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Tactics Berzerker Tactics

Andariel

Grizzled Veteran
Apr 9, 2015
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We needed a thread about sharing the zerker's intricacies, so here we are.

Bludgeoning, impaling, pulverizing, eviscerating, let's talk about going full berserk ! RAAAAAH !

By the way, I take this opportunity to share the recent berserker Breakdown video by Will Munk :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkQstOLz83I
 
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I feel like I'm the only one who likes the VLAD-1k, thing is a headshot machine.

I dunno. I find it a weird choice among the zerker arsenal. VLAD has always been a (useless but pretty cool) Support rifle in KF1 (even though it's a bit different, since KF's Vlad was some kind of shrapnel launcher), thus I find it a bit irrelevant for a zerker. It's a purely ranged weapon for a primarily melee class and the fact that it involves being subtle and headshotting to be effective in a perk which is all about rushing in like a maniac, is off-putting and it's probably why so may zerker don't bother with this gun. It's cool but it would be more appropriate in terms of the perk's main strategy to have the fire axe or the scythe (or even the Dwarfs axe :p) for the zerker and the Vlad for the support.
 
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I dunno. I find it a weird choice among the zerker arsenal. VLAD has always been a (useless but pretty cool) Support rifle in KF1 (even though it's a bit different, since KF's Vlad was some kind of shrapnel launcher), thus I find it a bit irrelevant for a zerker. It's a purely ranged weapon for a primarily melee class and the fact that it involves being subtle and headshotting to be effective in a perk which is all about rushing in like a maniac, is off-putting and it's probably why so may zerker don't bother with this gun. It's cool but it would be more appropriate in terms of the perk's main strategy to have the fire axe or the scythe (or even the Dwarfs axe :p) for the zerker and the Vlad for the support.

Hey man, I really liked the Vlad in the most recent versions of KF1 I've played. It's spread is insane and causes lots of carnage on small zeds.

I think the Vlad fits the zerker theme pretty well. The zerker seems like Dead Rising's craft-able item set, but focused on heavy melee. It confused me at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it fit in.
 
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I feel like I'm the only one who likes the VLAD-1k, thing is a headshot machine.

I was playing around with it last night, I gotta say it's a lot of fun. It's an incredibly versatile and undervalued weapon, I'm surprised I don't see more people use it.

Single shot decaps most any lower trash and stumbles bloats/sirens (sometimes husks). Multishot makes short work of sirens/husks up close, and has extreme damage potential in tight packs.

Question though, anyone try using it with Support? Does it get the support damage bonus?
 
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I spent a while last night solo practicing my parries on scrakes and fleshpounds and it seems that getting in an attack while they're stumbling will reset them out of the stumble when it lands so they'll immediately go into another attack which you can chain parry off of if you're quick about it, although I think there may be a damage threshold you have to go through for the attack you throw at them to actually cause the reset but only happens in certain cases so there's not really anything to worry about if you're playing a proper zerker with the pulverizer/shovel (katana bodyshots on a HoE fleshpound does not reset a fleshpound's stumble sometimes.) So basically parry > one swing > parry > swing, etc.

Getting to more advanced chaining, scrakes will stumble from an altfire hit of the pulverizer and will reset off of a normal swing while they're reeling from it letting you get in more attacks per parry. Parry > alt fire > light attack > immediate parry on their retaliation > alt fire > light attack, repeat.

Fleshpounds on the other hand will immediately rage off of an altfire so I still have to figure out how to deal with them raging as it's a lot more random (they have a couple of possible things they may do upon you raging them, such as immediately going into a swing or start the groundpound animation,) however getting a successful parry while they're enraged will reset them back to yellow and thankfully you won't have to do it too many times as the pulverizer makes decently short work of FPs (in my solo experience anyway.)

As for approaching either, they both have certain attacks they almost always do when you're just barely out of reach. Scrakes will wind up a slightly delayed swing so your parry will have to be timed for the delay, after which you can go into your chain. Fleshpounds, again, are only a tad more random. FPs can do a jump attack at you (this you cannot parry, it will not stumble them) so I recommend back pedaling (with your sprint key) to bait it out before going in, keeping in mind that they may also swing at you instead of jumping (he has a delayed right hook and a left hook that goes into a combo attack) but back pedaling should keep you out of the range of either.

A disclaimer though, this was only from one night of practicing in a solo match, so I can't really say if teammates attacking the thing you're trying to chain parry has any effect in the case that they do accidentally reset the stumble before you can get in a swing.

Edit: After playing some multiplayer matches, I can confirm that damage from any source will reset the stumble once it goes past a certain threshold. So depending on whether or not your team trusts you enough to solo the big guys, you may or may not have enough time after a parry/altfire stumble to get in a swing (depends on your weapon speed anyway.)
 
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You can parry this attack and take no damage, but it won't stumble them. You have to land the parry and be in the air when they slam the ground to take no damage. It's tricky.
That's pretty neat, I never thought about jumping up into the air after blocking the leap. I assumed the hitbox for the landing was just going to hit me for even being next to the FP.

Edit to prevent a double post: A nice little window to deal damage to a fleshpound and cancel his rage without expending an EMP, assuming you're relatively close to them when they start their rage animation, is to run up and give them a nice hammering (during their animation and only if you have the time to get in that swing) before parry stumbling them out of their rage spin that they like to do when you're in their face while they're raged. However, I wouldn't recommend running up to a raging fleshpound unless you are sure you can get to it before he stops his raging animation because if you are not in their face after they're done raging up they like to launch themselves into their three-hit jumping combo that you can't stumble him out of.

Expanding on fleshpounds some more, a pretty reliable combo to kill one off is to bait a non-raging fleshpound into his leap and sprint into his face while he's recovering from the attack animation. From there, the close proximity to the fleshpound will almost always cause him to launch a kick at you that can easily be parried into an altfire from the pulverizer which causes him to rage immediately leading into one of two animations for him to perform, the ground pound and one where he just flails his arms in the air and roars (the former giving you a safe window to land another altfire hit on him, the latter being a bit riskier as the animation isn't as long.) After finishing his rage animation he will either go into his spin attack or do a combo of swings, both having roughly the same timing to parry on the first damage interval of those attacks. This should bring him out of rage mode leading into more kick parry > altfire x2 > rage parries.

The above will kill a suicidal fleshpound in only 3 altfires if soloing, more players will lead to required reloads of your pulverizer due to hp scaling. A safe timing to reload would be after parrying him, where you can safely back pedal and reload while they're stumbling back, and then go bak to baiting his jump into a kick again. 6man suicidal hp fleshpounds take roughly 9 altfires to kill.
 
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