ARG's Guide to Zerk it Out

General Guides
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This guide is mostly devoid of images/videos because I have been planning of getting some footage in the future.

The Zerker. The Berserker. The True Xeno.

The actual KILLER of the hive. That many seem to fear, many dread and you will run away from it.

(Most of this guide was from a post that I made sometime ago)

As a zerker main (I only play berserker, sometimes forcefully Lurker and happily a Runner) because I am mostly too old and I have bad/horrible reflexes, it’s one of the few castes that you can actually Tank stuff and do real damage.

What does this mean?

You are the only XENO that feels like an actual threat to marines in CQC and you are not flinging 7251573 abilities to do some damage. You got 3 simple abilities, 2 of them which you don’t need to aimbot to hit and one that is kinda fine because it doesn’t fails/reset if you miss.

Why should I play Zerker instead of Base Ravager?

  • You are faster, not by much, but a bit.
  • You actually have some staying power.
  • You can actually dodge rockets/shots.
  • You don’t like any of that MOBA nonsense.
  • You like to slash people and not use some bumfuck ability to do damage.
  • You like playing it risky.
  • You love to see marines bleed.
  • You are old and love directional slash.
  • You cannot click for shit.

This leads to… what is a Zerker supposed to be?

  • You are a melee killer, no other xeno kills/fracs as good as you. This means, that when a marine CRACKS AND SCREAMS. You should move to the next target unless it’s a specialist or someone who is an actual threat. You can usually kill a marine on 5-7 slashes.

  • Unless you get 2+ rage, you are slow, weak and a runner. This means that you are extremely flimsy and useless without rage. The best you can do, is wait by walls, hidden until marines get close and strike out to slash someone 1-3 times.

  • You should always have your tail stab ready when attacking your first target. That’s your opener. (Sometimes frac the marine if they don’t wear helmet, or just damage them) To get the slowdown. A SLOW marines is FREE HEALTH and RAGE.

  • You should always wait marines to come to you, in defenses. Never in the open. Attacking in the open is how you get killed/rushed/commit a mistake. This is how you should play unless you got a good xeno team that will follow and cover for you. (Challenge impossible)

What are my abilities?

  • APPREHEND is your Boost/speed/slowdown. Use it to get into the Marines if they are far away (which you shouldn’t do often because…) it’s also your GTFO card. At max rage/stacks, APPREHEND makes you a runner, so you can literally escape from anything. If you have max rage and you APPREHEND, you can run faster than anyone else, it’s extremely funny and people will see you zoom across the battlefield… but if you are doing that, you are not using your rage. (The Actual slowdown on the marine is kinda shit, focus on using it as a speed boost)

  • CLOTHESLIDE is your Lord and saviour. This heals you, at max at 2 Rage. Not a starter attack, not a funny let’s do more damage ability. You should always reserve it for MAX STACKS or if you feel you need the HEALTH NOW! This means, you shouldn’t use it freely, it’s cool down is long. This ability can also be used to cap. It works like a warrior fling that sends marines 3 tiles opposite to where you are. If it’s low stack, it won’t do damage at all. And even at max, you are better off just slashing them thrice before having to aim it.

  • And finally, my favorite. EVISCERATE which if you look at the wiki, it’s all explained. AOE attack. 3X3 around you, stuns marines for a moment. At max stacks it does some real damage. NEVER USE IT WITH LOW RAGE. It’s damage is so low, it’s prep time long as hell and it’s range is even smaller. Only use it with 4-5 rage, 4 if you have to do it now. SADARS WILL SHOOT YOU. SNIPERS WILL SNIPE YOU. FOCUS ON KILLING OR WOUNDING THEM BEFORE DOING IT. Focus on hit and run until those threats are somewhere else.

Now for tactics. There is a simple flow:

  • USUALLY, you sit around, you see marines pushing, you hit the APPREHEND, you slash some slow fuck who is trying to understand how a ravager moves so fast, you see someone shoot the shit out of the engi because you keep moving around and ta-da 5 RAGE, now it’s time to EVISCERATE, you go deep. Not too deep. Deep enough. You look at the group of marines, you calculate your 3X3 Area of effect and where they will move. (Pics soon) And you do it. YOU ROOT YOURSELF WITH THE EVISCERATE while supposedly the whole marine force should be shooting at you (or not. Sometimes marines are dumb) and you prepare the CLOTHESLIDE to hit a stunned marine, who just had his guts PULLED OUT, while being a stunned target that your +30 years old ass can now click as they are not moving and recovering all the health (or most of it) before your rage goes away. So you can APPREHEND if POSSIBLE and run away.

  • Sometimes you stay, you keep running them down while your RAGE cool down recovers and then you KEEP RUNNING THEM DOWN. REMEMBER, YOU HEAL ON SLASH. MAKE THEM FEAR YOU.

This seems pretty easy, right? But it won’t. Because 70% of the time, Marines will have an actual brain and shoot at you, this means…

A good (not me when bored) zerker will wait for other xenos. YOU utterly suck at being alone. Even having a lurker, sentinel, runner, burrower or Valk around Makes you 200% more dangerous.

Why? Because they can stun or slow marines. Even one milisecond is enough for you to get 1–3 slashes. That means you are in READY TO GO MODE NOW otherwise most marines just run away and you are dancing without reaching them.

THIS IS THE MOST DANGEROUS/COMPLICATED thing of being a zerker.

Literally repeat this and that’s how most good zerkers play.

You can be more aggressive and push, but that’s ALWAYS dependant on marines. If you know that they won’t shoot, then they are easy kills.

This brings the point of…

Your weakness.

Most marines can kill any zerkers by… backtracking. Yes. Walking away. Shooting while walking away. YOU ARE A SLOW FUCK. A WEAK FUCK.

Flames are YOUR ENEMY from abilities and passives.

“B-But Eluxor, I am a Ravager, fire doesn’t damag-” STOP. Fire will stop you from healing from slashing/abilities. You will soon realize that without the active recovering/vampiring/life steal you are an actual runner. Your health will go down while you are scratching your head and being like “Damn those marines are OP.”

So, PAT YOURSELF. ROLL. TELL OTHER XENOS. If queen walks over fire, don’t follow her. If you are set on Fire, do not eviscerate. Do not CLOTHESLIDE. JUST RUN AWAY. GET THAT FIRE OFF YOU. YOU ARE USELESS.

But for marines…

If you are a marine, just shoot at the zerker rav.

Don’t run. SHOOT AT IT. DONT FEED IT. SHOOT AT IT. DONT STARE AT IT. BACKTRACK AND SHOOT AT IT.

This is why I always mention that Zerkers main ability is… MORALE DAMAGE. So many times, I have killed whole marine platoons and squads because marines retreat or freak out. Not shooting at me. Just standing or walk away… WITHOUT SHOOTING.

Zerker sometimes is braindead easy, but it’s just like any other xeno. One mistake and you are dead. One stun in the wrong time, a few misses/misclicks and you are gone.

Most of the time… marines can kill you… by shooting at you… or walking away.

Addendum

There is an unwritten rule that demands all zerkers to walk into the Dropship if you can get it.

You should always prioritize the cockpit/upper part of it. The south always has turrets, an eviscerate with the door open and/or marines near is huge. But using the wall in the middle of the Dropship as defense is also good. Remember that dead/alive buckled marines eat bullets. Just dance and enjoy the slaughter. If more xenos follow, then it’s a guaranted glorious death. Kill as many as you can. Paint the town red.

The Zerkers in Valhalla will appreciate it.

You can find me in-game as Prime Runner ARG, Ancient Lurker ARG or as Prime Ravager ARG.

I am always open to questions and to talk, be free to send/ask any questions here or in private and have a good day!

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Secret tech: if you listen to “Animal I Have Become” by Three Days Grace, or any of their songs for that matter, you will automatically generate rage stacks.

You can also automatically generate one rage stack by saying “you won’t like me when I’m angry”. Stay sigma.

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do note that rage decay timer(when your stacks start decaying) is based off of life ticks, so you will never decay at the same rate. dont try and muscle memory it because you’ll end up evicing with 4 stacks

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Great guide. My little addendum is the easiest way to learn how to zerker properly is to set your strain after the queen deovies, and play exclusively off of screech and neuro. Queen has the best stuns in the game, and getting 3-4 slashes before marines can even think about shooting you makes it way easier to learn how to position yourself, when to use abilities, and the like.

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I usually just took at my sprite. If I have the black outline, I am Eviscerating. Otherwise, I never pull it out. I don’t look at my stats or count the slashes, as you said. It’s quite unreliable. Sometimes I am inmediatly ready and sometimes I am slashing a marine half a hour and Im like huh?

The problem with this is that you don’t really learn how 2 Zerk. Zerking it with the queen is good, but it’s not only with her. Zerk is a good Frontliner with and without queen, as long you have team mates

Relying on queen makes you too used to her stun and you should learn to play without her help. But as you said, it can help new zerkers get used to the flow.

Zerker is a very visual caste, if you rely on muscle memory nothing will work, because you are supposed to be very careful about positioning.

One of my favorite tactics is the ‘I BLOCK TEEE’ which is literally getting in front a marine and just dancing with them while the others stare.

The classic ‘I stand on the 1 tile Cade’ is more dangerous, but usually marines panic. Most xenos don’t just stand on their exit and stare at marines, slashing them if they get close. This works wonderfully in a big push and when you get enough stacks, you can kill +3 marines that are trying to retreat and even kill one behind the cade if you can eviscerate+CLOTHESLIDE them against a wall.

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Eviscerate also heals you for 50 hp per marine, BUT only from those who are adjacent to you. So keep that in mind, if you want more health you need to hug marines.

There is a cap of 250 hp you can get from eviscerate, but usually you won’t reach it because even just eviscerating 5 marines is a huge achievement, let alone eviscerating 5 adjacent marines.

Medics really like to stick really close together, so triage for zerker is like a hennery for a fox. Especially since you can easily build up rage from wounded and crit marines.

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You see, that’s a good idea… IN THEORY.

I see so many ravs go deep to kill medics and then they proceed to die to marines that cut off their escape route. You should target medics yes. And the Eviscerate heals, but most of the times marines run away and the ammount of marines you need, as you said, is so big that it will never even enter my head in teh whole calculation. That’s why you are better off saving the clotheslide for that moment.

You only go for the medic pile when all xenos are pushing and marines are more worried about shooting other xenos than you… (When you are actually the biggest target)

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Zerker ravager is the T3 other T3s wish they were. Its the best ravager strain but I love the other strains as well.

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Zerk has:

  • Tankyness from being able to heal, get more armor when rages goes up and the next point.
  • Speed it helps you dodge marines, move closer, dance around them, position yourself correctly and sometimes when you APPREHEND, move as fast as a runner.
  • Damage you out damage most of the xenos, you can kill/delimb any marine. You will frac em in 2 slashes. You will kill many of them. You lack the charge, yes, but when your rage goes up, your click slash delay goes down. So you can just fuck everyone up and that’s not even talking about the funny eviscerates! Sometimes marines just need 1+ slash or simply the damage slowdown to die.
  • Teamwork a zerker is a xeno that fights at the front, who stays near their teammates and can easily become X6 dangerous if xenos are around. They are not a crusher just going in alone, they are not a preatorían spitting away. Zerkers need to go in and THEY FOLLOW THE QUEEN (usually)

And finally, but most importantly.

  • Aura as a Zerker. You make marines mad. You make them fear RP. You become doomguy, you drink their salty tears when you have 5 RAGE and their normal bullets do not damage. When you faceplant them and pull an eviscerate that kills 3 marines and leaves 2 crit. And then you just simply walk away.

NO OTHER T3 comes close to it.

If the xeno team doesn’t has a Zerker, they are literally making the game harder for themselves.

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Today something happened to me.

KYO round. Marines destroyed. Fighting at the FOB.

Marines got screeched, +10 marines stuck against cades.

I proceed to go ahead and get in the middle. Nice cozy spot. Surely a +6 people eviscerate.

Then I peer… a XX defender. They get near me. They block me. They get in my way. I am trying to get slashes from the non dead marines. I don’t have enough rage. And when I am going to pull the eviscerate…

THE DEFENDER TAIL SWEEPS. ALL MY TARGETS FLY AWAY. I CANNOT HEAL. I DONT DO DAMAGE. I AM STUCK THERE. ALL ALONE.

THE SAME DEFENDER PROCEEDS TO BODYBLOCK MY ESCAPE AND I GET GUNNED DOWN.

Kill all defender players.

Roundhouse kick defender players.

Obliterate defender players.

Sentinels, Warriors, Lurkers and Spitters are cool.

But defenders, they love to fling or sweep marines away from Zerkers.

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xenomains wouldn’t tell us marine mains but all prime xenos unlock a secret ability that turns on the safety on the guns of all marines around you, with its duration doubled if your being dragged off.

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Kill all Xenos. Xenos mad x 24.

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Today some xeno was explaining to me that Ravs always die instantly after the drop. I tried to correct him in that it’s traditionally Praes, not Ravs, that are useless and just die. But I guess this guide is popular enough to uproot that time honored tradition.

I think I’ll join that gang too and start maining zerker. Since “not sucking” is not really an option, I guess this is how we, the Prae mains would finally fix our caste’s reputation.

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The thing with Praetorians, as I have mentioned many times is that they are a win more caste.

What does this mean? That if you already have a Frontline (Zerkers+Boilers+warriors) then having Praes is fine. But otherwise they are not worth the T3 Slot.

A base Prae can stop a marine push? Maybe. But they get naded and insta die. Or they get pushed and die. They do not stand their ground, only if marines are fear rping. Marines at the start of the round are at their most crazed hellpush mode, so base Prae is kinda bad.

Oppressor and Vanguard are better, they have their advantages and disadvantages. But neither one can stop a rush of 10 marines like a Zerker (or even a crusher) can. They are too squishy, too slow or too reliant on their abilities.

Ravagers usually die because they push too much or they don’t have support. It’s actually insane how well a warrior+drone+ravager can do. Or hell, a sentinel+carrier+ravager too. There are many combos. But the main problem is that the other xenos are too afraid to follow ravs too deep and this the greed gets to you.

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