Whenever I see logs of Berserkers firing of deathblows on non-mage characters, I can't help but think "hmm, this aint right".

Now I do realise that ragers need some compensation for not being able to prep, but at least some of their powers help with that. I've seen plenty logs of a berserker winning a fight against a non-mage in a totally unfair situation. So I would remove deathblow against non-mages, but since in essence death-blow works only with rage:

- It would still trigger when the target has 20-25%+ of gear that is magical, possibly including inventory. You'd get an echo like: Sensing the magical currents flowing around 'opponent', you feel overcome with rage (or whatever)

- It would work when your hp % drops below 35%

"What is mind, don't matter. What is matter? Nevermind"

Ok, DB was originally used to counter xform which is basically gone, I know, Scion still has despoil, but it's not as prevalent as when you had hundreds of masters running around with 2k hp.

Nowadays ragers are more vulnerable to prepping chars than mages with unbelievable hp's. While DB does help against those who know where to get preps, it makes things imbalanced while fighting those who don't. I think a better solution would be to remove DB and replace it with a 'spellbreaker' blow. This would have 100% chance to remove all non-self cast preps. Any buff from potions, from other chars casting on you, etc, would be stripped.

This way an unprepped char would still have a chance of killing a berserker since they don't have DB and yet a berserker wouldn't be cannon fodder for the uber prepped chars.

The non-berserker loses haste, damage reduction, and lag reduction (flight, enlarge, reduce) the berserker still keeps thirst and resist.

Stripping of all buffs would mean mages become bashable. Since invokers rely on damage reduction and casting to beat berserkers, sepllbreaker removing both seems like it would tip the fight so far in favor of the berserker that no invoker would even bother fighting ragers.

And I think it's a good idea for ragers to have some form of dispelling maneuver. Appropriately balanced of course. Should it replace deathblow? If it's to be a berserker power, I'd say definitly.. Another option would be to make a fourth rager path. Or a power specific to rager leaders.

One (IMO) cool idea would to make deathblow do different things.. maybe one out of three:
1) Automatical critical hit when it lands
2) Dispelling strike (mentioned above)
3) The Big Hit (current deathblow)

That way, deathblow would be slightly improved against heavily prepped opponents, and only one third as nasty against unprepped warriors. Another thing I would like to see is an area attack added to bloodthirst, akin to that of bloodlust of the x fiends.




Side note: According to the original post, only externally acquired spells would be affected, so pass door / protective shield, etc would remain on nevertheless.. but I think I tried to make a point that the exact details aren't really important, so shame on me for writing this :p

I said it would strip any non-self cast buff, any buff not found on said chars spell list in other words. So invokers would keep their shields, but their warrior buddy wouldn't. Transmuters could be quickened, but not their warrior buddy. All mages would keep their bash protection, but would lose their ABS. Plus there would only be a small percent per hit that this ability would actually trigger, so it could easily be after the rager is really beat up before the mage loses his/her ABS.

So then it shouldn't work against classes that are more likely to parry/dodge it or have healing on a stick? It's a thought. Not saying a good one, but it is a thought. Go play a rager, or if you're basing this off logs, go read some where a berserker gets his ass handed to him by a non-mage, or has every deathblow parried.

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens." - Jimi Hendrix

I generally agree with this.

Jinroh excepted, almost everyone who really complains about deathblow has not spent a whole lot of time playing a berserker, especially at hero.

We don't bitch because we want to keep it.

If I had a choice between field dressing and deathblow in fights/raids/defenses, I'd probably choose field dressing 75% of the time. When you see some insane deathblow that kills someone in 1 hit it looks disgusting, but in the bigger scheme of things, there are other skills that turn the tide a lot quicker. Especially when you're fighting a skilled foe.

A relatively fair trade-off occurs when you see the sacrifices and hard times a rager app has to go through to get deathblow and the drawbacks of skills such as bloodthirst. In one random fight when someone gets deathblowed to pieces, you don't see this trade-off that only evens out when you see the entire piece of work that is a berserker's life.

I've played three berserkers in my career, two to hero. I've also played several non-battle warriors that have killed and died to berserkers. So I have a shred of credibility, but just a shred

For example, if someone is really curious you could look at my PK records with 5 warriors, three berserkers and two non-berserkers.


Berserkers :

Vinourak : Pk wins - 69 - Pk losses - 69 Gank-meter- 1.22

Ontylirn (deleted at 42) : Pk wins - 30 - Pk losses - 44 Gank - 1.3

Yintrik (crap, can't find his pbf) : Something like 50 and 50 i imagine.

Non-deathblowing warriors :

Icthaen : Pk wins - 62 - Pk losses - 27 Gank - 2.0

Gryshilniar : Pk wins - 128 Pk losses - 86 Gank - 1.6


Summary! Deathblow is teh suck.

Hehe, no but as you can see there's a case to be made for both camps of course. Perhaps people just don't want to admit it's *gasp* balanced.

P.S. Nep I just tried this account for fun and it still works. That's probably bad. Feel free to ban it!

I'm sorry, but there's some berserkers who aren't very good. Should I post some really newbie marans to prove maran powers aren't any good? What exactly is your point? Look up Kackrik. 150 pks for spamming bash.

I don't have access to every character who plays, so I examined the pbfs of hero warriors. Statistical analysis, rather than descriptive statistics, was required to help account for skew--some groups were better represented than others.

A character's cabal was one of 49 variables studied and the results have been given to the Imps so they can make informed adjustments on the data rather than on anecdotal evidence. I'll not comment on this forum what the results were, but understand that the coders have the information they need to take the appropriate action or inaction as the situation requires.

The pbf pool isn't necessarily rock solid enough to analyze very well. Its all somewhat anecdotal, because the sampling is too small to be valid. You cannot, for instance, compare a fire axe spec berserker with a fire pole spec berserker or a half-elf dagger berserker. You'd need controls in place such that, you had a plethtitude of combos all played by the same people with unbiased motivations and consistant performance/lifespan.

CF's complexity affords it a lot of leniency in reading too much into pbf figures.

Still, I respect you trying to crunch the digits. But as I noted to Grysh, its purely anecdotal.

That is always a risk, and given I 'only'* had 48 warriors to look at (Jan - August), certain things cannot be said with any certainty--if only two warriors had a given legacy, it would be dangerous to make generalizations about the deathfulness of that legacy, particularly if I wished to control for race and cabal. If I get approached to hero-imm someday I'll request a grep and put together a more comprehensive study, but for now, although Autumn Harvest may or may not be statistically good for rager smurfs, I can't say anything conclusive for that one taller dude who took it or the svirfnebli who chose against it.

That said, some statistically interesting things appeared that really cause me to question some people's pet theories about balance and play behavior.

Do I hope to provide any answers with this study? Not really, but maybe, MAYBE it will help phrase the correct questions to be asked during game design and testing.



* Reading through all those warrior PBFs seemed like a helluva lot of work, not mentioning entering 48 cases x 49 variables.

I mean, it's all available information anyway, and by sharing it people might be able to point out errors in your methodology or suggest improvement or simply to double check stuff. Not to mention I'm curious as to what exactly is in there. Chances are the imms have vastly superior data and methodology for that info anyway, so they won't weigh your analysis very heavily, but players would be interested.

>I mean, it's all available information anyway, and by sharing
>it people might be able to point out errors in your
>methodology or suggest improvement or simply to double check
>stuff.

PBFs for level 48 or higher warriors (N = 48) were examined by race, alignment, cabal, specializations, legacies, wins, losses, pkratio, gank and ganked numbers, wins by class and losses by class. SPSS was used to generate descriptive statistics for these variables, and then compared means tests were run in conjunction with Analysis of Variance to identify possible relationships between race, cabal, specializations, and legacies vs. wins, losses, pkratio, gank and ganked. I used a p <= .05 as the primary criterion for statistical significance, although the results were submitted with the relevant descriptive data so that a more informed weight could be given to each set of results.

>Not to mention I'm curious as to what exactly is in
>there. Chances are the imms have vastly superior data and
>methodology for that info anyway, so they won't weigh your
>analysis very heavily, but players would be interested.

I have not published the results for a couple reasons, which include:
a) to encourage warriors to experiment in diverse combinations
b) to allow the game designers to further study the larger dataset and make needed changes without undue pressure upon them from the playerbase. Leaks of future projects and priorities can be a pain in an imm/imp/coder's AIM & mIRC.

The reason why I even butted into this discussion is because many people have an opinion, but no one has mentioned a Hastur-ish attempt to look at these variables statistically. By suggesting that people look at the numbers beyond their own personal experience, I hope that people will not say, "DB is great as is" or "DB sucks" but say, "my perma-haste, pill-popping, ABSS-quaffing Imperial can defeat a Battlerager 75% of the time, but my unprepped, uncabaled warrior is a grease spot 80% of the time he blunders into a thirsting rager on Eastern Road" (percentages here are for illustration only).

You AREN'T releasing the real numbers that you looked at, so that people will look at the numbers beyond their own personal experience?


Uh.

In the absence of an isildur-ish ocd need to study all those stats myself, all I have...all anyone has, is their own personal experience.

If you want to make the numbers you came up with public, fine, you can then ask people to not make suggestions based upon their own personal experience.

until such information is out there, I really can not think any reasonable human being can expect people to *NOT* form opinions of any kind when they have personal experiences to draw on.

It's human nature to form opinions. And the most ready form of information humans use to form those opinions, is perosonal experience. The fact that someone's own personal experience does not jive with the AVERAGE of all people's personal experience, does not completely invalidate the opinion that they formed using the only available information that they had at their disposal...their personal experience.


Until someone (you? imms?) makes OTHER information available, personal experience will continue to be the only basis behind the vast majority of opinions on this board.


To sum up. You can't have your cake, and eat it too.

I understand some reasons for keeping such statistical analysis secret (even if it is based upon public information).

But if you decide that you want to keep such things secret, you should not also complain that people are forming opinions in the absence of such information.

I asked people to use the information that is publicly available to make slightly more informed generalizations than those based upon an even smaller dataset, their own personal experiences.

If the implementors want they can post what I emailed them, and if you want you can duplicate my efforts. I certainly won't claim to be an expert statistican, so anyone with a strong background in stats will likely do better. I'm just a hobbyist

Finally, I apologize if I came off wrong, but for quite some time I've heard people on both sides of the DB argument spouting from a limited perspective. I've ranted a few times myself, but hearing non-ragers saying DB was bs and ragers saying that "life was really really hard as a rager, boohoo me" I wanted to see what the numbers looked like. I certainly couldn't base any meaningful observations on my own pk prowess, because I admittedly have none.

There's way too many variables involved in that small sampling to draw any meaningful conclusions on whether or not anything is overpowered or underpowered, unless its blatantly obvious already (IE, if EVERY druid had 500+ pks, whereas everyone else had 20pks). There's too many player factors involved, environment factors, etc. Would Cabdru have existed in an environment that had very, very skilled goodies or imperials around at the time? Maybe, or maybe he would've lost his axe before he got incredibly strong. Thats one example of something that could have gone drastically different, because the pool of 'contemporaries' your character has can have a very large affect on the outcome of your character.

Additionally, the game evolves, which means the 'rules' for some of the characters in your analysis changed for others in your analysis. Legacies that seemed very good on paper when people had them, may have since been tweaked but not taken often since. Etc. Preps that maximized certain legacies could now be more well known, or more limited, and either way unavailable. Or, alternatively, there could be a series of preps that make a seemingly underpowered legacy a lot better, or the playerbase may merely misunderstand a legacy and not know how to maximize its benefits.

So no matter what, you have to 'account' for the stats that do exist, and part of what makes someone good at determining game balance or bad is being able to account for them accurately. Its the skill of generalizing. And while imperfect, I'd be more inclined to trust the judgement of a long time incredibly skilled player/Immortal than trends gathered from dirty data. The problems I listed above is why the Hasturish approach is misleading.

That being said, I'd have to see what conclusions you drew to know whether or not they were ones which you'd have a right to infer from the information. It may very well be that you chose assertions which you had all the evidence you needed to make, but without knowing what you concluded, I can't say one thing or the other, I can merely point out that it isn't easy to get a real grasp on this sort of information.

I'm asking someone with the full dataset to do a statistical analysis. Just as the small sample can't give an accurate picture, someone with ten years of playing experience doesn't necessarily have the current picture of how things are NOW--and I doubt any one person has played 50 warriors to hero range since January. Well, maybe a couple people on Dios we see deleting a new character every week, heh.

During that Jan-August timeframe the Gank stat varied significantly by cabal, for the handful of imperials who had pbfs were a very ganky bunch. Times are different now. Unrelated to anything I did, the staff decided that anti-gank code would address the mechanical issue and a change in the donations system would help change a motivation for ganking and the inevitable mass-looting that accompanied it. From a statistical standpoint, I am inclined to support statements that the Empire _was_ ganky, and changes to the system helped address that perceived problem.

If the fact that 9 of the 15 Battle and 4 of the 6 Imperial warriors were also in the top 20 winningest PBF characters means anything (N= 48, p = .02), then maybe we can start asking why this is so. Is it because the Empire was ganky? That could be the case, but interestingly losses, pkratio, and ganked numbers did NOT seem to vary significantly by cabal. Is it because all the best players play in the Village? I don't know, but the numbers encourage us to ask what other factors are involved.

I can't say that my CF experiences are remotely what the average player sees every day. Because I recognize that my own perceptions are limited, I put more stock in the numbers than what the top and bottom players report. It's a personal flaw, I know.

I think the point of my post that the characters that I mentioned in my above post were played with relatively the same Pk skill (obviously specs, legacies and many other things play a factor). Though I don't think my is a great example of the balance between berserkers and non-berserker warriors, I think it's a small sample of someone who's played both sides.

Should be taken with a grain of salt of course...or with many grains perhaps.

Anyway, I'll go back into hiding for now :p

I didn't at first realize they were all you.

First off, maybe you're not just good in that mold. This isn't a slight, some people are better at some types of characters than others. I'm better with classes that are non-gear oriented because I'm not careful like some people are. I do horrible with classes like invoker because I'm lazy with prepping and not meticulous enough. I'd do better in a berserker role than I would in an uncaballed warrior role. I know this because I play my uncaballed warriors often with little to no prepping. I'd think adding resist, spellbane and deathblow to a char that doesn't use haste, word or teleport would have to be an improvement.

Other people aren't like that, other people prep a lot and have a lot of support available from their cabal in the way of sanctuary, healing and etc. Unfortunately, there's an incredibly obvious difference for instance between an imperial warrior who played without any imperial healers available, to one that had a few consistantly around. You can cut that with a knife, its a solid difference. So its hard to compare your characters and draw statistics from that alone. You also gotta look at who was around to kill. I always get far better kill ratios when there's somewhat even odds between my enemies and me, and if I'm a non-priest/non-mage, I usually do a whole lot worse when the enemy is very strong. Classes like warrior are corpses when there's consistantly strong enemies who attack you in groups and use summon. As a warrior in fortress, for instance, if an imperial shaman/warrior/warrior group comes up to the Fort, you're going to get summoned and probably killed, if you don't have the proper backup in place to save your ass.

There's just a lot of variables. Player skill is the largest one, but it isn't the only one. I had thought you picked a random 5 people.

Berserkers (well, Battle in general) are given crazy powers because they get ganged more often. But the only reason I, playing a warrior, tend to gang them is because I know I can't take them one on one, and so naturally I'm going to run away from them in a one on one fight and only attack when I have a chance at beating them: i.e. when in a gang.

Its sort of a paradox to me - villagers having crazy powers to counteract ganging only encourages more ganging from players, excepting maybe a few elite characters who know how to handle them, or a few classes designed to kill them.

Yes, I am very well aware that with two warriors who are the exact same in every way, one with battle powers and one fully prepped, the prepped one will almost always roadkill the one with villager powers. The problem is that this formula gives all the advantage to people who know all the preps for warriors. Therefore, anyone who does not know enough of these preps is forced to gang down battle warriors instead of fighting them one on one.

Am I somewhat on target?

Not really. My opinion on Battle powers doesn't have anything to do with the propensity of some people to gang on them.

I would like to say as a mostly solo player, I've played all sides of the table Berserker and Defender, as well as pretty much every other cabal. And deathblow is the EXACT reason I tend gang villagers, I absolutly despise dying to the RNG hating me and deciding I need not one but two Unspeak deathblows spaced between a round.

Now I'm not saying DB by any means is overpowered, but it just seems to be that less and less of the mud is being based strictly on RNG, IE assassinate needing stalks, Invoker powers being based heavily on affinities, warriors getting neat skills, so on and so forth.

So to sum this strange rant up, I would be 100% behind a fix that still keeps Deathblow killing people, but gives me a way to avoid/make actual tactical use of, deathblow.

I've played alot of Villagers, before scouts and defenders were introduced and after. I will say that the BattleRager who does not pick Scout in alot of cases is not that smart. Berserkers do not do so well killing mages 90% of the time. Entwine + critical hit is very nice. Fighting melee classes is where berserkers do well at, but even then are limited. Example given. If you are just a lowly warrior walking down eastern you do not have to fear that Berserker, because by battle rules he cant touch ya unless you are with a mage or of opposing cabal. Lets say you are with a mage. Now comes the hard part...You are likely spelled up by a transmuter, which will make the fight ALOT easier (parry/dodge deathblow). Or you are with an invoker which means you likely have shields (no hard hitting deathblow) If trouble starts to arise flee;q return. With a certain legacy you dont even need to flee. Lets not forget in both cases the berserker is fighting two. (you and the mage) When the fight looks poor for you it easy to escape, when the fight looks poor for a berseker its time to go by the bank and start regearing.

I once played a character who fought alot of Villagers, most berserkers. He was a warrior with autumn harvest and let me tell you I did not fear one villager. The only thing that killed me was a big flurry from a giant warrior, because I could not dodge or parry it. I never did a premium battlefield with the character, but I know I did not die more than six times and likely killed 30 or so villagers. Fleeing, quaffing a return and healing at the healer just to go back refreshed is a very strong tactic against a berserker, because he cant do it, and if he thirsted...ouch he is dead meat with the fatigue. In my opinion Berserkers got it too bad for me to ever play one again, but the complaint of DB being overpowered can alway be brought up just like the age old question is coke better than pepsi. If you spend a few hours hounding others/looking for preps, trust me DB is a thing of the past for the rest of your CF days. Hope this was somewhat helpful, if not then I wrote alot for nothing.

DB lacks tact its just RNG killing people.
I want tactical combat I will not fight berserkers alone, because the RNG owns me not them *Therefor making their victory over me gay and usually cheaping the fact that I spent 2+ hours getting haste aura shield stoneskin and all that good ####.*, I am quite capable on prepping myself, most of my characters who can use preps of some form or another do so. From stoneskin and haste to the more obscure items..

My point is, I want a way to beat them solo without having to have some ####ing pocket healer or have some pocket transmuter or have 2 other imperials to help me gank them down.
I want to fight the ragers and win because my tactics rocked and theirs sucked, not lose because the RNG decided I didn't need to parry, and hit a DB for 450~*Whatever the cap is* hp


Edit-
End rant

Like I said, I had a Warrior who had no trouble killing them. If you got all those preps listed you should not fear deathblow at all. Especially if you have a defensive spec/legacy. You say the only reason they win is because of some random deathblow, I say the only reason you lived is ( q return) which is not tactical or elite either. Each has his own perks for every race class combo. I'd trade deathblow for somone sort of instant escape for a rager, oh hell yeah.

asdf

Would you prefer it if berserker Ragers just did double damage with every hit rather than the small chance of a big hit? Answer honestly!

Being able to better predict the amount of damage you're going to take would be pretty useful. Of course you still don't know exactly how many hits you're going to parry/dodge/shield block, but if you're playing a class that relies on damage reduction to tank, then I'd definitely rather have consistent double damage as opposed to occassional 4-5 times damage just so I would know exactly when I need to bail.

Also, parting blow deathblows would be less gruesome.

Of course I'm saying this without experiencing it. Maybe it would be harsher in practice, but I'll definitely know how I stand in the battle as opposed to thinking I'm doing okay then having 1-2 deathblows completely turn the tide of battle.

>Being able to better predict the amount of damage you're
>going to take would be pretty useful. Of course you still
>don't know exactly how many hits you're going to
>parry/dodge/shield block, but if you're playing a class that
>relies on damage reduction to tank, then I'd definitely rather
>have consistent double damage as opposed to occassional 4-5
>times damage just so I would know exactly when I need to
>bail.
>
>Also, parting blow deathblows would be less gruesome.
>
>Of course I'm saying this without experiencing it. Maybe it
>would be harsher in practice, but I'll definitely know how I
>stand in the battle as opposed to thinking I'm doing okay then
>having 1-2 deathblows completely turn the tide of battle.

That definitely fits my playing style - i'd rather be an armadillo than a mongoose.

If someone who hated deathblow said yes to this would be a moron. Think about being slammed out and exploiting a vuln with say a....pincer. holy crap would that hurt/kill on one hit.

As in limit it to melee hits, parting blow and whatever else can be a deathblow. If it includes all spec skills, then I'd have to say it's definitely worse than DB.

and I'd say, I'd love this change, for both my berserker chars AND my mage chars.


On the berserker side, it would make killing mobs alot easier. As I think this would generally increase average damage over time output, even above 5X deathblow. This would mean faster ranking for berserkers, meaning more berserkers in the higher (even hero?) ranges. I think this would be good for the game in general. I think it would make re-gearing a rager a WHOLE LOT easier, especially in the hero range...as you wouldn't have to go after the Ubber-weapon and/or +dam gear in order to be able to put out enough damage to effectively pk. Easier time getting back to effective pk, means more risk taking....more risk taking on the part of berserkers = game is more fun for everyone.

On the mage side...sure, the rager might be putting out more damage on average, but it would be at a somewhat more constant rate...giving me the option of deciding to leave on a more consistent basis....instead of thinking I'm winning with 800 hp left after 7 rounds of combat, him convulsing, then him hitting 1-3 deathblows in a round and me ending up a naked poncho. This somewhat change of the "#### I was winning then he did 900 hp in a round" dynamic, would allow more mages, especially the uncaballed and non-abs-whores(read, most mages) to do something other than "c tele" or "c word" when they see a berserker coming, without that decision being stupid. As it is, in many cases, if you aren't abs'ed up, a mage who doesn't tele/word before the fight starts is making the worst choise possible. This kind of change would make that LESS true, meaning berserkers and mages both get more pk fights. That's a good thing.



Now, on the other hand, I DO think this new double damage thing would need restrictions, just like deathblow needed restrictions.

Old deathblow could go off backfist and riposte....utterly INSANE, and it's a good thing it was changed.

This new double damage, I'd rather not see added on top of pincer/flurry/chop/overhead/charge/chargeset/drum....you get the point

>Would you prefer it if berserker Ragers just did double
>damage with every hit rather than the small chance of a big
>hit? Answer honestly!

I'd choose double damage, if only because it's easier to account
for and adjust to (from both a mortal PK perspective and an Immortal
balance perspective).

I have no experience either way, but as someone who entertains
the notion of playing one someday, I wonder if it would be
possible to let the berserker choose (like a legacy) the option
depending on how they envision the character.

Qaledus

.

I have a sneaking suspicion that is based on little more than gut instinct that 2x blows all the time would be considerably superior to deathblow as it currently is. So much so that I would have to dump my current and roll up a rager if such a change were to take place for the purpose of abusing (err showing how powerful it can be) the #### out of it before it was taken away.

My problem with ragers is not that their completely balanced when fighting a full a/b/s'ed mage or hasted/stoneskinned/shielded warrior, my problem with ragers is that when they are fighting someone who is not prepped up the ass, that person will most likely lose. There are some exceptions to this. I also understand fully that ragers without the head = meat for anyone with a grudge. I understand that playing a rager at hero is extremely difficult.

The thing is, I haven't seen much skill in any of the fights I've had against ragers. Either they are owning me with resist, thirst and deathblow or I'm ganging them down. Neither takes much skill nor makes me feel particularly good. When they do not have the head is the only time I'm willing to fight them alone, simply because I do not have the knowledge nor the time to get prep knowledge. Therefore, either I will be avoiding a rager (because I can't win alone) or I will most likely be ganging him down. This isn't much fun for me, and I do not think it is much fun for the rager's player either.

I'm not sure about double damage. That would seem a bit nasty. But something around there sure. My problem isn't that they hit hard. Plenty of things hit hard (like invokers, for instance). My problem is that you'll go from 700 hp to nothing in the blink of an eye, just for being stupid enough to fight a rager unprepped. That ain't cool, I hate being forced to prep for solo fights.

I know this was just a hypothetical, but please for the love of God don't change the one thing that may draw me back to CF =) The X-factor is what makes berserkers special. I think the reason berserkers seem so overpowered is because people who play rager berserkers do so somewhat almost exclusively and have a really good grasp of how to play them and put themselves in a situation where they have the upperhand; plus it's one of the last bastions of CF where prep'ing isn't involved and you're always part of the fighting.

Out of curiosity though, to all those that are the most vocal complaintants and keep rehashing this topic, did ragers kill your parents? =) Seriously though are you that much of a perfectionist that dying to a berserker because you didn't flee early rubs you the wrong way?

And I know it's been mentioned before, but if you've never had a successful berserker rager then please don't bring up this topic until you've done so. If you have had a successful berserker then by all means bring up this topic, but in the same note please mention who this uber-rager was. If you still wish to bring up this topic then try a berserker out, you'll find that the epiphany awaits you at the end of the tunnel and you may not accomplish your goal of owning everyone and their mom.

PS All the non-ragers I've played(all 4 of them hehe) haven't had trouble with berserkers and this was before prep'ing was available. I will definitely not give away the super secret way of doing so, but it's definitely not rocket science and yes having played a few berserkers in my time has helped me with the tactics there.

nt