From what I have seen, it seems that the main way to off-set the low survivability of zerker builds in sPvP is to use high mobility. Makes sense, since if you out range someone they can’t damage you. The problem comes from, sadly, thieves. They are the highest mobility class, as they should be, but don’t actually need it to survive most engagements. Rather, they use their mobility to easily escape a losing fight (stealth and shadowstep) or chase down/engage another zerker and drop them like a rock.
Normally, between two zerkers, whoever engages first and lands their burst will win. Short fights in which one person will either die or burn all of their stunbreaks and mobility cooldowns to try to reset their health before they die. Thieves royal kitten this up. Say you attempt to burst a thief as an SD engy or a Fresh Air ele. Your first few hits begin dropping them, and they hit one of their stealths, normally either steal+cnd, black powder+Heartseeker, or blinding powder. They then can freely decide to either engage you with a Backstab, stay in stealth until they’re healed and start their burst then, or disengage entirely.
In the opposite situation, when you have those same combatants with the thief opening, your only option is to run or try to out burst the thief from lower health (the second almost never works without a miracle). This is where mobility becomes important, and where thieves laugh as you try to run. Even giving the engineer rocket boots and the ele ride the lightning, they cannot escape, as a thief’s teleports will almost always be able to let him catch the fleeing opponent.
This is unfortunate, since it basically means no class besides thief (and to some degree mesmer, though they have poor map mobility, excellent in combat mobility though) are going to do well as a zerker type. It limits build variety in casual play (why would you ever want to die repeatedly to the same thief) and kills it in competitive. You can, in part, thank thieves for the current meta (high toughness condition builds). Not saying that it’s all their fault, as balance, condition burst, map type, and really crappy traits are a much larger part, but when your choice is being eaten alive, playing a bunker, or being a survivable burn bot, your tend to go with the option that kills the most people for your class.
Question for the commentors: Should a class be able to frontload large spikes of damage at long ranges or only when they properly set up?
Asura Engineer- Aelara Fole