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Nov 17, 2011 -- 10:04AM, Vestras wrote:

I am tinkering with the berserker and seeing a few ideas I might try out.  The way I see it, the CharOp for the Design as intended (dual role), would work best with All martial At-wills, All Primal Encounters, and 50/50 dailies.

The Berserker Martial At-Wills work fine as striker powers when you hit Fury, and will still offer a tidbit of defense. While Defender, you don't need the muscle of encounters typically, but some of the martial DA boosting daily powers are well worth it depending on the fight. Instead, use encounters for Primal where you can get some multi-hitters, or a solo crushing attack to push you over the edge.  Toss on a Primal Daily here and there to get some REAL power for striking and bob's your uncle. 

Weapon selection is where things get finicky. You'll easily have the str for Heavy shields if you really want that extra ac. But then the two-handers are where the damage is. I can see berserkers carrying a set of each, free action to chuck 1h and shield minor to draw 2h and go fury. 

All around, the versatility of this class is where it's power lies, and it makes a perfect 5th man, or in the right group, a perfectly serviceable main tank.  

For at-will DPR on a 50+% defender (that is, a character who doesn't need/want a full charging package since he'll want to hold a position a lot of the time), the temperate lands bonus to 1hander damage seems worthwhile.  All your at-wills and mark punishments will do well with that, and so will your real striker novas, Storm/Hurricane of Blades.  You'll fall behind on those high-[W] powers, but those don't tend to be your highest damage at Epic, anyway.  And a Waraxe is pretty respectable if you really want the big W.

The thing about the martial dailies is that most of the ones that are worthwhile compared to the good Rage powers are the ones that boost your Defender Aura, which is really only good if you're gonna leave it up almost the whole encounter.  I don't think I'd take more than one martial daily.  As to encounters, I'd probably keep one good martial encounter that would be pretty consistently good in the first two turns of combat... although at 27 when your class encounters can be Curtain of Steel, Storm of Blades, and Hurricane of Blades, it's hard to argue against any one of those.  Curtain of Steel seems especially awesome for the transition from defender to striker: just do whatever you can to convince the guy to hit you, then when he does, slap him for 3[W] and jump to Fury mode, ready to nova on your turn.

I do wish they'd written a better level 1 primal encounter power, since Barbarians don't have any especially exciting ones to start with, and you sort of need to go primal for your E1 to trigger fury on demand.