"Don't to fight them unless you can gang or execute an elaborate strategy to drop MV's during which you can still be 2 rounded at any point"

Something is broken regardless of the extenuating circumstances.

People keep suggesting damage reduction as a legitimate tactic. I'm sorry but unless it's class-based and not on a Paladin, I consider damage reduction is a special case only, and with the breaking of sets is completely variable on the player's luck and hours sunk into actually finding the a/b/s if it's a mage, a large number of mages me included never find all three wands and many limited sources are maxed out by either the liches or hero level shapeshifters/transmuters (not even mages in general) that have been around a while. Again, as Daevryn also said, you need more damage reduction the more stupid #### you plan on doing.

Currently fighting a Berserker toe to toe is 'stupid ####' and has been for over ten years when it really shouldn't be. I'm not saying they shouldn't stand a decent chance of killing you, I'm saying it should be less than it is now and wholly predictable (within the realm that anything is predictable in CF), especially with the prevalence of dagger due to dex now being important even to giants. The entwine/flurry is never funny but it can be avoided by lagging the warrior to death when his mainhand is empty.

What isn't funny is losing 400 HP in the round prior from 1-3 DB's trying to execute some strategy or even seal a kill on someone with 100 HP left. Especially if you were winning despite having little or no d/r.

Jhishesh claiming no warrior should ever die to the rager is disengenuous and he should be shot for claiming it. There's any number of situations you can't or don't want to quaff return even as an uncaballed:

A Berserker walks in and attacks or lags you while you have your hands full with another opponent. The berserker is probably not aware you're busy with someone else if this happens.

Cabal defense.

Other people, usually entire other cabals in your PK, can have exhausted your resources and you may not be in a position to have the gold or potions on hand.

Explore areas and other terrain. Granted, this is rare because they will never be outside of walking distance of the village with 50% MV, but it's happened.

What Jhishesh is proposing is a means of escaping a cage-match situation. Very little of CF is a cage match situation but DB certainly gets ragers out of plenty of those.

And it's not the DB alone, while a royal lifespan shortening pain in the ass, that's the issue. It's the combination of it with spellbane and thirst, in situations where running may not be an option.

CF is about PK. Tactical retreats are fun. Running away from people and praying they turn stupid is not fun.

Woldrun nuked me with DB wearing ragesteel and pit gear using his hand to hand spec while I was a fully geared tiger. Then he proceeded to talk about how awesome it was to nuke me with no effort at all for a perceived slight when I was about to give him some #### back that would let him survive but not two round people. Mirfalaus then proceeded to give him back everything that WOULD allow him to two-round people but that's not the point. This is stupid as hell no matter what you think his drawbacks are, he was raiding the cabal.

Bard Repertoire Clarifications:
http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=23735&mesg_id=23735&page=