Why The Zerker nerf was justified.

[Oldih]

If they add stamina system, it would have to apply for everyone. Fire a weapon -> drain stamina, keep firing continously -> drain stamina even more, run for long periods of time -> low on stamina and speed penalty, have more **** carried -> more stamina drain, something vaguely similiar found in RO if we're to sum it up in a simpler way.

But let me guess, that would be unfair for the other perks? We all know that katana was slightly retarded in terms of how 'powerful' it was to use before level up, but back when they modified the perks in early July they didn't cripple support's legs off, only kicked him in the crotch and made it more reasonable among other perks. No-one didn't really have issue with that but now that one of the perks suffers from economic crisis aswell due chocolate katana and marshmellow chainsaw, it's fine?

 

[Marls]

Why Berserkers were overpowered and why the nerf was justified:

• You only needed to carry a single weapon (besides the 9mm) and only needed to click repeatedly to do damage
• You did not need to reload a melee weapon
• You therefore did not need someone to cover you while you reloaded your melee weapon
• Your melee weapon therefore did not have ammo, a resource that other classes managed efficiently
• Your ability to level the perk was extremely easy
• Your ability to head-shot zombies at point blank range was not skillful
• You barely needed to 'aim', especially at a head/body that takes 1/4 - 1/2 of your screen
• Your strategy and skill required to be an effective berserker was lower than that of other perks
• You were often found standing in a doorway hacking repeatedly while killing everything in sight
• Your doorway camping technique minimized the total DPS of your group because YOU WERE IN THE WAY!!!
• You often did not give out the money you have accumulated for killing most of a wave
• Your teammates therefore were often ill equipped for handling higher level waves, because of your actions
• You needed to be healed more than any of your team mates
• You often ran when an encounter you cannot solo emerges, leaving your team mates surprised and unprepared
• Your ability to stun and solo high level Zeds was unfair and imbalanced
• You were generally speaking, annoying
• You were the reason the rest of your team died
• You were therefore your own reason why you died

Yes I am aware that there were some 'good' berserkers out there who actually understood the implications of the perk and how it hampers the rest of the team's performance. They were usually the ones handing out cash at the end of a wave as well. Kudos to you. However, as the perk was admittedly quite easy to play, it attracted a lot of bad players and therefore a lot of resentment towards their counter-productive actions.

Personally I think the nerf was fair. To me, the Berserker should be about a hard hitting melee perk that is only effective after a few hits/seconds. After a few seconds of 'rest' (or chainsaw re-windup) you should be able to do it again. Swinging a katana for 15 mins straight is unrealistic, and although this is a game, it should still be balanced to some extent.

As Beserker and Commando are my favourit two class's I play. I consider myself very good at both of them (they both went level 6 on patch release). You do however exagerate a few points, but you also have a few good solid points there.

As for the nerf, the katana was slightly dissapointing, but nothing really worth complaining over. Just really have to learn to adapt. Mainly reduction in damage I've noticed as well to the chainsaw. Katana was my primary weapon and I still intend to use it playing the role as a Beserker. I just have to maintain a finese style of attacking.

The major uncalled for nerf was the chainsaw. Its practicly useless now.

If you dacap a clot or gorefest, it stands around swinging its blade at you cutting down your armor. Just to think if you just decapped 3 gorefests and the whole 3 of them stand around swinging at you. Its a pain in the *** cause you cant move forward and loss of precious armor. I use to switich to chainsaw sometimes if I felt like it, plus I was more efficent decaping a fleshy with it and its more defensive attributes. But from now on I will be telling the newbies, or anyone asking what to use as a berserker to ditch the chainsaw and take the katana. Chainsaw no longer has a place in the Bersekers arsenal. Katana/axe or nothing. I sell my chainsaw imediately for a katana now at the end of wave 1. Unless Tripwire makes the beserkers chainsaw a decap instant kill, its not worth having. Unless you want to use its slash attack, but your better of having the katana for that.

I also never held down my primary katana attack, I always clicked when I wanted to swing, so the change tripwire did there doesnt bother me at all.

 

[Pseudointellectual]

Playing as a newbie I haven't found clicking to swing the katana to be a big deal. As a berzerker I don't tank so much as do hit and run attacks, ducking in and out and taking swings unless the zeds attention is elsewhere. Like everyone else has said, though, I haven't found a reason to pick chainsaw over katana. I used to snag it because I hadn't read the forums yet and for the cool factor, but as soon as I switched to katana things got easier.

 

[Pvt. Twinkle-Toes]

i didnt realise the katana had a damage nerf. The berserker needs a real tier 3 weapon, like a sledgehammer or something, because having two weapons the exact same price, but one far more effective than the other, is just silly, unless they beef up the chainsaw and price tag for it.

 

[Evilsod]

I also never held down my primary katana attack, I always clicked when I wanted to swing, so the change tripwire did there doesnt bother me at all.

Sorry but i don't believe that for an instant. Whether you realised you were doing it or not, you WILL have held down the fire button at times when multiple things nearby needed to die. Now doing that through force of habit (and because the Knife uses those mechanics) gets you killed for no good reason.

 

[Skunkee]

This is a difficult one. I totally agree with the OP on this. The spam slashing door hugging zerkers do my head in epsecially when they are hunting in 2 man packs. I can see exactly where the OP is coming from. It's even worse if they charge on in bunny hopping and making it impossible for us to hit stuff without team killing him which then just causes a World of Emo resulting in a ban for them.

Equally I've played with really good zerkers I didn't even realise were zerkers because they dug in with the lads with a gun and only whipped out the sword when we got a big guy on top of us or we we getting overrun. It's the latter I have some sympathy for.

I'm not a zerker so I leave it to profesional zerkers to decide whether the nerf is too much. Clearly there's a lot of passionate views on this. But spam slashing door hugging is totally unacceptable and really had to be dealt with one way or the other.

You're an alright person on these boards, but I can't take your opinion seriously in this topic because you only play friendly fire. I've played on your server before and the usual situation there is "find a good camp spot and form a line like the redcoat army" while playing commando, sharpshooter, and maybe a few support specialists. Friendly fire is fun and all but it totally negates the effectiveness of Berserker and Firebug due to the perk mechanics and overall ease of killing your teammates/getting killed by your teammates.

 

[kingkong]

^^ha, colonial style firing squads ftw. they play their game, we play ours.

the nerfs were completely uncalled for imo. and by completely, I mean a totally unecessary fan service that made absolutely no contribution to the game. don't get me wrong I see what they were trying to do, there was just no need for it, to me it just lowers survivability for the entire team. people relied on them when the going got rough, but were so quick to complain about everything else. the update was basically a "so long, we got bigger guns now" goodbye to our berserker.

I'll give credit to the guys who realise what this has done to the good zerks out there, we gotta pay for the killwhores and all the crying as a result of it. and as for our beloved chainsaw, it is my belief that this is just broken, and not working as intended. does not seem like a deliberate change to me since it makes no sense for such a huge reduction in effectiveness.

and holy crap am I on steam? never thought I'd see a "why my half-baked-but-well-explained opinion totally matters" thread here.

 

[SgtStress]

You're an alright person on these boards, but I can't take your opinion seriously in this topic because you only play friendly fire. I've played on your server before and the usual situation there is "find a good camp spot and form a line like the redcoat army" while playing commando, sharpshooter, and maybe a few support specialists. Friendly fire is fun and all but it totally negates the effectiveness of Berserker and Firebug due to the perk mechanics and overall ease of killing your teammates/getting killed by your teammates.

Dont bring firebug into this. I play firebug all the time on our server. There is no problem of burning your team mates to death unless your a tool with no ability to aim

There is a hell of a lot more moving about than you suggest with your redcoat army thing Hard mode + FF means you CANNOT simply camp one spot forever. On normal mode yes, you dont need to move, hard mode and its suicide to stay put.

Beserker doesnt really have much of a role on a FF server though, thats for sure. But i prefer this as i really just cannot stand the zerg mentality of non FF servers - no one bothers about aim or place themselves tactically - because there is just no need to. Close eyes, spray ammo everywhere safe in the knowledge you can only do good for your team. Reall not a fan of the whole zerker tanking thing either. It just seems far far too dumbed down to have superperson block specimens from the team whilst the team magically managed to shoot straight through the tank. Just dont get the appeal of it being so easy.

And before anyone says it no im not claiming im imba at KF - quite the opposite. I just like a challenge however.

 

[Uk1t4k3]

Seriously how could TWI nerf chainsaw dps as if u are using a broken chainsaw that cant even cut down a clot normally. I really hope TWI could bring back the old chainsaw with new penalty like requiring fuel to run or needing replacement for the chain.

 

[Pornhorse]

i didnt realise the katana had a damage nerf. The berserker needs a real tier 3 weapon, like a sledgehammer or something, because having two weapons the exact same price, but one far more effective than the other, is just silly, unless they beef up the chainsaw and price tag for it.

lvl 6 berzerker spawns with this.

 

[Skunkee]

Dont bring firebug into this. I play firebug all the time on our server. There is no problem of burning your team mates to death unless your a tool with no ability to aim

There is a hell of a lot more moving about than you suggest with your redcoat army thing Hard mode + FF means you CANNOT simply camp one spot forever. On normal mode yes, you dont need to move, hard mode and its suicide to stay put.

Beserker doesnt really have much of a role on a FF server though, thats for sure. But i prefer this as i really just cannot stand the zerg mentality of non FF servers - no one bothers about aim or place themselves tactically - because there is just no need to. Close eyes, spray ammo everywhere safe in the knowledge you can only do good for your team. Reall not a fan of the whole zerker tanking thing either. It just seems far far too dumbed down to have superperson block specimens from the team whilst the team magically managed to shoot straight through the tank. Just dont get the appeal of it being so easy.

And before anyone says it no im not claiming im imba at KF - quite the opposite. I just like a challenge however.

I'm all for friendly fire and all that, but if it's all you guys play then your concerns about berserker will be far different from the vast majority of players that play the perk. I'm willing to bet that friendly fire advocates make up less than 3% of the players of this game.

I made a thread over on Ideas and Suggestions that will hopefully shine some light on what can be done to make Berserker more interesting/useful:

[url]http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=37681[/URL]

 

[Marls]

Sorry but i don't believe that for an instant. Whether you realised you were doing it or not, you WILL have held down the fire button at times when multiple things nearby needed to die. Now doing that through force of habit (and because the Knife uses those mechanics) gets you killed for no good reason.

Heh, well its not like I going to convince you but. Have you played a game called Mount & Blade ? probably not so you wont understand. That is why the single click change doesnt bother me at all, cause I never used to hold it down. I also use the katanas secondary attack alot. Especially when I charging into my enemies I make it my opening move. Even if its just a clot. But not like I want you to beleive me cause it wont matter. I will tell other Berserkers to use it more in this recent update for sure.

But I will admit, I held down the chainsaws primary attack all the time. If thats what you want to hear, well ima guilty as charged, you got me there.