So first, i am sure that this has been discussed in the past and i take any scolding for being too lazy to use the search function, but in any case i would like to revive the discussion, as i haven’t read a single thing about it since i started reading the forums.
Are there any plans to let the minimum damage of the Berserker spell scale with magic or at least ascensions in any way?
This part of the spell being static makes it scale very poorly with levelling/ascending the troop and even levels of your kingdoms(statistically speaking by only 0,5 damage per point of magic gained, quite terrible for a single target spell).
While the randomness is fitting to the troops theme, the spell isn’t exactly stellar even if you roll maximum on it, but if you roll minimum it becomes abysmal pretty much breaking it.
I really love the troop, i am a sucker for Stormheim and its giants, and this one in particular with its amazing art, but being unable to increase the minimum damage in any way really hurts the troops usefulness(even more so than it being random in the first place).
I get it being random is part of the idea for the troop, and i don’t wish for that to change i just wished you could decrease the range of it a bit by levelling and ascensions.
Maybe other players like to chime in, while i pretty much never encounter Berserkers in enemy teams outside arena, Orion fans might relate.
are two of my favorite teams I’ve ever played. The minimal damage never scared me, because I do more skull damage with this team than with Berserker’s/Orion’s spell.
Right now, most spell damage is not commensurate with average skull damage. While the Berserker is a good example of this, many other spells are not nearly as useful in the current meta. Besides the few spells that can potentially scale up their damage depending on circumstances (Hydra, Paladin, etc), most can’t even touch the average 15-23 attack damage that is easily attainable through a variety of means on troops.
I hope this imbalance is addressed soon, in one of the upcoming patches.
I like board control too much to find this one very useful, but it’s one of my my favourite troops in Arena anyway. What I guess could be easily done to him is scale the upper bound not with magic but with 2 * magic. I’m curious if devs are about to address it somehow…
It’s a bit weird to me that you care so much about his spell itself, never mind the damage part of his spell specifically… That’s simply not what this troop is about. This feels like “I love the Frost Giant, but those stats…” in reverse.
He has some of the most amazing stats in the entire game, by far the best of his rarity pool, and is utterly elite in the Arena. He’s also one of the very few troops whose 3 traits are all good, have great synergy with one another, and great synergy with the troop holding them… so he should be pretty great in PVP as well (especially if ascended all the way).
The only incentive to cast his spell at all is to boost his Attack a bit further. If he deals good damage in the process, that’s strictly a cherry on top. Beyond that, he’s essentially a bigger and better Ogre.
Orion is something else entirely, although the RNG factor with a very low minimum damage mechanic of his spell is similar. He’s all about spell damage at his core, in contrast with the Berserker, so the risk to cast for 3 damage hurts him much more. He also received traits that aren’t altogether all that great (except for the broken True Shot, obviously, but he’s not a good recipient for it, as a squishy legendary) and don’t synergize much. You’d need him at the top to benefit from his good abilities, but he’s nowhere near tanky enough to withstand that role. Even with the built-in Dire Wolf he received for free and his increased self-buff to Magic, he’s still extremely unreliable. I’d rather see him reworked than the Berserker, honestly.
That may very well be the case, and should probably be the subject of a whole other discussion, but it has nothing to do with the nature of this one. I don’t ask for the Berserker Spell to be made objectively better/stronger or brought in line with skull damage, i just ask for the range of its damage to at least stay constant instead of being increased by levelling/ascending and kingdom bonuses, just to make advancing this troop to actually feel more of an improvement.
You don’t have to find it weird, different people have different priorities regarding their uses for troops, and i doubt you decide what this troop should be about. There are many troops with good stats in the game that also happen to have good spells.
Yes his stats are great, but the difference in stats gets dwarfed once ascensions and kingdom bonuses come into play. Druid for example has the same amount of combined defensive stats, while having a slightly lower attack which hardly matters with all bonuses, and Druids spell is actually amazing.
I personally find Regeneration pretty weak in comparison to many other traits, but you are absolutely right about the traits fitting the troop and having some synergy, but what does that have to do with my point? So if the traits fit, the spell of a troop has to be weak? Again there are a lot of troops whose traits are good significantly better than the Zerkers even and their spells are pretty good as well.
Yes of course it is, because of the low end minimum damage, that’s the whole point…and just disregarding the Spells damage component makes it a 4 attack gain for 12 mana which is pretty bad. Also it is the other way around, Ogre is the bigger one he actually has more combined defensive Stats and a bigger attack as well. And while he has a truly terrible Spell, we can hardly judge a spells strength by comparing it to the arguably worst spell in the game right?
I didn’t ask for a rework of anything i simply asked for the range between minimum and maximum damage to not be increased by magic gain but at least be constant through ascending. Anyways nowhere did i object to Orion buffs at all, quite the opposite, the fix i had in mind with magic increasing the minimum damage as well would benefit him more than the berserker.
I am aware that there are troops in the game in more need of some developers love than Berserker, i just wasn’t aware that me asking for some Berserker adjustments somehow stands in the way of buffs for those troops…
Well, I dont get why u say “you dont asked for a fix?”, I don’t say you did, but what would be wrong if you did ask for a fix? Nothing, right? I think most of us would be sky happy to see Berserker and Orion get balanced. One of the funniest troops to play with when they play it well. And as Sirrian said it looks like it is in the Devs plan.
Life > Armor. Also, having one huge stat is generally more resilient than two average ones, as it’s easier to buff, restore or otherwise maintain. Berserker has the biggest base Life stat of any troop in the game. In PVP, he also has two Traits that further increase it throughout the game, and a built-in mechanic that buffs his Attack every time he takes damage, which has incredible synergy with it all. He’s already a bit of a power creep as it is (albeit, admittedly a niche pick in the current PVP meta, at least).
Speaking of defensive… Your whole post reads a bit like a courtroom transcript. I didn’t challenge you to a verbal joust, man. You opened a discussion about the Berserker, and I gave you my opinion. Others have mentioned Orion, which makes sense since their respective spells have the same weakness, and I commented on this as well. No need to go berserk on me, even if it fits the troop’s theme, eh? ^^
Agree to disagree, then. Here’s a chill pill:
I wasn’t intending to sound harsh, if you felt that way i genuinely apologize. English isn’t my first language maybe my use of the language is too crude.
Anyways while life maybe more valuable than armor in a true shot meta, any stoneskin unit, regardless of other stats/traits fares better at receiving damage than the whole berserker package, and having 3 or so more life won’t do much when overall lifepools are in the 30-40s.
Aside from that i did mention Orion myself in the opening post as both troops share this random aspect of their spell, and the suggested fix i lead the OP with would benefit Orion even more so than the Zerker, so i just didn’t understand the point of making it a “rather rework Orion than Berserker” issue, is all.
Indeed, which is a larger, all-encompassing issue of the current patch and (PVP) meta, really, as @Mitheithel pointed out. We’re in a bizarro world version of the game in which a common peasant like the Glade Warden can outclass a legendary Dragon like Venoxia, and two-shot her with ease, thanks to the Ascencion, Traits and Kingdom buffs completely cancelling the original rarity/value system for troops.
This means, as you said earlier, that what’s causing the Berserker to be underwhelming at the moment (in PVP only) is not a Berserker issue… So do we really need a Berserker solution to address that?
In the Arena, where Traits and other godly buffs from above don’t replace the troops’ nature and original design, the Berserker is a freaking beast (even for a Giant ^^ wink wink), as he very well should be. We both agree on that, right? With a better spell on top of that, he’d likely move to the dark side of the “Yellow/Red Toy + Sumoner = You Win!” button, me thinks…
As for my point about Orion needing a spell buff more than the Berserker, it’s exactly that; no more but no less. I don’t think the Berserker really needs that buff, whereas Orion needs it badly. That being said, I don’t mind if they both get that minimum damage boost, and I didn’t mean to imply it’s one or the other in my mind either.
Sirrian already said that the Berserker will have a buff, so its not a question if… anymore. He is gonna get a buff, even if its a minor one, its a buff.
Yes you are absolutely right in the Arena the Berserker is a great troop, definitely not the best stand alone unit though.
I’d mention Druid again, with the same amount of combined defensive stats and an incredibly strong spell to top it off or if you just look for a body Ogre is about the same with one more attack (and a really really terrible spell ;)).
But yes a straight up buff is definitely not needed for the Berserker and that is not what i asked for.
The fix i lead with in the OP was to let minimum damage also scale with magic or simply ascensions.
That would have no or just a very minor effect on the spells impact in Arena, quite frankly even on fully ascended/levelled Berserkers the impact would be minor, but it would get rid of your mythic Zerker dealing a disheartening 3 damage for 12 mana failing to finish off the opponents true shot troop with its remaining 5 life…maximum damage might as well be adjusted to not make the spell stronger on average, i wouldn’t mind.
Anyways now i am just hyped to see what the Devs have in mind for the Zerker and hopefully Orion too in the upcoming patch.
