Alternate Universe Berserker

Alternate Universe Berserker

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Posted by: Hammerguard.9834

Hammerguard.9834

Instead of waiting for full adrenaline then entering Berserker for a predetermined amount of time, the warrior can press F2 to enter Berserker on demand. In Berserker, the warrior begins to degenerate health, sacrificing more health the healthier they are. The adrenaline and burst skills in Berserker can function as they do in this universe.

Instead of Rage skills *cough*Physicals2.0*cough*, warriors get a skill type that is stronger depending on the percent health the warrior is missing. For example an AoE taunt that last longer depending how low the warriors health pool is. Possibly given higher defenses with this skill as well.

… I still want tengu.

(edited by Hammerguard.9834)

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Posted by: Knighthonor.4061

Knighthonor.4061

Thats very poor game design.
keep in mind that GW2 is a more action oriented splash damage game,
and rhe Warrior is a primary melee oriented class.

adding tons of Self Damage, to a class that has to fight in melee range against splash damage sources isnt smart game design.

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Posted by: Atticus.7194

Atticus.7194

Instead of waiting for full adrenaline then entering Berserker for a predetermined amount of time, the warrior can press F2 to enter Berserker on demand. In Berserker, the warrior begins to degenerate health, sacrificing more health the healthier they are. The adrenaline and burst skills in Berserker can function as they do in this universe.

Instead of Rage skills *cough*Physicals2.0*cough*, warriors get a skill type that is stronger depending on the percent health the warrior is missing. For example an AoE taunt that last longer depending how low the warriors health pool is. Possibly given higher defenses with this skill as well.

Unless Berserk and those skills would be so powerful it would essentially break the game the sacrifice would not be worth the reward. I mean you’d have skills that could 1 shot other players at 10% health and do next to nothing at 90%? I’m afraid no one wants to play their character like that.

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Posted by: Arewn.2368

Arewn.2368

Instead of “stronger depending on the percent health warrior is missing”, I feel your idea could work if it provided increasing lifesteal depending on how low your health is.

Like Knighthonor mentioned, a health sacrifice mechanic on a melee class isn’t going to work on its own. It would need some form of compensation mechanic to support it.

Stronger lifesteal the lower you get would provide an interesting dynamic where, the lower on health the warrior is, the harder they are to kill as they regen more and more.
The counter mechanic to this is that if you can deny the warrior opportunities to deal damage, they die very quickly.

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Posted by: Hammerguard.9834

Hammerguard.9834

I love how people are bringing balance into question when that literally has no place being discussed here at all. All that I suggested is a gameplay mechanic. One that is already in hundreds of games and could easily be made into GW2.

Like Atticus for example talking about one shoting at 10% and doing nothing at 90% when a simple solution to this is limiting the damage multiplies at 100-75% health, 74-50% health, and <50% health. So the player is motivated to hover around 50% health for max damage since going lower wouldn’t provide any bonuses.

Knighthonor didn’t even make any sense so I can’t say much about that but, the way damage is applied in the game doesn’t mean anything. There are ways to apply damage and there are ways to mitigate it. Regardless of what kind of application it is it doesn’t mean that a certain gameplay mechanic can’t be made possible.

… I still want tengu.

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Posted by: Hammerguard.9834

Hammerguard.9834

Instead of “stronger depending on the percent health warrior is missing”, I feel your idea could work if it provided increasing lifesteal depending on how low your health is.

Like Knighthonor mentioned, a health sacrifice mechanic on a melee class isn’t going to work on its own. It would need some form of compensation mechanic to support it.

Stronger lifesteal the lower you get would provide an interesting dynamic where, the lower on health the warrior is, the harder they are to kill as they regen more and more.
The counter mechanic to this is that if you can deny the warrior opportunities to deal damage, they die very quickly.

At first I was thinking the new heal and utilities would be strong enough to help keep the Berserker alive since its heal would be stronger depending on the amount of health lost, but this would probably make those skills mandatory.

Anyways, Berserker shouldn’t be able to counter itself. There’s no point in adding a life degen if it also gives life steal. Yes you can stop him from doing damage but he can also just pop right out of Berserker.

… I still want tengu.

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Posted by: Atticus.7194

Atticus.7194

I love how people are bringing balance into question when that literally has no place being discussed here at all. All that I suggested is a gameplay mechanic. One that is already in hundreds of games and could easily be made into GW2.

Like Atticus for example talking about one shoting at 10% and doing nothing at 90% when a simple solution to this is limiting the damage multiplies at 100-75% health, 74-50% health, and <50% health. So the player is motivated to hover around 50% health for max damage since going lower wouldn’t provide any bonuses.

Knighthonor didn’t even make any sense so I can’t say much about that but, the way damage is applied in the game doesn’t mean anything. There are ways to apply damage and there are ways to mitigate it. Regardless of what kind of application it is it doesn’t mean that a certain gameplay mechanic can’t be made possible.

Uhhh, balance always factors in to these kind of discussions. I can propose things that sound awesome in theory but in practical application would never work.

Take for example your suggestion of applying damage multipliers to health level percentages, we’ve essentially had something very similar in the past with talents that rewarded you with bonuses based on your adrenaline. If you recall those went away because the idea of having to sit at a certain level of adrenaline or in this case health to do max DPS is not fun gameplay, it would just be annoying.

In addition you’d have to to specify as a berserker that every other class not to drop water fields or use altrustic healing or soothing mist or anything else that might indirectly increase your health otherwise you’d have to go out of your way to get hurt to drop your health down again. I don’t know about you but that does not sound like a enjoyable mechanic.

I don’t mean to stomp on your suggestion or anything but I fear your suggestion in practical application would not be nearly as enjoyable as you might imagine.

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Posted by: Bearhugger.4326

Bearhugger.4326

Sorry, but no thanks, I really don’t like the idea of having to juggle with my life bar to do damage. Keep that for the more daredevil classes like necros and thieves. Necros in particular would be a good idea because they have a second life bar if things go horribly wrong.

Berserker is supposed to be reckless, but it’s a warrior first and foremost so it should still be tough and resistant, an aspect of the class that self-damaging mechanics would directly compromise.

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Posted by: Robert Gee

Robert Gee

Game Designer

Fun Fact: We experimented a bit with this kind of “low health/lifesteal” mechanic earlier in development. We moved from that idea for the version you see now because we were concerned about some of the things Atticus has mentioned. When your effectiveness was based off of being at low health we found that it turned other players healing you (a normally positive experience) into a negative experience.

I think there still may be some places for this kind of thematic playstyle though, and there are actually a few good ideas I found in this thread already, so thanks for starting this discussion.

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Posted by: Hammerguard.9834

Hammerguard.9834

Well I’m afraid this thread looks like it’s already coming to an end unless we can salvage what was said between me and Arewn. Everyone else is simply disagreeing.

As for the healing dilemma, if the warrior is in Berserker maybe all healing while they’re above 50% health can be turned into adrenaline and while below 50% health can heal as normal? The 50% marker can of course be changed depending on how much the lifesteal is suppose to fluctuate as well as what percent health a warrior would need to hover around to be considered viable in all aspects of the game. They’re not only not punished for getting healed while trying to maintain a high level of lifesteal but rewarded with extra adrenaline.

However, I would actually like to hear more about your earlier iterations. Was there other issues that arose besides healing?

… I still want tengu.

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Posted by: TheDemonEmperor.6825

TheDemonEmperor.6825

I can think of other issues.

1, the gear for such a build will have no vit. mainly, assassine stat stuff.
This force the meta for warrior to shift into a swisshy dps “or getting as low a Health pool as possible” to proc maximum dps faster.

2nd, i for 1, dont like playing a masochist play style. Also warrior is already weak in pvp due to the sustain being so bad, and people already can kite ramage; Let alone u going into berserk, and staying low health “cause ur idea of staying healthy = weak” waiting to be pick off is terrible.

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Posted by: Arewn.2368

Arewn.2368

Berserker mode gives X benefits
One of the costs of being in berserker mode is constant health loss (damage per second) Compensation for that health loss is increasing life steal as health decreases

What I think this would do is create a situation where personal hp management is an important mechanic, but receiving health (regardless of source) is never impacting non-health related benefits.
In other words, if I’m at 50% health and an ally heals me, the only thing that’s negatively impacted is my life-steal. But that “negative” impact is okay, because the purpose of life-steal is to heal me in the first place. My ally healing me is still a benefit, or at worse neutral, because it’s just speeding along the process.

The purpose of having the health cost and attached life-steal is that it pushes you into an aggressive playstyle (in-theme with something like the berseker), a play style dependent on attacking enemies to sustain yourself, and one where you get harder to kill as your health decreases, but where you are incredibly vulnerable and die quickly when you’re denied the ability to attack.
Being CC’ed, kited, or poorly managing(timing) the berserk state would all be downsides to berserking do to the health cost.
While the berserk buff (attack speed, primal bursts) and lifesteal making you progressively harder to kill would be the up side.

It would have to be balanced in such a way that when you have high health (60+%), the life steal does very little to help you, when you have a medium amount of health (40+%), the life-steal can somewhat sustain you there, and when you’re low on health(10+%) the life steal is strong enough to bring you up a bit.

I think this would be interesting because it turns the warrior into more of a glass-cannon. Similar to damage-focused ele builds, if you’re not careful to sustain yourself and protect yourself with cooldowns, you can very quickly and easily get bursted down due to your low health pool. But in the berseker’s case, instead of your health pool being small, you’re just constantly low on health, bringing in a similar risk.

I also like Hammerguard’s idea of providing a secondary benefit to healing while in the berserk state, so that unexpected outside sources of healing don’t become a detriment to your buff.

(edited by Arewn.2368)

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Posted by: Hammerguard.9834

Hammerguard.9834

I can think of other issues.

1, the gear for such a build will have no vit. mainly, assassine stat stuff.
This force the meta for warrior to shift into a swisshy dps “or getting as low a Health pool as possible” to proc maximum dps faster.

2nd, i for 1, dont like playing a masochist play style. Also warrior is already weak in pvp due to the sustain being so bad, and people already can kite ramage; Let alone u going into berserk, and staying low health “cause ur idea of staying healthy = weak” waiting to be pick off is terrible.

1) How is that a bad thing? They either go for low health pool for faster damage and die easy or they get some vitality, slow down their damage increase as well as their death. Also who’s to say that the life degen and lifesteal can’t be percent based making this completely irrelevant?

2) Opinions. Warriors “lack of sustain” is something that can change over a single balance patch. Just because it’s “bad” now doesn’t mean it will be forever. So again, irrelevant.

… I still want tengu.

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Posted by: Copestetic.5174

Copestetic.5174

Warrior’s lack sustain? I hardly die in PvP. Then again, I don’t run that crappy Rampage build, either. Shoutbow4eva

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Posted by: Hammerguard.9834

Hammerguard.9834

I also like Hammerguard’s idea of providing a secondary benefit to healing while in the berserk state, so that unexpected outside sources of healing don’t become a detriment to your buff.

This isn’t necessary in your version.

There’s two idea going. One where the lifesteal is additional damage ontop of the original attack damage (Anets) and one where it’s not (Arewn). If the lifesteal was additional damage that would mean that a warrior would want to maintain a low health percent for max dps and this would also mean that heals could have a negative effect which is why I suggested healing = adrenaline if the warrior is above a certain % hp. If lifesteal didn’t add damage, the warrior would try to maintain as much health as possible and this would also mean that healing remains as helpful as always.

I actually like both ideas but I prefer Anets because it adds a much more interesting way to play the game. Playing at the edge of death for higher dps. It would also work better with the new utility types I suggested at the start.

… I still want tengu.

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Posted by: TheDemonEmperor.6825

TheDemonEmperor.6825

The only way i see this work is by having; Every 1% hp lost give the berserker 0.7%crit chance and 0.5% crit damage increase. “you can also add power gain to like, 2 per 1%”

So effectively at 50%hp lost, they would gain 35%crit and 25%crit damage. Making them more dangerous the lower they get.

This will help tank warrior and zerks. Also ally healing isnt a negative thing “Fresh reset”.

Berserker should be a class that the longer the fight drawn out, the more dangerous it become for the enemy “u can damage him, but that dont make ur battle with him any easier”.

I think my idea would be too OP. But with number changes it can be balance out.

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Posted by: TheSwede.9512

TheSwede.9512

Go to the middle ground, make Traits that work at set HP intervalls (50%, 33% etc) while the Mode itself rewards you for Losing Health rather than staying at low health, allowing others to Heal you without gaining the ire of the players.

Maybe next Elite Spec? Call it “Reaver” or something and give it Corruption Skills that Steal health, endurance or boons from enemies in return of stacking Negative effects on the Reaver. Food for thought.

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Posted by: Doon.2364

Doon.2364

Robert Gee, will Berserker mode alter the looks of warriors? I’m hoping to see something like Super Saiyan hairdos on warriors who go berserk. XD

http://cartoonsonlinepics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Super-Saiyan-4.jpg

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Posted by: Hoaxintelligence.4628

Hoaxintelligence.4628

Small question:
Can we use torch without selecting the elite specialisation line?

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Posted by: MiniEquine.6014

MiniEquine.6014

Small question:
Can we use torch without selecting the elite specialisation line?

No, and this has been consistent with every elite specialization. The base class will only ever be able to use the weapons they already could, and each elite spec weapon will require the elite spec trait line to be selected while wielding it.

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Posted by: Kiroshima.8497

Kiroshima.8497

Rather than gaining more effectiveness the lower hp you are, would it not be better to “spend” health to gain increased effectiveness, creating a chance for healing roles to synergize with said alternate berserker. It would be similar to the Lifeforce pool, but while in “berserk” your own health drains and fills up the pool, and at certain tiers (similar to adrenaline), skills gain increased benefits somehow (or unlock the primal bursts and such).

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Posted by: Hammerguard.9834

Hammerguard.9834

You are spending health for increased effectiveness. Entering Berserker dains the warriors health in turn giving them T3 adrenaline, new burst skills, and additional lifesteal damage. Then there’s also the new utility skills that also benefit from the lower percent health of the warrior.

… I still want tengu.

(edited by Hammerguard.9834)