Berserker/Melee Ability Balance
- Thread starter jestdoit
- Start date
I thought I wrote "it is mostly reliable on lower difficulties" but apparently not. My bad.
I am starting to think parry is for other perks like the martial artist. May be he can ripose after the parry or something, thats why berserker right now seems to be very bad, later they should serve other purpose.
But no matter what, PLEASE do something so that parry is registered on my end instead of server end. Now the guess parry is demotivating most people (including me) to play melee.
But no matter what, PLEASE do something so that parry is registered on my end instead of server end. Now the guess parry is demotivating most people (including me) to play melee.
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I like the feel of the melee weapons in KF2 but I find melee just doesnt have high damage weapons. In KF1 each class had its powerful option, even as a commando you could take down a scrake without much trouble if you knew what you were doing.
The evicerator itself is a joke. The fuel consumption is way too fast for the small amount you get. The fact that it has fuel means you can run out and be out of a melee weapon that cost you 1500 dosh. The sawblades have nowhere near the power they did in KF1. You've lost the ability to aim it to make sure your little sawblade ammo you get for these high hp zeds actually hit where you want it to hit. You lose the ability to parry as that button is replaced with a chainsaw thrust as well when it could easily be parry or iron sights. The evicerator itself will last for about 30 seconds in a wave and is only good for killing trash mobs that you could kill with the shovel or pulverizer which will last way longer. I've seen tons of people try to stand next to a fleshpound or scrake and try to use the chainsaw function, which is good in theory as the trader menu says it has insane amount of power over the shovel or the pulverizer, but in reality you'd be lucky not to die and even if you manage that you'll run out of fuel before you kill it. It's also 10 weight so if you want a back up berserker weapon your only choice is the shovel, and since zeds seem to increase in health as the waves go on, ceases being that useful about wave 4, long before you'd get this weapon.
The berserker's level 5 perks arnt that stellar either, bulk ammo is completely useless as you never start with the vlad 9000 or the evicerator and by the time you have the money to buy one of those you probably have the money to fill up on ammo for it.
Night vision is a nice touch but doesn't really offer a big advantage. All I use it for is that I knock out all the lights in the subway on burning paris so that majorly only I can fight in there because zeds are gunned down way before I can get a chance to reach them if I try to fight the some ones the rest of the group is fighting.
To get any experience I need to run off on my own I find, while the extra experience a berserker gets for killing a zed near a teammate is there, it's not enough to cover the pathetic amount of kills I can manage to rack up by staying near them and not having a gun, so I either level terribly slow or I put myself in danger every wave hoping that the game doesn't decide to spawn 2 fleshpounds/scrakes/either combination of the 2 to sandwich me in and screw me.
Frenzy is a nice idea but either you die immediately before you get to take full advantage of the perk, or a medic will heal you because that's their job, it's even encouraged as it gives xp for doing it. I'd suggest keeping the perk but instead of "if you get low on hp" and just allow us to not have that hp at all so a medic trying to keep his team alive doesn't end up making our perk completely useless.
Fake out is great as getting grabbed by clots is annoying and causes you to miss if you're shooting and as a berserker that's a very bad thing as an alt fire on the pulverizer takes a little bit of time to recover from; but this should be a given for a berserker, you shouldn't need to give up a perk slot for it. That IS the one of the berserker's trademark, he cant be grabbed by clots. I'm not sure what perk to put in that spot, though i've seen others suggest a perk for increased health or health regen, but that should just be a thing berserker's dont need to use a perk slot for.
The shovel and pulverizer are good, the pulverizer and the vlad 9000 are easily the way to go on the berserker and easily best weapon combination out of what we have for the class. The EMP grenades are weird but ultimately ok. I'm annoyed the katana is not a berserker weapon, not for the fact that it doesn't give experience, but the fact that it defaults above my berserker weapons and unlike other berserkers I've seen, I do switch between my nail gun and my melee weapon often. I've heard rumors that the katana is for another unreleased class but to me it feels like it was more of a placeholder and was replaced by the shovel, which is fine the shovel is solid and a fine replacement, but if that's true then I feel it doesn't really need to be in the game.
As i'm only a level 12 berserker I don't have experience enough with the other perks to post any collected thoughts other than how they'd sound and not how they work in play but those are my thoughts so far on the berserker class as a whole.
The evicerator itself is a joke. The fuel consumption is way too fast for the small amount you get. The fact that it has fuel means you can run out and be out of a melee weapon that cost you 1500 dosh. The sawblades have nowhere near the power they did in KF1. You've lost the ability to aim it to make sure your little sawblade ammo you get for these high hp zeds actually hit where you want it to hit. You lose the ability to parry as that button is replaced with a chainsaw thrust as well when it could easily be parry or iron sights. The evicerator itself will last for about 30 seconds in a wave and is only good for killing trash mobs that you could kill with the shovel or pulverizer which will last way longer. I've seen tons of people try to stand next to a fleshpound or scrake and try to use the chainsaw function, which is good in theory as the trader menu says it has insane amount of power over the shovel or the pulverizer, but in reality you'd be lucky not to die and even if you manage that you'll run out of fuel before you kill it. It's also 10 weight so if you want a back up berserker weapon your only choice is the shovel, and since zeds seem to increase in health as the waves go on, ceases being that useful about wave 4, long before you'd get this weapon.
The berserker's level 5 perks arnt that stellar either, bulk ammo is completely useless as you never start with the vlad 9000 or the evicerator and by the time you have the money to buy one of those you probably have the money to fill up on ammo for it.
Night vision is a nice touch but doesn't really offer a big advantage. All I use it for is that I knock out all the lights in the subway on burning paris so that majorly only I can fight in there because zeds are gunned down way before I can get a chance to reach them if I try to fight the some ones the rest of the group is fighting.
To get any experience I need to run off on my own I find, while the extra experience a berserker gets for killing a zed near a teammate is there, it's not enough to cover the pathetic amount of kills I can manage to rack up by staying near them and not having a gun, so I either level terribly slow or I put myself in danger every wave hoping that the game doesn't decide to spawn 2 fleshpounds/scrakes/either combination of the 2 to sandwich me in and screw me.
Frenzy is a nice idea but either you die immediately before you get to take full advantage of the perk, or a medic will heal you because that's their job, it's even encouraged as it gives xp for doing it. I'd suggest keeping the perk but instead of "if you get low on hp" and just allow us to not have that hp at all so a medic trying to keep his team alive doesn't end up making our perk completely useless.
Fake out is great as getting grabbed by clots is annoying and causes you to miss if you're shooting and as a berserker that's a very bad thing as an alt fire on the pulverizer takes a little bit of time to recover from; but this should be a given for a berserker, you shouldn't need to give up a perk slot for it. That IS the one of the berserker's trademark, he cant be grabbed by clots. I'm not sure what perk to put in that spot, though i've seen others suggest a perk for increased health or health regen, but that should just be a thing berserker's dont need to use a perk slot for.
The shovel and pulverizer are good, the pulverizer and the vlad 9000 are easily the way to go on the berserker and easily best weapon combination out of what we have for the class. The EMP grenades are weird but ultimately ok. I'm annoyed the katana is not a berserker weapon, not for the fact that it doesn't give experience, but the fact that it defaults above my berserker weapons and unlike other berserkers I've seen, I do switch between my nail gun and my melee weapon often. I've heard rumors that the katana is for another unreleased class but to me it feels like it was more of a placeholder and was replaced by the shovel, which is fine the shovel is solid and a fine replacement, but if that's true then I feel it doesn't really need to be in the game.
As i'm only a level 12 berserker I don't have experience enough with the other perks to post any collected thoughts other than how they'd sound and not how they work in play but those are my thoughts so far on the berserker class as a whole.
The zerk is definitely in a weird place. There need to be benefits to parrying and some more damage reduction so that other classes dont out perform the zerk in melee range. The pulverizer and crovel are without a doubt the best weapons. The nailgun is a great range weapon and i think it should stay, but the eviscerator needs some work still.
In terms of perk skills, oh man the zerk is a mess. I understand where they are going, but the whole low health thing and gain bonuses just doesnt work on suicidal and HOE. in normal it takes forever for things to kill you so those perk skills will be applied. But why have them? Im going to be swinging for the head on trash zeds every time and most likely taking it off with one hit. If im taking on an FP or Scrake with low health im going to die either by them or the trash surrounding me so the extra damage i get from being low on health probably wont help me.
Now if we changed those perk skills to say parry enhancing skills or flat defensive skills then i think were going somewhere. For example, how about some of these skills:
(Im not going to use numbers for the sake of it being either too good or not good, and im also going to try to be clever like the text!)
- Yeah, take that!....Whenever you successfully parry, your next primary or Alternate attack will deal X% more damage.
- Well they call you a "Berserker" right? Once per wave, if you are killed, you instead remain at 1 HP for 5 secs and are immune to all damage. During this time you gain X% damage and X% Movement speed. After 5 sec you finally die.
- When the going gets tough....Decrease all damage you take by an additional X%.
- Your death fuels me.... Every time you successfully remove a specimens head you restore X amount of health.
- Ooooh that's nice!....All healing from other sources are increased by X%.
Im just throwing some stuff out there like I said but some skills like those make me think berserker. So far im loving melee combat, it is satisfying and i like the way it flows. I really would like to see parrying bonuses or defensive increases because medics can be better berserkers than the berserkers.
In terms of perk skills, oh man the zerk is a mess. I understand where they are going, but the whole low health thing and gain bonuses just doesnt work on suicidal and HOE. in normal it takes forever for things to kill you so those perk skills will be applied. But why have them? Im going to be swinging for the head on trash zeds every time and most likely taking it off with one hit. If im taking on an FP or Scrake with low health im going to die either by them or the trash surrounding me so the extra damage i get from being low on health probably wont help me.
Now if we changed those perk skills to say parry enhancing skills or flat defensive skills then i think were going somewhere. For example, how about some of these skills:
(Im not going to use numbers for the sake of it being either too good or not good, and im also going to try to be clever like the text!)
- Yeah, take that!....Whenever you successfully parry, your next primary or Alternate attack will deal X% more damage.
- Well they call you a "Berserker" right? Once per wave, if you are killed, you instead remain at 1 HP for 5 secs and are immune to all damage. During this time you gain X% damage and X% Movement speed. After 5 sec you finally die.
- When the going gets tough....Decrease all damage you take by an additional X%.
- Your death fuels me.... Every time you successfully remove a specimens head you restore X amount of health.
- Ooooh that's nice!....All healing from other sources are increased by X%.
Im just throwing some stuff out there like I said but some skills like those make me think berserker. So far im loving melee combat, it is satisfying and i like the way it flows. I really would like to see parrying bonuses or defensive increases because medics can be better berserkers than the berserkers.
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Sure, Berseker was stong in KF1, but in KF2 :
They reduced every advantages of the berserker :
- Divided by two its perk bonus melee (+50% instead of +100%),
- The overall resistance went from +40% to a tiny 5%,
- While playing Berseker, bloat was a joke in KF1 (80% of bile resistance in KF1, you could even stand in front of the bloat and take 0 damage sometimes, in KF2 we got 25%),
- And... You don't get a katana anymore
I don't have all the stats but I'm sure they reduced the speed of attack and the overall movement speed too.
So, hopefully, they will make berserker a little better by the end of the EA
A lot of people simply look at damage multipliers and complain that new Berserker in KF2 is underpowered.
Don't forget that KF2 zeds are not as damage-sponges(aside from Scrake and FP) as their counterpart in harder difficulties in KF1.
The whole "explode on body shot kill" thing with Bloat is supposed to discourage missing headshots/mindless tanking(most obviously by Berserkers); now it works as intended like Husk's self-destruct.
Imo, Parry makes new Berserker much more fun; and the only real problem is that Katana is the offperk weapon instead of crovel(if I had to pick one "weapon" that requires less training to use, it would be the crovel).
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Did you know there's a perfectly-built melee perk that has:
-self heals that recharge 3x faster than the zerk (by the time your heal over time is finishes, you can activate again)
-self heals that are 50% more powerful
-nigh-immunity to bile (75% base resist)
-the same speed as zerks (+25% movespeed)
-passive life regeneration
- 120 hp
-175 armor, which comes free (crucial for Suicidal+)
-60% discount on armor purchases
-armor mending, and the ability to rapidly heal multiple teammates from across the map (which lets me always stay on the front lines, while keeping everyone alive).
-grenades that heal, last a long time, and deny an area by vaporizing trash and confusing tougher ones that walk through it
-the highest overall melee damage of all classes, and the most frequent parries, due to the lack of downtime
-all of these things at the same time
Right now I'm melee soloing Hans after the inevitable team wipes on 6-man Suicidal runs (I've had a lot of practice soloing him in single-player Suicidal). I can carry the team, always in the thick of the action with the least downtime, keeping everyone alive, eating all his drains, baiting/parrying his melee attacks, and killing him I'm the last one standing. If I miss parries, I don't get instagibbed. I can actually do all the things a melee class is meant to.
Meanwhile the level 20 zerks are always dead, or hiding behind a wall the entire fight, because they get gibbed from stray bullets, missing a single parry, or a random frag.
The one advantage the zerk has (+25% melee damage bonus), doesn't even make a difference in the number of swings it takes to kill trash, and has negligible impact on his playstyle.
Thankfully the zerks I'm playing with have stopped trying to parry on Suicidal/HoE. Even with 20-40 ping, animations/models will warp and displace. Scrakes and FPs do quick, extreme damage combos and have moves with next to no startup frames that can't be reacted to during online play. With full health the ranged classes can usually survive a parry error, gaining enough distance to sprint away to regenerate, whereas the zerk will just die in the first two seconds. To give you an idea of the damage, even a full health/armor high-level medic sometimes get two-shot by raged Scrakes (their combo sequences can hit 4 times in succession).
-self heals that recharge 3x faster than the zerk (by the time your heal over time is finishes, you can activate again)
-self heals that are 50% more powerful
-nigh-immunity to bile (75% base resist)
-the same speed as zerks (+25% movespeed)
-passive life regeneration
- 120 hp
-175 armor, which comes free (crucial for Suicidal+)
-60% discount on armor purchases
-armor mending, and the ability to rapidly heal multiple teammates from across the map (which lets me always stay on the front lines, while keeping everyone alive).
-grenades that heal, last a long time, and deny an area by vaporizing trash and confusing tougher ones that walk through it
-the highest overall melee damage of all classes, and the most frequent parries, due to the lack of downtime
-all of these things at the same time
Right now I'm melee soloing Hans after the inevitable team wipes on 6-man Suicidal runs (I've had a lot of practice soloing him in single-player Suicidal). I can carry the team, always in the thick of the action with the least downtime, keeping everyone alive, eating all his drains, baiting/parrying his melee attacks, and killing him I'm the last one standing. If I miss parries, I don't get instagibbed. I can actually do all the things a melee class is meant to.
Meanwhile the level 20 zerks are always dead, or hiding behind a wall the entire fight, because they get gibbed from stray bullets, missing a single parry, or a random frag.
The one advantage the zerk has (+25% melee damage bonus), doesn't even make a difference in the number of swings it takes to kill trash, and has negligible impact on his playstyle.
Thankfully the zerks I'm playing with have stopped trying to parry on Suicidal/HoE. Even with 20-40 ping, animations/models will warp and displace. Scrakes and FPs do quick, extreme damage combos and have moves with next to no startup frames that can't be reacted to during online play. With full health the ranged classes can usually survive a parry error, gaining enough distance to sprint away to regenerate, whereas the zerk will just die in the first two seconds. To give you an idea of the damage, even a full health/armor high-level medic sometimes get two-shot by raged Scrakes (their combo sequences can hit 4 times in succession).
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Despite what I say in my guide, I've stopped parrying altogether as a Zerk unless it's an emergency. I can dance with Scrakes and run Circles around Hans and Kite FP's, no need to take a huge chance of failing a parry.
I agree.
Since I have found out that you can do that with scrakes and other big zeds, parrying is just a last resort thing.
However any class can do that perfectly well... That's how I found out about that, I was in a game with some commando soloing couple scrakes alone.
Parrying Scrakes and FPs led to my death plenty of times due to it being a server side action. I was once on a server where my ping was in 50-60 range and I couldn't even parrying a single time. I have even tried on a lone clot. I couldn't hit the timing for some reason, even though it was perfect on my screen.
I'm pretty sure there's a nasty bug that causes your blocks to not register for the match. The last time I've had it I tested it on the last zed alive and my block wasn't working in any way. Not even dying and respawning seems to fix it.
I think of KF2's zerker as an evasive tank. Despite having lower max HP and a meager 5% damage resistance, his higher movement speed and parrying ability allows him to avoid damage better than the other classes, thus in turn has higher survivability, especially in those "oh crap, we're surrounded!" situations.
If anything Zerker needs more bonuses and abilities centered around the parry system.
I can see things like an 3% increase per level up to a 75% reduction in bleed though damage for block/parry really helping out the zerker as well as things like a constant knock back, longer parry stun or faster block speed. Really the parry system is the Zerker's main friend so maybe add things in that make it a lot easier vs other classes such as a perk that trait that reflects some of the damage from blocking back to the attacking zed and causes zeds to go after you instead of a friend when blocking/parrying.
There are a lot of ideas that could make the Zerker far tougher just by having parry focused bonuses and abilities.
I can see things like an 3% increase per level up to a 75% reduction in bleed though damage for block/parry really helping out the zerker as well as things like a constant knock back, longer parry stun or faster block speed. Really the parry system is the Zerker's main friend so maybe add things in that make it a lot easier vs other classes such as a perk that trait that reflects some of the damage from blocking back to the attacking zed and causes zeds to go after you instead of a friend when blocking/parrying.
There are a lot of ideas that could make the Zerker far tougher just by having parry focused bonuses and abilities.
Medic gets the same movement speed bonus, has considerably higher survivability (HP regen, higher max HP, higher & more resistant armor), and can parry just as effectively as the Berserker. They even get grenades that allow them to hold off a small AoE while healing.
The Medic is a better "evasive tank" than the Berserker in every way.
I like those. Better than what we have now by a long ways. Really, I wish each rank of berserker had a recovery | purely-offensive choice. Passive defensive perks don't really 'fit' berserker, but that's just my opinion anyways.
I'd like to see the 'call you berserker' perk be replaced by "every time you hit a specimen, gain damage/attack/move speed for x seconds. Max x%."
On the 'defensive' flip-side: same mechanic, but gain x% damage reduction instead of damage/attack.
Bare minimum I'd like to see the rank 5 zerker perks be replaced - I don't think either are any good at all. Night Vision Goggles should be a piece of equipment - so many perks get it already anways.
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I have a deep-seated personal grudge against Zerker but yeah, he needs a buff. Medic is definitely superior as a melee class which..isn't supposed to be a thing.
Just following up - all those perks that trigger off missing health are USELESS. You're either a hair's breadth away from death for what really does not seem to be a very impactful boost (from the damage one) - or a medic has healed you. They need to be replaced with something not reliant on missing health - cause that mechanic flat-out won't work.
What about a Zerk perk that works like this?
Tough As You Are: +5% Damage Reduction on the difficulty played 5% on beginner and raises 5% when you raise the difficulty up to 25% on HoE.
This would make Zerk a bit more viable on higher difficulties and yet not too strong on lower ones.
Tough As You Are: +5% Damage Reduction on the difficulty played 5% on beginner and raises 5% when you raise the difficulty up to 25% on HoE.
This would make Zerk a bit more viable on higher difficulties and yet not too strong on lower ones.