wasn't originally mine btw, I saw someone else post it on the forums but can't remember who it was. Tried to find it so I could give them credit but couldn't. :(

Might have been me, seeing as I had that exact same idea and I'm pretty sure I have posted it somewhere.
 
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Again with this endless trolling from you, smiff. I don't care how easy-mode berserkers are on paper, or in the hands of the top 5% of players. Why? Because 95% still effing die every wave after 6-7.

Yeah, berserkers are "easy" when you fully understand them. So is calculus, physics, etc. The problem is that the majority DOESN'T understand them, and getting to a point where it becomes easy takes a lot of time, effort, and skill development.

SMIFF: "Blabla, rage mechanic, blabla kiting, blabla end of story". On paper maybe, but they still. mostly. die.
 
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I'm having a hard time seeing how mistakes get severely punished. I watched a level 6 Zerker with no armor axe a HoE Fleshpound, get punched, retain what appeared to be half health or a little over, then jump back to heal and repeat the process. In case you're wondering, everyone else was dead because the Zerker had run off to rambo (successfully).

If getting punched in the face by a Fleshpound isn't a "mistake", then I don't know what is.

And how do you figure that the majority of players don't understand Zerker? From what I've seen, the majority of HoE games have a Zerker that ends up clutching the wave.
 
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Again with this endless trolling from you, smiff. I don't care how easy-mode berserkers are on paper, or in the hands of the top 5% of players. Why? Because 95% still effing die every wave after 6-7.

False.

Yeah, berserkers are "easy" when you fully understand them. So is calculus, physics, etc. The problem is that the majority DOESN'T understand them

But they WILL.

and getting to a point where it becomes easy takes a lot of time, effort, and skill development.

No it doesn't.
 
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The real problem isn't the berserker, it's the fleshpound's rage mechanic. Just change it so that it will enrage after a certain period of time regardless of whether it attacks or not, and just put the timer on pause when it breaks LoS instead of resetting it. That will go farther in balancing the berserker than anything you can do to it's stats imo.
That idea wasn't originally mine btw, I saw someone else post it on the forums but can't remember who it was. Tried to find it so I could give them credit but couldn't. :(

That I would be fine with, seems to achieve the same thing.

Alternative is to have the Fleshpound rage once he reaches a certain level of damage, regardless of how slowly it was applied (Like say 33% as a sort of last ditch effort to kill you before it dies.).

Although I still think the Zerker should be reanalysed with the stats I mentioned. As Scary Ghost said most proper Zerkers in 1014 didn't see the need for all the buffs, but alot of others players did, sort its sort of meeting in the middle ground.
 
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