[OUTDATED] [3.6] [CLEAR][BERSERKER] Smite SSF HC viable

And yea to the atlas thing, a lot of other players are having problems too so the old ways might not work anymore. Players in tradeleague are even complaining about having to buy all the maps to progress LOL, they should see what suffering that is in SSF.

Seems like it really needs a tiresome rng grind to get the first shaper fragment. But as soon as Elder spawns and we can run shaper/elder influenced maps all the time, everything will be fine.

I still think that keeping him at 1 quadrant all the time until we have the tier 8/9 memory is the best way cause if we got the full atlas, running shaper and elder influence until it suddenly disappears and he spawns next in a quadrant where we dont a lot of maps then we are tilted for sure.

This video is very good in explaining the atlas changes in the last year (there are a lot and I must admit I did not know most of that stuff when writing the guide)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPSM-eUSWV8

So please guys give me some time to try that out.

But yea the goal stays the same:

Run as many maps in shaper elder influence as soon as possible. That is crucial for building up an abundance of yellow map for having an OK xp efficiency and progressing fast. If we run out of maps in or next to elder/shaper influenced, then we are fucked until he comes back. So lets do everything that this does not happen.

Every time I was not running shaper/elder influence for a longer while I had a guaranteed map tilt at red and even sometimes yellow maps.

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The_Human_Tornado wrote:

Multistrike should be more bearable on GS cause Ground Slam does not have the 15% less attack damage that Sunder has and yea it shouldnt be too hard to get 300-400k dps with Ground Slam thanks to abyss jewel scaling and Elemental Focus supportgem.

Good base damage, good AoE thanks to templar and witch AoE nodes that I can grab without passive points waste due to being MoM.

So Mathil did a melee build/video recently (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p79xL5bV-s0) and something that stood out in what he said about the current state of melee. Its not that it is terrible or even not viable its just you need an insane amount of attack speed to make multi-strike not lock you down, and he also talked about how cheap it can be to craft some godly axes. Is it viable for SSF? Probably, just need to get a bit lucky with the bases from synthesis.

Melee just needs some loving, but I think it gets a little more hate than it actually deserves at the moment, mainly because how polarizing the caster/ranged skills are.

Yea saw that video, checked his build. Cool build BUT:

Phys weapon crafting and SSF are really not good friends.Like REALLY NOT.

It all starts with the phys weapons that you have when you enter maps. How much pdps does it have? 150? Then you have to spend all your currency to get a 200-250 pdps weapon to get a grip on yellow maps and if you are unlucky you dont even get one and have to wait until a mediocre unique like jack the axe or scaeva is dropping. And if you are dual wielding you dont need 1 but 2 of those, thats the joke. For me it ends already here cause its just unreasonable to waste all the currency on this shit.

If you are lucky you get 2 250-300 pdps weapon fast. What now? NOTHING. Just status quo you can clear yellow maps somewhat comfortably with a lot of passive skilltree investment but thats it. And yea then you gonna probably die at 93 like most players including me back when I did that because too less ehp and defenses.

Like literally man the first char of mine that did not scale with physical weapon damage, Hyena_giggle, got 100 with a fucking brightbeak and ground slam due to abyss jewel spam because I finally had an abundance of passive points to invest in defenses + a shield aka a second breastplate with block while dealing 400-500k dps.

Now go try to deal 400-500k dps with a phys without godlike gear or dual wield. Impossible except with abyssus and crit but yea HC SSF + abyssus not so gud.

While a different char, Laughing_hyenaHUHUHU had even good phys weapons but still got destroyed at 96 cause dual wield does not have good defenses due to missing a shield and passive investment.

Like I played this phys scaling stuff a 100 times it never worked when it worked then only because of abnormally lucky gear and coincidentally when I stopped doing it suddenly all doors opened.

Lets hope its different in 3.7 but right now NOPE.

Back when shaper stats sticks were a thing, a 300 pdps weapon was enough for a gladiator to rule the ladder with sunder if he got all this GAIN gear. But yea then shaper stats stick got destroyed and since the nobody on the ssf hc ladder plays melee except me.

With shaper stats stick dual wield sunder Sparrog was the ladder legend for 1 year, he got rank 1 and 2 in several leagues with sunder gladiator and yea ... where is this dude now? Havent seen him since Delve lol.

Looks really like everyone on the hc ssf ladder gave up on melee after the stats stick nerf and yea I have to admit that I feel kinda special and enjoy that also because I FUCKING HATED THIS SHAPER STATS STICK DUAL WIELD SUNDER because that made like 80% of melee players playing exactly the same shit and I never played it because its unethical. Everyone playing the same shit is what refutes the spirit of this game so GGG does very good on destroying such things, be it shaper stats stick, tombfist or loreweave. I am fine with that.

But I also have to admit that abyss jewel are not necessarily less broken than shaper stats sticks, the difference is that not that many people play it though, and thats why they will get nerfed next league. Its still funny for me how all the shaper stats stick abusers disappeared from the SSF HC ladder after the nerf when they could all just easily switch to abyss jewels and would get the same results. Thoughts like that make me really wanna play abysss jewel spam sunder in flashback somehow. Dont have a 100 with Sunder yet, hmmmm ... but i dont like sunder that much.

Ahh makes sense, I am not that well versed in these kinds of things. I also haven't delve into endgame very much in SSF either so my knowledge is super limited when it comes to that.

But great explanation...the insight is super helpful none the less.

Yea phys scaling is like really something that destroyed the dreams of a lot players including me, dumping hundreds if not thousands hours over years into nothing because its balanced around Disfavour, Starforge, Facebreakers and shaper stats sticks and thats why all the phys damage from gear a player gets is ridiculous. There is a lection though in understanding exactly why phys scaling currently is shit except with fancy, unrealistic for SSF gear.

Lets get back to the start post I made about offenses and base damage.

We assume to have a 400 pdps weapon with 2 Attacks per Seoncd (which is extremly generous cause getting a 400 pdps weapon is extremly hard in SSF). That means we have 200 flat phys base damage from the weapon cause 400 pdps = 200 base damage x 2 attacks per second.

What is 200 flat phys damage? Its like if you get another 200 you got double the damage and the support gems for giving flat damage, added cold and added lightning give a 210 flat damage at lvl 20 or 21.

So yea in this damage observing case, using a flat damage support gem would double your damage if your base damage is 200, that is way better than any 60% more damage gem with handicaps like concentrated effect or brutality. 100% more is way bigger than 60% more.

400 base damage is the magical limit, because with 400 base damage a 50% more gem is equivalent to using a 200 added x damage gem. There is no way to get 400 base damage with phys and have a 2 attacks per second base attack speed unless having abnormal gear, abyssus and herald of purity effect rings. Totally irrelevant for SSF.

So if you are stuck with 200 base damage you are literally stuck at dealing half or less the damage that you should deal and there is currently no real way getting out of this in SSF.

You gonna be stuck with 200-300 base damage WHILE with abyss jewels and the support gems it isnt even hard in SSF, even less with Smite, to get a 1000 base damage while still having a 2 attack per second weapon.

Lets check how much base damage cuddling_with_hyenas has:

-220 added cold
-230 added lightning
-130 smite aura
-25 smite phys conversion
-228 from abyss jewels
-24 from gear

857 ele base damage, phys for that ele build is irrelevant so lets not mind it. Alright didnt try hard enough, didnt get the thousand, so be it.

But if I would have got 1000 base damage then ... Thats 5 times more than 200, literally 4 50% MORE support (1.5^4 ~ 5) gems with just using 2 support gems. Then you get 2 other 50% more support gems and end up dealing 2.25 more damage (1.5^2 = 2.25), just with the difference that you have ele penetration which destroys all monster defense map mods even in red maps while the physical damage dudes can do absolutely nothing at "monster have 40% physical reduction + get endurance charges on hit" maps.

And yea not to mention having a 400pdps weapon is damn good and getting such a weapon in SSF is INSANE. Even in this best case scenario of having such a weapon ele damage stacking absolutely trumps phys scaling.

And on top of that, because dealing more damage for less investment is not enough, the ele damage build also gets the shock bonus for free which is another 0-50% "more" (enemies take increased damage" bonus.

I hope that shows how hopeless phys damage scaling compared to flat ele scaling is right now.

tl;dr, I dont think attack speed is that much of a problem but rather the stupid choice between either low base damage or low base attack speed of the generic weapon bases. Both is poison for dps. Flat ele scaling shows that a player can and should have both, high base damage and high base attack speed.

Phys can work very well with abnormal gear in the endgame but that fact is not interesting for us SSF players.

Chance to bleed with its 55 lousy flat damage is a complete joke compared to added lightning or added cold that give 4 times that value. Double Strike somewhat fixes tha but requires the player to burn a support gem on melee splash and needs some investment for bleed chance.

Yea lets hope they gonna give melee splash some juicy extra damage in 3.7 so that this stuff becomes competitve.

Gotta say, this guide is extremely well written and researched! Love it @The_Human_Tornado!

looking to serker for a possible demi in the may event. I am too scrub for HC, but i did hit top 20 ish in the 3.3 ssf SC race back last aug. It was alot of fun so i am checking out this guide to make further improvments.

The MoM-Warbringer synergy cannot be understated, it is obviously the strongest aspect of the serker skill set right now with the instant war cry nodes

the 40% more ascend also allows a free 7th link, which is even more enticing.

how did you decide on which melee skill to use? Smite has the obvious lightning flat dmg proc, and decent aoe/animation which makes it smooth. I see you are considering Ground slam just to change it up? Vaal ground slam is very clutch for instant stun resets, plus GS itself is a pretty fun and good aoe skill

are there other skills that you would consider? Since its mostly flat ele dmg; feel most skills would be viable, however stuff like groundslam and sunder dont have any flat dmg added. Double strike has flat phys on bleeding, but thats more of an afterthought i think?

i was theory crafting some EH serker nonsense, using EE and EO to get free res shred and buff the insane flat ele on EH already.

Looking forward to this thread and more as they announce what the may event actually is

<3



EDIT: just to put my 2 cents in, ive leveled about 10-15 serkers and going warbringer first has always been alot smoother over aspect. dropping mana potions and getting the instant war cry node + RT will carry you till maps ez, and aspect at cruel is the icing on top

have you done any experiments with abyssal cry? the 1.8s movespeed debuff + free explosions may help with corpse killing and add a inpulsas/gladiator esque clear speed?

once u get past the mashing 1.8s for enduring/rallying, it becomes EZ mode. free MS, free attack speed for leaps/shield, free 50% increased dmg, and the instant mana potion and instant healing lets you faceroll alot of fights


im going to try lvling some more serkers in ssf this week to improve my act1-kitava times, will be trying smite and a number of other skills (probably double strike, ground slam, EH, heavy strike and infernal blow)

Thanks <3.

I chose Smite cause the free Wrath aura, more ele flat is always good and not needing a melee splash gem, thats also like 50% more damage compared to similar skillgems.

The skill gems I use should have nice clear and nice base damage. GS has abnormal AoE and a damage efficiency of 190% if enemies are close, also generating endurance charges and stunning. Hyena_Giggle permastunned a lot of map bosses even without any stun investment, so the stun defensive layer replaces the freeze/chill layer and I can go Ele Focus for even more damage.

Consecrated Ground is also a top choice because of the autotargeting and good base damage, I dont need a sulphite flask anymore and can go for a Jade Flask that synergizes with the 100% increased evasion rating from the Stibnite, even more RNG defenses.

Sunder has also nice clear eventhough its single target is shit but yea it would be fun to show that the shaper stats stick nerf did not make any less competitive due to abyss jewels still being OP af.

And yea Smite, but just did that, I dont want to play the same skillgem all the time.

The Warbringer instant heal + ehp stacking strategy turns Berserker into a dude that has a much ehp and utility flasks as a typical ES player in SSF at least while having the superior sustain of a life stacker and best of all, not needing ES gear with all their blue sockets. Best of both worlds.

Abyssal cry ... nah, too low AoE and I need to spam enduring cry all the time and rallying cry here and then for keeping the endurance charges up to pull out the teeth of phys damage.

I would also consider heavy strike if I could get 2 of those 20% chance to deal double damage gems but getting them in SSF is cancer.

Another thing that I was thinking about is frostbreath EQ with flat ele stacking but got the first frostbreath in Synthesis at lvl 96 ...

Good luck with that demi, I cant wait for all the fortune hunters in SSF HC playing Berserker :) That was so much fun back in bestiary, in Incursion I couldnt get anything cause I always died to game crashes. So yea lets see how it turns out this time.

Recent Baeclast: Nugi, Tarke, Raiz and Octavian talking about Berserker for a moment.

Raiz says its good for nothing, but then Nugi mentions the 15k MoM ehp zerker playstyle :3

https://youtu.be/8ZHxJV1Sqmk?t=8952

Friendship with Raiz has ended. Now Nugi is my favourite streamer.

Edited the post cause I missunderstood raiz arguments, I thought he talks about everything eventhough his argument is just about spellcaster.

What sort of weapon do you look for when playing ground slam? The only thing I miss in this build is explosions and with shaper mace I could get the fire explosions if I want them. :o

Also Hasunic has made a pretty great atlas strategy post in reddit about sustaining maps in SSF.