Is it just me or Zurks bit too powerful?

General Discussion
1

I haven’t played Berserker that much, i am mostly Hedgehog player if i am going to play any ravs. so don’t know how it plays that much.

But fighting Zurks now a days it feels like you can’t do anything to them, like unless the zurk is real dumb you can’t kill the pest. Even off weeds, with out frenzy, alone.. i still can’t seem to do anything to the buggers.

i shoot and i shoot and i shoot but just tickles the zurk, my pals near me are blasting the zurk but nothing we do can stop the zurker. It seem like it take 4 or more marines putting concentrated fire on zurks to take it out even off weeds alone and without pheromones.

Am i just missing what the Zurkers blatant weakness is…am i just smacking my head against the wall with the way i am fighting them? Or has it just been the great number of Rav based hive giving me the overexposure to zurks and underexposure to other T3s?

It just feels impossible to kill zurks unless you have the whole unga ball on the zurk. Did the zurk get a buff or some thing or are we just getting lot of better zurk players?

Edit:

I have come to the conclusion that Zurks are not the issue here but a issue of IFF nerfs that have been happening over time.

As why Zurks are so powerful is that they are able to fight in the middle of the marines mass and its what they want to do. Because of the issues of FF marines are unable to get the amount of DPS needed to kill the zurker once they are in the middle of the mass, and if they do just shoot they do the zurkers work for them.

Before i think zurkers didn’t feel so unkillable before because we had much more IFF, the SGs was stronger, we had Smartscope IFF, IFF on bipod for the HPR… it allowed for marines to deal enough DPS even if they were in the middle of the mass.

I think that its that Zurks have yet to be rebalanced for the new lower powered IFF gameplay we are at.

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It has lifesteal which tanks it a bit. Flame it (preferably with green fire for armor shredding) and you stop it from lifestealing 100%. Other than that, don’t bunch up around it so it can AOE you.

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its high DPS low range xeno caste, it may be look strong but its due the players play it also still slower than a random marine with light armor so it’s actually not that OP

also xenos need high DPS castes like this without them marine win rate would be atleast %10 higher

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it is infact yes however because it requires game sense and the ability to click you wont see it nerfed until someone can be bothered :smiley:

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The best you can do is ask a person with a flamer or B-GEL to target (x) ravager if you want to kill someone especially.

Load your M41A with AP and chase it down after it tries to escape. Yes, you may die, but in the end, that’s a berserker ravager dead. And you MAYBE will be even recovered.

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I know that as much.

Ah hadn’t thought about that! i knew that flames stop regen but hadn’t put 2 and 2 together about it also stopping lifestealing. That is some very good advice.

True, and i don’t even have a issue with the zurker DPS mores so the about its at time seemly unkillable survivability.

hmmm yes and no with its Apprehend ability it can still run up on light armored marines. And the issue is that only needs to get on one marine to start causing issues. Guess thats the idea behind it.

Seems like that’s all i can do, I think i am going to have to start packing a flamer and lots of AP. Still its rather wild that key point advice i am geting is that should flame the caste of xeno that is immune to fire damage.

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yo if marines stopped being walking medkits ( walking into melee range for fun ) zerker would be 10% as strong as it is

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I got gud at zerker :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:. In all seriousness I’d say just play it and you’ll see it’s not as invincible as you think it is. I used to think zerker was nuts until I played it and realized “oh, I’m not shit without rage stacks or other Xenos teeing me up”.

As for OP or not, I’d say it’s just a failure of other Xenos to be compelling options. Zerker and boiler are the only Xenos in the entire game with consistent crowd kill potential, crusher sometimes can in close quarters. A lot of matches will often hinge almost entirely on the performance of the zerker or boiler player because of this, that’s just the reality of it.

I like zerker because it’s the only melee xeno that truly puts the fear of god back into the ungas, and it is one of the only Xenos that truly has the aura of “perfect alien killing machine”. As for playing around it, you just have to respect the stacks, and respect the spin. If you go all in on a max stacks zerker you’d better have the firepower to back it up, and if you see it start positioning for the spin you need to make sure you’re not within 2 tiles. People fail to deal with zerkers because they refuse to learn their effective combo.

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Just many players don’t notice the really actual gamechanging details about fire-protection.

Green fire actually shreds armor, slows, and shuts down the zerker lifesteal which it heavily relies on, also prevents regenerating on weeds while on fire.

Pretty much flaming xenos before killing is the best advice you can give in general, it also applies to crusher, way easier to frag them if they’re on fire.

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just don’t stop shooting at them, marines often just stare as his buddies get mowed down.

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Flame it, yes. Back when incendiary rounds were a thing, I had to be the one to kill all the zerkers, because only me and the SADAR could. That should reflect that you’re correct on your assumption.

A headless monkey can also play zerker, it’s not game sense. Dropped 40 kills my first ever game with that so called skilled caste.

Kind regards

BerserkerHater27

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AP ammo is mandatory imo (DPS check due to self healing). Had I been loaded with AP rounds, the zerker rav would have likely been done for. It also doesn’t help that this game has unbalanced MOBA mechanics where you can have your meta friends play a pocket healer available T1 that can emit strong ward pheromones and suicide heal burst.

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Zerker just lacks counterplay rly when ppl walk into it and give it speed stacks. And it can just sit behind walls until that happens, especially waiting for people it knows it fracced before on like R foot or something to get max stacks off of.

Zerker’s existence is “U get fracced because of someone else, now if u try anything you will be that someone else feeding stacks, so you MUST get surgery, and go down and get fracced again if you even so much as step near zerker’s range”

It doesn’t help that it’s nearly unkillable and unpressurable without proper coordination/dmg if it plays right :C. Near immune to nades, fire, stuns, has high armor so most ppl wont dmg it, heals lots, throws you, goes REALLY FAST so they have a much more forgiving effective ttk then most other t3s and can make most positions unsafe, has EXTREMELY high dps and low time to frac enemies…

its just a HUGE statcheck. The only way to get better at beating it and pressuring it is for marines to get better at working together and outputting dmg (utilizing AP when possible is necessary vs berserker despite it being so costly, and like 2 ap marines MIGHT be enough to shut it down for a lil? It’ll still be able to frac one of the marines though if it gets close), but is that going to happen anytime soon? who knows… MOU is decent vs it but berserker can counterplay mou due to its high speed, healing, and it needs like 2 or 3 reloads to kill so its like… barely makes a dent lol, while it can easily access the range of MOU and frac them making them useless in future encounters. m37 is somewhat useful but once they armor stack its much less useful. And if a berserker is positioned near other marines it becomes much more difficult to burst them with MOU without ffing the marine in the process

I’ve had luck pressuring/zoning it using grenades (especially when juggling is a factor), but it can largely ignore it without a large amount of available dps nearby.

Zerker’s positional advtg is so massive that it feels almost unfightable a lot of the time, alongside having some of the best survivability in the game. That’s why I feel like it’s just overtuned stat-wise. It’s hard to balance stat-spam castes, as when played well with groups it becomes impossible to fight very quickly as there is no real counterplay except ludicrous stat-spam of your own to match it - otherwise its like a 10 second ttk while it has a 2 second ttk on you or any marine it wants. The math just doesnt work in your favor, and most often you will lose since your allies will greedily rush into poor positions and fail to dps most of the time and it has the speed and tile advtg and can engage/disengage with minimal issue.

This is something that can be tested just by observing how zerkers perform, what they lose to, and how reasonably capable of not losing to that thing they were. If they are overtuned they can deplete marine resources for far too little cost/risk necessary.

So really the counterplay is kill it as soon as possible. And if you cant do that you just lose your capability to push after it achieves victory after victory. Also SADAR counterplays it too, i forgor to say that.

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14

To kill a zerker you need to use brain. Marines are known to not use brain.

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15

Burning ravagers regenerate health on weeds

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That is the only way zerkers can heal while on fire. N combat it means about 10 health regenerated if it was a long fight.

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CM balance is based around how many good players are on one side compared to the other. Any frontline T3 when played by someone with hundreds of hours is gonna seem too powerful when they’re able to use their kit effectively.

Same thing could be said regarding most specialists. Demo has the ability to solely dictate the flow of the round if they can hit a SINGULAR AP rocket into a queen. A scout can solo any T1 and many T2s, hence why there’s always complaints about impact rounds. Xenos rely on queen screeches to consistently get many caps, the hive needs a at least decent queen player when they aren’t able to win the initial skirmish.

Most of the time when someone posts clips of a zerker fragging, its OWL. But if you nerf the shit out of things due to a tiny proportion of players its gonna cause issues.

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id like to take this time to mention zerker gets 45 armour on full stacks, like doubled speed, and increased attack speed ontop of the 45 slash damage and 100+ healing per hit, its not a skill check its an AP check, you arent killing one without AP loaded especially if there is someone who isnt aware of the full capabilities of a zerker and tries to fight it with normal ammo (100% guarantee)

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19

Ah that would explain it Like to use the M39 and i just looked at the stats for the ammo… base only does 5 damage at 45 armor while M39 AP ammo starts to fall off at 40 Armor only doing 15 damage at 45 armor. Add in the Effective Range of 4 plus a falloff of 6…

Ya if i am using the M39 i an’t doing shit to a zurk.

Also looking at the stats of M41A MK2… 10 damage at 45 armor for base… and 30 damage at 45 for AP ammo. Much better stats for sure but still not great, unless i have a SHIT ton of AP ammo.

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Well now we’re getting into the fact that game balance is reversed; xenos are the the lower population, “higher quality” team versus the endless horde of mindless marines when it’s supposed to be the other way around, but it would require basically a fundamental rework of many game systems to about face on that at this point.

But otherwise, your point is spot on. Most any xeno main that’s not in that top 1% of skill will tell ya how things feel to play as a xeno right now and it’s not great. Rav (and lurker) in general IS pretty overpowered, but then you have to compare the fact that basically every other caste is made of tissue paper, and outside of a Rav soloing the frontline, the only other major player in the hive in terms of combat threat and damage output is the queen itself. Crusher is a single target one trick pony and by the time it has to turn and run its target MAY have a fracture, but almost definitely won’t be dead if it wasn’t already significantly wounded. Praetorian is more or less a support caste, even with its more combat focused strains. And, well, Boiler is just a glorified catapult. Everything else is pretty much there to soak bullets and get in their pittance of damage in support, but themselves will struggle to contribute with any notable significance.

Xeno contributors do clearly like the Ravager, but at this point all of the other ‘hard hitting’ xenos have so little sustainability, and don’t hit nearly so hard by comparison, that any nerf to the Ravager without an equivalent spread of buffs to basically every other caste at the same time, will be disastrous for the xenos.

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