For what it's worth, this was how I saw it, playing Djetmai-- I played aggressively in terms of attacking any perceived enemies whenever I got the chance, unless they were going to be a surefire suicide mission, and even then sometimes I'd go for it. I chased magi/nexuns whenever I could, attacked them in all cities despite the Tribunal being around, etc. I defended to the death without hesitation.

The problems I had with getting kills were largely due to my build, which was well-suited to scaring the crap out of people, defending against raids, causing confusion, etc., but not sealing kills because:

1) I had no way to stop people from running that were flying. And trip only works so well fighting solo.
2) Fighting one-on-one, I couldn't circle stab and had no real kill sealing skill to deal a lot of damage or cause bleeding
3) Being a thief (and still learning my way around), it was difficult to hunt outside of cities and roads where I could hide. People saw me coming and typically ran unless they were ready for me.
4) Often there weren't enough kills to go around. Some Villagers were very quick to call targets and the whole parity thing often left me watching others fight from the shadows.

Most fights that I "won" ended in people running or quaffing, which happened a lot. It wasn't like I just ran around in groups, just sat at the cabal, or really that I ever jumped into others fights unless it was a raid. I was almost always running around alone. Then when people did die, it was often when I'd be fighting them during a raid situation, and Salyeris or some bloodthirsting warrior would come in and blast them down with a powerful round or two. That kind of stuff happened a lot, and pushed my gank-meter to where it was despite doing what I honestly felt like was a reasonable job at a berserker. The stats can be a bit deceiving.

Regardless, having played nexuns a couple times I'll admit that the berserker warriors were nearly invincible to me. But I've also seen it from the other side and saw the berserker warriors dropping like flies in a lot of situations. As a thief with this kind of build and still learning the game, this is how it ended up as a berserker--just not that deadly and quite easy to kill for a lot of matchups. If I'd studied as a thug/binder I think it would have probably been a much different story.

As for whether being a berserker should be a reward for something, I guess I don't have a real opinion other than that if it was strictly PK-based you'd tend to be rewarding the badass PKers to be even more dominant whereas someone like me that's looking for a little boost to help be competitive is left with less options. Plus the choice in path is really supposed to be RP based, right?