So the thing about Berserkers is that I don’t see any point in using them for melee.
I give them laser AR and use them to safely strip armor from big baddies from long way away [I don’t use rage burst, because it’s an exploit: berserker’s ability to shred armor using direct fire weapons I consider bordering on exploitive]. Actually, I don’t want them to be too close to their target because I want the lasers to hit as many body parts as possible to strip armor from all of them.
I have read and I can imagine many other combinations, some of them quite OP and gimmicky (like not healing the berserker so that he keeps the damage boost from blood lust, blood lust that he indulges in using a cannon or sniper rifle), but one thing I don’t see is a berserker in a melee.
With that in mind I suggest the following changes:
Replace “armor break” with “charge”: ability to appear on any tile next to any enemy within 10 tiles and attack with a melee weapon, all for 3-4WP and 1-2AP.
Make berserker melee attack always shred armor
Rework blood lust so that the boost comes not from health loss but number of attacks from enemies.
I have tried Berserkers in melee, but it’s weak.
Shotgun is much more effective for the same amount of AP (and you are not forced to sit in a contiguous tile). Melee is just when possible and to save ammo.
I’m adding myself some limits on builds to not cheese the game.
So I won’t be using “armor break” or “adrenaline rush” with anything else than melee (no grenade launcher).
That makes that their only interesting traits for me is “not losing limbs”, “not being mind-controlled”.
Haven’t seen many synergies other than assault (for dash). But I haven’t experimented a lot with them.
They fill the same spot than assaults except that I can dual class those as sniper or infiltrator.
I mainly utilize my berserkers as capture platforms. I tend to trap crabs around corners or lead them into buildings and have the b’s hit them with the melee paralyzer. The next turn I give them another tap or two to buff the paralysis then prep for the next one.
As far as HtH goes I find the process underwhelming as they are left in the open to soak damage from everything around them, although I will utilize them to take out tritons that come into my ambush zones with the hammer since it takes longer to paralyze them.
Perhaps Berzerk can be used for melee paralyze but beside rush captures the pistol is much more efficient.
I used melee a bit, hammer stun, but yeah now when I recruit a Berzerk with equipment the first thing is remove the melee weapon.
Melee, and Stealth are topics very hard to merge well with shooter tactical gameplay. There’s already a bad balance between shorter range and longer range, melee is a minor aspect in comparison.
True, forgot about that. An advantage of Berzerker for captures is that he can “daze” Arthrons (so not take return fire) and proceed with Neurazer.
But it’s quite niche. I usually snipe their MG arm off.
Pistol capture is a lot faster and easier, but ok I realize that if you want mass capture in a mission you better setup something close range without ammo. It’s niche but it makes sense as it’s a game resource.
But the link with Bererk and close range weapons is tiny.
Firstly perhaps tune a bit melee, but no point to make it a major tool. There’s a huge amount of work before implement good melee combats compared to Fantasy tactics.
Berzerk is fine for me, ok level 1 perhaps useless, at level 2 armor break is already a powerful tool even only with a pistol, at level 3 there’s a good option skill to take or not, and level 4 allow multi class and a very useful soldier. And this is only in case no personal skill gave an option before that.
No, Adrenaline Rush isn’t an exploit, if it is then Dash is an exploit. Move for 2AP and shoot twice, Adrenalin Rush doesn’t allow more and has a higher WP cost. Sure it is more flexible than Dash but at end doesn’t allow move on longer distance. It allows 4 shoot to a sniper not moving, instead of 2 with Quick Aim, but Quick Aim increase precision, and Adrenaline Rush decrease a bit precision.
I don’t know what Fantasy tactics is and I don’t know if the devs intend to go this way. Fixing melee would start by making it a little bit less than absolutely useless (e.g. lower the cost to 1ap for at least some melee weapons)
Berserker is very useful for “meta” builds, basically as medium to long range armor stripper or glass cannon damage dealer. Personally, I’m very tolerant with “meta” gameplay, but berserkers for me cross the line.
Why in the hand of these guys laser AR shred armor like it was paper? And do more damage because they don’t have access to health care?
There is no reason to use Adrenaline Rush with melee weapons over ranged weapons.
That’s my whole point: berserkers are only really useful when combined with another class to do ranged attacks. And it’s completely “meta” because the advantages of e.g. giving laser AR to berserkers, can only be explained by the rules themselves, not anything remotely plausible or grounded on reality - i.e. because berserker has an ability that shreds tons of armor with every hit, so it is best to give him some weapons that does many hits. Same with health: as long as you don’t heal them they do more damage, doesn’t matter if they were hurt a minute or a year ago.
This is all that I’m suggesting to change: give berserkers a skill to quickly close with the enemy only to use melee weapons and make them shred armor only but always when using melee weapons. You can then combine them with heavy for a large damage bonus, and so that they can use the heavy armor for protection.
And make blood rush conditional on damage taken during the mission. Unless this is an intended subtext on how someone who is denied healthcare by their employer can be made to take their rage out on innocent shellfish.
520 Damages, 800 Electricity, sure it worth it, and if you mean a shotgun, well no point use anymore the close range weapons if the Berzerker can use a shotgun.
I wish Berseker hit (with his malee weapon) could canceled Siren mind control and overwatch cone, this class should focus on breaking enemy front line in close quarter combat. If an enemy attempts to attack a Bersker that has malee weapon and within melee range, it will activate before the enemy attack. Just to make more sensible, this class are easy to get dazed or panic.
Imho sniper has done enough to spot enemies. Perhaps add skill ‘Drone’ to reveal some fog of war area, and their counterpart would be shot down the Drone if its in Triton line of fire.
I sometimes think I’m playing a different game from some of you. The Beserker is the one of the most OP classes in the game, easily on a par with Rageburst snipers. A Beserker/Assault can close with dash and then virtually clear a map of anything smaller than a Chiron with Rapid Clearance and Adrenaline Rush, and all this using the basic Marduk’s hammer. I wish the game tracked soldier stats because I think my single Beserker has more kills than the rest of my squad put together.
Adrenaline Rush is lvl 7 skill.
So we have a melee-oriented class not able to melee properly before hitting lvl 7. While Heavy does it with his 1 AP bash using heavy cannon from lvl 1.
I’d be willing to bet that there’s a lot of stuff that is not explained there.
“Marduk’s hammer” does 140 damage and doesn’t ignore armor, so it does probably 100 to 120 damage per strike, 200 to 240 with two strikes and lots of crabs & tritons have more HP than that.
“Reckless” (+30% damage) ?
“Close combat specialist” (+25% damage) ?
You deliberately wound your soldier to increase damage beforehand ?
Frenzy with a priest or stimpack (so still needs assistance) ?
By the way, it is probably a bug, but “Adrenaline Rush”'s description specifies that you can’t use willpower at the same time, so you shouldn’t be able to do “Rapid Clearance” after, and doing “Rapid Clearance” before should prevent you from clicking “Adrenaline Rush”.
So long as you use Adrenaline Rush as the last willpower action it’s effect still triggers and it doesn’t cancel Rapid Clearance. In my play through I didn’t use a priest (except to counter the final boss) and I didn’t intentionally get my Beserker injured. She had both Close combat specialist and Reckless, (I specifically selected an assault with these abilities to cross class), and was able to one shot end game Tritons and 2 Shot Arthrons and Sirens. My usual tactic was to have 2 assaults with Rapid Aim damage as many enemies as possible then rush her in and mop up.
There’s certainly a hole here with Rapid Clearance and Adrenalin Rush, and it’s just a no ammo option with hammer, you can as well mix it with an heavy chain gun and strong man. Not sure you would need much preparation from team.
