First, a disclaimer. These thoughts are not inspired by any one character, but rather by close to a decade of continuous play by a person who has played one berserker (and was amazed at the amount of ass I kicked that I shouldn't have been able to). I try to be "enlightened" in all things, and look at every angle, but my opinion of BattleRagers is still a negative one, and I want to explain why.


Except berserker powers come with huge, enormous, get-you-killed drawbacks, and are also powers which can be prepared against, defended against, reduced, and generally circumvented.


This is the line that's been pitched since God-knows-when. You believe it, and the Imms Who Count believe it, so it probably won't change, but this is where I think it is wrong...

What, exactly, is enormous about the drawbacks? If you use bloodthirst you will auto-attack mobs...but you can flee from those mobs and into your cabal, which has the best strategic location in the game. What is the drawback to deathblow? What is the drawback to resist? What is the drawback to spellbane? I only see gold stars, A-pluses, and two-thumbs up.

You also say the powers can be "prepared against". Well, deathblow is designed to ruin the effectiveness of preps, and does so quite well. How do you prepare against resist? How do you prepare against spellbane (short of bringing a gang)?

Now the "umbrella drawback" to the village is that you can't use magic. Duh. We all know that. Sure, it's pretty big. It was a lot bigger in the past, when mages had less drawbacks in regards to gathering preps, some stronger shapeshifter forms (anyone remember falcons kicking everyone's asses?), transform, etc. Now Scions have something similar to 'transform', but it's not as easy to use, and has a wide degree of variance. Villagers still have deathblow, resist, thirst, spellbane, trophy...why haven't they lost something as the game has become more challenging for everyone else?

I mean, do I have to roll up a power-combo cloud berserker sword spec and log every crazy scenario where I rip through my entire range in one sitting before something will change?

One thing that I really want to know, but have little to no chance of really finding out, is if the group that has always viciously defended the integrity of Ragers in CF is just small and loud, or more broad-based. If it's the former, that's some form of minority tyranny, which is not, I remind you all, an oxymoron.


None of that can be said about this particular scion power. It's entirely without drawback and it is impossible to defend against by most of the people who are required to fight the cabal. Worse, it renders a success against all the scion actual players a loss.


To comment on this, you should know that the thieving nightwalkers tend to fail quite a bit. As soon as they fail they become vulnerable, and visible. That's one way to fight them right there. The other way is to simply stay out of their way...which is the one real solution to getting around all of those nice rager powers . Sounds poetic to me.


If no one agrees here, well, just think of me as the crazy guy in the corner, like always!