Fury Based Berserker Balances

[Gorth]

Resident guy with opinions here. I've been playing Berserker for a long while, now, old game and new. Currently, fury doesn't appear to increase damage, or decrease defenses, which is sad, but I think they wanted to make that partial rerolls, which would be in line with other classes. That's the big bulk, here. Berserkers don't get rerolls from most things. I'd certainly be sad to see us get more difficulty defending, but if we had ways to do more damage for it, I'd probably be okay with it.

Here's the main things:

- Fury drains, even if you're fended. I've got no issue with it draining if you miss. But having your attack nullified and then losing the resource to try again is a little disheartening, especially with how little of rerolls we can get to actually hit, to get that resource back. Maybe it even just drains by half the cost, or something. That'd be fine.
- Attacks generated by abilities don't (seem) to generate fury. I wouldn't expect something like, say, furious blow (that attacks once) to generate fury from itself, but maybe the second hit of flurry could, if it hits. It doesn't get any rerolls on either attack.
- Flurry doesn't get any rerolls, at all. The second attack does less damage. It'd actually be interesting if the second attack had a couple rerolls, or pushed down defense for like a surprise type thing. Your enemy expected one attack, they got two. On that note, flurry generates a second attack. Maybe it's necessary to do that so that there can be the same weapon energy cost on the second hit, and so that if the first one kills, you don't spend extra energy (which is really helpful). I feel like it'd be fine, though, if it was rolled into one attack, like I've been told multi-throw does. A free followup attack. Also, by virtue of how it generates that attack, it doesn't get ambush pushdowns on enemy defense.bonuses
- As relates to the two points above, I am unable to test if multistrike weapons generate fury for the subsequent attacks.
- Defense is rough. A lot of our big damage moves require hand and a half, which means that we can take a shield for defense, but lose out on damage, or go all dodge/parry. We do get medium armor reductions, but encumbrance makes dodge rough, not to mention that quickly climbing armor hindrance negative rerolls. My non-shield using Berserker tends to walk in to combat, and either avoid all the attacks and generate zero fury that way, or take all the hits and have lots of fury, but be super damaged, by virtue of taking damage. I'm not positive what I suggest, except maybe inverting the fury idea to be more damage, and some natural damage reduction on top of armor. Not a ton, because otherwise that could be crazy. But I like the idea that Berserkers can just kind of keep swinging, even if they're bleeding out of every part of their body. That or a tactical dodge that gives you some fury, but I don't know how often I would be able to activate that. I'm honestly fine with either Berserkers getting extra defense, or extra ways to do stupid amounts of damage. I enjoy extreme hitter glass cannons. Oh, I also forgot to mention that if you use a shield for extra defense, you miss out on followup punch which also doesn't appear to build fury, so it isn't a huge loss, but followup punch is still nice. More damage, chance for staggers.

[Ela]

Important to note about my following ideas is that I don't have a Berserker, so I'm a little out of my element and I could be wrong in my vision of them.

The first idea is that the Fury decay be removed when the character has "You are under attack!" under their effects. This seems like a good solution to decaying Fury because Tumble/Flip probably has the same problem of draining your Fury as getting fended off, though I can't confirm that. Because Fury amounts are fixed at 5 intervals ( Grounding Shout takes 5, Furious Blow takes 15, Furious Shout generates 15 ), the decay makes the immediate loss of Fury in combat potentially make it so that you're unable to use your abilities until you get/take additional hits.

The second is that Fury tends to be a pretty fun resource to balance in a lot of games. There are plenty of games where you don't want to hit the cap/go over the cap on the resource, so lifting the cap from 25 to 100 and including an ability or abilities that have you hovering in a sweet spot of Fury so that you're getting a benefit, whether that's additional or partial rerolls, could be a fun way to make it a lot more interactive. Put in a penalty for going above a certain amount of Fury or tie it to an ability so it is something players can opt in to playing with, and it might be a pretty fun addition to the class.

The other ideas are less likely to be implemented.

Using the system that determines whether foes are challenging enough to give increased riln amounts/the "challenging enemy" system, an ability to restore small amounts of health to the most injured locations of a Berserker when they defeat a worthy foe could help with sustaining themselves to make use of their Fury. It wouldn't need to be much, but something to simply keep them going as they build their resource over time.

Something simple like having a high amount of Fury allowing them to reduce their RT by 1, but removing the ability to aim could be fun to represent a frenetic assault.

[Gorth]

Important to note about my following ideas is that I don't have a Berserker, so I'm a little out of my element and I could be wrong in my vision of them.

Nah.

The first idea is that the Fury decay be removed when the character has "You are under attack!" under their effects. This seems like a good solution to decaying Fury because Tumble/Flip probably has the same problem of draining your Fury as getting fended off, though I can't confirm that. Because Fury amounts are fixed at 5 intervals ( Grounding Shout takes 5, Furious Blow takes 15, Furious Shout generates 15 ), the decay makes the immediate loss of Fury in combat potentially make it so that you're unable to use your abilities until you get/take additional hits.

Don't know about the tumble/flip thing, forgot to test. But oh baby, getting rid of decay in combat would make things a lot easier. There have been many times where I lined up my fury perfectly, and then ended up in a tiny bit of roundtime. That or got staggered, in which time you cannot move or do anything to generate more fury, but it still drains. It never really meshed with me that my character slowly lost the battle fury while in combat.

The second is that Fury tends to be a pretty fun resource to balance in a lot of games. There are plenty of games where you don't want to hit the cap/go over the cap on the resource, so lifting the cap from 25 to 100 and including an ability or abilities that have you hovering in a sweet spot of Fury so that you're getting a benefit, whether that's additional or partial rerolls, could be a fun way to make it a lot more interactive. Put in a penalty for going above a certain amount of Fury or tie it to an ability so it is something players can opt in to playing with, and it might be a pretty fun addition to the class.

That would be so much fun. Like I said, I love glass cannons. But I also really like balanced, risk reward builds, where if you can keep your stride, you can do great, but if you over extend at the wrong time, you get punished. Pulling the ceiling up would give lots of ways to play with that, and adding in negatives to your defenses at the cost of damage boosts or similar once you pass, say, seventy, or something, would make me really enjoy the fight to stand at that threshhold and pass it only once I need that damage and don't think I'll get hit. Beautiful. Especially if we can get some abilities that really let us capitalize on going over that point of extreme risk for some real reward. Would play, all day, every day.

The other ideas are less likely to be implemented.

Using the system that determines whether foes are challenging enough to give increased riln amounts/the "challenging enemy" system, an ability to restore small amounts of health to the most injured locations of a Berserker when they defeat a worthy foe could help with sustaining themselves to make use of their Fury. It wouldn't need to be much, but something to simply keep them going as they build their resource over time.

Something simple like having a high amount of Fury allowing them to reduce their RT by 1, but removing the ability to aim could be fun to represent a frenetic assault.

I like the first one a lot. Something like what I read old Adrenaline Surge doing, where you just get a little refund after something dies/runs away. Second one would be really cool, actually. Especially coupled with the trying not to go over a certain threshold idea. The faster you attack, the faster your fury builds, and then suddenly they're in a pile on the ground, but if they get up, you're gonna hurt.

[Gorth]

I also forgot to mention furious counter. The ability says it gets rerolls, but it actually doesn't (don't worry, I bugged it). But even with those rerolls, it's risky. I still do it because it's fun and it can be super good, sometimes, but more often than not it ends up putting me in more roundtime, with less fury, when I could have just spent that on a flurry or something with more chances to hit.

[Gorth]

I'm curious if anyone else playing Berserker can confirm any of these findings. As it is Berserker feels very difficult to play. It requires time in combat to generate the resource necessary to get rerolls (which are the balancing factor in combat) and then those rerolls often end up not mattering, or get nullified by something like fending or tumble.

I've been thinking about sitting down to come up with a bunch of ideas, but I don't want to, if people aren't experiencing the same things as me. Maybe I'm just doing something wrong. Maybe I should just dump even more ability points and get mighty blow and spam that and staggering blow, and be content with those being more or less my only forms of rerolls, despite the extremely heavy energy costs.