Bard in battle + any two berserkers can power through anything ranking wise. Or just any other bard for that matter. Anthem, Resist, and healing. This works at any ranking level. I would always rank with two berserkers if I were playing the bard, because mobs just die so much quicker with deathblow firing. With my bard in the village, I took two berserkers, and we killed every nightwalker in the ruins of Maethien in our mid 40 ranks without stopping once.

Unless berserkers are going around forced into solo ranking I don't buy that they need deathblow to rank efficiently.

That said, I don't mind that they have deathblow when they do since it does scale with level. But don't tell me it is compensation for less ranking ability. It's to put out huge damage. Cause they need to lots of times in PK cause villagers can be victimized pretty badly.

At low ranks, it may be a terror. At high ranks, I watch some mages simply laugh at berserkers. Invokers can often kill them with three spells. Scouts are often more deadly just through using critical hit coupled with spell bane and spell evasion making them harder to hit with spells.