I mean, if you take away the squishiness is actually the easiest
This isnât true at all. Berserker is one of the more difficult classes to play, execution wise, in harder content.
Thereâs no homework to play it like arcana (which is otherwise easy) and itâs not an rts silver league apm req like the âhigh apmâ classes. Anyone can learn what you need to do on zerker ability wise in two sentences: Use Red Dust then chain it with strike wave/finish strike and anything thatâs not chain sword/shoulder charge thatâs off cd. Spam chain sword followed by 1-2 abilities as filler in between red dusts.
Thereâs more complexity than that due to positioning, priority in various encounters, and how high skill cap your abilities are due to the inherent mobility and staggered cooldowns. The rotation doesnât come off cd cleanly so you need a bit deeper understanding there as well vs something like a blue gunlancer where itâs brain-off always mash these 3-5 abilities together.
The real difficulty is in landing your damage. And then once you land it⌠you do some amount less dps anyway than the high tier classes right now. And you wonât really land them all in real fights, so youâre at an even larger disadvantage vs classes that can trivially do that with 1/2 the skill and 1/100th the gamble. Thatâs why KR zerkers are complaining.
Strike Wave has a reasonably long windup and then slowly moves and needs to hit all of its hits. It is your highest damage ability by far if it hits. If the boss is moving, if you didnât position correctly distance wise before using it, etc, then it wonât do full damage. And you canât control for that â if you hold it until a long pattern you lose too much damage. Instead, you need to gamble on what the 2nd pattern will be & also already be prepositioned to not be hit by the first pattern you see starting.
Strike Wave alone has a higher skill cap than half the classes in the game, and if you time red dust wrong, get interrupted during red dust cast, get interrupted or have to cancel strike wave cast, you lose 1/3 your damage for the next 20s+. Over 50% if your red dust window is wasted along with strike wave, and you simply canât control for it because itâs not like timing an awakening (eg, if you give up uptime youâre falling farther and farther behind other classes).
Zerker has a number of abilities like this that are even less rewarding than Strike Wave. Strike Wave/Finish Strike are both fine as-is because they have stellar risk:reward. Itâs the rest of the kit that throws some question marks.
I suspect a balance patch will buff or qol Hell Blade & buff Tempest Slashâs damage. Maybe Dark Rush will get adjusted in some way, although it doesnât have to be, because right now the only time you use it is when everything else is on cd, for a stagger check, or because you want the super armor for some reason.
I donât get why people talk about squishiness, yes mayhem zerker is one of the top 3 lowest ehp classes (including damage reduction). Who cares, they can do all current content fine on ilvl w/o supp and donât have low enough ehp to complain about it. In exchange, they get practically capped move speed with yearning from supp & a decent space (although longer cd than some other classes) & a gap closer that doesnât function well as an out & a gap closer thatâs a damage ability.
Ehp shouldnât impact damage output. Anyone who thinks harder to play or squishier = more damage has a broken thought process. Certainly you expect to get non-damage perks in exchange for ehp, and mayhem delivers well enough here already.
There is a big balancing question though: how do you balance classes that canât reliably hit all their abilities with high uptime in the encounters youâve designed vs those that do? If you balance them for âaverageâ hits or stalling for good windows then a really high skill player or a lucky run will have that class completely crushing & their numbers will be insane in trixion (pre-nerf mayhem). If you balance them around that 100% run then they will under perform a significant portion of the time and feel bad to play vs classes that can execute more consistently.
I donât really know the solution there. Iâm mostly enjoying Mayhem as-is, and while I hope for qol or some 5%-10% buffs to hell blade/tempest slash, I also donât care if mayhem gets 0 buffs.
