User:Masel/Builds/Berserker

Spear Power Berserker

Build Rating (Subjective)

Criterion	Rating
Burst Damage	4/5
Sustained Damage	5/5
Utility Options	3/5
Survivability	5/5
Difficulty	2/5

Power  Berserker is a very strong build for instanced content, even with a simplified rotation with like the one I use. It's also a great pick for solo gameplay, as it provides itself with good amounts of the most essential offensive boons:  Quickness,  Fury and  Might. Through Relic of Zakiros,  Might Makes Right and Fried Golden Dumpling, it can achieve excellent self-healing and Endurance recovery, making it a very durable spec to choose. With the usage of Spear as the main weapon, it further has high range, allowing you to deal great damage with flexible positioning.

Link to the DPS Build on the Editor

Playstyle & Skills

Skill Type	Skills
(Primal) Burst Skills
Spear Skills
Utility (Option 1)
Utility (Option 2)

Berserk and Adrenaline Management

• As the name implies,  Berserker is made for angry people. It's probably best described as one of those Uruk-Hai from LotR that hit the gym a little bit too often.
•   Berserk is the key mechanic of Berserker, which gives you access to Primal Burst skills and reduces the maximum adrenaline you can have to 10 (down from 30).
• That means that it becomes much easier to gather up Adrenaline for powerful burst skills, but Primal Bursts count as tier 1 bursts for all traits that benefit from them.
• Since you have much more powerful stats inside   Berserk mode (higher Power, Strike damage, Ferocity etc.)), you'll want to try and extend its duration by using Rage skills.
• Managing Berserk duration requires some practice, as it has a ~8 second cooldown once it runs out before you can enter it again. You don't want these 8 seconds to occur during Burst phases, because that will lose you substantial amounts of damage. Overextending Berserk is therefore not always a good thing.

Rotation Concept

You can find my most recent rotation showcase here.
Link to Damage Log

Rotation Flow

Section	Notes
General Stuff	In this build we'll spam the spear primal burst   Wild Throw while using most skills on cooldown. It is the most powerful skill in your kit, so you (almost) always want to prioritize it.   Relic of the Claw requires you to apply Control effects to maintain it. With  Alacrity,   Disrupting Throw is enough to maintain it,   Head Butt provides additional uptime. You can use   Wild Blow instead of   Shattering Blow for a small dps gain and even safer   Relic of the Claw uptime. In that case, you need to break the stun from   Head Butt with   Outrage.
Opener	Option 1: Open combat with   Head Butt, break the self-stun with   Outrage, then   Berserk and the first   Wild Throw. Option 2: Open combat with   Shattering Blow for  Stability, then   Head Butt,   Berserk and the first   Wild Throw.
General Flow	The skill priority is as follows:   Wild Throw (followed by   Blood Reckoning & another   Wild Throw when available)   Disrupting Throw for   Relic of the Claw uptime,   Spearmarshal's Support,   Maiming Spear, Option 1:   Head Butt, break the self-stun with   Outrage. Option 2:   Shattering Blow for  Stability, then   Head Butt (this requires you to not use   Shattering Blow on cooldown). Always use   Outrage on cooldown to extend   Berserk duration. Fill gaps with auto attacks.
CC Skills for Breakbar Damage	Disrupting Throw   Head Butt   Spear Swipe Additional options can be obtained by putting additional weapons on the secondary weapon bar.

Utlity Skill Notes

Default Skill	Notes
Blood Reckoning	Rage skill that heals you for 33% of the damage you deal. Insane healing tool for both instanced content and open world. This will recharge ALL primal burst skills, not only   Decapitate. Since it also grants 10 adrenaline, you can always use your primal burst again after using this inside Berserk.
Signet of Might	Just there for the passive damage, can be replaced by anything else you might need.
Outrage	Rage skill and short-cooldown Stun break. More importantly, it will grant you 10 adrenaline when an enemy is nearby (5 when there is no enemy), allowing you to instantly gain access to   Wild Throw when it is off cooldown.
Option 1:   Shattering Blow Option 2:   Wild Blow	Option 1: Rage skill used for more flexible   Berserk duration management. Use it right before to   Head Butt to negate the self-stun on it via  Stability. Option 2: Use it to apply CC and extend berserk mode.
Head Butt	Rage skill that does damage, applies Stun and grants maximum adrenaline so that you can always enter Berserk immediately after it. Careful: this stuns yourself, so you need to either apply  Stability at the right time or break the stun it applies right after.

Gear & Traits

Important Stats in Hero Panel (descending in Importance):

1. At least 60% Critical Chance:  Fury and  Smash Brawler give the remaining 40% (in   Berserk).
2. Maximize Ferocity
3. Maximize Power

Gear

Armor	Prefix	Rune
Head	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Scholar
Shoulders	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Scholar
Chest	Assassin's	Superior Rune of the Scholar
Gloves	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Scholar
Legs	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Scholar
Boots	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Scholar
Trinket	Prefix
Amulet	Assassin's
Ring 1	Berserker's
Ring 2	Berserker's
Accessory 1	Berserker's
Accessory 2	Berserker's
Backpack	Berserker's
Weapon	Prefix	Sigil
Spear	Berserker's	Superior Sigil of Force Superior Sigil of Air
Purpose	Item Type	Source
Damage	Ascended Food	Cilantro Lime Sous-Vide Steak
Damage	Non-Ascended Food	Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup
Survivability	Ascended Food	Peppercorn-Crusted Sous-Vide Steak
Survivability	Non-Ascended Food	Oysters with Zesty Sauce
Damage	Utility	Potent Superior Sharpening Stone
Survivability	Utility	Potion Of Karka Toughness
Damage	Relic	Relic of the Claw
Survivability	Relic	Relic of Zakiros

Traits

Tactics
Strength
Berserker

• For a budget variant, simply replace all ascended armor pieces of Berserker's with rare/exotic Berserker's.

Open World Build

Link to the Open World Build on the Editor

You can find my most recent open world build showcase here.

For OW, it can make sense to make a build more forgiving, so that you can sustain on your own.

Increasing General Survivability

• The first major step to increase survivability is to use  Relic of Zakiros. this will heal you based on your damage dealt. Combined with   Blood Reckoning, you can reach massive amounts of healing.
• Spear gives you high range, allwoing you to kite a lot of damage and keep distance to the target.
• I recommend getting a bunch of cheap exotic Diviner's trinkets for higher Boon duration. They cost around … each, totaling up to … for an Amulet, 2 Rings and 2 Accessories. Just make sure that you still hit 60% Critical chance.
• A great allrounder choice for open world is to swap out  Tactics for  Defense. Doing that will drastically increase your survivability and still include strong enough damage modifiers:

Defense
Strength
Berserker

•  Adrenal Health is a strong passive heal, and you just need to use burst skills on cooldown to maintain 4 stacks of it.
• Your damage with this will scale with  Weakness and  Stability due to  Cull the Weak and  Stalwart Strength. You will cover good uptimes on both of them natively in your rotation in open world.
•  Defy Pain will trigger on every cast of   Head Butt and makes you immune to strike damage for 4 seconds every 20 seconds.
• For even more passive sustain, use  Might Makes Right and  Forceful Greatsword in  Strength.
• On top of that, you can use use Fried Golden Dumpling for additional  Might on critical hits.
• Combined with the trait changes in  Strength, this leads to massive healing and large amounts of Endurance via all the stacks of  Might you apply to yourself, so you can dodge a lot. Sources of  Might and Endurance:

1.  Forceful Greatsword
2.  Reckless Dodge - don't underestimate how strong dodges are on this build.
3.  Phalanx Strength will heal you for massive amounts whenever you are not alone.

•   Jade Tech Offensive Overcharge and   Jade Tech Defensive Overcharge gives 150 permanent Toughness, Vitality, Condition Damage and Power as well as all boons aside from  Stability,  Resistance and  Resolution on entering combat. These effects can be pre-stacked by using an Enchanted Snow Diamond Tonic repeatedly when out of combat. The  Protection from this is another free massive gain to survivability!

Boon Coverage

•  Might coverage is explained above.
• Swap to  Heat the Soul in  Berserker to cover a good uptime on  Quickness and  Fury on yourself (and allies around you!).
• Swap in   Frenzy for additional uptime on  Quickness and another Stun break.
• Via   Wild Blow &  Heat the Soul, you will also cover  Fury.
•  Thick Skin yprovides a bit of  Protection on yourself.
•   Brave Stride and   Stalwart Strength will give you a really good uptime on  Stability, oncreasing your damage and allowing you to ignore incoming CC!
• For  Swiftness and thus higher mobility, use   Charge on warhorn on cooldown.
•   Call of Valor will provide a ~50% uptime on  Vigor for even more dodges.
• In case you don't want the hassle of reapplying jade protocols, you can abuse the synergy between Relic of the Cavalier and   Blast from the Skyscale to apply lots of  Aegis,  Resistance,  Might and  Quickness to yourself. It does not have an internal cooldown and applies the boons on every hit of   Blast. This also works with any other mount engage when hitting multiple targets.

Utility Skills (Open World)

Skill Choice	Notes
Blood Reckoning	As explained above. Use when you are on low health and stay on the offense to heal back up.
Wild Blow	Covers  Fury, applies Defiance bar damage and grants Adrenaline.
Outrage	Fully fills Adrenaline in Berserk when an enemy is nearby. Great short-cooldown Stun break too!
Frenzy	For better  Quickness uptime, also provides a decent heal through  Might Makes Right. Another Stun break.
Head Butt	With  Brave Stride, this will apply stability on cast, allowing you to automatically ignore the self-stun. Great opener for combat, as it also allows you to immediately use   Berserk. It's also another Stun break.

Dealing with Conditions and Control effects

•   Call of Valor cleanses 3 conditions off of you and allies around you, so swap to warhorn when you need to cleanse conditions.
• That synergizes well with   Brawler's Recovery in   Discipline, since that will cleanse another condition whenever you swap weapons.
• If you need more frequent condition cleanses against bosses, swap to  Cleansing Ire in  Defense. That will also increase adrenaline inflow whenever you get hit.
•   Wild Blow removes  Weakness,  Slow and  Blinded on cast.
•   Outrage is a short cooldown Stun break.
•   Frenzy is also a Stun break.
•   Head Butt is also a Stun break.
•   "Shake It Off!" can be used instead of   Frenzy; it is a Stun break and cleanses conditions, so it does both. Also affects nearby allies.

Optional:  Discipline and Dual Axes

• For general open world roaming and instanced content, you can also swap out  Tactics for  Discipline

Discipline

•  Axe Mastery massively increases Adrenaline inflow, allowing you to spam   Decapitate more often. Through this, it also gives you a little more freedom on when to use   Blood Reckoning and   Outrage since you don't need the adrenaline from them as much.
•  Warrior's Sprint gives 25% increased movement speed whenever you use at least one melee weapon (Axe, Sword, Dagger, Greatword etc.). Due to this trait, your damage also scales with having  Swiftness!
•  Fast Hands allows you to weapon swap faster, which has multiple benefits, such as cleansing a condition and gaining 5 adrenaline.