Berserker nerf in 3.2

I won't even debate about the " berserkers casters", it never made much sense anyway.

So... Leaving also the whole vaal pact change last patch, which made Cloaked in Savagery almost useless, now we have this new rage mechanic. Let's put it this way:

We previously had:

- 40% more damage
- 50% increased damage
- 50% increased attack speed

I'm considering the main damage nodes, used by 90% of the berserkers : Cloaked in Savagery, Aspect of Carnage and Crave the Slaughter. Even with the "savage hit" mechanic, we all agree we had the buffs above always ON at combat.

Now, exploring the rage mechanic at its full potential, with Crave the Slaughter + Rite of Ruin, keeping Aspect of Carnage, we have:

- 40% more damage
- 100% increased damage
- 50% increased attack speed

Considering this only applies at full rage stacks, with the massive downside of -20% life per second, all that for just 50% INCREASED damage, not able to leech properly with vaal pact in its current state, how that's not a big nerf?

Congrats on making Berserker only viable with Bloodseeker.

Edit 02/26

So the degen got reduced to 0,1, which translates in -10% life per second, which is manageable. Also we got 6% increased attack speed on a minor node, instead of 14% armour.

Berserker probably won't be meta, but at least will be playable

You are right. It does fit the thematic better. I'm talking about numbers.

Either buff the damage to compensate for this insane life degen, or reduce it. Right now it feels like a nerf.

Eh whatever. They apparently just started balancing and throwing random numbers around to appease the community. It could change at any moment depending on which rage post they are looking at atm.
Who knows what will come out on patch day.

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LowBudget780 wrote:

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Haadd wrote:

You are right. It does fit the thematic better. I'm talking about numbers.

Either buff the damage to compensate for this insane life degen, or reduce it. Right now it feels like a nerf.

degens been nerfed

?

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Haadd wrote:

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LowBudget780 wrote:

degens been nerfed

?

A post on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/7yyyga/assassin_guardian_and_hierophant_will_be/dukify9/?context=1

Better be like 10% max or something or I'm ma throw a walrus at you

There are still two huge problems with the rage mechanic. They're really only problems when you combine the two.

1. The wording implies that it can't be mitigated in any way. It's not a damage type, just Max hp lost.

2. You can't turn it off. It's fine when you're constantly leeching, but what happens when you're out of mobs? You really want to have huge degen with no form of leech. With blood rage and RF, you can at least stop it with weapon swap, dousing, or manual gem removal.

With good regen, it probably won't kill you, but sounds like a pain in the ass that will make me avoid this ascendancy for any of the other melee ones, even the prebuff versions.

I agree that the huge life loss per second is too much. It will only lead to people having to invest into life regen, speccing out of vaal pact and changing gear once again. This is not balance, it is annoying for anyone who had fun min-maxing their gear.
I only run my berserk as a MF at the moment but I still absolutely hate tgese changes.

A far better and more suiting alternative would have been to think about what a berserk actually is. He gets into an enraged state and stops caring for his own health. But he doesnt just DIE from standing still for a while. INstead, reducing his defenses over time like armour and resistances would make much more sense.

hoping they will revisit leech in general. In particular having it be something you can improve through investment without vaal pact and I don't mean "leech rate" noob traps.