Berserker question

[Silma]

Hello playgrounders!! Quick question.

This is the Berserker's Berserker Fury Class Feature

BERSERKER FURY
When you use a barbarian primal attack power, you enter your Berserker Fury until the end of the encounter. Alternatively, you can use a minor action while you are bloodied to enter the fury. The fury has the following effects.
Your defender aura ends, if it was active, and you cannot use defender aura or vengeful guardian until the fury ends.
Some of your powers, such as your barbarian martial at-will attack powers, gain additional benefits, as noted in those powers.
Your melee basic attacks deal 1d8 extra damage. This extra damage increases to 2d8 at 11th level and 3d8 at 21st level.


My question is: Do you HAVE to enter berserker's fury EVERY time you use a primal attack power? Or you can simply choose if you will enter fury or not?

[obryn]

If you use a Primal Barbarian attack power, yes, the switch is mandatory and immediate. (It is not triggered by Primal attacks from other classes' or paragon paths' powers.)

Primal Barbarian attacks have their striker damage bonuses built into them, rather than relying on a class feature like Rogues or Warlocks do. If the switch were not mandatory, there would be little incentive to ever switch.

On a personal note, I've had a Berserker in my game for a few months, and it's a remarkably good class. He's focused on the Defender angle, and deals enough damage to make me take a lot of notice.

-O

[Silma]

I see, So he would have to take martial barbarian powers to keep up his aura.
See, we are starting a new campaign soon and me and another guy will be taking a Human Assassin (my friend) and an Elf Slayer (Dex based, melle + ranged). We cant change characters due to story reasons and our third friend will only play a Barbarian or a Warlord, but he clearly prefers the Barbarian, so I was trying to find a way to have a little more defensive Barbarian to improve synergy even a little bit. I'll see how he likes the Berserker.
But in case he doesn't do you have any idea on how to make the regular Barbarian a little more tanky?

[obryn]

I would really encourage the Berserker, honestly. It sounds like it'd work well with your party.

You can stack a Berserker up with Martial powers from HotF pretty easily. As a Defender, he's not quite as sticky as a Knight by default, but there are a few Dailies which do some great stuff like expanding his Defender Aura to 2. If he doesn't lowball his Wisdom too badly, he will be able to snag Battle Awareness for even more defenderishness.

If he doesn't want to do Berserker, well, I don't have too many specific suggestions. I am not all too familiar with the straight Primal version of the class, I am sorry to say.

-O

[Silma]

Ok well thanks anyway. :D

[tcrudisi]

Unless you will soon be level 16, I'd advise against trying to build a defendery Barbarian. They can certainly be built tough, but holding the monsters attention? That's the tricky part.

If you must attempt it, there are a few things to keep in mind.

For starters, hybrid Cleric. That will give you Battle Clerics Lore so your AC won't be so atrociously bad. Surprisingly, hybrid Cleric will increase your damage potential and give you some basic healing ability. It really is an improvement over the base Barbarian. Take the Str based powers and you're in good shape. Then you can safely take Cha or Wis as your secondary stat and do well. There's also a really good Cleric paragon path that will make him into a true defender. (Hint: Battle Awareness works well until then.)

If he doesn't want to hybrid Cleric, Dexterity becomes all-important. It's literally your true secondary. Your AC will be acceptable, just not defender-level. If, for some reason, he thinks Con or Cha is his real secondary, slap him with the book and tell him its Dex. If he still thinks its Con or Cha, get a bigger book and slap him with that book. Repeat until he realizes that Dex is his real secondary.

Other than that, trying to be a Barbarian defender is about doing damage. Make yourself as big of a threat as possible by doing as much damage as possible. Make it impossible for the monsters to ignore you. Will it work? Well that depends on the DM, really. It wouldn't work for me. But it does with some DMs.

[obryn]

Yep; if he wants a Striker that can convincingly pretend to be a Defender, it's probably a Pursuit Avenger. That's not one of the ones he wants though!

Quick question - is the Assassin an Executioner? If so, there's some great room for the Warlord you alluded to earlier, between a Slayer and an Executioner, in lieu of a Barbarian.

-O

[obryn]

Yep; if he wants a Striker that can convincingly pretend to be a Defender, it's probably a Pursuit Avenger. That's not one of the ones he wants though!

Quick question - is the Assassin an Executioner? If so, there's some great room for the Warlord you alluded to earlier, between a Slayer and an Executioner, in lieu of a Barbarian.

-O

[Silma]

Yep; if he wants a Striker that can convincingly pretend to be a Defender, it's probably a Pursuit Avenger. That's not one of the ones he wants though!

Quick question - is the Assassin an Executioner? If so, there's some great room for the Warlord you alluded to earlier, between a Slayer and an Executioner, in lieu of a Barbarian.

-O

Yep. Elf Slayer and Human Executioner. I know that a Warlord would work really well with those two, but to be honest in this campaign we decided not to give so much attention to team synergy. I know fights will be difficult, but we decided that everyone will play the class they want even if they don't work well together. That why we were trying to make the barbarian a bit more defensive, so he wouldn't have to change class. Besides, the 4th player thinks of playing a goblin thief, so party synergy just flew out the window anyway. :smalltongue:

[Dragvandil]

To re-iterate what others have said: I also encourage the Berserker.

Personally, he has the best at-will's and they are only worth taking if you are a Berserker. He gets the D8 on a charge instead of the D6. And he gets a super fun punishment. (A hefty swing)

And actually he does pretty damn well as a primary defender. The fighter is still king, and Aura defender's have a lot of draw backs, but still he get's the job done.

Specially if it isn't optimized, he makes a great defender, a competent striker, and is a lot of fun. ^_^ (Even in harder campaigns he does pretty darn good)

So push for him to go Berserker. It's plainly better then the other builds for Barbarian. (IMO)