Accessibility of Major Berserk in U37

Lykeion · February 2023

TLDR: Major Berserk is not a proper substitute for Empower, and the accessibility of Major Berserk should be considered more carefully in U37.

It is an accepted fact that Major Berserk is one of the best damaging buffs, and it works in both pve and pvp. Before discussing the Accessibility of Major Berserk in U37, I'd like to state what it was like before U37.

Access of Major Berserk before U37:
- Kinras's Wrath: A dungeon set that provides Major Berserk. In order to get Major Berserk you need a lot of practice to learn to maintain its stack, and many dungeons and trials are not suitable for Kinras' play. Even so, it had dominated meta set for a long time.
- Storm Atronach: Sorcerer's in-class ult skill, consumes 200 (170 considering the passive) ult, gains 8 seconds of Major Berserk. A skill most Sorcerers would choose, even if its Major Berserk coverage isn't great.
- Reaper's Mark: Nightblade's normal skill, which grants Major Berserk —— but only after the target dies. Even though its reward is very attractive, when it triggers is completely uncontrollable. As far as I know there is almost no pve Nightblade slot this skill, and when the pvp Nightblade slot this skill it is mainly for its Major Breach.
For other classes, they do not have Major Berserk in-class skills at all

And U37 introduces Major Berserk in two skills: (old) Empowering Chains and Wrecking Blow, as a replacement for Empower. What's concerning is that both skills easily allow Major Berserk to reach 100% coverage, with Empowering Chains even being DK's in-class skill. Considering the high cost of Major Berserk-providing set and skills previously, it seems very disturbing that U37 gives it such easy accessibility. And DK is already the most powerful class in pve, which has held that position for over a year. If you open the dps rankings in esolog, you'll see that DK has dominated most of the trials. The DK is just as powerful in pvp. It is hard to kill, and retains excellent burst damage. The new Empowering Chains will undoubtedly take DK's strength to the next level.

I hope dev will think more carefully about the accessibility of Major Berserk. If you want to improve the accessibility of this buff, please take the class balance into consideration before doing so. Other classes need to have a fair chance to compete with DK

axi · February 2023

What is sad is that ZoS decided to take the route of completly destroying DK's heavy attack identity that was a part of the class for years, basically since the beggining. They took away unique heavy attack buff on molten armanents and turned it into easily accesible empower and now they are changing empower on chain due to the fact Dk have empower on other ability. [snip]

They could for example turn molten armanents into unique heavy attack execute buff that skill was in the past. Wouldn't be a big issue in PvP and it would help DK to retain unique heavy attack identity because it's kinda silly atm that class which was known for heavy attack buff for years now parses 10k behind sorc or warden on heavy attack builds.

[edited for bashing]

robpr · February 2023

-Give Chains of Devastation Major Courage instead, or Minor Berserk
-Increase duration of Major Berserk from Sorc Atro to 10-15s at minimum to mimic Horn

Won't change much for trial roster due to how strong DK is in both single target and AoE at the same time (mostly due to Talons) but won't mess up both pvp and pve with it's Major Berserk. I doubt all other specs will suddenly start using Wrecking Blow just to match the uptime.

OBJnoob · February 2023

I mean major courage would be even worse, wouldn't it? Let's not.

Tannus15 · February 2023

robpr wrote: »

-Give Chains of Devastation Major Courage instead, or Minor Berserk
-Increase duration of Major Berserk from Sorc Atro to 10-15s at minimum to mimic Horn

Won't change much for trial roster due to how strong DK is in both single target and AoE at the same time (mostly due to Talons) but won't mess up both pvp and pve with it's Major Berserk. I doubt all other specs will suddenly start using Wrecking Blow just to match the uptime.

just remove the synergy requirement for atro.
cast atro, get major berserk.

chains should be minor berserk.

Sir_Hammock · February 2023

axi wrote: »

What is sad is that ZoS decided to take the route of completly destroying DK's heavy attack identity that was a part of the class for years, basically since the beggining. They took away unique heavy attack buff on molten armanents and turned it into easily accesible empower and now they are changing empower on chain due to the fact Dk have empower on other ability. [snip]

They could for example turn molten armanents into unique heavy attack execute buff that skill was in the past. Wouldn't be a big issue in PvP and it would help DK to retain unique heavy attack identity because it's kinda silly atm that class which was known for heavy attack buff for years now parses 10k behind sorc or warden on heavy attack builds.

[edited for bashing]

God I used to love my magdk with double Maces and damage enchants on them back when enchants on one handed weapon wasn't cut in half. Stacking empower, the psijic skill line. You could basically one shot a ton of people with your heavies, was sooo much fun. But that was back when we were allowed to have fun and we had our old wings and where each class had something that made them unique and having different flavors.

Finedaible · February 2023

This was the only thing I found strange about this first week's changes. ZoS has traditionally made Major Berserk a hard to obtain buff that required some effort to obtain but is now being given out with 100% uptime to DK and Two-Hander? I mean, I'm not really opposed to these changes, it just seems oddly inconsistent with their balance philosophy and their constant struggle to reign in DPS. I'm not sure they intend for M. Berserk to replace Empower though since they didn't compensate Ambush and some other skills affected by the Empower rework, but it seems like a slippery slope to tread on. It would only be fair to compensate the other abilities and sets that require players to jump through hoops to obtain the M. Berserk buff in my opinion; Reaper's Mark and Storm Atro for example.

WuffyCerulei · February 2023

OBJnoob wrote: »

I mean major courage would be even worse, wouldn't it? Let's not.

For pvp, probs. For pve, it wouldn't matter too much outside solo arenas or just solo in general. A healer or tank generally has a set that gives Major Courage.

acastanza_ESO · February 2023

Sir_Hammock wrote: »

God I used to love my magdk with double Maces and damage enchants on them back when enchants on one handed weapon wasn't cut in half. Stacking empower, the psijic skill line. You could basically one shot a ton of people with your heavies, was sooo much fun. But that was back when we were allowed to have fun and we had our old wings and where each class had something that made them unique and having different flavors.

It was not fun. One-shot builds with no counterplay are straight up abusive and ZOS was right to remove them from PVP.

Some NB builds are getting back into this range and are going to need to be looked at.

katorga · February 2023

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Sir_Hammock wrote: »

God I used to love my magdk with double Maces and damage enchants on them back when enchants on one handed weapon wasn't cut in half. Stacking empower, the psijic skill line. You could basically one shot a ton of people with your heavies, was sooo much fun. But that was back when we were allowed to have fun and we had our old wings and where each class had something that made them unique and having different flavors.

It was not fun. One-shot builds with no counterplay are straight up abusive and ZOS was right to remove them from PVP.

Some NB builds are getting back into this range and are going to need to be looked at.

Well heck.... I one shot people with no counterplay today with the the Assassins Will bow. Except now I haven't gimped my build with a bunch of garbage heavy attack sets so that my other skills, healing and defense suffers.

I don't miss those random 25K + heavies coming out of nowhere though. Nerfing everyone else and leaving my class with the next best alternative is all gravy.

TechMaybeHic · February 2023

robpr wrote: »

-Give Chains of Devastation Major Courage instead, or Minor Berserk
-Increase duration of Major Berserk from Sorc Atro to 10-15s at minimum to mimic Horn

Won't change much for trial roster due to how strong DK is in both single target and AoE at the same time (mostly due to Talons) but won't mess up both pvp and pve with it's Major Berserk. I doubt all other specs will suddenly start using Wrecking Blow just to match the uptime.

Nah. We should just give chains major heroism. That's what a DK really wants, right?

acastanza_ESO · February 2023

katorga wrote: »

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Sir_Hammock wrote: »

God I used to love my magdk with double Maces and damage enchants on them back when enchants on one handed weapon wasn't cut in half. Stacking empower, the psijic skill line. You could basically one shot a ton of people with your heavies, was sooo much fun. But that was back when we were allowed to have fun and we had our old wings and where each class had something that made them unique and having different flavors.

It was not fun. One-shot builds with no counterplay are straight up abusive and ZOS was right to remove them from PVP.

Some NB builds are getting back into this range and are going to need to be looked at.

Well heck.... I one shot people with no counterplay today with the the Assassins Will bow. Except now I haven't gimped my build with a bunch of garbage heavy attack sets so that my other skills, healing and defense suffers.

I don't miss those random 25K + heavies coming out of nowhere though. Nerfing everyone else and leaving my class with the next best alternative is all gravy.

This is exactly why Spectral Bow is currently a major target for criticism and nerf requests right now.
Although to be fair to class-identity, if anyone is going to have the ability to one-shot, the "Assassin" class is where it should be, but the tradeoffs for building into it should be severe (imo more severe than they are right now).

Dr_Con · February 2023

People are more likely to use wrecking blow than the chains, except in pvp. Using a tanky build, dotting someone up, getting major berserk, then using corrosive to get true damage is some of the most dumb gameplay but ZOS seems intent on implementing it (I guess Purge is counter play? Good job disincentivizing purge and extending dot duration I guess)

WrathOfInnos · February 2023

I think you're making a few leaps in the logic here. What makes you so sure that DK won't use Wrecking Blow? It needs to be cast every 5s, but it does much more damage per cast than chains. If they do, then it would reverse the entire class balance argument.

DK has one of the best spammables of all classes with Whip. If all the classes start using WB then DK is gaining the least, and all the classes with weak spammables are getting buffed more by the change.

Now I'm not saying this is necessarily the case, nobody knows at this point in early testing. I also don't love the idea of every class spamming WB, but that seems unlikely even with the Major Berserk change.

If this becomes a problem, it could alternatively be fixed by offering other ways to obtain Major Berserk. This could be something like Sorc Storm Atro offering better uptime (12s to all group members instead of 8s to 6 players?), or maybe add it to other lesser-used, low damage generic skills like Soul Trap, Elemental Ring, or Hidden Blade.

In PvP this is also an interesting discussion. Builds seem pretty tanky at the moment, in part due to the fact they can get 100% uptime on Major Protection from revealing flare. Major Berserk happens to be the buff that counters Major Protection, so having easy access to 100% uptime for all classes doesn't sound like a bad idea. That leaves Major Maim and Major Vuln as the more difficult to proc debuffs that have a similar effect, and are also approximately balanced with each other.