User:Masel/Builds/Berserker

Dual Axes Tactics 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   Berserk,  Might Makes Right, Fried Golden Dumpling and  Forceful Greatsword, it can achieve excellent self-healing and Endurance recovery, making it a very durable spec to choose.

Link to the Build on the Editor

Damage Log

Playstyle & Skills

Skill Type	Skills
(Primal) Burst Skills
Dual Axe Skills
Warhorn
Off-Hand Mace
Utility

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 ~12 second cooldown once it runs out before you can enter it again. You don't want these 12 seconds to occur during Burst phases, because that will lose you substantial amounts of damage. Overextending Berserk is therefore not always a good thing.

Skill Usage & Choices

• In this build we'll abuse the axe primal burst   Decapitate, which recharges itself when it hits. It is the most powerful skill in your kit, so you (almost) always want to prioritize it.
• Always open combat with   Shattering Blow for  Stability, then   Head Butt,   Berserk and the first   Decapitate.

These are the skill combinations to regain full adrenaline for   Decapitate (more on the skills below):

1.   Blood Reckoning +   Decapitate,
2.   Outrage +   Decapitate,
3.   Wild Blow and 4 other hits with axe skills +   Decapitate,
4.   Whirling Axe +   Decapitate and
5.   Shattering Blow for  Stability, then   Head Butt +   Decapitate (this requires you to not use   Shattering Blow on cooldown).

• The cooldowns of the rage skills line up perfectly:   Blood Reckoning,   Wild Blow and   Head Butt have 20 second cooldowns and   Outrage has a 10 second cooldown.
• With  Alacrity, that creates a fixed loop rotation cycle of the combos mentioned above with a duration of ~16-17 seconds .
• Use axe skills on cooldown in between!

Utility Skills

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.
Wild Blow	Rage skill that applies  Fury to yourself and knocks enemies down. Also grants 5 adrenaline, filling up half your adrenaline bar inside Berserk.
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 regain access to   Decapitate after you used it.
Shattering Blow	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. On encounters with short burst phases, using   Signet of Might here can be better. In that case, you need to break the stun from   Head Butt with   Outrage.
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.

CC Skills for breakbar damage:

•   Wild Blow
•   Head Butt
•   Tremor (with Off-Hand Mace)

Gear

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
Axe (Main Hand)	Berserker's	Superior Sigil of Force
Axe (Off Hand)	Berserker's	Superior Sigil of Impact
Mace (Off Hand)	Berserker's	Superior Sigil of Impact
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 Thief
Survivability	Relic	Relic of Durability
Roaming	Relic	Relic of the Cavalier

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

Traits

Tactics
Strength
Berserker

• The default specializations for damage are  Tactics,  Strength and of course  Berserker.

 Strength

• In strength, we’ll be using all the juicy damage buffs we can get!
• 5% increased Strike damage and Critical chance, converting Power to both Vitality and Ferocity and finally up to 21% increased damage upon spending bars of Adrenaline.
• Strength will also make your dodges apply  Might and damage enemies, make burst skills restore Endurance on hit and have  Might grant more power to you (40 per stack instead of 30).

 Tactics

• Tactics adds a lot of utility and survivability to your kit while providing great burst damage.
• It grants 10% increased damage versus movement-impaired enemies, 1% damage for every boon on you, 25% more damage against targets above 80% health well as sharing 3 seconds of  Stability with allies whenever you hit with a burst skill (with a 10 second cooldown).
• All these damage modifiers make it easier on tactics to maintain high damage even when you drop out of berserk mode, since less of your damage comes from spamming   Decapitate

 Berserker

• With the traits of choice,  Berserker gives 25% Strike damage, 300 Power and additional 15% Critical chance when in Berserk mode and a conversion of Precision into Ferocity, which doubles when in berserk mode. These traits are why it is so important to remain in berserk mode as much as possible and anticipate burst phase timings to not drop out of Berserk in them.

DPS Rotation Showcase

You can find my most recent rotation showcase here.

Open World Build

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  Might Makes Right and  Forceful Greatsword in  Strength.
• On top of that, use Fried Golden Dumpling for additional  Might on critical hits.
•  Building Momentum restores Endurance whenever you use a burst skill.
• 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.   Decapitate &   Eviscerate - spam these as much as you can as they will heal you, restore Endurance and do great damage.
2.  Forceful Greatsword
3.  Reckless Dodge - don't underestimate how strong dodges are on this build.

• A great allrounder choice for open world is to swap out  Tactics for  Defense and make use of jade protocols. Doing that will drastically increase your survivability and still include strong enough damage modifiers:

Defense

•  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.
•   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!
• On top of using slot a Warhorn on the secondary weapon bar.
• The Warhorn allows you to maintain  Swiftness and provides another source of area  Quickness through   Charge.

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!).
• Combined with  Burst of Aggression,   Charge,   Frenzy and   Dual Strike, you will cover  Quickness on yourself.
• Via   Cyclone Axe +   Wild Blow, you will also cover  Fury.
• Together with a Relic of Durability,  Thick Skin will enable you to maintain a decent uptime of  Protection on yourself.
• 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

• 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 tot his 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.