Berserker: Rage Skill Suggestions

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Something in PvE that warriors gripe about is the fact that the Bannerslave Berserker and non BS Berserker are not much different in benchmarks. Part of this is Anet being afraid of giving warrior on the whole utilities that are actually useful beyond a few staples.

So I though of something that would help.

 

First: rework King of Fires by merging Last Blaze into it

King of Fires: 
Increase the duration of burning you apply. Gain fire aura when you critically hit an enemy. Berserker skills detonate fire aura, damaging and burning nearby foes. Berserker skills also inflict burning on nearby enemies.

 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/6/6a/Damage.png/20px-Damage.png Damage: 117 (0.44)^?

 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/4/45/Burning.png/20px-Burning.png₃ Burning (3s): 1,179 Damage

 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/c/ce/Fire_Aura.png/20px-Fire_Aura.png Fire Aura (5s): Enveloped in a fiery shield that burns foes, grants might each time you are struck (1-second cooldown per attacker).

 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/8/8b/Duration.png/20px-Duration.png Duration Increase: 33%

 

 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/a/a4/Radius.png/20px-Radius.png Radius: 240

 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/4/45/Burning.png/20px-Burning.png Burning (4s): 524 Damage

 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/5/53/Number_of_targets.png/20px-Number_of_targets.png Number of Targets: 5

 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/a/a4/Radius.png/20px-Radius.png Burn Radius: 300

 

Last Blaze becomes Mighty Rage
Mighty Rage: Using a Rage skill causes your attacks to deal more damage. Grants a buff that increases all damage dealt (condi and strike) by 20%/15% (PvE/Comp) for 8s after using a rage skill. 

What this does is let a Berserker time their Rage skills to maintain this effect thus boosting their damage, which is the spec's entire purpose and raises it's damage in such a way as to make it desirable to bring as a DPS slot even without the banners.

Iffy on the numbers for competitive play, but things can always be toned down. It would at least give the Berserker some increased damage for when they are out of Berserk Mode.

[anbujackson.9564]

2 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Something in PvE that warriors gripe about is the fact that the Bannerslave Berserker and non BS Berserker are not much different in benchmarks. Part of this is Anet being afraid of giving warrior on the whole utilities that are actually useful beyond a few staples.

So I though of something that would help.

 

Last Blaze becomes Mighty Rage
Mighty Rage: Using a Rage skill causes your attacks to deal more damage. Grants a buff that increases all damage dealt (condi and strike) by 20%/15% (PvE/Comp) for 8s after using a rage skill. 
 

Thats a lot of damage with a potential high uptime. Too much for an Adept tier trait. Cut the numbers in half and the duration to max 5 seconds. Stackable to an overall duration of 10 seconds. Or just switch it with king of fire Spot lol.

 

King of fire could really use a small buff though since its tied to detonating to be somewhat useful. Maybe just get rid of that and give it pulsing burning?

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

3 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Thats a lot of damage with a potential high uptime. Too much for an Adept tier trait. Cut the numbers in half and the duration to max 5 seconds. Stackable to an overall duration of 10 seconds. Or just switch it with king of fire Spot lol.

If that is the case then I'd stack it in intensity at 5% a stack for 10s durations, and have all stacks refresh their durations when a new stack is applied like the EoD specs do, max 4 stacks.

3 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

King of fire could really use a small buff though since its tied to detonating to be somewhat useful. Maybe just get rid of that and give it pulsing burning?

Kind of did that by merging Last Blaze into it and make the burn apply off of all berserker skills not just rage skills.

[DKRathalos.9625]

Hmmm I am actually thinking what if we just give outrage a big damage if we use it to breakstun? or maybe small damage when not breaking stun but when breaking stun it will deal big damage. By I mean big is not something OP but should be something significant.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

3 hours ago, DKRathalos.9625 said:

Hmmm I am actually thinking what if we just give outrage a big damage if we use it to breakstun? or maybe small damage when not breaking stun but when breaking stun it will deal big damage. By I mean big is not something OP but should be something significant.

Besides what KoF does with detonating the Fire Auras?

The whole purpose of Outrage was to be a super short stunbreak to help keep Berserk Mode up, but then they nerfed it's CD.

TBH, I see no reason not to add to it's effects. 300 range PBAoE, 500 tooltip damage and 2 stack of burn for 4s, both doubled if a stun is broken with the burn stacks doubled.

 

Damage and burn stack baseline numbers doubled for PvE.

Edited January 11, 2022 by Lan Deathrider.5910

[DKRathalos.9625]

6 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Besides what KoF does with detonating the Fire Auras?

The whole purpose of Outrage was to be a super short stunbreak to help keep Berserk Mode up, but then they nerfed it's CD.

TBH, I see no reason not to add to it's effects. 300 range PBAoE, 500 tooltip damage and 2 stack of burn for 4s, both doubled if a stun is broken with the burn stacks doubled.

 

Damage and burn stack baseline numbers doubled for PvE.

Yes beside KoF, because the KoF help for condi but I mean about helping the power as in the outrage didn't help for power at all, so by default it should dealt some strike damage which maybe add little to condi since not much precision and ferocity but will help power more as it will improve alongside the stat. If traited with KoF then the burning + detonation fire aura added
 

I agree maybe the original purpose is that but come on really? just break stun add 5 secs berserk without anything else? it should give something more, like whatever offensive or defensive, add something to this poor skill. Plus by default even if this is on short cooldown it's not spammable if you want to maximize the potential aka headbutt and outrage on PvE. On competitive sadly not very useful because other stunbreak which has extra utility is better, oh well not like anyone use berserker for competitive anyway.

[artharon.9276]

I don't have any issues with the numbers you suggested,

 

Let me ask some questions, mean no disrespect I really appreciate posts like this.  Anyway, before anything else don't you think they should fix the role distrubition among the classes first? is it ok for a class tank support heal while dealing equal and more damage than a dps only class? if you see this as an issue like me, do you think giving more damage to warrior at this point would adress anyting? 

[Geoff Fey.1035]

King of Fires you could easily fix by reducing or entirely removing the cooldown.

Having no cooldown might be too overkill, as within a 40-second period, a Berserker with all Rage Skills + Torch could detonate 15 times. Although, considering Firebrands being able to permanently use Justice around mobs (refresh upon kill) that wouldn't be unreasonable to give Warriors the ability to keep pace.

Having a 4s cooldown might be the sweet spot; just making it so that if you don't detonate it you'll be able to get the Fire Aura back without breaking up your flow.

I honestly don't know why the cooldown of 15s is on King of Fires for gaining an Aura anyways. It's wholly dependant on having crit chance (Viper's, Celestial, etc.) and the primary purpose (detonation) is wholly dependent on Berserker skills. Most Warrior main-hand weapons don't have much in the way of utility anyways (barring Mace) so if you use all your Utility skills you're practically a sitting duck, so that should be the cost/benefit of the trait where you're balancing out your skill usage.

I currently run Mace/Shield & Sword/Torch with a King of Fires build that focuses on detonation. If you're smart about skill usage (and the Fire Aura from trait is off cooldown) you can get 3-4 detonations off within an 8 second period and then you're hooped for the next 7 seconds. Not horrible, but honestly the ease with which Firebrands, Elementalists, and Engineers can load burning onto a target for less effort is obscene compared to the "supposed" King.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

28 minutes ago, artharon.9276 said:

I don't have any issues with the numbers you suggested,

 

Let me ask some questions, mean no disrespect I really appreciate posts like this.  Anyway, before anything else don't you think they should fix the role distrubition among the classes first? is it ok for a class tank support heal while dealing equal and more damage than a dps only class? if you see this as an issue like me, do you think giving more damage to warrior at this point would adress anyting? 

It is a valid question, to which the answer is that Berserker is a lightly armored (remember the -300 toughness?) dps spec. The problem here is that there is very little difference in running it with or without banners. My proposed solution is to create an incentive to taking rage skills in order to increase DPS in or outside of Berserk Mode.

That way there is a more clearly defined separation between the Banner builds and the DPS builds.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

13 minutes ago, Geoff Fey.1035 said:

King of Fires you could easily fix by reducing or entirely removing the cooldown.

Having no cooldown might be too overkill, as within a 40-second period, a Berserker with all Rage Skills + Torch could detonate 15 times. Although, considering Firebrands being able to permanently use Justice around mobs (refresh upon kill) that wouldn't be unreasonable to give Warriors the ability to keep pace.

This is part of why I stopped even trying to proposed balanced solutions. Other professions get cheese like what you just mentioned, and I'd prefer to have something similar. I don't think that your idea would be out of place at all considering what is available elsewhere on other professions.

13 minutes ago, Geoff Fey.1035 said:

Having a 4s cooldown might be the sweet spot; just making it so that if you don't detonate it you'll be able to get the Fire Aura back without breaking up your flow.

I honestly don't know why the cooldown of 15s is on King of Fires for gaining an Aura anyways. It's wholly dependant on having crit chance (Viper's, Celestial, etc.) and the primary purpose (detonation) is wholly dependent on Berserker skills. Most Warrior main-hand weapons don't have much in the way of utility anyways (barring Mace) so if you use all your Utility skills you're practically a sitting duck, so that should be the cost/benefit of the trait where you're balancing out your skill usage.

I know right? Part of why when I suggested the change to Brave Stride that the Devs ended up including was with no ICD. But I think in this case even a 1s ICD would be fine since then you couldn't mash Outrage and another skill at the same time for a double proc.

13 minutes ago, Geoff Fey.1035 said:

I currently run Mace/Shield & Sword/Torch with a King of Fires build that focuses on detonation. If you're smart about skill usage (and the Fire Aura from trait is off cooldown) you can get 3-4 detonations off within an 8 second period and then you're hooped for the next 7 seconds. Not horrible, but honestly the ease with which Firebrands, Elementalists, and Engineers can load burning onto a target for less effort is obscene compared to the "supposed" King.

I agree. Outside of Flaming Flurry or pin down within scorched earth it is hard to do in competitive play.

[Infusion.7149]

Eh just because Firebrand is broken doesn't mean it is okay to make something just as broken. Instead Firebrand shouldn't be used as a baseline and just toned down (i.e. imagine of Tome of Justice only reset on veteran+ mobs or if only the passive reset).

Your primary problem is in any scenario that condi berserker is run you don't really need a berserker because unlike with power comps which get +100 precision and +100 ferocity (6.67% crits) you only get +100 condition damage in a condi comp.

The last iteration of Bladesworn is slated to be pushing 39K DPS as full DPS with not much CC and ~36-37K as banner bladesworn. Therefore a condi berserker pushing ~37K cDPS with leaps and 34K+ cBS is not that bad.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Just now, Infusion.7149 said:

Eh just because Firebrand is broken doesn't mean it is okay to make something just as broken. Instead Firebrand shouldn't be used as a baseline and just toned down (i.e. imagine of Tome of Justice only reset on veteran+ mobs or if only the passive reset).

Your primary problem is in any scenario that condi berserker is run you don't really need a berserker because unlike with power comps which get +100 precision and +100 ferocity (6.67% crits) you only get +100 condition damage in a condi comp.

The last iteration of Bladesworn is slated to be pushing 39K DPS as full DPS with not much CC and ~36-37K as banner bladesworn. Therefore a condi berserker pushing ~37K cDPS with leaps and 34K+ cBS is not that bad.

I'm not disagreeing on Firebrand, but if it pass the post EoD balance unscathed I am going to treat it as baseline.

[Infusion.7149]

2 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

I'm not disagreeing on Firebrand, but if it pass the post EoD balance unscathed I am going to treat it as baseline.

The current iteration of King of Fires has a cooldown only for the fire aura on critical hit. There isn't a cooldown on the detonation which is why a leap finisher condi berserker puts out more damage.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

34 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

The current iteration of King of Fires has a cooldown only for the fire aura on critical hit. There isn't a cooldown on the detonation which is why a leap finisher condi berserker puts out more damage.

I am aware of that fact.

[Geoff Fey.1035]

41 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

The current iteration of King of Fires has a cooldown only for the fire aura on critical hit. There isn't a cooldown on the detonation which is why a leap finisher condi berserker puts out more damage

Yeah the issue isn't with the detonation it's with gaining the Fire Aura via leaps & crits. Berserkers have 2 leaps on weapons (Sword Mainhand, Shield Offhand) and 2 Utility skills (Bull Rush, Savage Leap) and if you take Bull Rush it reduces your ability to detonate Fire Aura, and with Shield you have no way of CREATING a Fire Field to get the Aura.

So you're looking at maybe 2-3 ways to generate Fire Aura beyond the critical chance on its 15s cooldown, and the leaps/fire field are on their own 15-20s cooldown as well, further limiting your ability to access it. The 33% burning duration is nice, but hardly world shattering...

A Detonation Berserker paired with a Fire Aura Catalyst might actually be pretty cheesy if you're gaining the aura like crazy, but that's the thing: to do what other professions do, Warriors are wholly dependent on those other professions. Warriors can't do X alone tot he same effect that Y profession can.

46 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

The last iteration of Bladesworn is slated to be pushing 39K DPS as full DPS with not much CC and ~36-37K as banner bladesworn. Therefore a condi berserker pushing ~37K cDPS with leaps and 34K+ cBS is not that bad.

This makes me kind of sad because really the only role they've built for Bladesworn to muscle into would be as "THE" DPS elite spec, and instead they nerfed that into the ground after getting all the support for it (I think CMC actually said they had its damage be so high purely for that "oh wow" moment during the reveal....).

It's true that having 1-2 Bladesworn from Beta2 would carry the DPS of an entire team--in Fractals add in Alacrity/Quickness/Support and they're walking nukes, but dropping it down to 34-39K is the wrong choice because it's "just another Warrior" at that point. Like @Lan Deathrider.5910 said there's nothing differentiating Bladesworn from anything else, especially if its damage is similar to other Warrior specs.

@Infusion.7149 Guardian is pretty much baseline for everything to be compared to at this point. Once Willbender comes out, you'll have party-wide Quickness/Healing/Alacrity/Aegis/Stability spam by just having 2-3 Guardians in the group. 

Edited January 11, 2022 by Geoff Fey.1035
Said Firebrand instead of Guardian at last comment

[Infusion.7149]

13 minutes ago, Geoff Fey.1035 said:

Yeah the issue isn't with the detonation it's with gaining the Fire Aura via leaps.

A Detonation Berserker paired with a Fire Aura Catalyst might actually be pretty cheesy if you're gaining the aura like crazy, but that's the thing: to do what other professions do, Warriors are wholly dependent on those other professions. Warriors can't do X alone tot he same effect that Y profession can.

This makes me kind of sad because really the only role they've built for Bladesworn to muscle into would be as "THE" DPS elite spec, and instead they nerfed that into the ground after getting all the support for it (I think CMC actually said they had its damage be so high purely for that "oh wow" moment during the reveal....).

It's true that having 1-2 Bladesworn from Beta2 would carry the DPS of an entire team--in Fractals add in Alacrity/Quickness/Support and they're walking nukes, but dropping it down to 34-39K is the wrong choice because it's "just another Warrior" at that point. Like @Lan Deathrider.5910 said there's nothing differentiating Bladesworn from anything else, especially if its damage is similar to other Warrior specs.

@Infusion.7149 Guardian is pretty much baseline for everything to be compared to at this point. Once Willbender comes out, you'll have party-wide Quickness/Healing/Alacrity/Aegis/Stability spam by just having 2-3 Firebrands in the group. 

It used to be speedclear meta to run condi Berserkers with fire condi weaver on Matthias. That changed with the torment changes and confusion changes.

You can still see an archived page https://web.archive.org/web/20201107230435/https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks/
On Matthias it lists condi Berserker x3, one fire weaver.

The reason this isn't used anymore is because you need to run 2 quickness sources rather than one boon thief and also renegade , scourge, and mirage were buffed due to torment and confusion changes. If you look at LN comp now it's double boon daredevil, condi BS, druid, 3x mirage, 3x condi ren: https://lucky-noobs.com/teamcompositions

Prior LN comp from 2020 was the same berserker setup https://web.archive.org/web/20200804142617/https://lucky-noobs.com/teamcompositions

Realistically you aren't running fire aura catalyst because you would need to use Powerful Aura on catalyst which has no value besides the aura share. On tempest running aurashare is vastly different since you gain healing on auras and condi clear + healing is a support archetype. Fire+air+catalyst is going to be a stronger power build than fire+water+catalyst ; likewise fire+earth+catalyst will likely be the condi setup.

Even after nerfs Bladesworn has the largest burst damage in PVE. That's different to soulbeast , DH, or holo in that the burst is in a single blow rather than multiple hits in a short interval. (Think One wolf Pack + barrage/rapidfire/whirling defense , grenade barrage , Zealot's defense/whirling wrath/procession of blades, etc)

Edited January 11, 2022 by Infusion.7149