Berzerker Lifesteal Balance

[adoomgod]

You were twinking. Of course that will make you somewhat overpowered versus a relatively light encounter like Grell. I don't think healing 20% of your life every second is overpowered. Most monsters in elite do that in a single hit. In order to survive elite, melee needs serious tools.

I played an untwinked build and was fine until act 1.5, then died about 50 times total.

Barely twinked. But I guess. Still, read the data i wrote about last. 20% life per crit at rank 15?! your crit chance will be absurd then even without rage.

[Chthon]

1. I've been saying that this looks overpowered on paper since the PAX videos.

2. While overpowered, I'm not entirely sure that it's as bad as all that. As Jerich points out, this is still an early-game boss. Don't overreact and nerf it too hard.

3. I've got no problem with charge-up making this skill ridiculous for a short period. Charge-up is an inherently ridiculous mechanic. I'd expect no less.

4. If what people have been saying about melee being out-and-out worse than ranged is true, skills like this might be closer to balanced on the bigger-picture level than they appear when examining the skill out of context.

5.a. Spreading the heal over a longer duration is probably the best nerf to start with, but taking it too far completely destroys the skill . Ideally, the heal/sec on all of your leech abilities put together (including this skill) should roughly equal the "wear and tear" damage/sec coming off the generic, non-boss "garbage" mobs standing between you and the next quest objective. A longer-duration nerf puts a hard cap on heal/sec, which runs a risk of making the skill worthless if average damage/sec from the monsters ends up exceeding the heal/sec cap. You will always have to pop a potion anyway. (For an analogous situation, visit a Guild Wars forum and search for threads about "why regen is worthless." There's a lot of them.)

5.b. Nerfing the overall amount healed per crit is the next place to go for a nerf. This doesn't cap heal/sec, so you can nerf it as far down as you need to. Note that increasing duration and reducing heal/crit together is going to have a multiplicative effect on the size of the decrease in heal/sec. A little bit goes a long way, so be careful.

5.c. Think about decoupling this skill from max-hp. On the one hand, coupling it to max-hp makes it scale and stay useful throughout the game. On the other hand, it enables abuse through hp pumping like doom mentioned. I'm not sure which is the greater concern.

[Zidders]

You know..I've been saying we need a separate forum for beta talk, so that we don't give a negative impression or what not blah blah but really...I think this is good stuff. This shows people that A)Runic is into the community having a part in helping make the game better and B)it shows how great the game is already and lets poeple know that it will be even better once things are tweaked.

Starting to think my beta forum idea is kinda poo.

[adoomgod]

Cthon I'm about to face the final act boss, so.... I'll update this in a bit. But it is OP. The devs know better then to nerf it to death.

Grell is early but on elite you should be able to literally stand next to him and hold 1 button down.

The last boss' lightning move is OP, devs said it will be toned down a bit. So as an OP boss he isn't the best thing to gauge blood hunger against.

Enemies that slow my attk spd are literally the only problem I have. The end of act 1 is only harder because of all the ice elemental enemies. That implies that act 2 would go back to being breezy since there are like no slows.

[D2Hans]

You know..I've been saying we need a separate forum for beta talk, so that we don't give a negative impression or what not blah blah but really...I think this is good stuff. This shows people that A)Runic is into the community having a part in helping make the game better and B)it shows how great the game is already and lets poeple know that it will be even better once things are tweaked.

Starting to think my beta forum idea is kinda poo.

I do think a section for Beta would be nice. Since some people do not want to be spoiled about some of the content of the Beta. Also it can be helpful for the testers and the developers to sort through any issues

[gluemchen]

I think its too early in the lifespan of the game to start nerfing characters. Maybe lets see what other players come up with when it releases. It`s not like i am disregarding the fact that its op. I just think it`s too early.
I think we should be looking out for more things that are weaker in comparison maybe. It`s about action and feeling powerful. So lets get all the characters up to a point where we can say they can be all very good and then think about nerfing.

[D2Hans]

It is hard to tell if it is massivily OP or just a bit OP. we have not seen how it fares in other Acts and new game + mode.

[Chthon]

Cthon I'm about to face the final act boss, so.... I'll update this in a bit. But it is OP. The devs know better then to nerf it to death.

Sorry. I'm a bit traumatized from years of GW skill "balancing" by Izzy whose idea of "nerf" meant to make a skill so terrible that no one would ever touch it again. I should show a little more faith in RUnic not to overreact to something being overpowered.

[Tarani]

I really need to get my boyfriend to sign up for a Runic account - he has almost an unnatural ability to find balance issues in games. This is why his roleplaying groups systematically banned him from playing every class except Street Samurai in Shadowrun. XD He's also got a CoH char that's nigh-invincible in PvP, and the things he's done to Skyrim (without any mods!) are just WRONG. I know there'd only be a tiny chance that he WOULD get in the beta if he signed up, but I swear, I think he should find a way to have his full-time job be "balance tester".

[xani]

I really need to get my boyfriend to sign up for a Runic account - he has almost an unnatural ability to find balance issues in games. This is why his roleplaying groups systematically banned him from playing every class except Street Samurai in Shadowrun. XD He's also got a CoH char that's nigh-invincible in PvP, and the things he's done to Skyrim (without any mods!) are just WRONG. I know there'd only be a tiny chance that he WOULD get in the beta if he signed up, but I swear, I think he should find a way to have his full-time job be "balance tester".

better learn him to mod then (so he can fix it right away), because when you sit down to almost any game you can find tons of those even with not much effort. I mean even hardcore competetive games like SC2 which are very well balanced are still getting balancing patches

[Tarani]

Sometimes I think he has just about as much fun "breaking" games as playing them, really.

[adoomgod]

Sounds like me, tho I'm working my butt off within the beta to get everything as balanced as can be.

[jamesL]

Patch 0.11.8.1 notes

*Blood Hunger nerfed a bit

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=23531

try it out dude, same build you did last time (or same char if you still have it)
see if you can stand there one vs one and take him this time

[Pogo]

I built Berserker for my first champ and also kind of realized that there may be too much synergy. I'm not the type of person to dump full points into it, though, as I like hitting other abilities instead of auto attacking all the time.

I'm not sure what Doom's stream is under so I can't see if my experiences meshed with his. I did notice that Grell wasn't that tough to solo on Veteran on my Berserker, though.