Edit: I love how 3 people dislike my original post, when I am asking for input. It's like saying "I don't know what you mean. Can you explain?" and getting downrated. Unless of course, people just feel a bit defensive about their favorite perks and can't stand a little criticism.
Just maxed berserker last night, -only- used it since I made this thread, on normal then hard public servers. Honestly it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, but it still feels terribly lacking. One mistake and suddenly you're missing half your armor because of one crawler you didn't see behind that decapped bloat. With commando teammates I'd have them buy a SCAR for me with my spare cash near the last waves (because everyone is a millionaire, so why the hell not) which led to me using it in order to one hit massive groups of crawlers and pick off sirens in a horde.
Also, I once heard that a berserker with a katana + crossbow could solo pretty much anything. As a practice run with level 5, I started up a game with 4x the number of enemies (Faked Players mutator, very useful) in West London, and had a VERY hard time - was down to 40HP and no armor at one point. This was normal mode. Although I managed to survive, it dissuaded me from trying again on hard.
Katana/Fire Axe/SCAR(or any AR/Handcannon) was the usual loadout. If you have the space, a fire axe is actually fairly handy for Fleshpounds, but not much else. Hard to kite those cramped maps like Biolabs though. Crawlers were honestly the largest problem - seeing as how they're pretty much everywhere, as fast as I am with a 9mm in hand, and deal decent damage once my armor is below a certain point. Under ideal conditions like a low ping, not totally surrounded, etc, I can take them on with a katana, with a ~70% success rate of midair hits.
But now I have even more sympathy for the zerker; after the twentieth time a twitchy demo or commando decides that I need some help with the group of four clots and a couple gores directly in front of me. Of course all the clots are dead, and one gorefast is left by the time the three nades and twenty bullets reach me, but hey, it's the thought that counts.
Then there was that RE1 mansion story map, in which I played zerker on normal to conserve ammo and thin out crowds. Problem is, my team accused me of "ramboing" the entire time. I was healing more than the medic and everyone else, not going away from the group, and generally acting as a meat shield to keep teammates alive (they weren't the best in the world..) This led to them not telling me when the next area was available and trying to get me killed. Of course I was the last one to die, all three times, in the same spot.
I'll admit that with a 'perfect' team of half decent, knowledgeable players, berserker is usable. It's simply outclassed by the other perks. However, with that said, it's not the perk for me. If anyone wants to tell me what exactly I did wrong to make berserker feel like such a 'bad' perk, feel free to do so.
Will attempt either firebug or demo next. Preferably not demo seeing as how that's already at 6.5m.
Now for argument time.. hooray. Based on my experiences with it in the past, and seeing others use it recently, demo doesn't deal enough damage at all with his nades, even with the +60% or so damage with them. Hell, a level 6 demo on normal may not be able to kill a gorefast with a direct hit. I AM "good" enough to not hurt or blow myself up with nades, and know how to aim to deal splash damage to every spec in a group in nearly every situation, yet it still seems limited to being useful in large custom maps.
A recommendation as to what weapons I should use would be nice.
Side note; should I reset my perks? Now I feel like there's no reason to actually play a specific one anymore - which means I'll pretty much be using 2 perks for all situations until I'm horrible with everything else. Starting over from normal/hard at level 0 sounds fun, but I'll definitely miss using the ones that took time to level up such as medic.
