SoE's treatment of Zerkers

[neight]

Yeah there wasn't anything before 59 for purity and wasn't spiritual str originally a mini-focus?  I keep seeing the .dat for it in my head, but it's just been so long I'm not sure.  I seem to remember it being changed over to the hp/atk buff it is now and the line going in, but I'm just not sure like I said.

You're right. I didn't remember this, so I had to go check it out for myself. :) Relevant information from Spell History for Spiritual Strength:

[code:1]09-04 11:33    Changed Mana cost from 425 to 150
09-04 11:33    Changed Slot 4 from "Increase STR by 67" to "Increase Max Hitpoints by 150"
09-04 11:33    Removed Slot 3: Increase DEX by 50
09-04 11:33    Changed Slot 2 from "Increase HP when cast by 250" to "Stacking1 v1 1: 150"
09-04 11:33    Changed Slot 1 from "Increase Max Hitpoints by 250" to "Increase ATK by 18"[/code:1]

So it used to add more hp plus strength and dex, minus atk, but cost a hell of a lot more. Interesting.

Neight

[Shambler]

Adding classes when class balance is already messed up is something that SOE likes to do.. simply to sell more expansions. Adding more classes usualy breaks the vision even more.. We used to have 3 of everything for each primary skill.

Berzerkers and Beastlords...
Beastlords realy gummed up the balance works because they were created from the changes their "parent classes" wanted for balance :). It is not the beasts class fault obviously, but more the fact that SOE has screwed shaman and monks relatively speaking. Monk mitigation super nerfed.. almost gone.. and thanks to a cleric monopoly on being able to keep an experience group alive shaman are not allowed to bring anything to the table except a marginaly better slow and realy gimp healing. :)

Berzerkers on the other hand have not made many waves yet.. . but hopefully they can find a more unique roll, that wont trample on the existing classes. The best fix would probably figure out how to do the openings system in a way people like. Openings that lower the avarage damage each hit a mob delivers would be nice.. I mean lower the average a lot more than cripple spells (/snicker). Openings that make the monster considerabely easier to land hits on. or anthing else that makes sense.

I think there is more room in this game for crowd control classes. The enchanter and the Bard are the only ones I know of that realy do that job and bards seem to be rare.. probably due to carple tunel syndrome.

The game needs more capable healers (not just the cleric with their practicaly guaranteed spot in every single group)

[TerjynPovar]

Balance is a mythical concept, and thus if you want to claim balance before adding something new, you have effectively shut down your future development.  Beastlords have nothing to do with Shaman or Monk "issues".

[Bengali]

Monk mitigation super nerfed.. almost gone.. and thanks to a cleric monopoly on being able to keep an experience group alive shaman are not allowed to bring anything to the table except a marginaly better slow and realy gimp healing. :)

Don't really see how beastords were created from the changes that their "parents" wanted.  It's not like beastlords got the mitigation that monks wanted or the extra healing/utility that shamans wanted.   Everything we got from them was less than or equal to what they got.

By the way, a "marginally" better slow makes a significant difference in damage output.   Slow uses a formula similar to haste, which is:

slowed delay = unslowed delay/(1-slow percentage)

Using a base delay of 10 for a mob, it breaks down like this:

Shamans = 10/ (1-0.75) = 40.  Mob is FOUR times as slow as before.
Chanters = 10/(1-0.70) = 33.  Mob is a little more than THREE times as slow as before.
Bsts = 10/(1-0.65) = 28.  Mob is a little LESS than THREE times as slow as before.

Numbers are truncated based on info that EQ truncates numbers instead of rounding.

The difference between a shaman and beastlord slow is the difference between a 28 delay and 40.  A mob slowed by a beastlord will do 30% more damage than one slowed by a shaman.  That's not marginal at all.

I mention this because a lot of people seem to assume that the difference in MOB DAMAGE between the slows is 10%, and that's not quite right.

[Hrann]

Also, the old pet procs did MUCH less damage.

[Tastian]

Yeah they totally changed the pets and pet procs.  This was way back with the old warder needs hth and didn't double attack?  God so long ago.  Glad to see I was right about the mini-focus lol.  Sometimes I just think I'm losing my mind and other times I know I've already lost it lol.

"Adding classes when class balance is already messed up is something that SOE likes to do.."

Class "balance" doesn't exist.  Class "Definition" is what they are going for now.  They've been working on defining what a class is and is supposed to do and then building them around that.  I'm really anxious to see what some of the class definitions are and a bit worried too.  8P

If berserkers could give overhaste, could reliably lock down 1 or maybe even 2 mobs, kept their snare/stun, and gave group end regen I'd find them useful in a lot of spots.  An almost pure dps class though just wasn't what the game needed imo.  There was room for another mez capable class, was a completely lack of an end regen capable class and only a single class with overhaste.  *shrugs* will have to see where zerkers are in 6 months or so.

[Shambler]

Eh, Shaman used to want to be more melle capable themselves :) This whining about healing is more recent (starting in PoP). Beastlords were made from a lot of ideas and sugestions for changes to other classes (mostly shams ehe).

I have never seen slows calculated like that...
Shaman slow is 10% better than beasts but only 5% better than enchanters. Compare that to the desparity in healing classes get.  Thanks to a new trend called mitigation, the difference between slows is nill. The shamy problem with this right now is they/my shaman, bring almost nothing else to a group these days. Everyone will always take my beast over my shaman :), which is sad to me.

Adding more classes just makes balance more difficult IMO, but it definetly sells more expansions so I expect they will continue the trend. I don't want to see more classes that do the exact same things. They need to find a way to give them some uniqueness and stop farming things out to all classes.

[Jkal_Shihar]

I play a zerker alt and just recently got him to 51. Mainly a group of us wanted to do what that one guild is doing and take on old world stuff but with twink gear hehehe.
But, I know most of there problems have been stemming from 60+. Really pre 60 a zerker is a warrior that wears chain and has knight hpts. But being limited to 2handers when asked to MT for a group. I can do it but out of endurance pretty fast to hold aggro.
In that they have a snare and stun axe which does great at aggro but hard to hold if you dont constantly use em.
Then theres the war cry's. Since a nice monk blantly told me not use that disc ever again till it got fixed (apparently he was following stuff on the class) I dont even bother now.
I guess I'm drawn to broken or red headed step child classes though. Still have my ranger, rogue, monk, Jkal is and will always be my main, and a zerker.
But on the brighter side I miss'd when Tigger would say 'Ding' when I buffed him.

[Ukator Iceblood]

If berserkers could give overhaste, could reliably lock down 1 or maybe even 2 mobs, kept their snare/stun, and gave group end regen I'd find them useful in a lot of spots. An almost pure dps class though just wasn't what the game needed imo. There was room for another mez capable class, was a completely lack of an end regen capable class and only a single class with overhaste. *shrugs* will have to see where zerkers are in 6 months or so.

A few of these things are almost able to be done now. They can keep mobs snared/stunned hower it costs an axe everytime they do it, adds up the cost of playing the class. They tank decently, better than us for sure, think  high end they are on knight hp level.

The overhaste should be fixed when they fix Warcrys. This is could be their SD/Para type of feature. Warcry now doesn't work for a few reasons... blocks other class aa (SF), takes a ton of end, is on a long reuse, and just doesn't due too much. A few zerkers have wrote to SoE about putting it into the bard box, not having it block others aa, and just letting it do something.

[Goretzu]

I play a zerker alt and just recently got him to 51. Mainly a group of us wanted to do what that one guild is doing and take on old world stuff but with twink gear hehehe.
But, I know most of there problems have been stemming from 60+. Really pre 60 a zerker is a warrior that wears chain and has knight hpts. But being limited to 2handers when asked to MT for a group. I can do it but out of endurance pretty fast to hold aggro.

I think that's why people don't notice so much the lower level Berserker issues, they are there, but the high twinkage of many Bersekers and the relative easy of they earlier levels (relatively) tends to mask it a bit.

But really many of the later issues are there almost from the start.

[Jkal_Shihar]

Your pretty much right Gore. Being below the 60+ crowd of zerkers I really never noticed any of the problems that they are mentioning.
I do remember all the tears and trials and what not we went through with the bstlords. Might be another reason why I made a zerker. To go through again I guess but as an alt.  :D

[Bengali]

I have never seen slows calculated like that...
Shaman slow is 10% better than beasts but only 5% better than enchanters. Compare that to the desparity in healing classes get.  Thanks to a new trend called mitigation, the difference between slows is nill. The shamy problem with this right now is they/my shaman, bring almost nothing else to a group these days. Everyone will always take my beast over my shaman :), which is sad to me.

I got the slow formula from this  thread.  I don't know the exact effects of mitigtion except that Absor or someone said a long time ago that mitgation worked such that it would still be better to have a shaman slow over another class slow, even if the mob mitigates.

[feralize]

I also play a zerker alt but I don't agree that they're "broken" per se, they're just incomplete. I don't have a problem with them making zerkers another chain class either. We only had 3 chain classes before zerkers which was the least amount other than leather classes.

There's not really a great deal of variety in what they do, although insta-cast stun, snare and jolt are pretty damn nice. I believe they also lowered the resists on the snares so for groups who specifically require a snarer beserkers are a good choice. The cost of components is trivial: a stack of blunt axe's will convert into 400 axes (20 x 20). 5 stacks and you've got 2000 axes at the cost of a few pp. You might as well buy these lower level regeants as the higher level snares which require more expensive components appear to operate in exactly the same way as the lower level ones. This is something else they need to correct like extending the duration or further lowering the resists.

If they enhance Frenzy (think a triple-attack version of Kick) so that it scales up in damage better, they add decent AA's and give them more skills based on crowd control i.e. giving them a mez skill and/or a decent duration overhaste skill then berserkers will be welcome into most groups. Their dps right now is not bad at all. It won't take too many changes to make them desirable.

I really do feel for those 65 zerkers who've got nothing right now to spend their aa points on. That is unacceptable.

I do enjoy playing my zerker though and I'm really looking forward to the planned improvements. Then we might see them becoming the twink class of choice much like beastlords are nowadays. Hopefully it won't be that bad  :twisted:

[RabidMonkey]

Found this site while looking around.
http://p214.ezboard.com/bthebalancingchamber

Is a site dedicated to class balance.

[RabidMonkey]

heheh looking about on this issue, found something even better, some guys actually going to make a lawsuit against sony lol, here's a cut and paste of his initial post.

Welcome all berserkers.

I am warhound a 65 bers on mordin rasp. I was first on my server to 65 and first to be EP and time flagged. and 3rd to be GoD flagged. As you can see i have put in many many hours playing my bers from scratch and i am now no longer silent. I to am fed up with the non responsive Sony Ent. They sold a product that was incomplete, and thru customer service and many discussions was told that the fix was comming. Sounds like sony took a page from microsoft here and look what happened to them. I at this time have consulted a legal rep, of a firm in my home town wich is located in California. I wish to start a class action lawsuite against sony and other affiliates of the game EverQuest. I need as many people as possible to fill the requirment against sony INC. Please if you feel like many of us do email me at [email protected]. I think its time we spoke up and turned the gamming world around so they see that they cant put out poor products incomplete and then ignore their customers. I will refrain from refering them to other names other then sony ENT or Sony INC. as we dont need any other problems. we pay to play and pay for expasions that are by far incomplete. would you be happy to buy a car with AC and then told we will add it next month or 6 months later? Would you buy a TV and then find out it doesnt have a way to change channles and they will fix that as soon as they get to it. Yet they still work on the next styles of TV to come out next?? NO well me either. People get sewed for that. and so should they. Please email me and lets send a message to all the gamming communities that we wont be ripped off for faulty products anymore.

Thankyou
Shawn Clines

Here is a link to the thread,

http://www.goberserker.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=1658

hehe funny stuff, GL to him ;p