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Making Dreadnaught Viable in comparison of Skirmisher

Demon Swords

Active member
Jun 2, 2019
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The Berserker's tier 1 perk Dreadnaught is not viable except with a devoted healer constantly healing the berserker. As such the perk is not usable for single play.

Currently:

Dreadnaught: Increase total Health 75%.

Skirmisher (other tier 1)
Move 20% faster and sprint 25% faster when using a perk melee weapon. You also regenerate 2 points of health every second

Skirmisher is significantly better as not only is the health regen better then more health. but it also as the additional effect of extra move speed.

In concept Skirmisher should be used as a mobility perk that helps the play-style of quickly moving from zed to zed and for dodging attacks.
Dreadnaught in concept should be about standing still fighting zeds / standing in a door way to prevent their passing.
As dreadnaught is weaker though skirmisher is always used making the playstyle of what dreadnaught should provide not be done.

Buff ideas for Dreadnaught: (not in any order)

1: Also Increase armor
- This would make the dreadnaught more tanking though it holds the same issue as just getting more health, so i do not think this is the right fix.

2: Increase Healing effects on you.
- The problem of having more health over regen is that more health requires more healing effects to occur to benifit from it while regen is constantly giving the benifit. Through increaseing healing effects this would make having extra health more likely to be useful as well as makes the combo of berserker and field medic stronger. This would also make perks like Vampire or Berzerker Rage more viable both of which are lesser used perks.

3: Increasing damage for a duration on hit. stacks up for each hit.
- The point of skirmisher is to go around killing small zeds with haste. Draudnaught on the other hand is about hunkering down and fighting. Increasing damage would make a berserker have the ability to fight bigger zeds better which would be necessary if blocking a door. The reason the damage needs to ramp up is so that dreadnaught would not take the role of skirmisher of running around and taking out small zeds easier. With a constant damage increase small zeds would be easier to kill when that is not the perks purpose. The purpose is to make standing and fighting viable while skirmisher is about running in and gorilla tactics.

4: Slowing nearby zeds on zed kill. Or maybe Increase the power of incapacitation.
- locking down zeds from other players is the purpose of the berzerker. This change would make it easier to do so when not in a corridor where standing still prevents being passed. This change would not help for solo play much (unless your using the Pulverizer) but it would at least make the role in multi play more usable. This also fits the name of the perk well as it can be interpreted as causing dread into the zeds. This is not a solution i would suggest.

5: Immunity to being status effected by the E.D.A.R's laser.
- (Would still take damage from it.) Without being able to hit the E.D.A.R. at range it is difficult to deal with it as the berserker. With being immune to being grabbed by clots it would make sense to also being immune to the lasser. Since it is unlikely to be added to the base kit, it could be a useful buff to this perk. For a dreadnaught to want to black a door it would prevent them to move up and fight that E.D.A.R. This is a very small buff and as such I do not see it making a big diffrence but it would help a bezerker player. With this in mind. if it would be added i would suggest it with one of the other ideas.

6: Deal damage to zeds that hit you.
- This would work well with the perk's concept of taking constant damage and being. This would be useful in both solo play and multi play though i don't think this is a viable solution. The damage from this would either need to be small and thus likely not useful or it might end up being to high. Additionally, this buff would be a greater incentive to doing the Berserker + field medic combo when a buff should try to make this perk viable in other scenarios.

Do you think Dreadnaught is a viable perk? If not do you think any of the above solutions would work? do you have any solutions of your own?
Plz and comment and discuss below your opionion and ideas.
 
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Skirmisher rewards disengagement and you know skirmishing so it's only logical that the other skill should be the opposite but the issue here is skirmisher has more survivabilty than the other skill and 75 extra hp on hell on earth doesn't mean much so a 75 extra armor would be nice plus something like a kills increases damage and movement speed by 5% stack up to 25% and kills increases stumble power by 25% stacks up to 200% decays over time or instead kills regenerate armor 4 points per kill plus a stumble bonus these two ideas also help another berserker skill shine which is the vampire skill this may fill the role engage and protect play style
 
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Wolf_elmeira;n2332437 said:
Skirmisher rewards disengagement and you know skirmishing so it's only logical that the other skill should be the opposite but the issue here is skirmisher has more survivabilty than the other skill and 75 extra hp on hell on earth doesn't mean much so a 75 extra armor would be nice plus something like a kills increases damage and movement speed by 5% stack up to 25% and kills increases stumble power by 25% stacks up to 200% decays over time or instead kills regenerate armor 4 points per kill plus a stumble bonus these two ideas also help another berserker skill shine which is the vampire skill this may fill the role engage and protect play style

Gaining armor on kill is not a bad idea but 4 is too much as armor reduces damage taken at set intervals based on how high of it you have. I would suggest more of 2 as armor since the lowest damage reduction of armor is 55% and it's highest is 75%.
 
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I think Dreadnought is in a pretty good place tbh. In fact, it's my go-to if i don't expect to carry all that much weight on me, since you can still move faster by simply carrying less things. The Hemoclobber also makes Dreadnought more attractive than before.

If it ABSOLUTELY needs a buff however, I would go with Demon Sword's suggestion of 2 Armor per kill (Or even just +1 armor per kill, since Vampire already plays a similar role to armor)
 
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flashn00b;n2332491 said:
I think Dreadnought is in a pretty good place tbh. In fact, it's my go-to if i don't expect to carry all that much weight on me, since you can still move faster by simply carrying less things. The Hemoclobber also makes Dreadnought more attractive than before.

If it ABSOLUTELY needs a buff however, I would go with Demon Sword's suggestion of 2 Armor per kill (Or even just +1 armor per kill, since Vampire already plays a similar role to armor)

Ditto.
 
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I think adding Vampire's health-on-kill to Dreadnaught would suffice. Because:
  1. The increased max hp is, as always, good for tanking lots of enemies, especially the bigger ones
  2. The health-on-kill helps you get your highly increased max health back up without relying on a Medic or picking another specifc talent, which makes it viable for sustainability on its own
  3. As per point 2, that means it also means you don't depend on a Medic as much, thus making it a better solo talent
  4. When levelling up a Berserker, especially on lower levels (and moreso when solo), health sustainability is often an issue. Skirmisher helps with that, but Dreadnaught doesn't. With health-on-kill, however, it would be a decently talent for self-sustainability, making the 2 talents compete better with one another.
As for what to replace Vampire with, that's another story. Refer to the the following linked thread for a more deep revamp of Berserker: https://www.reddit.com/r/killingfloo...serker_tweaks/
 
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