Guild Wars 2

Please make Primal Skills F2 by default. It is a bit clunky to press F2 to get to zerker mode and then F1 for primals.

Alright my thoughts on berserker after trying a couple specs with it this weekend. Let me prefaces this by saying I was very unimpressed by the berserker last beta weekend and was very interested to see how the changes played out.

The main issue with berserker is that is very limited how core warrior is limited. For any sort of PvP play you need fast hands and thus you need discipline. Furthermore, PvP mandates defensive options, especially on a melee class thus you need Defense.

In the end you give up a lot of potential build options because you need to go into Discipline and Defense. All because of fast hands.

Fast hands need to be made baseline for berserker to have any chance of a condition build possible.

My thoughts after playing berserker a little bit in the silverwastes and a CoF p1:

It was definitely nice, took me a few tries to get the right build but I noticed something strange. When using berserk after a burst skill ,the primal burst skill on half the cooldown. Another thing was when out of combat berserk is still up but my adrenaline is fading, quite annoying to be honest.

For dungeons , the necessaity of banners and phalanx strength do not help much for berserker and the lack of fury on GS hurts a lot. Therefore I don’t think it will have much play in dungeons.

To end my feedback a little suggestion: bloody roar could use the reaper shroud treatment: part of the fury needs to be given by default.

I really like the feeling of berserker stance, you’re speed and destructor (rupturing smash is a little weak now, need at least a stun). But for now it’s underhelming. Berserker traits doesn’t offer anything for making you change between strengh/arms, defense and tactic. I think berserker traits needs a rework (dead or alive need to be buffed it’s too weak now) for making the specs more competitive but i don’t think if it’s possible without changing warrior core traits which are mendatory. Maybe making Fast hand baseline?
Maybe berserker mode can last a bit longer too (20s?) coz it’s pretty expensive and a lost in dps (no using burst skills) for activate it.

You are too weak in non-berserker form and berserker is barely stronger than the base warrior. It way too gimmicky. I was fighting a guildmate chronomancer yesterday with my zerker in pvp and I could not believe how great it expand on the mesmer class.

So ways they could change for zerk mode itself is for:
1) Berserker mode to last longer – maybe 20s?
2) Berserker mode to have a decay but can generate uptime by hitting stuff?

I wonder what it would be like if for example it lasted alot longer, say 25-30 seconds with more buffs to the mode itself such as increased damage / damage reduction, slight buff to burst skills. However each time you’d use the primal burst skills it would reduce the time of berserker mode?

This way you had some sort of mechanical choice between zerk mode lasting longer or using primal skills for the effects/burst.

As a wvw player, all i can say is:
Not worth it.
You need to sacrifice to much for a 30 second buff.. whenever you are not in berserker mode.. you are weak as kittenhen you added a CD on the transformation and boom.. if anyone had a doubt about it being useful, you completely removed that doubt..
So the only berserkers out there eill be PVE or really unexperienced warriors who will take it cause it is new…
But most warriors will just remain warriors.

One question, what did you guys actually think when you created hammer f1 ind berserk mode?
I mean I give up an aoe stun for a 1 sec immobilize. Why would I ever want to do this?

In general most of berserk f1 are still worse than the usual f1 or at least not that good that it would be worth to go into berserk traitline.

Longbow berserk f1 for example is actually exactly the same skill just slightly worse because a big circle is just superior.
Why do you guys do not create sth new.
Berserk Longbow f1 for example could be sth. like Ranger’s “Barrage” with burning arrows etc.

In the current state all those skills look like the original skills which are slightly worse except maybe Mace f1.

Not to mention that you still can’t take berserk or have any build diversity because in pvp you have to go into discipline/defence anyway.

Some burst are better but I do think the original burst are mostly better.

Arcing shear is nice but the lack of fury make it a tiny bit worst I think.
Decapitate is decent. This is a fair trade from the normal one.
Rupturing Smash is a big meh.
Gun flame is hard to analyse since it’s bugged.
Scorched earth is worst than it normal counterpart.
Skull grinder as nice synergy.
Not played enough with sword.

15 sec ICD on berserker form is way to long. While you are waiting for it you can’t really use your warrior mechanic and by taking head butt for on call for berserker form you lose a lot.(Signet/Banner and rampage)

It partially improve on our mechanic while in zerker form but the normal form is so weak and play in a very un-warrior way because it does not allow us to spend adrenaline. They once stated that when they changed berserker power cause they didn’t liked the idea on warrior saving their adrenaline.

The trait line that we have to trade to get berserker really hurt us and it don’t expand on the class mechanic.(Like reaper) The new stuff they gave us does not give us any new class mechanic or they don’t fit well with our class.(Like mesmer well)

*have hard time english is not my main language.

^
summed it up pretty well

Final thoughts on berserker (Most WvW roaming).

• Discipline (fast hands) still mandatory for any melee build, and the berserker trait line does not offer anything to minimize that.
• I was playing Mace/Torch Sword/Shield Condition berserker. Full dire with krait runes and it was really good. (But only in PvP, WvW because you can’t interrupt a boss or CC him to apply conditions in PvE).
• I’ve tried a Sword/Torch LongBow burn build in PvE and, with a good rotation, i was able to maintain 8-12 stacks of burning, this with Dire gear and 0 precision.
• The Burning on Torch 5 felt almost nothing (even with 100% burn duration). I was using it only for condition removal.
• Wild Blow still clunky to use.

Suggestion to Blood Reckoning: Remake it, is really terrible. In order to get it to work you need: Berserker stance, to not get blinded, and last stand to not get CC’d to the ground while trying to heal. So you need to consume 3 cooldowns in order to get ONE heal and if you are fighting any stealth base profession, good luck. I would suggest to make it similar to Enchanted Daggers with a 20 sec cooldown, a flat heal and heals per hit.

If remaking it isn’t on the table at least remove the cast time, so you can combo it more easily.

So the general consensus is Berserker is very gimmicky and a bit clunky and in the long run is not even a viable sidegrade to baseline warriors due to certain skills we can not afford to lose even for Berserk? Oh and that rage skills and many primal bursts are completely pointless? Did I get everything?

Jebus, how the hell is ArenaNet planning on fixing all of this in less than 3 weeks? Sounds like this spec is fundamentally flawed needs massive overhaul to be anything close to viable. I do not envy Anet right now.

I’m going to chip in and reiterate the problem I and many others feel about Berserker:
Berserker’s special mechanic is not only gated behind a cooldown, it’s ALSO gated behind a cost.
I understand that it’s how it was designed but please understand that in practice it’s extremely clunky to be gated behind a max adrenaline bar! There are multiple traits that proc effects on entering Berserker mode but because of the double gate you end up with the awful situation where you either not use your Burst Skill (which is always a source of pressure and pressure relief) just to wait for an opportune moment, or you just end up using your burst skill anyway and push Berserker aside because baseline warrior consumes the same resource. Please take a page from Druid’s setup and stop gating Berserker behind a resource so heavily priced.
Additionally, Berserker form might seem acceptable to be gated as such in comparison to Reaper but the key difference here is that Necromancers can access Shroud any time they have any amount of usable Life Force which is incredibly easier than gaining max adrenaline. This is on top of how they have nothing else to spend Life Force on.

Double gated clunky issues aside, many other people have also stated how Berserker will not see play because baseline Warrior is crippled by mandatory traitlines. Every single viable PvP build uses Discipline and Defense for Fast Hands and Cleansing Ire. This isn’t even a debate! Everything about Berserker, down to Physical Utilities 2.0 is largely outclassed by baseline warrior – The only exception utility-wise is Outrage, who fights tooth and nail to earn a spot over yet another Stance because Warrior is so reliant on those for survival.

About Torch skills:
Flames of War should pulse out very minor damage to everyone in it’s radius and generate adrenaline that way to help with Berserker’s adrenaline consumption. Would also kind of be like a soft counter to stealth as you’ll have a 360 radius indicator of when they’re approaching, fitting the flavour of walking into firelight.
I’m also going to hazard a guess that Flames of War cleanses conditions to provide an alternative to slotting cleansing ire constantly – to that effect I think torch in general should get a baseline cooldown reduction as they feel fine functionally with the Torch trait, but warriors shouldn’t be forced to take a condition focused trait just to have Torch feel good as a weapon. The trait should take something good and make it great, not take something mediocre and make it good.

Regarding the primal bursts:
Hammer Primal Burst is really awful, why would anyone trade a 2s Stun for a 1s immobilize with terrible damage? Either increase the duration of the immobilize to be actually worth (3s, cleanses are far more easily accessible than stunbreaks) or change the functionality – I definitely agree with the previous posters that said a pull would be fantastic here, and would be a similar flavour to the original intention of giving a new type of cc to warrior. (On the note of Hammer burst though PLEASE fix how any slight elevation change makes it completely fail to hit anything)
Sword Primal Burst does absolutely nothing for Power builds, a crying shame as it’s very much a hybrid weapon. I think this issue would be significantly reduced if the gating issue with Berserker form is fixed as we’ll actually get to use it defensively without having to squander and sit on max adrenaline.
Longbow Primal Burst is objectively terrible compared to Combustive Shot, please make it last longer in exchange for the awkward directional shot that’s so much easier to avoid than a giant circle. If it’s a skill that lets enemies strafe a little to avoid at least let us paint more of the floor with FIRE assuming we get the adrenaline to do so off cooldown. Also, right now you can untarget to manually aim where the shot fires – I think it’ll be significantly more intuitive to just completely change it over to how Revenant’s stability road is targeted.
No real complaints about the other burst skills! (Other than the one about how they’re all basically the same flavour as regular warrior’s bursts which is really boring)

In conclusion I think the real key issue that many people keep reiterating is that Berserker doesn’t feel like an elite specialization the way the rest of elite specs do. An overwhelming majority of the time, what you are playing is literally just warrior, maybe with Headbutt instead of Rampage, and even that’s kind of questionable.

1)make fast hands baseline
-> this change is a must have, otherwise you are stucked in discipline+defence

2)rework all primal bursts
-> make them completly different from those normal f1 skills.Neither is anybody interested in having an eviscerate 2.0 or arcling slice 2.0 which are actually worse than the original skills nor is anybody interested in having a 1sec immobilize on hammer instead of an aoe stun.

3)lower berserk cd from 15s to 10s
-> waiting 15 seconds to get access to taunt which is atm the only reason to use berserk mode is not that great.

4)implement an option to leave berserk mode
-> if you have full adrenalin in berserk mode and you leave it you still have full adrenalin

5)idc about rage skills but except the 10s stunbreak those skills have no place in pvp

With those changes berserk could become viable in pvp

Have fun fixing this in 3 weeks ~

I spent some time playing Druid and Reaper this weekend, and I have to say their transforms feel so much better than Berserker.

The main issue is that I feel like activating Berserk mode is unexciting and unrewarding, compared to the other transformations. It just doesn’t feel any different (Druid does this better) or any more powerful (Reaper does this better). Berserk is all flash, no substance.

In addition to the lack-luster nature of the transformation, the mechanic itself is very clunky. Activating it with F2 is really unintuitive when 90% of the time you’re immediately going to press F1 right after – why can’t both the transform and the primal burst use F2? You could either disable F1 during Berserking, or just allow us access to both burst abilities. I know that doesn’t fit the original image, but for side-grade primal bursts like Sword or Longbow, always having the option of an F1/F2 burst would encourage more people to run the spec. GW2 combat is so quick that I actually think this choice encourages more skill-based gameplay than locking you into one burst ability for the duration. Holding off on using Berserk to maintain access to a specific burst is just gimping you and invalidating all those “Berserk mode” traits you’ve invested in. Hardly a good choice to make – a better “choice” is to just not run that nonsense to begin with.

Another annoyance I have is with how quickly Adrenaline degenerates out of combat. It means that I basically never utilize Berserk mode in open world pve. Which makes me wonder why I’m even bothering with the spec, when Strength or Arms would offer more consistent power. Should the adrenaline degeneration be adjusted (again)?

The cooldown on Berserking also feels really bad. I think it should be reduced, or preferably just removed entirely. If the spec is all about going Berserk, I want to be able to do it as often as possible. If I have the 30 adrenaline, I should be allowed to transform regardless of an arbitrary cooldown. Limiting the transformation uptime via adrenaline instead of a timer feels better because it is more dynamic. In heavier combat situations you are able to get angry faster and go Berserk more. Yes, this means you could chain Berserk modes together. Is that really a problem, though? The attack speed increase is marginal, and other than that all it is doing is changing your F1. Why does that need a cooldown?

I think the core Berserk mechanic should have a serious looking at, as well as the other things people have been mentioning in this thread (trait issues with core warrior are a major problem).

Overall, Berserker feels very meh. It does not feel powerful or worthy of the awesome skill animations the art guys came up with for it. It feels like driving the cheap V6 Mustang instead of the V8.

I’ve played Berserker, Chronomancer, Druid, Herald and Reaper and I’ve also seen quite alot of Scrapper. I don’t really care for PvE, mainly because anything will be viable for PvE. I have to say in terms of PvP and WvW roaming Berserker just flat out sucks.
But I won’t even use it in PvE either because I can hardly use the berserker when fighting those trash mobs and I also lost quite a chunk of dps due to the Berserker traitline.

The whole traitline is a joke. Sorry if some people get offended when I say it like that, but it is just so disappointing. Berserker is just more of the same old clunky and no real synergy Warrior. The whole adept line could have been baseline and it would still suck.

And then we have those useless primal bursts. I was really thinking that this has got to be some evil joke. There are two good ones right now. The bugged rifle shot and the greatsword one. Rifle will be nerfed hard but the greatsword is actually quite enjoyable. The only good thing about the Berserker. The rest of those bursts are of no use.

The rage skills are almost as useless as the physical skills. Even the 10 sec cd stunbreak sucks, because at the moment you take stances or shouts(bow) or you are dead. Warrior has no sustain and stances give you at least that tiny window of opportunity. While those rage skills, even if they hit, do very little and their cooldown is far too high.

Even if you would lower the cooldowns of those skills by 50% they’d probably still suck, because warrior still has no defense, other than stances and maybe shield block. Bad sustain because of a high health pool but nothing to cover or recover it.
No instant teleport that can be used while stunned. No invisibility. No protection. No blind. No aegis. Nothing. And on top of that you are melee most of the time. Guess where you don’t wanna be: Next to a necro that plays reaper. That is how the warrior should be. The reaper is the new warrior. Too bad all my ascended armor is heavy.

I would have hoped for something special for the warrior, maybe something like the ability to carry a third weaponset, but the Berserker specialisation is set in stone. To make it viable against all these heavy condi classes running around in the meta today, you would have to give Berserker something real good. And I mean real good. Like pulsing resistance during berserk mode (baseline or not does not matter, the rest of the traits suck anyway)

And at last: Warrior had two decent condi weapons. And that was offhand sword and bow. So what about either buffing sword mainhand for condi or give us a mainhand condi weapon. But no ofc we get a torch, which is kinda on the same level as sword offhand, but there is still no real condi build for warrior, that can match condi mesmer, engineer, guard, necro or ranger. Not even cele ele(in terms of condi dmg, survivability is something completely different) or condi thief. Useless condi warrior.

Use all the base burst remove a tiny bit of something and add some more flavor. Like eviserate or gun flame.(not bugged)

Arcing shear should add a bit of fury back and sword should be able to immobilize. I liked more the old Rupturing Smash. Someone had a good idea in another thread for hammer. A circle with pulsing stun like if the ground had a small earthquake.

Right now Primal Burst just feels like your regular Burst “on fire”. About as boring as Torch is… If they really wanted to make Primal Burst skills interesting, they should do something that the weapon in question normally doesn’t have access to.

Greatsword would do a CC, Rifle an AoE attack, Mace a ranged attack, Longbow a melee / short range attack that becomes stronger as enemies get closer. You get the idea.

You should also still have access to your regular Burst (F1) during Berserker Mode, as well as the Primal Burst (F2 a second time).

A big improvement over the last beta, good work.

Here are a few things I would like to see change:

1) The 15 sec ICD on berserker form is too long. I think it should be reduced to 10 or even 5 seconds, it is just too long.

2) Rupturing Smash (the Hammer primal burst) is really bad, needs a buff. More damage or more immob.

3) Sundering Leap and Wild Blow need to have a cast time reduction, and possibly some animation changes. They feel really clunky.

4) Please, PLEASE, consider making Fast Hands baseline for Warrior. Several threads on the topic have been made over the last month, so I wont go into detail here.

I understand that anet is going for more of a burn spec but let’s be real here. Warriors are all about bleeding. That is their bread and butter condi. We can’t get enough burn stacks to really be a threat and bleed just doesn’t doo enough damage. If the could buff our bleeds somehow then we could get away with burn/bleed warrior but as it stands they we fall short of other condi specs

The biggest problem i see is that Berserker is unable to replace Strength or Defense.
We either loose a lot of dmg, or a lot of survivability. And the new bursts do not change or improve our class enough to be worth the loss of dmg/survivability.

And one of the few ways i could see that ever being fixed before launch is if they add significant buffs to berserker mode itself, give us for those 15 seconds berserk is on(or reduce the time, 10seconds perhaps) a way to survive. That way we could change defense for something else, or maybe even a stance or two for something more offensive.

While i am not sure what the best way to buff our sustain would be while in Berserker, there are many ways to go about it. And preferably one where there will be counterplay.

Maybe we healed for a % of dmg we do while in Berserk mode, maybe whatever adrenaline we use heals us for a nice flat amount. Something like that. Warrior has always had horrible sustain and we have been forced to take as many immunities as we can because of it.

This is a chance to change that! Make the Berserker what it was supposed to be, a relentless too dumb to die beast of war.

Now about the rage abilities.. i have no idea what you can do to fix those, they are just as bad as physical abilities are, and i do not see how to fix them would be possible without changing them all together…
that being said Wild Blow is fun to use, but will never work as utility. Would have worked as some kind of weapon ability instead. I am sad such a interesting ability will go to waste : I

BurrTheKing.8571:

extremely good feedback

I agree with everything BurrTheKing said, plus I add my own opinion:

The adrenaline nerf needs to get reverted – it hamstrings Warrior and Berserker unnecessarily, and the reasons for it have vanished.

Having your adrenaline decay immediately and rapidly after battle now is just insane. To begin with, if you want to open a fight with a burst/primal burst, you have to blow your cooldowns (Signet of Fury/or multiple Rage skills) just to start using your class mechanic. Then, as soon as you disengage, you have to do to it all over again, because you will have zero adrenaline to start the next fight with.

The reasons that Warrior suffered the adrenaline nerf are long gone. The old traits (old Berserker’s Power, Berserker’s Might, Embrace the Pain) that let you build adrenaline more quickly and gain buffs for storing it up got eliminated. ANet transformed Warrior from a sustained fighter to a pure burst class like all the others. If we can’t open a fight with our class mechanic, we are basically crippled.

Yeah, some of the other classes have to “build up” their mechanic (Druid, Necro/Reaper), but they can carry that over from fight to fight. At least give Warriors a grace period before you sap all the adrenaline out of them.

Played berzerker for a few rounds, but really, thats all i needed i think. Most of the other concerns have been said over and over.

For me, berserker is clunky and gimmicky.

One, you have to replace a trait line to get zerker. The zerker trait line mostly works when in zerker mode. So id say a good chunk of the time, youre giving up a really great trait line (like str, def, or disc) for a line that works – some of the time – but really, this has been echoed in this thread multiple times.

Two, its just clunky. Having it activate on maximum adr means that youre always concentrating on getting your adrenaline up as fast as possible so that you can actually take advantage and get your money back on one whole trait line that isnt working – yet – and when you get there, youre pushed back all the way to zero adr/rage and have to work it up again. You get a few sprinkles of buffs here and there but really, you just want to transform for the primal bursts – most of which are inferior or broken.

To be honest, id just rather get juggernaut. I get an arguably superior transformation, with a superior synergistic trait line that works 100% of the time.(str)

As for the rage skills? gimmicky and meh. Im willing to bet most warriors will give zerker a go and then just go back and stick to whatever works for best for them now.

What a disappointing turn of events. I wouldve rather they just fixed base warrior problems (fast hands, rifle, gs being an almost requirement, etc) rather than waste development time on a gimmick – now were stuck here. Looks like the only new things for the expansion is just PVE and a new arena for me.

I greatly enjoyed the Berserker this weekend. The traits were much improved, with less ‘obvious’ choices for traits to pick, and I felt like it’s a great addition to the Warrior.

Things done right for Berserker:
- the new Smash Brawler trait is amazing; it makes the Berserker feel a lot more smooth/fast if you’re using Berserker primarily for the primal bursts
- the traits overall are much improved; I can see use for pretty much all of them
- the Torch feels much better overall. The increased distance on Torch 4, for example, felt like it ended too early last BWE, so this time around it felt just right
- primal bursts (except for Hammer’s) feel much better, especially greatsword’s and axe’s

Remaining issues of the Berserker:
- Hammer’s primal burst is bad. A knockdown would make more sense, be more effective, and would have more synergy with the hammer trait (as well as traits that knockdown / knock-back). Since knockdown is a bit stronger than immobilize, some other things about the primal burst may need to be changed to take this into account.
- the Dead or Alive trait doesn’t seem to do enough for the ICD it has. I recommend either lowering (or possibly eliminating) its ICD, or greatly increase its healing
- the healing skill is still underwhelming; it could be good, but too many factors hold it back. There are many changes you could do – have it pulse bleeding to nearby foes, making the user immune to blinds, making your attacks unblockable, etc. As I don’t want to make it too powerful, though, I think it should have a cast time decrease and a small second heal when the effect ends. These changes make it easier to use and less punishing if you can’t get enough healing through damage alone. Hopefully, this will make it more reliable against foes who can easily cheese the ability in pvp and it shouldn’t have too much of an impact in pve.
- without Smash Brawler, the Berserker doesn’t feel quite right to me. This may be personal preference, but I need both Discipline (decreased burst cooldown) and Smash Brawler to feel like I am using my primal bursts enough. Because of this, Smash Brawler is the obvious choice for me for Berserker, even though I love using multiple Rage skills in a condi build. I’m not quite sure what needs to be done here, as I don’t want Smash Brawler to go away, but I feel the other skills should be more competition. I think if the burning was increased on the Rage skills, that’d probably be a good start, but I’m not quite sure what should be done beyond that.

And that’s it for me. The only negatives I really see for the Berserker is one bad primal burst, a trait that needs a little boost, a heal that needs a little help, and an issue that very well may be my personal preference.

But the conversation can’t just end like that, because the Berserker is still having issues beyond that. If you look in this thread, you’ll see things such as “Discipline is mandatory”, “I can’t give up Defense because I don’t have sustain”, and “I can’t give up Strength because I want to do damage”. The reason I haven’t addressed these before is because I was only addressing problems with the Berserker before. These are problems with the Warrior.

(Some) Remaining issues of the Warrior:
1. little sustain without taking Defense
2. greatly decreased damage without taking Strength
3. Discipline is almost mandatory to take for Fast Hands
4. Tactics is almost mandatory for dungeons
5. Greatsword greatly overshadows other weapons in dungeons, due to Phalanx Strength & Forceful Greatsword

With these issues, you can start to see why people are complaining about such things as a Berserker. When you add the Berserker specialization, you only have 2 specializations to work with. Since Discipline is mandatory for most (and especially important for Berserkers), that leaves you with 1 specialization to work with. You want sustain? Give up damage and grab Defense. You want damage? Grab Strength and give up something else. You want to help out in dungeons? Grab Strength and Tactics, and drop Berserker, because it really can’t compete damage-wise or support-wise.

Right now, the Berserker can really only choose 1 specialization because right now the Warrior can really only choose 2. If you truly want the Berserker to be in a better spot, then you need to put the warrior in a better spot.

Here are some recommendations that could help with these issues:
- make Fast Hands baseline for the Warrior. Since this Minor Trait is the reason why this Discipline is practically mandatory, it makes sense to just take it out and give it to Warriors. The build diversity for an entire class shouldn’t be so terribly crippled by single trait, let alone a minor one. This recommendation would help fix #3, as Discipline would no longer become mandatory (but instead just be a really good specialization that synergizes incredibly well with Berserker).
- let critical hits in Berserk mode grant Might, or have a chance to grant Might. This change would reduce the Berserker’s reliance on Strength for pure damage (#2) and Strength+Tactics for dungeon runs (#4 & #5) without overshadowing/replacing those choices entirely.
- upon entering Berserk mode, have a ‘Berserker Stance’-like effect for a few seconds (maybe ~2?). This makes sense, gives Berserkers a little more sustain versus conditions, and can easily be fitted in given that Berserk mode already gives the Berserker a few buffs upon entering the mode. This recommendation, in addition to buffing the Dead or Alive trait, should help reduce the Berserker’s reliance on Defense (#1).

tl;dr
The Berserker is much-improved, but still needs work. It still has a few issues itself, in addition to some issues caused by it being tied to the Warrior. I recommend the following to fix these issues:
- change Hammer’s primal burst to a knockdown
- increase the healing of the Dead or Alive trait, or either decrease or eliminate its ICD
- change Blood Reckoning so it gives a second (small) heal when the effect expires and has a lower cast time
- (possibly) increase burn damage on the Last Blaze trait
- let critical hits in Berserk mode either grant might or have a chance to grant might
- give a Berserker Stance effect for a couple seconds upon entering Berserk mode
- make Fast Hands baseline for Warrior

BurrTheKing.8571:

Currently, half of the blame resides with the design of the Berserker and the other half lies with the base Warrior. It’s hard to build a good house on sand.

The Issues with Berserker:

The trait line isn’t bad, but it brings nothing that makes it worth taking over Strength (Arms in some condi builds), Defense, or Discipline.

Rage Skills are basically just a different breed of Physical skills.

As a result they will not generally be used for exactly the same reason. I don’t LIKE using stances, but not using them means you’re a poor Warrior unless you’re playing Shoutbow. I can see Reaper being used on a team because while it can be very selfish it does some very useful things like AoE Chill and boon stripping. What do Rage skills bring to your team? A (very) brief reflect.

Now the obvious exception is Outrage. It has good synergy with Rousing Resilience…but you’ll still probably just see people bring Last Stand. Oh, and I’m pretty sure Savage Instinct isn’t triggering RR even though I’m pretty sure it should. Head Butt isn’t bad….but feels really clunky and inconsistent.

A focus on condi when now many, many, many specs have a plethora of removal/negation options.

Applying a good amount of Burn means bringing Rage Skills, which means you’ll have much less sustain. Now, you can go for just a moderate amount of burning but I was under the impression that the theme was supposed to be “everything is on fire all the time!” with the differentiation to Burn Guards being that the Guard is more about burst burning while Berserker is about sustained burn.

The design of the Berserk Mode itself.

I’m assuming that in an effort to differentiate Berserk from Death/Reaper Shroud the Devs gave the form a CD. However, this does not only make me not feel like a Berserker, but it also hurts it mechanically as well. When you aren’t in Berserk mode you feel weak. The CD also means you probably won’t see any Berserkers in organized PvE either.

Now, if Shroud is an ability that is a bit slower to gain but lasts a long time, why not make Berserk easy to enter but harder to maintain? Make us have to constantly smack enemies to stay angry but if they pull a invuln/chain blocks etc. you just have to get full adrenaline aging rather than sitting around waiting for the form to come off CD and not using your class mechanic cause you wanna make sure you can enter the form when it’s off CD.

The Issues of the Base Warrior:

Like several classes, Warrior is almost required to run certain specs depending on the game mode. However, many of those classes are just tied to a single spec, Warrior is tied to two. In fact, depending on what kind of build you’re going for your other spec is often decided for you as well.

No Defense? Have fun melting to even a small amount of condi pressure once your Berserker Stance wears off.

No Discipline? Enjoy 10 second weapon swaps on weapons clearly designed around rapidly swapping. No Warrior’s Sprint also means you’ll be a breeze to kite.

Going Power w/o Strength? Enjoy dealing much less damage and losing out of your GS trait (you’re probably using GS). Oh, and if you want to make a condi build using CC weapons you need this as well for Body Blow and Distracting Strikes.

Going Condi (in base War why would you though?) without Arms? You now have much lower condi application

While in theory having Strength and Arms decided for you depending on what type of damage you want to do is fine, being forced into Defense and Discipline is not.

Warrior is great for stomping noobs, but someone with any sort of knowledge about the class will just easily squash you unless they majorly screw up.

I’m totally cool with Shouts and Stances being there for new players, but just because the class is designed around mechanical simplicity doesn’t mean it can’t offer a bit more for veteran players.

Looping back around to Rage skills, why can’t sundering Leap be the Warrior version of Blink/Flash? Obviously you can’t make it work on all ledges/bridges but being able to chase after classes that can reach them would go a long way. Shattering Blow is just…there. A Warrior with a shield and/or mace has a lot of reflect already and the duration is too short to be reliably timed (It can also randomly swing you the opposite way of your target). Being able to move while constantly punching rocks (not “summoning”) like the Dragon Hunters’ block only with reflect would at least add a bit of team utility.

Being able to have a bit of nuanced sustain that involves positioning and timing and is also VIABLE would open a ton of options.

One last thing I’m going back and forth on, while many agree that Fast Hands needs to be baseline, I’m starting to think that the movement speed increase with melee weapons needs to be baseline as well.

Why? Even with baseline Fast hands you become very, very easy to kite. Warrior’s Sprint could still be a trait…maybe make it remove Chill and Slow as well? Warrior is a class focused on melee combat, sure we have ranged options but they’re almost never the main focus of a build. Right now, Reapers and Scrappers feel more like Warriors than Warriors in terms of melee sustain.

This was a longwinded rant I know, but I’m just so utterly disappointed by Berserker that I want to get all my thoughts out.

After 18 months away from gw2, I returned to check out the changes.
All of the above is hard line true about warrior.
After playing against nearly all new professions multiple times in PvP, I only faced one berserker the entire weekend. It was obvious the elite was dropped by warrior fans after 2-3 goes with it.
It amazed me that new skills like unrelenting assault stick to their target to a high degree, yet rush; bull charge, shield bash etc are still 50/50 at best.
The adrenaline decay is overtly rapid. I get the nerf, but it felt to me that this was a chain used to hold warrior down.

After this much time away it made for new eyes. The new traits standout instantly, but it also showcased what is just not working with warrior..which, sadly put, is a hell of a lot at the moment.

I didn’t have much time to play this weekend. I did re-try the Berserker in PvE, and it seemed less clunky than it was during the previous beta. However, it still felt somewhat weak, and I still ended up struggling to kill mobs far too often. Berserk seems more like a gimmick rather than a real elite speciality ability, and overall, the collection of torch, skills and berserk ability doesn’t really feel like an elite class either.

I rolled a necro and tried reaper, and I was completely floored by it’s amazing DPS and strong survivability. By comparison, it felt like my warrior/berserker was using foam weapons. Warrior has been my main since early release, but at this point I don’t foresee using berserker at all. I may even put the warrior on the shelf and start running necro/reaper instead.

Condi Warrior feedback.
I have much experience in the condition damage warrior and I would like to offer some feedback on the current torch and longbow as they provide the most effective dps for condition damage as of current.

Longbow
the longbow primal burst skill while i love the changes to the size and the rectangular shape I feel it lack luster in the burning department. When it comes to conditions many of my effective builds rely on applying the max stacks in the shortest period of time. when I activate the primal burst skill I only get 2 stacks of burning upon using it. which for me is a lack luster amount considering i could simply use dual shot (#1 skill for you newer players) and get the same amount. In short Long bow primal burst may need 1-2 more stacks of burning upon cast or allow the fire field to apply more over the duration.
TLDR: Change Primal burst to give more burning on cast or allow more burning over duration.

Torch
I still find this weapon to be lackluster for a condition build even with the trait that reduces the cooldown the 20 seconds on flames of war is very long and cumbersome to keep burning up. the torch and sword primal burst offers great condition burst but the duration of the burning is a little low making an extended fight against a boss mod or raid boss a much worse choice for maintaining high burning dps. I would much rather use a long bow to maintain stacks because the cooldown for berserk is much lower than the cooldown for flames of war. the torch 4 skill while a decent way to cripple foes trying to escape leaves the amount of burning to be desired. I feel like of the skill hits multiple times should add multiple instances of burning. I am not sure if this was intended and it is not working as such or not. maybe lower the stacks to 1 and apply it in 5 pulses for a total of 5 stacks that would give us something to help us keep our burning up while we wait for the cooldown of weapon swap to go back to long bow or berserk to use the sword primal burst.
TLDR: Change either cooldown of flames of war or allow attacks to stack burning over duration. Blaze breaker need more burning no cripple.

traits
King of Fires: Best Trait ever made for condition damage warriors, allows us to keep burning on more than one target while large aoe attacks are on cooldown. but the 20% burning duration is very meh I can get the same thing out of a superior sigil of smoldering which only increases burning by about a 1/4 of a second. either up the burning duration to 40% or allow 20% overall condition duration.
TLDR: King of Fires Add more burning duration or change to overall condition duration

Last Blaze: this skill actually i feel is a little too strong when there are 5 targets nearby and super lackluster when there is one target available. keeping 1 stack of burning for 3 seconds on 5 targets is great especially when you are in melee with a torch, but against a boss there is no reason to use this unless the only rage skill you use is Outrage or Sundering leap. Suggested Change: lower to 3 max targets increase number of stack of burning to 2-3 lower duration to 2 1/2 seconds.
TLDR: Too strong for aoe too weak for one target. lower max targets to 3 increase stacks to 3 lower burn duration.

Rage skills

Shattering blow: completely useless for condition builds considering we are focusing the berserker on burning damage. 4 stacks of bleeding not worth the cast time and the small reflect time is too hard to use consistently. Suggested change Change damage to burning lower stacks to 1, 2, 3 for respective ranges lower duration to 4 seconds

Blood Reckoning: Heal skill needs to be revamped, heal skills usually are a skill we like to use as an “oh cr@p button” a heal skill that you need to preemptively use for the full effectiveness is not helpful. 25% crit chance added is way too much considering with fury and any gear that as precision on it you will have about 75-80 percent anyway. if you use the signet precision you are already at over 90%. Suggested changes increase base heal by 200% lower crit healing.

A thank you to ArenaNet for the chance to theory craft and test these classes. Looking forward to seeing condition warriors take over the world.

your fan for life,

Bloodsoaked Orchid

My only feedback from playing the class is that it feels a bit weird having to press F2 then F1 right after one another, I think you could just make the new adrenaline attacks on the F2 so you dont acidentally cancel berserker and use a non berserker skill

Also there is a bug where the warrior will lose all adrenaline instantly randomly or when teleported, at least while i was raiding.

Played Berserker in BWE2 and BWE3 in PvE. Brought it to Vale Guardian.

For power builds, the gains over Arms feel dubious. Clunky contortions are necessary to maintain any sort of respectable damage. Not a fan of managing the on/off state in general, does not feel very kitten to have my elite spec turned “off” for 40% of each fight. Might be better if there was a more visible cue in the UI. Switching back to Arms was such a relief – suddenly I could maintain Berserker’s Power easily, could deliver more crits to power Phalanx Strength, and could focus on the fight rather than micromanaging my adrenaline bar.

For condition builds, Berserking feels in place. Sword+Torch/Longbow is extremely active and fun. Without Berserker’s Power up-time as a consideration, I don’t feel so weak when in the “off” state compared to power builds. As good as this feels, however, the number remain in question. How does it stack up compared to other specs brought for their damage alone?

A few additional specific critiques:

• Berserk/Primal Burst chain feels good now.
• Rupturing Smash is awful compared to Earthshaker. Needs to be tuned up/changed.
• Gun Flame is hilarious, hope it’s still good after it’s fixed.
• The healing on Blood Reckoning feels weak. Need to plan a large damage burst to use it effectively, but then it’s not available when a heal is needed. For a “Berserk” ability, seems a bit too premeditated in its best use case.
• Still found no use for any of the Rage skills in PvE, outside of Headbutt for open world.
• Arc Divider feels good.
• Scorched Earth feels like it ought to be ground-targeted, like Inspiring Reinforcement on the Revenant Dwarf stance.
• Last I checked, the attack speed increase from Berserking did not stack with Dual Wielding. If this isn’t yet fixed, it should be. Would help spice up the PvE applicability of Axes.

And one last, if I may.

• I still really, really, really want in my heart of hearts a way of maintaining 100% Berserking up-time in PvE.

As a warrior main I see no reason for using this elite the berserker is so bad it makes me sad, imo it needs a complete overhaul but if some of these changes are implemented I could see it working out somehow.

My proposal would be
1.Just give the Berserker a rage bar that fills up when you hit/get hit and or use rage skills.
2.Eliminate CD on Berserk Mode and lower the duration to 10s
3.Make both normal burst and primal burst available at all times and at the same time. Normal burst f1 and primal burst f2.
4.Primal burst rework. They don’t necessary need to be more powerful but they should offer a different play-style arc divider is a good example. If you want the fury use Arcing slice but if you want the range use arc divider.
5.Maybe make BM a f3? and when you go BM create a mini explosion of energy that does a small knock-back. (could be also a grandmaster that replaces bloody roar like when you transform in the game bloody roar)

Traits need rework
Always Angry – Start with full rage bar
Fatal Frenzy – 3s 3 might stacks, 3s fury, 3s quickness and 3s Swiftness when entering
BM
Smash Brawler – When at melee range you take less damage
Last Blaze – Its fine I guess Make it so rage skill give extra rage.
Savage Instincts – No change
Blood Reaction – 5% all Status increase while in BM
Heat the Soul – No change but instead of 150+ condi damage make it 10% Burning duration
Dead or Alive – No change but eliminate the 30s CD
Bloody Roar – When activating BM create a small area KB and give 5 stacks of might to allies.
King of Fires – No change but add Burning duration -20% and Lower the Burning duration to enemies to a 15% and add an FX to the trait -_- something along chilling nova
Eternal Champion – Leave the trait the same but add the taunt here.

PS: MAKE FAST HAND BASELINE! it would open build diversity. The new skill animations need some work they look underwhelming the flames look bad. I also dislike how my weapon disappears when I use my rage skills.

Berzerker felt much better this time around in comparison to the previous beta.

The build I played the most was the condition berzerker, and I really felt like I was playing a good version of a condition warrior. The animations felt really fluid, and I did not miss Discipline nearly as much as I would have expected. The mace f1 lets you dish out a respectable amount of conditions even if you are hitting a foe with stability on, and Bloody Roar’s taunt resulted in some cool moments.

I have mixed feelings about Torch. On one hand, it allows for some increased condition pressure and is a good way to get dire of some of the blocks in the game before following through with a combo. on the other, its damage feels a little underwhelming. Still, the rest of the Berzerker condi kit definitely made it capable of melting many opponents – perhaps not at burn guard speed, but with far more crowd control.

Chokolata.1870:

The main issue with berserker is that is very limited how core warrior is limited. For any sort of PvP play you need fast hands and thus you need discipline. Furthermore, PvP mandates defensive options, especially on a melee class thus you need Defense.

In the end you give up a lot of potential build options because you need to go into Discipline and Defense. All because of fast hands.

Fast hands need to be made baseline for berserker to have any chance of a condition build possible.

I agree. Or berserker could somehow also reduce swap CD. They’d just need to keep it from stacking with the other to prevent 0 CD swaps

Im sure all this has been mentioned a few times before, but I didn’t read every post on here :P

PvP/WvW raiding/GvG perspective=

Anyway; someone did mention on the first page that fast hands needs to become baseline. This is 100% true to create build variation in this class. Discipline is a really great traitline even without fast hands, but the lower weapon swap is something that nearly all warrior builds rely on. I think the best example of how class build variation changed with the specializations patch was mesmer. By making illusionary persona baseline, it removed the need to trait illusions for shatter builds. Now we have all types of condition shatter, mantra shatter, pure burst shatter, etc ALL because you dont need to have the illusions line anymore.

But for berserker itself, I only felt like arc divider and gun flame were actually worth running for any mode. I realize that gun flame is actually hitting twice currently, but theres no way to make it competitive without keeping its damage the way it is with two shots, or just increasing its damage flat out. The only reason berserker was strong this weekend was because of gun flame being extremely strong still. Arc divider felt a lot stronger and seems balanced, so no complaints there.

The problem with condition on berserker is the fact that you need to be constantly within melee range of your target, and your burns aren’t even that potent. When compared to burn guardian, the damage is nothing. When compared to a normal burning engineer or elementalist, they can both output more burns with much more sustain in their builds. Basically, they can output lots of burn damage without that even being the focus of their build. Torch still feels weak, and the final burn actually got reduced (if you were lucky enough to land it). Even reaper can do insane condition damage with chills, burns and bleeds; while being insanely difficult to kill.

The hammer burst needs some update to it still. As a warrior that raids in WvW every day with my guild against great numbers, its too difficult to hit. The aoe is not smooth and therefore you cannot really aim the immobilize (not that it matters with how short it is). If I could suggest something, it would just be to change the hammer burst to be a field that sits there and maybe pulls enemies in for a short time? Or maybe just make it a field that quickly expands on impact, immobilizing. The burst needs to feel more fluent as it lands; not guessing on who your going to hit with it.
The sword burst needs work too. Its very slow and inaccurate, and does nearly no damage. When I played pvp or wvw with it, I feel like im just useless sitting with it, waiting a few seconds for my next weapon swap back to rifle or greatsword. If I could suggest anything to it, it would be at least bring it back to a melee-oriented burst.

I think overall, fast hands baseline is the major change that is needed to offer berserker a chance into new builds. Berserker itself needs some update to burst skills (specifically gun flame (assuming that the double shot is a bug), hammer and sword), and a small overhaul on the rage skills (outrage is good, but it wont replace anything else competitively).

Would probably like to see the Torch have better power damage scaling to become a more viable option for power builds. It just doesn’t offer anything helpful compared to the other offhand weapons to validate running it, whether it be utility or damage.

Most warrior builds just can’t dump the Defense tree, it means giving up too much survivability, specially for pure melee builds and even with it up people just kite Warriors to death anyway only it takes a bit longer.

Also fast hands practically defines the Discipline tree. its been the primary reason people ran it since the day I started playing and has been a defining factor in every build. I agree with most people that it would be nice to have it as a class feature.

This really narrows down our build options a lot.

Overall Berserker feels really clunky at the moment, I love the theme and animations but it offers very. little viability compared to what Warriors have currently running.

[Casual PVP View]

Primal Burst:
Rupturing smash: This primal burst is weak, it needs to be buff a lot more. I think it should still do multi-hit damage like last beta weekend while inflicting a very short daze and 1 sec immobilize (effect triggers only once). The end result is a burst with okay damage, interrupt, soft cc, and less vulnerability to blinds and aegis.

Scorched Earth: A bump in burn stacks when hit would be nice.

Rage skills:
Shattering Blow: I like that this skill has a active defense component that the core utilities lack but it still feels and performs poorly. I propose changing this to a 2 skill utility like “Static Shield”. When activating the skill the player grabs a boulder from ground that acts as a projectile shield for a duration of 1 1/2 second after which it crumbles. The second ability would cancel the “projectile shield” and do the regular Shattering Blow with the reflect.

Sundering Leap: Unless this does really good damage or loads lots of conditions it won’t be able to compete with the standard defensive utilities. By just adding a stun break, it would turn it into a very flexible skill depending on how you trait. Cool down would obviously need to be increased.

Everything about berserker is bad and you should feel bad.

Really? A-net is this the best you can do? After testing all different builds with my war for several hours and then logging onto my revenant or chronomancer it literally feels like berserker is 1/3rd a class. 1/3rd the abilities, boons, CC, ANYTHING. Berserker excels at nothing and is only moderately ok at condi dmg in a small area. The wind up time to go into berserk is way too long unless you sacrifice a utility for a full rage bar for a transform thats subpar to a base line regular 3 trait line war. Think about that.

First off, I want to give a big shout out to ANet for all of the hard work they’ve been putting in lately, and for all of the utilized feedback and communication they’ve kept with us during the last couple of months. It’s been amazing! Now onto my feedback from BWE3…

I main Warrior and exclusively spend my time in sPvP, so that’s where all of my testing and suggestions are coming from. Since BWE2 I’ve only REALLY tested the Berserker, and for the most part I have enjoyed it in both a Damage and Support role. The changes from BWE2 to BWE3 were significant; some for better, and others for worse. Here we go…

#Berserk felt much better without the delay and the attack speed increase (10% to 15%) this time around. With that being said, it still didn’t feel strong enough to me… I’m not sure what it needs exactly that would benefit all builds, but for starters… lowering the cool down would be great. I felt myself waiting to go Berserk a little bit more than I would have liked in BWE3 due to that.

#Always Angry felt EXACTLY the way it should. This is one of my favorite changes for the Berserker in BWE3.

#Bloody Roar was GREAT when it worked. With all of the Stability/Blocks floating around these days, this trait wasn’t nearly effective enough to choose over Eternal Champion, though. If it went Unblockable, that would be great… but that might step over the line of being a little overpowered. (I’m trying to be reasonable here!)

#Dead or Alive felt like it was in a good spot. Taking what Amulet you ran into consideration, it had what I felt was the proper impact on your survival.

#Smash Brawler was a fantastic change, and I feel it’s in a great spot in the Adept Trait line.

#Blaze Breaker felt good, especially pared with Leg Specialist. I feel the 20% damage nerf from BWE2 hit it a little harder than it needed to be, so if it gained 10% of its damage back, I wouldn’t be upset.

#Flames of War is still underwhelming to me. I really want to like it, but with the recent Shield buff, I feel like this either needs to remove more conditions, inflict more burning damage to enemies standing in it, or gain more benefit by changing Heat the Soul (I’m not sure the best route to go with this one, but compared to Shield Master and Quick Breathing, it’s incredibly weak… maybe when traited your abilities also created a Light Field and rename the trait “Light the Way”?) to be a competitive, yet not crazy over powered off-hand choice. I chose Light Fields b/c they aren’t really that amazing, and it fits thematically with the torch. That on top of a fire field would make Powerful Synergy a much more appealing GM Trait, too.

#Arcing Sear was another favorite change of mine. The larger radius made for some devastating combos. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the growing fire field, though.

#Decapitate felt better than it did in BWE2, but didn’t really change the game in my opinion. The AOE splash is cool and all, but something I’d like to see that skill benefit from is a longer leaping distance.

#Flaming Flurry still suffered from being incredibly difficult to land. If you set it up properly, it did some pretty fantastic damage, but if the target was moving, you could maybe land one of the projectiles. It would greatly benefit from not locking you in place. I’ll add that the animation is one of my absolute favorites, though!

#Gun Flame was something I didn’t test b/c it was bugged, but the videos were pretty entertaining I have to say.

#Rupturing Smash wasn’t as good as I had hoped. It was one of the changes I was looking most forward to going into BWE3, but it didn’t perform well. The knockback from BWE2 wasn’t amazing either, but I’d take it back with the current version’s damage in a heartbeat. I think this skill suffers mostly from not being a circle AOE like Earthshaker is, and could just take some getting used to. With that being said, I’d still prefer the knockback.

#Scorched Earth was the sleeper hit of BWE3 for me. It worked a lot better than I expected, and aimed very well. Ironically the aiming arrow was bugged and never appeared for me… but if it would have, it was EXACTLY I wanted it to go!

#Skull Grinder was something I tested a lot in BWE2, so I didn’t do much with it this time around. I do like the skill though, and how it fits the Eviscerate role for Condi builds.

#I tested Rage skills the least out of everything, as I’m not very impressed by any of them. Sundering Leap is the Rage Skill I tested the most, and I appreciated its nice synergy with Leg Specialist after the change from BWE2. The change to Blood Reckoning was appreciated as well, though it still isn’t strong enough for use in sPvP.

In my overall assessment of the Berserker, I feel like it’s headed in a good direction, but is still sitting way below the other new Elite Specializations like the Reaper and Chronomancer (who isn’t am I right?)… and that’s because it’s missing one thing that Warriors have been asking for, for a LONG time… and that’s Fast Hands going baseline. I tried my best this weekend to play without the Discipline Line, and really gave it “the ol’ college try”, and I felt nerfed beyond belief without it… which was incredibly restricting to build diversity… like it always has been. If Fast Hands went baseline, along with a few of my other suggestions from above… I think the Berserker would live up to its name, and truly be a force to be reckoned with.

Thanks again ANet for a great weekend, and good luck in your next three weeks (ermahgerdthreeweeks!) getting the expansion ready!

Would be really neat if hammer primal burst produced an aoe knockdown or float!

-Currently primal burst and regular burst share a cooldown, so you can’t get any synergy between them. Is it possible for separate cooldown to be a consideration?

-Decapitate still feels extremely weak compared to other primal bursts. The cone aoe behind the target is unreliable since the ability requires melee range. Player does not have ability to take angles. Changing the burst to a range skill (similar to part of the change to sword) would make the cone aoe more reliable.

-Rage skills are still overall not useful. Primary issue is that warriors take utiltities to stay alive, and most rage skills do not have any properties that help in that manner. The heal and the three utilities that are not outrage simply don’t offer enough to take over survival utility, and the amount of offensive punch they will need to pack for them to be worth taking would be imbalanced. If nothing else, at least 1 rage should help in someway in condition clearing.

-Not specifically berserker related, but it seems axe 5 is still split between pve and pvp. I don’t know if that’s intentional or not, but I thought it’s worth mentioning.

Berserker is underwhelming and offers nothing new to the class and nothing in that traitline makes you pick it over the others and the sinergy with the other trait lines, well, there is none. As it is, the only reason for taking this line is to funck arround and maybe have some fun.
Before it was revealed I had hope that the elite spec. will bring something new to warrior, solve some of the problems that it has and drag it away from the stances build in PvP and WvW and the BORIIIIIIIIIIIING banners in PvE. In reallity…?!? … well, you’ve seen it…
I don’t know who theory crafted Berserker, but the only nice thing about it is the name…When you see the name you think “oh scheise” and under the hood is just a weak spec. Like seeing a big shadow that comes from arround the corner, and you get scared of the beast, and behind the corner is just a puppey.
I like how Druid feels like a new class and it’s sad that Berserker is the same old warrior, even weaker, with some shinny new animations. It’s bad, and feels bad man.
I am sorry, but for it to work it needs a rework and it needs to adress the warrior problems, not to make a fiery theme you think it’s cool.
If you want a condi spec, just go to arms, where we have our bleeds, vurnerabilities and our condy dmg, and change or rework some bad traits there (plenty of them), add some fire and torch ones and there you go. Arms, even as bad as it is, I would take it over Berserker, Signet Mastery and Burst Precision, even Dual Wielding, makes it better than this eltie spec.
Sorry Anet, you funcked it up.
PS: This my oppinion and I would like people to respect it as I respect other people oppinions on Berserker being good or decent, or people who actually like condi warrior.

You forgot that the icon look cool. I agree with ya they failed on that class if you compare it to the other one. I wonder how complicated it would have been to make an elite spec for warrior it’s the most basic of class. I guess he might have ran out of idea after the reaper and the chronomancer. Also sad since isn’t warrior one of the most played class in the game? Maybe was it the goal to make people change class?

Minus the broken gun flame, decent decapitate, barely viable arcing shear and condition builds the whole rest is a big fail. The animation and effect look bad, we lose too much to gain access to that spec and it’s not viable at all.

I can only echo the concerns for the Berserker specialisation which our fellow warriors have already voiced.

In short, I stopped playing Berserker after 1 day into the BWE simply because I’m a competitive player and felt to compete against any other competitive player in pvp scenarios the Berserker fell way short of any usefulness when compared to vanilla warrior. Im just not willing to sacrifice any of the must-have traits for a gated buff which feels lacklustre in execution.

At this point in time I do not have any reason to sacrifice traits from the strength, defense, and discipline lines or feel that it is worth swapping out any of my utilities for the newer ones introduced via Berserker. I have no interest in running a condition warrior either.

Bearing in mind the elite specialisation is not the be-all and end-all of warrior and is an option, I hope in the next few weeks I’m compelled to, or given more reason to consider running a Berserker when the expansion goes live.

I do like the idea of this specialisation and have really enjoyed trying some of the other
specialisations over the weekend.

Thanks.
Raid.

The rage abilities save for savage blow (the knockback one) and headbeat are useless. Shake it off already does what outrage does and rock smash is absolutely never worth taking. The problem you have with berserker is that all his abilities are ever more selfish and doesn’t benefit allies around him.

Warrior class already was a class where it fell too hard in team fights and berserker did nothing to alleviate it. I’ll not only even look into the new abilities but look at the current outdated abilities such as:

Shake it off – CD too long and only removes 1 condition, it needs to do more.
On my mark – This needs to reveal to prevent stealthing, stunbreaker + blind immunity.
Killshot – needs to be like Gun Flame where you can move while firing.
Power synergy – this grandmaster trait is 100% useless and should be a taunt instead.

In general warrior needs more taunt mechanics, but you gave it to reverant instead which makes absolutely no sense.

The spec is fun.. and basically.. that is it.
If you wanna have fun.. you can use it and achieve that..
If you wanna play for serious competitive goals on spvp or wvw… sorry, not this time..
You just can’t take other traits for a the new ones..
But that is not a prob with the spex itself.. it is a prob with last trait patch that messed up all the warriors mandatory traits and kinda made only one build viable… in order to be competitive you just can’t remove those trait lines no matter what..
So there is like 2 ways out of this:
1- completely rework warrior trait lines offering more build options to players (let’s face it… just wont happen)
2- leave it as it is and berserker will be just left out of the competitive modes of the game.
It is quite sad.. since the 1st image that comes to our mind was something awesome.. and than..after looking closely we have that “mehhh”
Feeling..

I do love the changes made to the Zerker!
Its become quite a class to play in the PvE environment (didn’t play it in PvP due to me not wanting to miss out on rewards.. HA!) The condi damage on Sword / Torch is great! When specced for pure burns, you can see your burn numbers hitting a constant 4-8k damage tick. 10-16 Avg. Burn stacks in PvE.

Physical damage on the GS and Axe Rage skills seems an improvement from what they were before. And these two burst skills work like a charm with Blood Reckoning, the AoE Cleave and heal, might make me change my mind on keeping healing signet! However, this heal does not work with a Condi setup, being that it is based on damage dealt, conditions do not contribute to this healing.

Rage skills are really like Marmite as it stands. I can see a place for Outrage, Sundering leap and Blood Reckoning in Zerker setup, but the others i really cant see any play in the PvE environment. Unless there is some kind of a boss who sends out OHKO projectiles which you need to knock back to the foe to kill?

Traits are much nicer now and work well with other builds.
However I did notice that Dead or Alive does not scale with healing power.. well it does but 10 HP increase isn’t scaling.

It would also be nice for Last Blaze to give rage skills a cooldown reduction.

Further more, Fatal Frenzy: how come this doesn’t give 2s of super speed instead of Swiftness? Would mean the F2 can be used to get in closer and faster to land that burst … or run away.

PvE Dungeon/Fractal/Raid overview…

Torch Skills: Fine, I suppose. the PvE condi build will have pretty decent DPS, but suffers from less utility and less dps than the Power build. Some people just enjoy condi for the sake of condi and this is at least a big upgrade over what we have now.

Traits: the condi traits are fine for the same reason as detailed above for torch skills. One issue with the condi build is that Smash Brawler is so good now that it feels like a “must take” trait. This means you really can’t take the “rage skills inflict burning” trait ina condi build because Smash Brawler is vastly better. the rest of the traits are OK for their intended purpose.

One big flaw for me is that the GM traits feel weak. None of them feel as powerful or build defining as we have come to expect from GM traits, especially in PvE. King of Fires is OK, but its not even nearly as good as engineer’s Incendiary Powder. The other two traits for a PvE power build are either unusable (Taunt) or weak (stability).

Additionally, the most powerful trait in the entire spec, Smash Brawler is at adept. I’m not sure how to move these things around, without ruining the condi spec but Smash brawler is to Berserker what Fast Hands is to Discpline. It should either be baseline or a minor trait, because there is no other option nearly as close.

Rage skills: not so great for PvE, but I don’t think it is intended or needed for them to compare to banners or signets for warrior.

Primal Bursts: buff to arc divider is great and exactly what was needed.

In my opinion:

1) The burning has been improved and feels far better, maybe the torch skills could get a little more of damage but they are close to the spot and the torch is a nice weapon. Viable condition damage is -for me- the best the class has to offer actually

2) What I feel lacking is a “new gameplay” beside condition damage, the berserker mode and their bursts doesn’t feel like they have a clear ambition/theme: its not the slow-heavy hitting reaper, the ultra-healer druid, the absurdly mobile daredevil, the time manipulator mesmer and even the risk-reward tempest. I cant clearly define the berserker like those. I would love a rampaging berseker that grows in power the more it fights, but other people have proposed other interesting ideas like burst of power easy to get but hard to maintain, or a more classic “you get stronger the lower your life is”. All good ideas that can be obtained with the mechanics already present. They just need to be adjusted with a new, interesting way to play the class in mind.

will continue later….

I main a warrior and was very concerned when i heard about the torch being the weapon. but after last BWE and this one, i love it. the burns man. THE BURNS. i am already planning on swapping over my soldier gear for dire gear. so strong. that being said… i would like to see a bit shorter cooldowns on the torch skills, and two stacks of burns on the rage skills or shorter cooldowns. but, that is my opinion. the condis are great, but it just doesn’t feel like they are on par with what some of these other classes can crank out, and if i am going to run a condi build, i REALLY wanna run some conditions. other than that, could not be happier. sword torch longbow is amazing and can really devastate in wvw as well as in pve, which i have never seen before

During the whole of BWE3, i have never seen anyone one a berserker in wvw or pvp. I dont do much PVE therefore i cant tell for that field. But if noones rolling a beta warrior, there must be something terrible wrong with it.

as for my pov, i find it very underwhelming as compared to others. Adding any skill that acts like rampage, with new burst skills is not helping. The trait is horrible, most of the traits cant even compare to dis,str or tactics/arms. It needs huge rework.