Guild Wars 2

Right now the primal rage mechanic is really just bursts behind a 4 adrenaline paywall. It really isn’t that unique. Consensus from the warrior forums is that it activates way too late into a fight to be useful.

Unlike standard bursts, Primal Rage needs to be front loaded. Here is how I would fix it:

Warriors begin a fight, match, or map change with Primal Rage immediately usable. Upon use the warrior will go into the standard berserk mode.

However when Primal Rage ends, goes on a 15 second CD, and you lose all built adrenaline and gain 3 effects that cannot be removed from by clears:

Overexerted: You take 20% more damage
Lethargy: You move 50% slower
Strained: You attack 25% slower

Your adrenaline bar becomes a recovery bar. Each bar of adrenaline gained removes one of the 3 effects in the order listed above (overexerted > lethargy > strained).

After 30 seconds Primal Rage comes back again. The conditions also expire on their own with 5 seconds for overexerted, 7 for lethargy, and 10 for strained.

This front loads Primal Rage and makes it usable at ANY time, immediately when its not on CD. However, after primal rage warriors become weakened and have to quickly build adrenaline or use protective skills to ward attempts to kill them while they are in recovery mode.

Another strategy would be to use something like “To the Limit!” or the adrenaline signet to quickly gain 3 bars and clear all the effects immediately.

This makes the zerker mode a high risk mode that rewards warriors for using it at the right time + having strategies to protect themselves when it wears off. However, it can be a doubled edged sword and hurt you if you use it and are cc’ed or don’t kill the enemy during its duration and go into weakened state at the wrong time. This is how a berserker should play.

lordhelmos.7623:

However when Primal Rage ends, goes on a 15 second CD, and you lose all built adrenaline and gain 3 effects that cannot be removed from by clears:

Overexerted: You take 20% more damage
Lethargy: You move 50% slower
Strained: You attack 25% slower

Your adrenaline bar becomes a recovery bar. Each bar of adrenaline gained removes one of the 3 effects in the order listed above (overexerted > lethargy > strained).

You should understand that they got rid of the “Take 25% increased damage” effect from Frenzy for a reason. It murders the viability of the ability by making you just utterly melt from pretty much anything, not to mention a movement speed decrease and attack speed decrease would make even using Berserk completely unwanted because you’re not going to gain adrenaline pretty much at all to effectively remove those effects, this would especially be true in PvP. None of that works with the fast paced nature of Guild Wars 2.

Sorry.

no……………

lordhelmos.7623:

Overexerted: You take 20% more damage
Lethargy: You move 50% slower
Strained: You attack 25% slower

Wow… Sorry, but I laughed a bit there. No pun intended, but if this is the effects you want, rather just send Warriors directly into downed state after PR ends, to spare them the torture of playing with such handicap and to prevent them from being humiliated by anyone that happens to be anywhere close to them at that point, lol.

Yeah other than the after effects on PR I agree with you

Honestly, berserker seems rather underwhelming compared to what I imagined after the recent arenanet information.

Kind of feels like they went back on that 33% attack speed boost too early. The berserker idea sounded a lot better on paper when we didn’t know some of the datails.

We need easier access to adrenalin, less adrenalin loss outside of combat and a buff to / or rework of a few berserker (even warrior) features at this point. Really don’t want to have another handicap when going into burst mode. It would be the old Frenzy all over again.

Berserker mode would have to be on par with something like Rampage (damage resistance, condition resistance and increased damage) to justify such a high disadvantage when ending said mode.