Tactics, berserker perk based

[Don Punch]

This is a post on my forums, thought I would share with the rest of you.

Hi, I decided since I'm bored and already figured a few things about the game, I'd post a few tactics of my prefered class.
But first a few ground things for all classes:

1) Self Med-syringe animation is very cancelable. If you hit your heal button a few times while it's being brought out, the initial injection animation will be skipped and you'll get that heal just that little bit faster. If you hit any weapon swap key, you will swap to that weapon when the syringe recharges back to 10 instead of the long animation that goes up to around 30.

2) L.A.W and Xbow reload cancel. Since the law and Xbow are single shot weapons there is no defined 'clip' however this trick is far more useful to the law because it has a longer reload time. If you hit any weapon key and hit your law / xbow key quickly, the weapon will try to swap out but be brought back in immediatly after the firing action. However the scope cannot be used for about a second after this trick is done. Very useful for law users.

3) L.A.W. Is classifed as a shotgun class weapon. While special support users do not get a discount on it, they will benefit from the extra ammo and damage perks that a shotgun has and the L.A.W. will level up your shotgun total damage required to level.
On that note, L.A.W. Is only useful for the Specialist and Berserker. Specialist because of higher damage, ammo and slots and Berserker because the increased run speed with melee negates the 15 slots, making you effectively run at 'normal' speed with a melee out. (Normal speed, running with a knife out as any other class with 1 slot.)

4) Clots. Jump and move away from them to slowly break from their grab. If you are surrouned by clots, kill clots in one direction while jumping and move out that way. Try to pick a direction that isn't covered by a gorefast or your murdered.

5) Get monsters to hate Bloats. If they start attacking the bloat, you've effectively reduced two specimens from trying to kill you.

6) Fleshpounders will kill any specimens infront of them while they are charging.

7) Hiding behind an object when the Patriarch is using his chaingun will stop him from attacking. He likes to use it mainly after he has meleed you.

8.) If a Specimen has lost their head, ignore it. They take damage constantly and will die.

9) Specimens slowly lose HP and die off if there are only 6 or less zombies left. If you leave around 8 left, you can run around the map hunting for ammo, armour and guns without the wave ending.

10) Keep moving in solo mode.

11) Reloading does not waste any remaining ammunition in a gun. The extra ammo shown is based on how many full clips you have remaining and the ammo you have left is a standard numerical number like any other, it's just hidden behind the full clips remaining.

Now, onto the more berserker-specfic hints.

1) Chainsaw, while highly useful, is very bad for solo. You WILL notice the reduced move speed that the 8 slots takes when trying to run. I find a machette is very good in both damage and keeping my slots down. That is all you will need, the rest of your money is devoted to armour, grenades and 9mm ammo.

2) Fire axe. Very good, high damage and low slots. However, it's attack animation is way to long, if you want the increased ZED extension bonuses a fireaxe doesn't attack fast enough to get another attack off while in ZED.

3) Melee attack cancels. If you start a melee attack and wait half a second and swap weapon, not only will the melee attack be accelerated, but you'll be swapped into another weapon. The most useful to do this with is the knife. If you swap to your knife and hit any other weapon key and then swap back to your knife quickly before it's put away, your last weapon used becomes your knife. If you start the alt-fire, the stronger knife slash and hit your last weapon used key, you will swap back out into the knife, canceling the animation but the attack will come out faster.

4) Save your money and whenever you can, buy a LAW or Xbow if your good at headshots. Space them out on the map, you will need these for soloing the Patriarch. What you do is sell anything you have so you have 1 slot. You can outrun the patriarch when he melee's only as a berserker with 1 slot. When he stops to attack with a rocket or chaingun at LONG range, pick up a LAW or Xbow and shoot him, then drop it if he comes after you. Do not use flamethrowers or hunting shotguns soloing the Patriach - They are far to short ranged, you need to run the second he cloaks or he'll nail you if you aren't running with 1 slot and a knife.

5) Keep crawlers away and avoid sirens. Shoot crawlers away if you are not experienced at taking them down mid-flight. You will have a VERY tough time running from crawlers constantly trying to leap at you as it is faster than their run speed.

6) Scrakes, Gorefasts and stalkers stand still to do their attack. You can WALK away from them.

7) Sirens screaming does not go through walls or objects. Initate the scream, hide behind the wall, take her down with melee attacks.

8.) FleshPounders. There are two ways to approach this guy - Melee and ranged. Using the ranged method, slowly piss him off with your 9mm then run away with the knife, make sure you are a fair distance away from him and you will outrun his moment of being pissed off. Using melee, go for the head and let him tap you for 5-10 damage every now and then, heal when your around 75hp. This will stop him most of the time from going berserker on your *** as whenever he deals damage it resets his level of being pissed off.

9) Continue running around the map and only loop back if you absolutely MUST. Looping back is dangerous. If you ever need to get the heat off, pull your welder out as you close a door and weld it to about 15-20% and run away. If you over weld it, zombies may go around when you move to a new location because it is faster and you will be surrounded.


Using these techniques I have managed to hold my own in hard mode with nothing but a machette and a 9mm pistol.

 

[Hedon]

Level 5 Berserker here.

If you're good enough, you don't even need a machete. The knife's altfire is enough to kill anything less beefy than a Scrake in one shot if you aim for the noggin, and on crawlers you don't even have to hit their head.

Another tip on Scrakes, a melee attack to the head will stun them for around three seconds. They will simply sit there, standing around like nothing is going on, where you can repeatedly stab them in the head. That said, they will almost always be able to get their first attack in, so charge at them, swing once at their head, back up before they finish their swing, then run back in and finish them off when they're stunned.

On FleshPounders, diregard the post above. Fleshpounders have two states. Yellow and Red. In yellow, he's slow and doesn't hit too hard. In Red, he's fast as hell and hits like a truck. He will only switch from yellow to red if you do a significant amount of damage in a short amount of time to him. Taking that into account, you can fire on him with a handcannon in periodic bursts without sending him into a rage. I use 3 Handcannon shots as a baseline. Four usually pisses him off. You can use this to lead him forever.

 

[Nanostrike]

Melee attack cancels. If you start a melee attack and wait half a second and swap weapon, not only will the melee attack be accelerated, but you'll be swapped into another weapon. The most useful to do this with is the knife. If you swap to your knife and hit any other weapon key and then swap back to your knife quickly before it's put away, your last weapon used becomes your knife. If you start the alt-fire, the stronger knife slash and hit your last weapon used key, you will swap back out into the knife, canceling the animation but the attack will come out faster.

If you're good at setting keybinds, this can be set to automatic, at the push of a button. I consider it somewhat of an exploit, but putting it in as a series of commands is very doable. A lot of folks in Team Fortress 2 do it.

Something along the lines of:
bind f 'attack 1', wait .5, 'swap weapon 2', 'swap weapon 1'

Those aren't the exact commands, because I'm sure they're different in the Unreal Engine than in the Source engine, but in TF2, that's a melee-cancel attack at the push of the 'F' button.

4) Clots. Jump and move away from them to slowly break from their grab. If you are surrouned by clots, kill clots in one direction while jumping and move out that way. Try to pick a direction that isn't covered by a gorefast or your murdered.

It's worth noting that as 'Berserkers', we're immune to grabs!


And for the 'Zerker stuff...

2) Fire axe. Very good, high damage and low slots. However, it's attack animation is way to long, if you want the increased ZED extension bonuses a fireaxe doesn't attack fast enough to get another attack off while in ZED.

I prefer the fire axe. The machete has faster speed, but the fire axe stops them dead in their tracks. It can take down most everything short of a Skrake or Bloat in 1 hit!

1) Chainsaw, while highly useful, is very bad for solo. You WILL notice the reduced move speed that the 8 slots takes when trying to run. I find a machette is very good in both damage and keeping my slots down. That is all you will need, the rest of your money is devoted to armour, grenades and 9mm ammo.

The chainsaw is slow, as you said, but is amazing for holding doors. Worth the cost if you know you'll need to hold a hallway or doorway. A medic healing you while you slice away is a chainsawing brick wall...

5) Keep crawlers away and avoid sirens. Shoot crawlers away if you are not experienced at taking them down mid-flight. You will have a VERY tough time running from crawlers constantly trying to leap at you as it is faster than their run speed.

Yes. Completely true. Crawlers are our biggest threat because even if you cut one down in mid-jump, you WILL take damage. If you fight one melee, period, you will take damage. Best to back off and shoot them. Sirens are nightmares. If you don't have the jump on one, back off and shoot or just run for help.

8.) FleshPounders. There are two ways to approach this guy - Melee and ranged. Using the ranged method, slowly piss him off with your 9mm then run away with the knife, make sure you are a fair distance away from him and you will outrun his moment of being pissed off. Using melee, go for the head and let him tap you for 5-10 damage every now and then, heal when your around 75hp. This will stop him most of the time from going berserker on your *** as whenever he deals damage it resets his level of being pissed off.

This'll get you killed...don't melee one, period. Whittle it's HP down. If a Fleshpound takes more than a certain amount of damage in a 5 second period, it goes berserk. As the last poster said, the handcannon is great for this. 3 shots, wait around 5 seconds, 3 more shots, repeat until he dies, never going berserk. If you berserk him, you CANNOT outrun him and he will hit you for HUGE damage. Unless you're playing on Beginner, you CANNOT take a Fleshpound in hand-to-hand whatsoever...

 

[razerpro]

This'll get you killed...don't melee one, period. Whittle it's HP down. If a Fleshpound takes more than a certain amount of damage in a 5 second period, it goes berserk. As the last poster said, the handcannon is great for this. 3 shots, wait around 5 seconds, 3 more shots, repeat until he dies, never going berserk. If you berserk him, you CANNOT outrun him and he will hit you for HUGE damage. Unless you're playing on Beginner, you CANNOT take a Fleshpound in hand-to-hand whatsoever...[/quote]


You can easily out run it, I've been a zerker and shot gunned one to the face twice to piss it of switched to knife and ran like hell and escaped them.

 

[Aev]

You can easily out run it, I've been a zerker and shot gunned one to the face twice to piss it of switched to knife and ran like hell and escaped them.

Pretty sure you cant outrun one, they always seem to catch me with 100% health low weight and a knife and they attack while still running.

And the post above, it's possible to go toe-to-toe with a FP on normal, but nigh impossible on hard.

 

[Cato269]

I've meleed them in hard mode with a machete to piss them off and quickly swapped to knife and ran away. In most cases, as long as you are holding nothing else to slow you down, you will outlive his rage.

 

[Nanostrike]

You can't outrun one in rage, period. A zerker with only the knife out and all slots empty will still be outrun by quite a bit. The only way you can 'outrun' one in rage is to get him stuck on things, such as ducking behind a car or behind a bus, ect. He isn't smart when he's charging. But actually outrunning him out in the open? No way.

And yes, you CAN tank one with the chainsaw in normal if you have full health and armor, but IF you life, you'll barely be alive. Not an efficient use of your abilities to say the least!

 

[Cato269]

You can't outrun one in rage, period.

In most cases, as long as you are holding nothing else to slow you down, you will outlive his rage.

I never said you'd be able to outrun one.

The rage time I've found for the Fleshpound is variable. Sometimes it's quite short, other times it's quite long. If it's long, you won't outlive it. But you can certainly outlive his short-medium lengths.

 

[Aev]

And yes, you CAN tank one with the chainsaw in normal if you have full health and armor, but IF you life, you'll barely be alive. Not an efficient use of your abilities to say the least!

Agree with first part but using alt fire to the face I've had them not even hit once due to decapitation, and when they dont get their heads off they only hit once or twice and my armor is still intact

 

[Crusad3rMKII]

You can actually beat an FP in hand to hand, even with knife, but you have to be really cautious: few not-so-fast stabs without getting too near and, after some time, you'll take them down without making them go rage. It's pretty good on maps like Farm or Manor but quite hard to do with huge mobs of other specimens (expecially in narrow places like Offices and BioticLabs).

Moreover, if one go rage you cannot be reached if you are quite far away and use obstacles to slow him... he'll usually calm down after some seconds.

P.S.: if a Berserker is meleeing an FP (expecially in maps like the ones above) do NOT shoot the beast: you'll just ruin all the work the 'Zerker has been doing with patience and possibly make the FP kill him. Happened to me once...

 

[Colt .45 killer]

medic makes a very good melee class and anti FP class because of your faster run, medic level 3 with knife can outrun a FP he will still get a small tap on you if you started very close to him, but otherwise you will out run him.

and yes, 3 deagle shots, ~3 rifle shots, not sure how many crossbow shots. (ive sometimes shot one with a Cbow and pissed him off in one shot)

 

[Stryker159]

i tell the pugs i'm with to let the FP target me, then they can go all out. i rarely get hit by them. go go medic speed

 

[Zelaxe]

It is actually possible to kill a FP on normal with a chainsaw without taking to much damage. First, you piss it off, and when it gets close it always bows it head forward, making it possible to cut it off quickly enough, and then it just walks around like an idiot.