>I was wondering from a PvP standpoint how best to utilize the ability to zerk of out a dance?

You don't.

If you're in a position to need it, usually because you're about to die, the IF drain from the switch will make your berserk last barely a moment.

It's a nice ability in theory, but I have never had cause to use it, PvE or PvP.

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Hunta Talna Kortok, built by Gor'Togs, for Gor'Togs
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That saddens me.....

I just got it and did a test, dancing cobra I zerked stone and it dropped me to 7/13 IF level......I couldn't imagine what dragon would do....

I use it fairly often. If a celp lands a lucky stun or an enraged tusky stuns me, I'll berserk nightmare out of cobra or eagle and kill everything then leave. I consider it pretty useful in PvE.

>Some people never bothered to get any of the berserk stuff that requires going out to Poke.

I never understood this. In the current system the barbarian guild one of a few guilds with no real quests. Sure you have to find a few people to get dances, but you can hardly call that a quest when you compare it to really any of a Cleric's quests for communes, a paladin's quest for the Holy Weapon. In fact the only other guilds without any quests associated with them that I can think of thieves and Traders. Warmies have their pathways and fir fams, necros have to get into the guild, rangers have their various companion quests, moon mages...well, we'll just not even talk about them and quests...

I guess bards are on the fence... If you're a die hard bard, then you'll have to "quest" around Elanthia looking for all the various songs.


I guess it boils down to the fact that there are two main types of barbarians... The circle chasers who want to be able to murder everything and everybody under the sun as quick as possible, in which case I can understand the not heading to Ratha for the zerks.

Then there's the RPing barbs, who've had their barb as their main character for closing in on 8 years, and are just now reaching 80th circle... :P

On a similar note, I was extremely disappointed with the "quest" to get the ability to zerk out of a dance. I fully expected him to force me to dance, then toss me into a bunch of critters like usual... :(

Here's to hoping that our awesomest GM has some awesome stuff planned!

-Healf

Not to rock the boat, but I think I zerked once ever during a hunt. Another time was to make a swim to arbelogs. Other than that, at most 4 times to test it in spars. Other than that, I have to agree that they really are pretty useless (to me, anyway). Clearly, I am not a zerking barb, but one can very easily never use a zerk and get to 150th with zero hickups.

I've berserked with my barb maybe a dozen times. And I've died a dozen times while berserking. I don't berserk at all for any reason. Every time I've tried them while hunting I've ended up dead, either from them wearing off and ending up prone and stunned, or because I couldn't retreat. Either way, I hate berserks and will never use them.

My barb is 65th circle and doesn't have Dragon either. I know I have to go out to Hara to get it... I think... But I don't know how to get out there, and if I did, I thought there was some climbing involved. Since I have 37 ranks or so in climbing, I try not to do things that require it.

I figured I'd wait til 80th circle before trying to get Dragon and the other berserks on Poke. I just have to figure out how to get to those places. It was easy in TF because I had a boat and a moonie at the time. In prime I have neither. Oh well. I'm doing just fine with Cobra, Badger, and Eagle, and just a couple of roars. I'm in no hurry.

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We've decided that instead of spells Paladins will be a new arm of the Bard guild utilizing interpretive dance moves.

~GM Zeyurn

I've only danced a few times up to 80th circle, because they are basically useless.

Codiax.
Forged Weapons:
http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/User:Codiax#Codiax-Forged-Weapons

>>in both PvP and PvE, you have a bunch of Barbs with understandably varying opinions.>>

So true personally I PvE with dances and PVP with Zercs/Roars.

The bottom line is your a barbarian so cut em up.

> I found Stone to be incredible up through circle 20.

I find stone to be unbelievably amazing. When I started in gryphons, I was very small for them (42nd circle when I was continuously hunting) and was defo overhunting. I tried everthing from upping reflex/agility to dancing badger, and I'd ALWAYS die. Then I started zerking stone continuously in there and it was just cake.

That being said, I now notice the opposite, where my dances are more powerful, but that's cause of the dances being percentage based, whereas the zerks are more of a flat line modifier. To extrapolate that, I'm upping my discipline, so that helps more with zerks.

>If the annoyance factor (no look, no retreat, hiding penalty) turns you off to them, that's reasonable

No look? That's stupid. I don't know why nobody knows this but all you need to do is a simple look other. It's a bug, and I've reported it more than a dozen times. I don't feel like it's mech abuse at this point, because of how many times I've bugged it.

As for hiding. Why are you zerking when you hide? There are dances designed exclusively for that.

>>Berserks have basic functionality. I'm not sure why anyone is trying to dispute this. Just stop.

Define your version of basic? Dances seem more basic to me. Berserks are for advanced users who took the time to learn the ability and get max potential out of it. You have to know your IF level, know what you can stack, test everything, learn the barriers of what you can and can't do, when to use them, which ones to use when etc etc. Sounds like advanced abilities to me. Dances are just easy, there are 0 downsides. (basic).

Most people that post about berserks say they only used them a handful of times, and either died or didn't like the restrictions so just stopped using them. It takes more than a few tries to learn berserks, specially since they all do different things. So like I said, berserks are for more advanced users that take the time to learn the ability.

>>Like I said, you could never go to Poke beach -- and there are some Barbarians who haven't -- and you'd never feel like you sacrificed anything.

You could say the same thing about any ability you don't use. You don't need any abilities really. I would argue that you need your abilites from circles 0-50 much more than you do from 100-150 because of how the game is designed. And from 0-50 berserks are much more potent. If you want to argue against that, then you fall into the group of people that don't know how to use berserks.

LEEJ82, you probably should stop posting like you're the authority on barb abilities. We don't want someone seeking help reading one of your posts when there is so much misinformation in them.

Codiax.
Forged Weapons:
http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/User:Codiax#Codiax-Forged-Weapons

>>Berserking out of a dance is pointless. Kuniyo/Everild/Trothfang berserks are essentially pointless. They are supposed to be our top-tier abilities and instead they are met with a huge "meh" from Barbarians.

I don't know, man. :D

Currently I have no use for all of those (never bothered to get Trothfang though I will soon), but there was a time where Kuniyo was my go-to ability against a Paladin named Landros.

Taking roaring out of the equation (which is fair considering some of its limitations), I couldn't hit him with LT. He'd block every throw. My only shot was at melee. However, Smite Horde would destroy me even when I was dancing Dragon. So without roaring he'd beat me, until...

I started using Kuniyo. Kuniyo would weaken Smite Horde almost to nil and I'd have the offensive boost to beat him at melee. I tried the Blood/Stone combination and for some reason it was not enough to hit him nor defend against Horde as well.

My point is, there are Barbs out there with certain stat/weapon builds where some of these berserks are more than just pointless.

If you want to get into whether or not it's wise to build your character around berserking from 0-150th circle, then that's another story altogether.

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Individuals, families, countries, continents are destroyed at the heavy hand of Vinjince.

-GM Abasha

>>but there was a time where Kuniyo was my go-to ability against a Paladin named Landros.

Heh. Funny you mentioned him. He is exactly who I used Kuniyo against (due to dragon's limitations in that instance) a couple times. I had very similar experiences. Had to do the same vs. Adakin, as well.

>>Heh, my version of dealing with big paladins is to sing to them so they fall asleep :D

Bardic songs IG have this effect on me IRL at my keyboard.

Right now, Having no kuniyo, my PvP goes like this:

zerk nightmare, roar 4-5 roars, attack. IF I can't hit the person I zerk blood. If they start hitting back, zerk stone.

This allowes me to kill people who are 40ish circle over me. My record is twice against a 110th warmie when I was 72nd.

So....they defo have more than a basic functionality.

Right now though, I'm going to be doing some different experimenting with dragon/wolverine/etc during PvP, as they seem to be gradually getting more and more potent.

And I cannot wait till I get Kuniyo (Assuming I make it before the change). I've always felt that Kuniyo is to huge barbs what flame was to me when I got it. But by that time who knows what my stats will be like.

>Any ability with a built in chance of death regardless of your actions is unusable in my book.

lol

Maybe I'm just crazy, but I love the high level berserks. Getting a massive boost to everything and obliterating an opponent who should rightly beat you, and then dying from rage atop your defeated opponent's corse, is so freaking metal.
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Malkien

>>Any ability with a built in chance of death regardless of your actions is unusable in my book.

The only time I ever die from the effects of a berserk is when using Steel. I haven't used Everild more than like once so I'm not sure if someone is likely to die from that (its effects are supposedly similar to Steel's), but I don't believe there's a chance you'll die from using other berserks, and if so then it's so rare only a few people ever seen it.

One or two berserks shouldn't make the rest unusable IMO. I thought you were a berserker for some reason, Caraamon.

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Individuals, families, countries, continents are destroyed at the heavy hand of Vinjince.

-GM Abasha

At the end of the day, I've always enjoyed the idea of berserks much more than the actual functionality. I've probably used a single or any combination of berserks ten or twenty times, and only when I was basically left with no other choice. The limitations are just to difficult to deal with on more than an exception basis, in my opinion.

>>I was for a while, but Steel has killed me 5 outta 5 times I've used it.

I find this surprising. Maybe the chance of death has been adjusted since Steel was new to you and when it was new to me? How and when were you using it?

I have used Steel five or six times now also, once back-to-back and out of combat while Steel was periodically draining my inner fire to prevent vitality death from two "death awaits" bleeders. I have never died because of the berserk itself.

>>At the end of the day, I've always enjoyed the idea of berserks much more than the actual functionality. I've probably used a single or any combination of berserks ten or twenty times, and only when I was basically left with no other choice. The limitations are just to difficult to deal with on more than an exception basis, in my opinion.

I think Codiax summed it up very well. If you get Serpent's Hiss of Warning, the mechanical penalties for berserk are so marginal as to be, for all practical purposes, non-existent. No-retreat is taken care of by Hiss. The hiding and stalking penalty are annoying but miniscule: you really need to be on the very edge of your skill to notice them. The intelligence/wisdom penalty do not affect experience gain, so who cares?

The real "difficulty" is active participation. Every five to ten circles, you should experiment a bit with your berserks in a no-risk area while backtraining a weapon. You need chakrel. You need to know how much each berserk costs. You need to know how viable it is for you to stack any combination you might wish to try. As an example, Malkien's current process is Blood/Stone, mind lock a weapon, then Nightmare. After that, repeat berserks infinitely as necessary.

The difficulty is tweaking your routine, sort of like how a mage might want to know how much mana he can harness without nerve damage or at what mana he can snap-cast without backfiring, etc. Once you've tinkered a bit and know your limitations, it's easy.
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Malkien

Isn't that is goto for everyone? :P

>>You would've loved the original berserk, garunteed death at higher levels. But it was seriously OP Godmode, your offense and defense went through the roof, balance, vit, fatigue, everything. You were unkillable, then you'd waddle out of the hunting ground and die in front of the nearest group of adventurers.

I did love it. Loved the original four roar too :).
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Vibrant orange flames seem to flicker in the Solomon's GM eyes, capturing your attention with a mesmerising stare.
You feel a calm wash over you, but you think about internet arguments and nerd rage, and it goes away.