A guide to berserker in tera: February 2014

A guide to PVE zerker

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1. Overview:

If I were to describe a zerker in one word, it would be positioning. Realistically, 90% of the time you are holding a button and walking around. This means that you want that 10% of the time you are actually dealing damage to hit the boss for as much damage as possible. This means hitting the boss from behind and staying out of aoes or kd/staggers so that you don't have to recharge is essential in playing zerker.

The next word I would use would be crits. Your class is completely reliant on crits to deal good dps. The difference between critting and not critting for a geared end game zerker is often over a million damage. This means crit rate is really good on zerkers, which is a point that will be emphasized in multiple places throughout this guide.

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2. Skills

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2.1 overview

Combo attack:

This is your skill that does basically no damage and is mostly reserved for oh shit I need mana to block moments. Use it as a filler when you have 0 mana and a priest that doesn't mana charge or a mystic who doesn't use auras.

Block:

This stops you from getting killed. It also prevents you from dpsing because you can't charge while blocking. Use it as little as possible to optimize damage while not making healers hate you. Remember that block costs 100 mana and has a 1 second cool down.

Oh wait, there is even more about block that needs to be talked about. You can block all frontal attacks, aoes, and pretty much everything that isn't a 1 shot with this skill with a few exceptions. In order to block an aoe, notice that the damage usually comes from the center of the aoe. This means you block it by BLOCKING TOWARDS THE CENTER.

Block can also animation cancel or charge cancel a large number of skills that you use. Use it to quickly stop charging TS or Cyclone when you will die if you don't or to cancel animations on skills such as cyclone to either avoid something or to end it during its recovery frames.

Cyclone:

Cyclone is a huge dps skill. It your most consistently reliable dps skill on zerker. If it crits every rotation its similar dps to a thunder strike and it is almost always more dps than a non-crit thunder strike. It is also your main aoe clear for trash mobs and things along those lines.

Flatten:

Unglyphed flatten is awful. Glyphed flatten is acceptable. You need both glyphs to make flatten viable for dps and you need to be chaining it from staggering strike. That being said, there is a large KD chance on flatten, so its useful for dungeons where the boss can actually be knocked down. Currently this is anything that came out before MCHM.

Thunder Strike:

This is your most important DPS skill. It is your single hardest hitting skill and it's crit rate glyph doubles your total dps, not your base like other double and triple rate glyphs. This is the single reason why crit rate is such a good stat on zerker. This is also the charge skill that you can move full speed by charging so its just overall an awesome skill.

Triumphant Shout/Unchained Anger:

More mana. Use whenever up to help with mana.

Tenacity:

Tenacity is mana with a glyph for even more mana and HP. The mana glyph is very good, the hp glyph is good but not essential. It also gives a large amount of stun resist, so it can be used to negate things like sleep on bander without disrupting whatever you are doing. Yes, sleep does count as a stun.

Vampiric blow:

Vampiric blow is an instacast after TS or Cyclone. Its free DPS. Glyph it for extra damage and its a free 500k dps boost. Any questions?

Evasive Smash:

This is the single best skill on zerker. It hits harder than thunder strike, has the only I-frame on zerker, allows for easy re-positioning, is your best mobility skill, and it allows you to save dps where otherwise it would all be lost by getting staggered/kd. Learn to use this, it is a good skill.

Staggering Strike:

The only "stun" on zerker. It is extremely low chance of success and only stuns for a brief period. It does however turn boss around to give you back damage. It can also be glyphed for extra thunder strike charge speed.

Leaping Strike/Lethal Strike:

Its an escape skill. Use it to jump out of aoes and get out of the way. Leaping strike has priority over lethal for getting out of the way.

A note about lethal strike: Yes it has a high base power, but it has no glyphs. Due to the lack of glyphs to support it, such as no crit rate glyphs, it is not worth using in dps rotations.

Dash:

An increase of move speed by 50%. Remember when I said positioning on zerker is important? Yeah this helps. In certain fights you want to save it to get out of certain moves, but most of the time you can just spam it whenever it is up.

Fiery Rage:

+20% power, -40% endurance. Don't use when you know that you are going to take more damage than you can handle due to being undergeared or not knowing the instance well. Other than that use it whenever it is up. Oh, and don't use right before debuff on queen if you are taking one...

Flurry of Blows:

20% extra attack speed and charging speed. Its good. Use it whenever it is up.

Blood Lust:

Use it once and you will feel the power. 26 more power to be exact. You need to save this one for points where you need the dps in some long fights, such as queen's shield before wonderholme gear happened, but in short fights just pop it when you start dpsing. It has a long cool down so make it count.

Mocking Shout:

It staggers and prevents you from being staggered for a pretty long period of time. Its usually pretty useless, but great against bosses like the first boss in channelworks that likes to stagger you every time you try to charge anything.

Retaliate:

I am not explaining this. Figure it out for yourself.

Skills that are useless in pve:

These are best used for laughing at feared bosses or trolling your party in pve. They are good in pvp, but don't do much in pve.

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2.2 cyclone rotation

The core of this rotation is TS->VB->Cyclone. Its that simple. However there are more details in the rotation then that. You also rely heavily on evasive smash to position and to hit like a truck. This rotation is all about positioning. You use TS, Cyclone, and VB from the back and use ES whenever something is gonna stagger you or kd you while charging, and use fully charged ES to re-position when you wouldn't otherwise get to hit the back. Use staggering strike as a filler and remember to buff every time its up unless you have to save it for a shield phase or burn.

This is the essential glyphs for this build

As you can see there are 7 glyph points not used for what I linked above. No this is not a mistake, thats why I said only the essential glyphs, you have 7 glyph points to play around with.

The other 7 points can be filled by a combination of glyphs for flatten, staggering strike, dash, tenacity, and a couple other things depending on the dungeon you are running. Here are some example builds.

Option 1 -- uses for general extra dps from the increased charge speed on ts while providing the extra mana regen from tenacity

Option 2 -- an overall build that is basically the core of the build + a free holism every time tenacity is up. Its nice for almost every dungeon or open world pve related activity. The only time where I would say you need to change some things around is when you want dash glyphed for queen.

Option 3 -- this build uses the two flatten glyphs. Flatten is a good skill when fully glyphed after a staggering strike. You need to use both glyphs to really make flatten worth it in my opinion, but is not a bad choice specifically against bosses where knocking them down is viable.

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3. Optimizing Gear

3.1 basic essentials

Ok, this is the basic stuff you should be shot if you don't use. With a watermelon. Moving at 1000000 km per hour. Yes I just used metric units despite being in the US. Yes I am quite aware of how messy a way to die this is. You should be using a Savagery scroll and a Nostrum of Energy V. The biggest thing the nostrum does is allow you to VB after every TS and the savagery scroll massively increases your damage. More on comparison between savage and carving later.

3.2 Crystals

For defense you should generally be using all anarchics. In dungeons like MCHM it is acceptable to use relentless on Queen because debuff ticks for a flat amount of damage, but the rest of the time anarchics all the way.

For offense there is a little variation, but in general you should be using carving, acrimonious, focused, and savage. If the boss doesn't enrage a ton like all the current dungeon bosses do, then you can swap focused for forceful.

3.3 Gear types and rolls

The most important gear pieces for a zerker are gloves and weapon. For any glove made after the change to the way stats worked came out, you want to roll attack speed, power, and crit rate. For any gloves made before the change, you want all power. So now that gloves are out of the way time to get into weapons.

There are three real choices for an end game pve weapons for a zerk. The keen wonderholme axe, the intense wonderholme axe, and the nightforge pve vm 2 axe. Nightforge is going to be the best dps overall, but its only barely better than keen due to the double crit chance on thunder strike. Intense axe is the worst of these 3 options on zerker but still within enough of keen to make it worth using if you don't mind losing a few percent overall damage to see big crits.

Ok now that this is out of the way, lets talk about how to stat your weapon. You want to roll overall damage, crit rate, and back damage. Back damage is considerably more damage than the extra damage you will get from the .3 crit damage due to the fact that you are already using a scroll that gives you a bonus 1.34 damage multiplier. The 14 crit rate is essentially 28 crit rate for your thunder strike, which is excellent. And overall 6% damage is just good.

The reason you don't really roll attack speed is that the amount of time it saves you in animations and charging speed is minuscule and not really worth the dps trade off you are getting from dropping one of the stats mentioned above. For classes like warrior who use constant animations, attack speed significantly speeds up their rotations and makes it exceptional for increasing their dps. Zerker however spends multiple seconds charging a skill before using it. The lack of skills per second by zerker significantly decreases the value of attack speed for pve.

For chest you want to roll thunder strike for the skill stat, as it is used in every rotation as a key skill. For the +3/6/9 stats you want reduced damage, max hp increase, and frontal. If you have a +7 roll either HP resto or KD damage works well there.

Boots are boots. Least important gear piece. Increased endurance, move speed, and decrease slow duration are all good rolls. Upgrade these last.

3.4 Jewelry

Ok lets start off with the basics, you want 3 zenith jewelry pieces. So if you have nothing get that. You also need 4 socketed jewelry pieces, so that takes priority too. After that you ideally want 2 shield bands, 2 zenith earrings, and a kelsaik's rage. If you can't afford the 70k+ to get a rage that's ok, just use a zenith neck instead.

Shield band vs ring of pain is an interesting choice, but shield band edges out over perfectly statted rings of pain. This is mostly due to the increased crit rate on shield bands significantly increasing the stability of your dps. The choice is due to the 3% increased damage and .07 crit damage on both RoP vs the 12 crit rate and .04 crit dmg rolled on each of the shield bands.

3.5 Charms

For a zerker, keen charm and power are about the same. This is due only to the fact you have double crit rate on thunder strike. However due to the number of people that rage when you throw a keen charm and that every other dps class deals more with power charm, you usually will just use a power charm.

4. General tips

4.1 random tips

When running with a party that has a good sense of humor, use fear every time its off cd for laughs.

Fear also works on things like the pillar before bander in WHHM and the flower you have to kill in the one room of AC.

Always remember dash is a good skill that helps you re-position much better.

You don't have to stand right next to boss while you are charging a skill, you can walk a little bit away and then walk back to make it easier to avoid close range moves that might stagger you out of your charge.
It is often better to use ES on a partially charged skill and lose some dps than it is to lose all of the dps by dying or getting staggered and having to recharge. Take it as an opportunity to re-position while you are at it so next time you will be able to fully charge if possible.

1 combo attack gives you enough mana to block at least twice.

4.2 all about block canceling

Block canceling is a technique used to save time and to stop yourself from dying. There are two things that can be thought of as block canceling, ending skills early and ending skills after dealing damage to save animation times.

The first type usually applies while charging something or when cycloning. Blocking cancels both cyclone and charging any skill so that you can react without having to be charging. This is useful for fights such as queen where if you finished charging and attacked you would often flat out die when queen performs certain moves. Its a pretty simple concept and even simpler execution. Just saying that this is possible, in a paragraph, using way too many words, etc.

The second thing you can do with block is cancel recovery animations on certain skills. A good example is vampiric blow, where you can cancel a good part of the recovery animation time after you have already dealt damage. Doing this will allow you to start charging or executing the next skill more quickly and over time increase your dps.

A guide to berserker in tera

Monday, February 3, 2014

PVE