Berzerker Speculation

[Fen__]

In my oppinion berzerker is srsly op. Although in every game i played people (1650-1750) fail on him completly and thats probably main reason of "weak-cry", those players usually have big problems in getting over 200 gpm on any sort of hero so their oppinion is pretty worthless.

The fact is that in couple of games that i was matched against berzerker, even tho his farm was thrashi and he had boots + blacklegion at 30 min mark, he was still able to kill most of people on my team. 350 gpm ew needed to run away from a 200 gpm berzerker couz she just couldnt stand autoattack fight (ye he was getting killed fast, but so did she).

Everyone is saying that zerk isnt op because of the increased dmg that he recives, but i belive thats just too easy to avoid when playing him:

1. You dont have to use your ult imidietaly, before fight
2. Get a barbed armor (90% of the noob people that are spreading all over hon atm, doesnt prob know how to use i properly)
3. Let your team initiate the fight

Another thing is that his ulit debuff resistance can be considered like a free semi-sh in terms of making you debuff immune at lvl 3. Yes you can still be bursted down but for sure you wont get disables in a normal decent-like game during a big teamfight. I mean who would waste their 2s stun to ministun smb for 0.5s, same goes for slows.

The best part of berzerker is that because of free inbuild dmg + free damage resistance + free movement speed + free attack speed you can build a lot of usefull items for which you wouldnt had slots before when late game arrove -> shaman heardress, barbed amor.

And not sure if its only me but elder parasite looks insane on that hero in terms of late game. You get ton of hp, i would say around 4k, pop up ep + ulti 35% damage increase charge in and use barbed. If they try to fight you back, they will get huge damage in return. Yes you will die but when combining dmg done with ep active + the reflected dmg im pretty sure that enemys will be low enouigh to let your team finish them.

In my oppinion berzerker is a pretty unbalanced hero atm. Hes great early, mid and i belive that late game as well makes him another "good in almost every way" hero made by S2. I just want to point 1 important thing that makes most of people fail on it. Dont build team of 4 people all sorounded around that zerk. Get a 2 carry team. Berzerker is just meant to do ton of dmg focus attention of all enemys (prob die couz of that) and let the other carry make a cleanup. That hero can be very dangerous in teamfights even with very low farm. As soon as players/team will learn how to use him properly im almost sure he will have huge impact in every game that he was picked.

[Z00lander]

For a carry, the lost item slot is an issue that shouldn't be understated. And spending 400 gold just to get back to the point where you don't get instantly faceraped by heavy magic damage dealers is also pretty significant. With ult on, Artesia should have a pretty easy time dealing with him, even with a vestments.

It is only 400g for a very effective protective item agaisnt magic nukes. It would be a different story if instead he required a Headress to outweight the increased incoming damage from magic nukes (specifically Artesia's nukes) when Carnage is active. Even considering this, Shrunked Head is still a possible pick-up, especially for a carry.

[Beroya]

The hero currently has a base 0.25 hp regen when it's supposed to be 1.5 or 1.75. I can't remember the base, but I do know it's pretty dang high for melee heroes.

Strength Sap can give up to 100 hp regen per second. The likelihood of that happening is slim to none, but still. That's nice.

I personally think the ult needs slow immunity, mostly because it kills me how easy it is for opponents to escape taking damage from it. The only time it shines is if an opponent gets into a right-clicking contest.

[[TsGr]Isis]

In my oppinion berzerker is srsly op. Although in every game i played people (1650-1750) fail on him completly and thats probably main reason of "weak-cry", those players usually have big problems in getting over 200 gpm on any sort of hero so their oppinion is pretty worthless.

The fact is that in couple of games that i was matched against berzerker, even tho his farm was thrashi and he had boots + blacklegion at 30 min mark, he was still able to kill most of people on my team. 350 gpm ew needed to run away from a 200 gpm berzerker couz she just couldnt stand autoattack fight (ye he was getting killed fast, but so did she).

Everyone is saying that zerk isnt op because of the increased dmg that he recives, but i belive thats just too easy to avoid when playing him:

1. You dont have to use your ult imidietaly, before fight
2. Get a barbed armor (90% of the noob people that are spreading all over hon atm, doesnt prob know how to use i properly)
3. Let your team initiate the fight

Another thing is that his ulit debuff resistance can be considered like a free semi-sh in terms of making you debuff immune at lvl 3. Yes you can still be bursted down but for sure you wont get disables in a normal decent-like game during a big teamfight. I mean who would waste their 2s stun to ministun smb for 0.5s, same goes for slows.

The best part of berzerker is that because of free inbuild dmg + free damage resistance + free movement speed + free attack speed you can build a lot of usefull items for which you wouldnt had slots before when late game arrove -> shaman heardress, barbed amor.

And not sure if its only me but elder parasite looks insane on that hero in terms of late game. You get ton of hp, i would say around 4k, pop up ep + ulti 35% damage increase charge in and use barbed. If they try to fight you back, they will get huge damage in return. Yes you will die but when combining dmg done with ep active + the reflected dmg im pretty sure that enemys will be low enouigh to let your team finish them.

In my oppinion berzerker is a pretty unbalanced hero atm. Hes great early, mid and i belive that late game as well makes him another "good in almost every way" hero made by S2. I just want to point 1 important thing that makes most of people fail on it. Dont build team of 4 people all sorounded around that zerk. Get a 2 carry team. Berzerker is just meant to do ton of dmg focus attention of all enemys (prob die couz of that) and let the other carry make a cleanup. That hero can be very dangerous in teamfights even with very low farm. As soon as players/team will learn how to use him properly im almost sure he will have huge impact in every game that he was picked.

Wait, so you somehow turned elder parasite and his ult's damage taken increase into a good thing? wat? Why don't all heroes just stack HP and make barbed armor then?

Berzerker does a lot of single target damage. However, there are quite a few reasons why he isn't overpowered, and might be, in fact, underpowered (I havn't come to a conclusion yet).

His farming capability is horrid. The only thing that comes close to a farming skill is his second ability, and that does 200 AoE damage. This hero can't farm, and relies on dominating his lane and getting early hero kills to snowball into late game.

He has no escape abilities, and has to be facing an enemy for his third ability to work. Combined with his 20% taken damage from his ult, he is VERY easy to focus down.

Much like CD (without the range and AoE damage), it takes berzerker a while to build up his damage. First he has to hit his second ability, then he his to target somone with his third ability, then he has to hit his ult, then he has to root somone. It doesn't matter in what order he does this, the fact is that he has to use all of his abilities (some with cast times, some without) before he can start to output heavy damage.

His damage is COMPLETELY reliant on his ultimate. If his ultimate isn't on, he hits like a wet noodle. This isn't so bad once he hits level 16, with a 12 second duration and 30 second cooldown, but at level 6 with an 8 second duration, 20% extra damage taken, and only 40% debuff reduction it's easy to stun him and run until it turns off.

The thing about berzerker is you can't just buy items to fix all of his problems because he can't farm as well as a normal carry. He's also extremely easy to kill because of the 20% extra damage he takes while his ult is on.

One of the key things you're forgetting in this whole "magebane versus berzerker" argument is that only a 1400 trash mmr magebane is going to sit there while a berzerker with all of his buffs up is wailing on him. What do I do if I see a berzerker running at me with all his crap up? Blink away, then blink back in when it's down, optionally targeting another member of his team. He is COMPLETELY reliant on that ultimate being up to do damage, if it's not on he's worthless compared to other carries. A hero like dark lady can farm better, chase better, and deals more damage with more utility (her ultimate, silence).

Yes, berzerker can do obscene amounts of damage but little items, but he CAN NOT survive without items such as BKB, helm, and shamans headress in team fights because of his 20% increased damage taken, and the reason he is balanced is because he is HORRIBLE at farming.

[Fen__]

1 important argument that no one stated before is the fact that a lot of nukes are disables at the same time

i.e. ws stun/gaunt ult/parasite ult/magmus stun/behe stun/tundra ult etc

Now we got berserker with ult turned on, and you got 2 options:

1. Waste all your nukes on him losing toooooooooooooones of the disable time because of 80% reduction time (efficient stacking of disables is not an option :<)

2. Use only burst nukes without any additional effects, and save disables for others

During option 1, you will basically lose all or almost all(couz of high hp pool) of your disables making your team vulnurable to the enemy team.

During option 2, you wont have enough burst to kill zerk so fast and your efforts will be ineffective.

In a pub game you wont give a **** bout wasting stuns/silences etc on zerk because its usually 1 man game <-- 1 good player trashing whole enemy team and 4 tards looking for a opportunity to KS

But in a higher mmr game or comp, there will be a lot of mind games coming into play. If you waste all the disables on 1 hero even if you kill him, than you will get trashed anyways by his team who doesnt need to worry bout getting CCed.

And again, barbed armor is a great item which makes the decision even harder. (im too lazy to check this spam thread and find post when somebody stated that if barbed armor is so good why not make on other heroes, so ill answear hear: because zerk doesnt need to build dmg, just hp/survivability, while most of carrys need to build a lot of dmg)

[[RCT]Reldnahc]

This is a minor point, but I don't see why getting Ghost Marchers is bad on a hero that has no blink/charge skills and has to walk to his target every time. Steamboots adds 190 health. 10 damage, and 15 attack speed, plus an additional 15 damage with ultimate activated. Ghost Marchers are much faster, have unitwalking, and add 24 damage all the time. Berzerker is already beefy even without the 190 HP from Steamboots, and is already squishy with ultimate active even with the 190 HP.

GM just seems straight up better, considering his mobility issues.

Mark of Death gives increased MS and unitwalking and Chain Spike slows/immobilizes. Not to mention the STR and +15as synergize much better with him. Matter of preference though.

[[eR]Ekamo]

Thread cleaned up.

Try to:

1. Stay on topic.
2. Don't derail this into a strategy discussion.
3. Be respectful to other users.

[HeLLgEiST]

i think zerk is balanced. Ult gives him the right amount of squishiness needed to keep him in check. His farming ability is just medicore and without an escape mech he needs some seriously good abilities to compensate. I almost think he could get a buff on his strength sap to be an instant nuke to creeps instead of a ticking aoe dot.

But anyways..... zerk grows big, nuke zerk, zerk dies. Pretty simple. He stomps games where people don't know his ult is active, or where a great initation leads to zerk chasing and cleaning up kills.

[[zV]Hermione]

He's the Ra version of AUTO's.

RA: Stack HP get big nukes + surviveability
Zerker: Stack HP get big autos/crits + surviveability.

BIG VOID IS BIG GUYS!

[Fen__]

i think zerk is balanced ... I almost think he could get a buff on his strength sap to be an instant nuke to creeps instead of a ticking aoe dot.

Why almost every low mmr player post is always: this hero is bad because he cant nuke a creep wave in 1 blow. If you got any clue how to rice on a carry, getting 400+ gpm on zerk wont be a prob. Not ony that he haves aoe skill that lowers creeps to the point when he can 1-2 hit them, he can as well farm enemy heroes without any problem since lvl 6.

But anyways..... zerk grows big, nuke zerk, zerk dies.

I bet that nuking down, without ability to effective disable, a hero who buys only hp items is very easy, especially in mid-late game when he gets shaman heardress and even on +% dmg received, he still gets less dmg than other carrys since they cant really afford "wasting" item slot on shaman.

[Lodurr]

If you got any clue how to rice on a carry, getting 400+ gpm on zerk wont be a prob. Not ony that he haves aoe skill that lowers creeps to the point when he can 1-2 hit them, he can as well farm enemy heroes without any problem since lvl 6.

Ricing and farming enemy heroes are two different things. He just can't rice as fast as carries that have +attack speed skills and build Runed Cleaver. He can rice the first 15-20 minutes just as quickly as other carries, but after that he trails behind them if he's just ricing.

He's in a weird spot--he can't initiate, can't solo hard carry, can't mid (I watched Testie lose mid to a 1700 Nomad with Berzerker ), and is only an okay ganker. His peak is in the mid-game, but he's outclassed by Nomad and Drunken Master who peak at the same time but have better survivability/utility and comparable damage output.

[Fen__]

Ricing and farming enemy heroes are two different things. He just can't rice as fast as carries that have +attack speed skills and build Runed Cleaver. He can rice the first 15-20 minutes just as quickly as other carries, but after that he trails behind them if he's just ricing.

Well by saying ricing i dont mean afk 40 min in jungle, just using every freetime to clear creep wave/jungle.

+ Yes he cant farm as fast as runed axe heroes but
1. runed axe makes you usually worthless for next 10 minutes
2. its not a good late game item
3. even with the extra 50-150 gpm that you will get because of runed axe zerk will still beat you up with his 40% increased attack speed and inasne bonus dmg.

Something that almost no one noticed. His mark gives him 40% increased attack speed -> with steamboots or demonic (1 of them you will probably sooner or later get) you get around 200 attack speed which means that this 40% bonus gives you 80 attack speed for free. Thats almost as much as madman ultimate.

Anyway got enough of this hero, even when having 450 gpm on range carry while zerk got 200 gpm, he could usually solo me down unless i just run away or got team assistance

[Brannock]

Something that almost no one noticed. His mark gives him 40% increased attack speed -> with steamboots or demonic (1 of them you will probably sooner or later get) you get around 200 attack speed which means that this 40% bonus gives you 80 attack speed for free. Thats almost as much as madman ultimate.

This isn't how attack speed works.