Berserkers vs Barbarians, who would win?

[Zaphling]

Well, judging from the new berserker class where each martial at-will gets a +1dX bonus to damage when in berserk rage, does the new berserk mechanic flat out prevails vs old Rage powers? (Berserk vs Daily Rages. )

The old barbarian does not have any +1dX mechanic like the rogue and ranger, except with Howling and Devastating strikes, but the new berserker at-wills all have +1dX mechanics built in. Is this unfair guys or not?

About Striker roles, which one is more powerful, or hurts more? Berserker or OBarbarian?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, but you can get a LOT of mileage out of things like Swift Charge and Rampage. You've got the ability to get in a good number of bonus attacks, and considering the amount of charge optimization you can do the Swift Charge thing can easily amount to several dX equivalent of extra damage and you're likely to pull it off say on average once per encounter (probably a bit more in practice). You also have the Rage Strike capability, which does cost a power, but can drop many extra Ws of damage.

Honestly at this point I don't know for sure which is going to be more potent, or if you can really say that one is clearly better overall. I gotta say, a berserker can really pile on a bunch of extra d8's to its OAs and a decent amount to all MBAs. I'd say it puts you roughly into the same damage output range as other strikers. Haven't had a chance to sit down and play with builds or even read the entire thing thoroughly yet though. There could be aspects I'm not seeing.

 

[S'mon]

The Barbarian I played at 1st level felt incredibly lame. The one fight he was Raging he felt comparable to an E-class, otherwise it was just miserable.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Well, judging from the new berserker class where each martial at-will gets a +1dX bonus to damage when in berserk rage, does the new berserk mechanic flat out prevails vs old Rage powers? (Berserk vs Daily Rages. )

The +d mechanic of Berserker's Fury adds to mbas, and at-wills. The Barbarian's at wills similarly do extra dice of damage. So, not a major difference.

The major difference is that the Berserker can choose to play Defender for a while before he 'Furies' (?). The Barbarian wasn't exactly a top-tier striker, though obviously fine at charging, and the Berserker in striker mode is about the same, I guess. The Barbarian's striker support is mostly in it's powers, and those powers are all available to the Berserker.

As a Defender, the Berserker isn't up to quite the same standard as the Knight, so definitely not great there either. The ability to change roles mid-combat, though, is pretty intriguing.

And, the 'feel' of the class - the mix of martial and primal, the berserker rage that you go into more or less voluntarily but don't come out of quite so easily - hits closer to the archetype, IMHO, YMMV.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

My only experience with 4e barbarians has been with a 9th level rageblood that I played when the regular player was absent (this was in addition to my own character). Now, as a disclaimer, I built this guy's character for him, so I knew what it could do.

That said, during the fight, this character really laid on the damage. Thanks to his class features and some lucky crits, he was the only one to succeed in taking down any of our opponents that fight (we were up against 6 Stone Golems). None of the others could touch his damage, and his accuracy was reasonable, if not equal to the human fighter's.

In the current game I'm running, we're about to hit 4th level. There is a Shifter Thaneborn in the group, and he certainly holds his own. His friendly competition comes from a human Slayer and a dragonborn Dragon Sorcerer.

Until I actually see a berserker in action, it will be hard to judge, but IME, the Obarb doesn't suffer any kind of inadequacy.

 

[Neverfate]

Here's what I think this pretty much comes down to: consistency.

The older Feral Might builds deal high damage in spikes, but can go long droughts without a real good punch. A lot of their damage mechanics rely on Rages, which they'll at best get 3 a day (and that's not so for much of Heroic), Critical hits and dropping something to 0HP to trigger abilites.

The Berserker gets a more streamlined, reliable damage mechanic instead of several loosely connected powers and daily rages. I'd say that's the problem they are trying to address with the Barbarian class in general here. To just have it be reliable in a role (which ever one it chooses).

Both classes have similar strengths and weakness too. Both are easy to charge optimize even for casual players, but they will also have similar accuracy problems (they won't be using light blades, they get no "Weapon Talent" Essentials features). They're also are the more meatier side of Strikers, which decent defenses and HP/Surge pool.

TL;DR- Berserkers are more consistent, but not necessarily better and might not see the high damage spikes that Feral Might builds do.

 

[the Jester]

The old-skool barbarian imc deals holy hell in damage in pretty much every fight not involving weakening, insubstantial, regenerating swarms. I don't know how a berserker would stack up, but the barbarian does just fine.

 

[WalterKovacs]

The Berseker (assuming they run with all primal encouner/dailies so they are 'constantly' in a fury) vs. a normal barbarian is only going to come down to at-will damage, and a few class feature things. The encounter powers and dailies are basically a wash other than factoring in Rampage and bonus features. Once it gets 'down' to using at-will powers.

Howling strike and devestating strike have the d6/d8 per tier, which matches them up to the berserker at-wills under the effect of a fury. For a berserker though, they get an effect on top of the damage, and in the case of charging, they get to use a normal MBA with d8's instead of d6's.

This does put the berserker ahead outside of bonuses from the rampage/swift charge (or similar features). However, that requires a complete abandonement of the defender part. If they go with just a token ammount of defendering (say one or two encounter powers for the first couple of turns), you are going to lose out on about 1[W] for each of those encounter powers, and so you are looking to use vengeful guardian to make up the damage difference. One important note, your normal OAs don't deal extra damage while you are a defender, so an enemy might get wise and just walk away instead of shifting ... but those OAs would still be counting towards your catch up DPR since that enemy would likely be able to avoid an OA coming from the rage-barian.

 

[Zaphling]

But a defender berserker gets a d8 bonus to OA from their aura.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Running the numbers, the Berserker gets better at wills, but the encounter and daily powers are exactly the same. Defensively, the Barbarian's Agility is probably a match for either the sword and board tricks or the cloth armour feat intensive tricks - it all balances. (Sword and Board has the advantage on [1w] attacks and the disadvantage on >[2W] attacks).

Offensively I've aready noted that the primal at wills are not a match for frenzied martial at wills on optimal routes (rather than minion clearing - Howl of Fury/Savage Rend) or for that matter the frenzied MBA. On the other hand, barbarians also get their Feral Might. Assume for the sake of argument that Feral Might = Rageblood Vigour - it keeps the maths simpler. Which gives the Barbarian a free charge attack if they kill anything. And some free temps (not that it matters).

Is the advantage beserkers get on their At Wills and OAs a match for the advantage Barbarians get with getting a charge attack for free most encounters? I'm going to have to say "Not past second level".

Mathematical Assumptions: Barbarian with Howling and Pressing Strike - two uses of howling, one of pressing, and two encounter powers in a five round fight. Berserker with a +d8 melee attack in play. Which means that the barbarian drops a total of six and a half points of damage. On the other hand the charge attack does 3d6 + 5 (Str 18, +1 weapon) = 15.5 points of damage. Triggered in 70% of fights (low estimate - the hit rate cancels with all the other hit rates if I ignore the +1) = just under half this damage expected, i.e. 10 points of damage bonus from the free charge. Barb wins - but it took that second encounter power rather than an at will to make the barb win. At first and second level, I think the advantage goes to the berserker due to the OAs, but the barbarian pulls ahead at third as at wills get less common and charge attacks more powerful.