Kritika:REBOOT – Berserker Guide

DISCLAIMER: This is a PvE Only guide, this guide will not include anything relating to PvP at all, I am NOT a expert or well versed in PvP only PvE. This will be a guide of me explaining how I believe the class should be played optimally, you’re free to make your own decision.

Introduction:

Hello there and welcome to my guide made for beginner and advanced Berserker players. I am a Zerk player on the Kritika:REBOOT server on steam and have played since near the beginning and started from no knowledge to now becoming an expert on the class. This knowledge about Berserker and the game did not happen from only my effort. I asked many questions (as should you) from many veteran players who’ve been playing the game since EME days and have honorable achievements for their respected classes. I am here to share all the labbing and theorycrafting with the class I have done so you don’t have to do it yourself. I would like to warn those who are interested in playing Berserker, leveling a Berserker does not come with a rewarding time but when you are able to get your imprints, you will know satisfaction and fall in love with the class if you are a fan of fast gameplay.

Berserker is an S tier class in Kritika due to it having everything a class needs. There are no weaknesses in Berserker’s kit. Below are some of the Pro’s and Con’s to the class.

Pros:

High Mobility
Great Mobbing
High Sustain DPS and Burst Potential
Super Armor on almost every skill.
Steroids with 100% uptime (Explained Later)
Bleed
Easy to reach 100% Reduce Hit to become unkillable
Requires No Attack Speed due to Imprints

Cons
Leveling is Slow and doesn’t feel satisfying until you reach 70 and get top imprints.
Berserker Rage Bug (Explained Below)
Lack of Range Abilities and requires close combat “in your face” gameplay.
Must be okay and embrace the “Spin2Win” memes.

Now to discuss the elephant in the room. Since you are interested in playing Berserker, you may have come across others talking about. I will be very clear when I state that, although this bug is unavoidable, there are ways to help reduce the effectiveness of the bug.

This is the best example I could record while making this guide. The issue is when a berserker uses a skill such as Bloody Roar or Burn Intense, the games packets are server sided which when the user sends activates the skill but it’s not updated quick enough if there is high latency which causes a delay and thus resulting in the player not getting a resource. This is why players who may live outside of the U.S may get the bug more often that someone who lives in the U.S.

The best advice I can give to berserker players is play on an ethernet connection for the best possible connection to the server and NOT taking the rage extension passive in the skill tree.

By not taking this passive, you reduce the berserker’s max rage from 150 to 100. The way zerk’s damage works is basically always staying above 50% rage i.e 50+ rage. This allows you to easily sustain and recover from the bug if your Burn Intense does not grant you full rage but your bloody roar does.

NOTE:
There is a similar bug where something similar will happen with Bloody Roar in which either Bloody Roar does not grant the full amount of rage based on your awakening points + if you have myth weapon which has the effect of Bloody Roar granting you 100% rage upon activation. There’s not much you can do about this bug, but it rarely happens.

Basic Skills:

These skills are never specced into for any reason for PvE purpose. They are basic skills that deal very miniscule damage and are not even worth considering for any reason at all. Do not take these skills for any reason at all, these skills are used in PvP scenarios which is not included in this guide as I don’t PvP.

Berserker’s Speciality kills:

Hurricane Slash
This skill is activated by holding right click and this is your main filler skill for dps and way to clear mobs when your other mob clearing skills are on cooldown. You want to max this always.

This skill can also be animation cancelled for movement as shown below

The way to do the animation cancel is:
1. Right Click to enter animation of Hurricane Slash
2. At the end of the first dash animation, hold LMB
3. Continue to press RMB at the right timing at the end of each dash.

Neverdie
Allows you to recover hp after hp falls below 30% HP and gives you a HoT(Heal over Time) as well of 60% HP. I don’t take this skill due to the nature of zerk doing more damage by playing on lower hp values due to prime. As a zerk, you don’t want to be healing. If you really need to, you have Fury Insight and Bloody Roar and your prime passive to sustain you.

Life Relay
Converts all of your MP into bonus HP when maxed. Again as for similar reasons to not taking Neverdie, I don’t skill into this skill because I want to take damage and have my hp drop to lower percentages to allow more damage gain from my prime. I don’t want higher hp values.

Rage Extension
I don’t spec into this skill as mentioned earlier due to the simple fact that it allows me to have a lower rage cap which lets me reach and sustain 50% rage more easily. Unless you get the bug, you will never drop below 50% rage without having burn intense up. You will always get burn intense around 61% rage left which gives you plenty of time to use it off cooldown.

Double Slash
This skill might as well be called Double Trash, useless don’t put any points into it. Next.

Drill Stinger

Great filler skill that serves many purposes. It’s a dash that groups mobs together and has a very low cooldown of 5 seconds. Also a great mobility skill and can be used to reach bosses quickly when in range from dashing with Hurricane Slash to approach.

Tornado Smasher
Another great bread and butter skill that is a filler outside your big cooldowns. Often used for mobbing and can be used to pull mobs depending if holding forward or backwards. You want to always max this.

Gigantic Full Swing
An iframe skill with a long wind up time that has a 2nd iFrame animation depending how fast you press the skill a second time. The skill itself does decent damage in comparison to Spiral Strike but the cooldown of 15 seconds and cast time makes it an inferior skill. Don’t recommend taking this skill. Zerk does not need iframes, you already get 2 from Outrage and 1 from 2A skill Mega Earthquake.

Drive Slasher
One of zerk’s best skill for the sole reason that it applies bleed to the target while used under the Bloody Roar effect. Great damage for a 6 second cool down and usually will apply 4 stacks of bleed if all hits land on the target. The fact it’s a movement skill is just a bonus. Max this skill,

Spiral Strike
Spiral Strike is a great ability as it’s a stronger filler that allows for mobbing and repositioning for back attacks. Its 10 second cooldown, mobbing, and repositioning potential makes it a better option to take than gigantic full swing. Max it.

Tempest Blade
Sigh, just trash, don’t bother. Very weak and underwhelming skill, needs a buff, useless and not worth the point investment.

Infinity Glaive
One of zerk’s strongest skill and big cooldowns. This skill with top imprints hits three times which makes it very powerful, your 4th strongest skill to be exact. Has a chance to apply bleed on hit. This can be reset with Bloody Roar with your top imprints. Using this skill without the Bloody Roar effect will change its effect and instead of doing 3 strong hits, will perform a flurry of swipes that is very weak compared to the Bloody Roar version.

Full Breaker
Ah the ole’ Full Breaker, I gave this skill many tries but could never justify the use of it. The skill itself does decent damage but the problem is the cast time on it and the need to hit a release timing every time it’s used. The window of opportunity to use this skill is very small and just seems to do more harm than good. It’s inferior to Infinity Glaive as well, don’t recommend taking.

Mad Rush
Zerk’s strongest skill by far. When activated you should be spamming left click with this skill instead of holding LMB to let the game attack for you. By left clicking you can deal more swipes with this skill yourself faster than the game can. This skill should only be used on bosses as it’s your biggest cooldown. This can be reset with Bloody Roar with your top imprints.

IMPORTANT NOTE: IF YOU ARE IN MAD RUSH STATE, DO NOT USE ANY OTHER SKILLS OR YOU WILL LOSE THE MAD RUSH EFFECT AND YOUR SWIPES WILL NOT DEAL ANY DAMAGE, YOU MUST LMB THE ENTIRE DURATION OF MAD RUSH AND THEN USE OTHER SKILLS

Bloody Roar
What do I even say about this skill.It’s your main buff and gateway to all of your damage. With top imprints, this Bloody Roar state consumes less rage and gives you steroids. It’s also responsible for allowing you to get 12% crit rate which allows you to reach caps much easier. The state of Bloody Roar should ALWAYS be active as a Berserker and over 50% rage or you are dealing very little damage.

Crater Leap
Not that great of a skill, decent mobility skill and breaks super armor. Not strong enough to be a filler, wouldn’t recommend taking,

Maelstrom
Your main room clearing skill. It can be used to pull bosses or mobs. In step dungeons you should be able to use this skill and kill all the mobs quickly and move on to the boss. Always try to stand near the middle of mobs as it has a decent range. You should hold the skill down to get the maximum damage and longest suction time. An example of clearing mobs in a step dungeon is below.
Wild Crash
Trash. Basura, worthless. Can be used for movement and an iframe but not worth the 6 points. Next.

Burn Intense
Grants 50 rage upon use in exchange for 10% HP, and your main way of sustaining your rage after using Bloody Roar. You want to use this skill off cooldown and if you have myth weapon, always use it after Bloody Roar to get the 5 seconds cooldown reduced. Also gives bonus damage rate with myth helmet.

Outrage
This skill is …Outrageous! It’s mainly used as a big buff before dealing damage or an iframe. You wouldn’t use this in a step dungeon or during dailies, only on a tanky raid boss or in arena. If you activate the skill a 2nd time you can get another iframe that basically returns berserker back to a normal state instead of “Outraged”, it’s shown below.

Hurricane Slash

This skill is activated by holding right click and this is your main filler skill for dps and way to clear mobs when your other mob clearing skills are on cooldown. You want to max this always.

This skill can also be animation cancelled for movement as shown below

The way to do the animation cancel is:
1. Right Click to enter animation of Hurricane Slash
2. At the end of the first dash animation, hold LMB
3. Continue to press RMB at the right timing at the end of each dash.

Neverdie
Allows you to recover hp after hp falls below 30% HP and gives you a HoT(Heal over Time) as well of 60% HP. I don’t take this skill due to the nature of zerk doing more damage by playing on lower hp values due to prime. As a zerk, you don’t want to be healing. If you really need to, you have Fury Insight and Bloody Roar and your prime passive to sustain you.

Life Relay
Converts all of your MP into bonus HP when maxed. Again as for similar reasons to not taking Neverdie, I don’t skill into this skill because I want to take damage and have my hp drop to lower percentages to allow more damage gain from my prime. I don’t want higher hp values.

Rage Extension
I don’t spec into this skill as mentioned earlier due to the simple fact that it allows me to have a lower rage cap which lets me reach and sustain 50% rage more easily. Unless you get the bug, you will never drop below 50% rage without having burn intense up. You will always get burn intense around 61% rage left which gives you plenty of time to use it off cooldown.

Double Slash

This skill might as well be called Double Trash, useless don’t put any points into it. Next.

Drill Stinger
Great filler skill that serves many purposes. It’s a dash that groups mobs together and has a very low cooldown of 5 seconds. Also a great mobility skill and can be used to reach bosses quickly when in range from dashing with Hurricane Slash to approach.

Tornado Smasher
Another great bread and butter skill that is a filler outside your big cooldowns. Often used for mobbing and can be used to pull mobs depending if holding forward or backwards. You want to always max this.

Gigantic Full Swing
An iframe skill with a long wind up time that has a 2nd iFrame animation depending how fast you press the skill a second time. The skill itself does decent damage in comparison to Spiral Strike but the cooldown of 15 seconds and cast time makes it an inferior skill. Don’t recommend taking this skill. Zerk does not need iframes, you already get 2 from Outrage and 1 from 2A skill Mega Earthquake.

Drive Slasher
One of zerk’s best skill for the sole reason that it applies bleed to the target while used under the Bloody Roar effect. Great damage for a 6 second cool down and usually will apply 4 stacks of bleed if all hits land on the target. The fact it’s a movement skill is just a bonus. Max this skill,

Spiral Strike
Spiral Strike is a great ability as it’s a stronger filler that allows for mobbing and repositioning for back attacks. Its 10 second cooldown, mobbing, and repositioning potential makes it a better option to take than gigantic full swing. Max it.

Tempest Blade
Sigh, just trash, don’t bother. Very weak and underwhelming skill, needs a buff, useless and not worth the point investment.

Infinity Glaive
One of zerk’s strongest skills and big cooldowns. This skill with top imprints hits three times which makes it very powerful, your 4th strongest skill to be exact. Has a chance to apply bleed on hit. This can be reset with Bloody Roar with your top imprints. Using this skill without the Bloody Roar effect will change its effect and instead of doing 3 strong hits, will perform a flurry of swipes that is very weak compared to the Bloody Roar version. After using this skill you actually gain 80% critical damage for 5 seconds.

Full Breaker
Ah the ole’ Full Breaker, I gave this skill many tries but could never justify the use of it. The skill itself does decent damage but the problem is the cast time on it and the need to hit a release timing every time it’s used. The window of opportunity to use this skill is very small and just seems to do more harm than good. It’s inferior to Infinity Glaive as well, don’t recommend taking.

Mad Rush
Zerk’s strongest skill by far. When activated you should be spamming left click with this skill instead of holding LMB to let the game attack for you. By left clicking you can deal more swipes with this skill yourself faster than the game can. This skill should only be used on bosses as it’s your biggest cooldown. This can be reset with Bloody Roar with your top imprints.

IMPORTANT NOTE: IF YOU ARE IN MAD RUSH STATE, DO NOT USE ANY OTHER SKILLS OR YOU WILL LOSE THE MAD RUSH EFFECT AND YOUR SWIPES WILL NOT DEAL ANY DAMAGE, YOU MUST LMB THE ENTIRE DURATION OF MAD RUSH AND THEN USE OTHER SKILLS

Bloody Roar
What do I even say about this skill.It’s your main buff and gateway to all of your damage. With top imprints, this Bloody Roar state consumes less rage and gives you steroids. It’s also responsible for allowing you to get 12% crit rate which allows you to reach caps much easier. The state of Bloody Roar should ALWAYS be active as a Berserker and over 50% rage or you are dealing very little damage.Crater Leap

Not that great of a skill, decent mobility skill and breaks super armor. Not strong enough to be a filler, wouldn’t recommend taking,

Maelstrom
Your main room clearing skill. It can be used to pull bosses or mobs. In step dungeons you should be able to use this skill and kill all the mobs quickly and move on to the boss. Always try to stand near the middle of mobs as it has a decent range. You should hold the skill down to get the maximum damage and longest suction time. An example of clearing mobs in a step dungeon is below.

Wild Crash
Trash. Basura, worthless. Can be used for movement and an iframe but not worth the 6 points. Next.

Burn Intense
Grants 50 rage upon use in exchange for 10% HP, and your main way of sustaining your rage after using Bloody Roar. You want to use this skill off cooldown and if you have myth weapon, always use it after Bloody Roar to get the 5 seconds cooldown reduced. Also gives bonus damage rate with myth helmet.

Outrage
This skill is …Outrageous! It’s mainly used as a big buff before dealing damage or an iframe. You wouldn’t use this in a step dungeon or during dailies, only on a tanky raid boss or in arena. If you activate the skill a 2nd time you can get another iframe that basically returns berserker back to a normal state instead of “Outraged”, it’s shown below.

All of these awakenings are chosen optimally to just add more skill damage to each skill with no other effect except for the ones listed below.On top of giving more skill damage, the awakening allows you to control the direction of Tornado forward with a 50% mspd increase for the skill OR backwards but you receive a 95% mspd reduction.

On top of giving more skill damage, this adds a 10m distance on the skill and allows you break super armor when NOT using the skill in the Bloody Roar state, which is not recommended

Adds a 30% attack power steroid during Mad Rush and an extra 10% ASPD. DO NOT USE the EX version of this skill that you are forced to take. It causes you to do a knee attack that is very weak and useless, if you wish to use EX with mad rush, use Mad Rush FIRST then use EX.

Mega Earthquake
Zerk’s 2nd strongest skill but also used to one shot many bosses when you are strong enough. You only want to use this skill when you are below 50% rage. To do this while sustaining DPS, I tend to burst with Mad Rush then throw in a infinity glaive/Rage Cross and avoid using burn intense in the beginning and then use Mega Earthquake. Once you get strong enough you can one shot bosses. I’m able to one shot every boss in Raid 2. Very good skill in arena as well if it is able to hit both bosses.You can also disable the cutscene for this skill by this setting here. This does not mean it cancels the animation, it will still occur.

Abyss Killer

A decent skill basically a stronger drill stinger, but not worth the point investment due to the long cooldown of 40 seconds. If the skill had a shorter cooldown perhaps 10 seconds it would be worth investing in. Don’t recommend taking.

Destroy
A good iFrame skill that does good damage but Berserker doesn’t need to iframe and wants to take some sort of damage without dying if possible. To deal the full damage it has a cast time and it lasts about 2 seconds to deal the full damage. If you really want a reliable iFrame you can put one point into this skill and just pull points from drill stinger, but for the most damage, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Down Fall
Actually a hard hitting skill, but lack of points don’t allow this skill to be utilized. The long cooldown of 35 seconds is also a deterrent and this skill can sometimes displace you and put you in bad positions. Not worth taking, but can possibly experiment with.

Rage Cross
3rd Strongest skill, and should be used pretty much on cooldown if Mad Rush is on cooldown. Has 2 charges and is a range skill, recommended to create space from the target and then shoot out two charges to allow more hits to connect for maximum damage.If you’re standing directly on the target you won’t be able to get the full damage off due to the projectile traveling through the target quicker.

Fury Insight
The description of this skill is wrong, I’m not sure if it’s just a bug or mistranslated but the skill only gives you 40% reduce hit and isn’t canceled with the effect of bloody roar. This skill consumes 40 rage, but can be used with 0 rage. So if you need to be tanky before a fight, I recommend using Fury Insight first, THEN using Bloody Roar + Burn Intense, that way you dont lose 40 rage after using Bloody Roar + Burn Intense. Also can be used as a heal. Bloody Roar and Fury Insight heal.

After many hours of labbing and theorycrafting, this build seems to deal the most consistent damage and removes all unnecessary skills such as passives and avoid sub optimal skills which I explained earlier in the guide.

Top Row does the most damage for imprints due to just the raw amount of steroids we get from it.

I chose Mad Rush for the reason that Mad Rush is your strongest skill and in comparison to the common x9 Bloody Roar CD setup, the damage loss is not worth me getting Bloody Roar 7-8 seconds faster.

-20% Atk Power during Bloody Roar with rage consumption reduced by half which allows for better rage management.
– 80% Crit Damage
– Infinity Glaive, Rage Cross, Tornado Smasher all getting additional hits.
– 100% Damage Rate and 200% ASPD(Puts you at cap)
– Resets of Infinity Glaive and Mad Rush which is zerk’s main source of dmg.

I will briefly go over the issues with the other two imprints and why they aren’t viable

2nd row imprints
Lower damage output than top row, no resets, weaker steroids and no additional hits. Just an insane amount of survivability that is not needed.

3rd Row imprints; Extremely slow and slow stacking steroids. The lack of attack speed doesn’t allow much mobility and is probably only even remotely viable for Illusionary Palace, but top imprint would perform better if you are moving around the room with Tornado Smasher, Drill Stinger, and Drive Slasher effectively.

Prime Ability

The main point of looking at zerk’s prime is the level 4 effect, you need to be conscious that zerk does more damage when you are at lower hp percentages. If you can take hits and then get 100% reduce hit to not die that’s much better than just popping full immunity and sitting at 100% hp the entire time.

Buffing your three highest damage dealing skills is straightforward in Parallel Labyrinth, after testing ele shred in chaos lab, I found damage rate to be more consistent for about the same numbers. So this is what I chose and recommend.

General Combo Order for Bosses

Open With

Then:

Whether or not you decide to use Outrage before this combo is up to you. Chances are if the boss isn’t going to die from the first 2 rage crosses you’ll probably need all the damage you can get, if it’s raid you’ll want to use outrage before the boss, but if it’s just step dungeons or lab, you should be fine without using it. The general concept of the rotation is to apply bleed and burn your strongest skills off cool down.

I will list the skills in terms of a priority list that should be followed for the most dps in a general basis.for bosses.

1. (If boss is tanky and not going to die in one shot, use this as most priority, you should only have to use it twice to get max bleed stacks then you should of at least gotten one or more from your mad rush which should give you 10 stacks)
2. You never want to sit on these charges on a boss, they come out quick and deal a ton of damage very quickly and can apply debuffs like dmg type shred with a high chance.
3. Your strongest skill, if this is on cooldown and you have Bloody Roar available, immediately stop what you are doing and use Bloody Roar and go into Mad Rush. Unless you don’t have max Bleed Stacks then use Drive Slasher and then Mad Rush. Make sure you are spamming left click to deal the most damage !

The rest is just a simple order of priority, if the skill in a higher order is available, then use it accordingly off cooldown in relation to others. If none of your cooldowns are up, then you are just using Hurricane Slash until there’s one available.

Note:

Unless you are planning to use Mega Earthquake soon or after you use it, you should always be spamming Burn Intense OFF COOLDOWN.

For mobbing

General Rotation for Mobbing

For one Large Room and then boss like Space Time or pretty much any room with a lot of mobs similar to those.

If none of these are available then you are expected to just hurricane slash trash mobs.

If no myth :

Spiritual Liberation Armor x5
Daybreak Weapon
Dirty Cleaner Accessories

Otherwise aim for full myth gear.

For rolling gear.

DO NOT ROLL ATTACK SPEED! Zerk automatically gets capped from top imprints, attack speed rolls are bad. Replace them with boss hit rate, reduce hit rate, or boss crit damage for the extra spots

You want to aim for

78% Crit ( In Town, with spirit lib or myth, you will reach cap in dungeon with bloody roar up)
600 Prime for Lvl 5 Prime Bonus (Prime = Fighting Spirit)
1500 Hit ( Helps roll damage to max damage more consistently )
40%-50% Reduce Hit in town, Fury Insight gives you 40% and you get another 20% for 20 seconds when using Bloody Roar so you pretty much have almost perma invincibility, and can heal yourself if it gets spicy.

After you reach that aim to stack as much of Boss Hit Rate > Slash > Elemental Damage > Damage Rate/Crit Damage as possible (It’s in order of importance for largest damage increase) .

– For arena, you generally want to hit both bosses with drive slasher during bloody roar to get bleed on them both and mad rush them both down. Try sucking them in a corner with Maelstrom and then hit both of them with all you have.

– For Illusionary Palace, there’s nothing special other than just using Tornado Smasher, Drive Slasher, and drill stinger along with hurricane slash to move around the room and just keep killing things as fast as you can with those skills.

– If you have plans to use a tab or EX and you have mad rush available, make sure you use Mad rush THEN use your ex, otherwise you’ll be forced to use Mad Rush EX which is a garbage charge and then use normal Mad Rush.

– Never left click with zerk unless you are using Mad Rush, if you don’t have a skill to use, just use hurricane slash until one of your low cd skills are available like tornado smasher, drive slasher, drill stinger, spiral strike.

– Make sure you are left click spamming during your mad rush, you can get more swipes out clicking yourself than allowing the game to do it for you, I can’t stress this enough, it can result in 20-30% more damage on your mad rush total damage output.