How to deal with berserking Rages?

[Kreegan]

So, in short, I have two Wars in the Champions and Legends brackets respectively and both of them are doing quite well, however Rages in berserk mode put them to sleep (sometimes - in a coffin) way too often. The first one is a dual-wielder with Blades, two 1.55 swords, with very high Agility, adequate Strength but mediocre in the other fields and he actually manages to take down some of these crazed brutes with frequent attacks. The other one is a two-hander with high Strength and decent Agility (69 base, 82 with the gear) and even with 6 on Armour Movement and 6 on War Cry, he often finds himself cut down to 10-20% health before he can act. Both of these guys have Create Distance on 7 but it doesn't trigger as often as I'd like it to, sometimes I don't see it at all. I'm planning to train them both in Last Stand so they can give those berserkers a taste of their own medicine but it will take good 6-7 more levels to get to that point. Anything that can help to even the odds before that?

[Narol]

Rather than going right now for last Stand, I would recommand raising Create Distance, Hamstring, Warcry and Armor Movement all to 10...

That way you can slow down the berseks and even strike more often than them... Barelling attack can help too as warriors seems to attack less hard and less often from the ground.

[crow]

I agree train create distance up to 10 and that will take away 1 attack per round. But 2hand wars against dual blade rage is a complete lost cause now since Nate nerfed the 2hand wars. Going against a glad that swings 8+ times a round and your glad swinging less than once a round is a total mismatch if your glad can not get the first shot in for the round. I believe the 2hand war using rage skills of last stand has a better chance against this build.

[Kreegan]

Thanks for the tips. I was intending to go for Last Stand after both of the mentioned gladiators have at least 7-8 on Armour Movement and War Cry and no less than 6 on Hamstring but I'll get Create Distance to 8-9 as well.
As a whole, training a War into shape at the moment seems to be pretty difficult compared to developing a good Rage - the Wars seem to need many of their skills trained to good levels to accomplish what a regular Rage build investing in its purely offensive skills does without such struggle. I have a fledgling Rage with score 57-8-7 who's losing mostly due to strategy mistakes or against significantly higher level gladiators while my Wars' performance has never been better than 4:1 (win:loss), usually closer to 3:1 in the lower brackets.
Out of curiosity - what do you think about an eventual offensive build with Brute Force, Barreling Attack and Called Shot + Signature Move (mainly the latter) from the Theatrics tree? Stun, Sweep and Disarm sound good to keep the opponent's activity low combined with Hamstring and Barreling Attack - in theory that is.

[Narol]

Barrelling attack and SM : Stun work well to slow down speed ragers... Blind helps too as it makes them miss some attacks and cannot be prevented...

One of my guys has disarm and it works less well, speed ragers usually quickly pick up their weapon (due to agility and activity ?) or attack with the other hand...

Called Shot and aiming the head can cause frequent stun even if it's not the sig move, so overall I think that the offensive build you suggest work quite well... My War Kaspar is quite like that with Stun as sig move, and between Stun and Hamstring the speed ragers often have a tough time against him...But don't neglect War Cry and Create Distance anyway even if you go offensive, you need both defense and offense against those hyperactive imps !

[Cynaidh]

Any more thoughts on this?

My idea was to counter the Kill shot-last stand stratagy that uses "I am trying to Give Up" on a 2 hand warrior by going 10 Tank 1 on "Opponent is trying to Give Up" to attempt to create distance the attack or at least have max defense up against it, but i cant get the "Opponent is trying to Give Up" to fire at the same time as the "I am trying to Give Up" on a 2 hand warrior. I ran my guy as a sprite even to max out that D but hard to try it without that trigger working.

Even going against my own guys where i know for a fact i can see his "I am trying to Give Up" trigger and i eat the 1500 damage shot my "Opponent is trying to Give Up" never fires until the very end of a match (whats really weird is i got like 3 kills today after it triggered).

So over all my plan was to get the jump on them with armor movement/war cry, hopefully get a hamstring on them, beat them down, then turtle up when they last stand, come out of the turtle when their last stand heals them after the hard hitting attack (that's how it works for them) go back to hammering them with a 10 kill desire :o .... but can't get the end part to work right....

So i have changed over to Trug to just try and eat that big last stand hit and then hopefully grab initiative back and finish them off.... jury is still out if this is working or not, doesnt really seem as elegant as my above idea... that damn "Opponent is trying to Give Up" is just killing me.

[Apoca1ypse]

normally rage sets it to "I am very injured"

[Narol]

Stunning them is what works better... Aim Head and prey !

[Cynaidh]

Really Apoc? Mine all are set to "I am trying to Give Up" and it works with Last Stand just fine.

[Kreegan]

I don't know, I'm getting the impression that Berserk is too powerful in general. It's a no-brainer to begin with, all Rages start with it as a default tactic and it's not a matter if it will be effective - because it always is - but if it will drop the opponent in just one sequence of hits. The drawbacks are almost cosmetic - no defence when the Rages have almost no defence to begin with and faster exhaustion but I rarely see a Rage in berserk mode lose more than half of his/her endurance before the opponent is cut down to pieces (the Rages in the upper brackets barely lose 1/3 of their endurance - and that's in the worst case - before the fight ends). In comparison, War's Tank and Theatrics' Counterstrike are no cookie-cutters, have much more serious drawbacks and have to be used strategically while Berserk is pretty much the only strategy that the Rages currently need to win. It's only dangerous against... other berserking Rages. Just doesn't seem fair. I check the Blood Games regularly (which seem to be overpopulated with Rages for some reason) and the Wars there seem to get bad beating from all Rages who aren't fresh newcomers with some 1000 Health and unimpressive gear (and sometimes even they can beat monsters like Laharl or Eruption). So I think that Berserk has to be nerfed somehow so the Rages are forced at least to apply some tactics to their fights instead of going mad from the beginning and switching to a Last Stand strategy if the opponent manages to hurt them somehow.

[Loki]

Although it makes sense, I did not know that hitting the head give a significantly better chance of stunning the opponent. I've noticed that big hits to any body part can cause a stun. Narol could you give me an idea of how often one can expect to stun with called shot aiming head and also let me know what level your called shot skill was. Much appreciated.

[Narol]

It's hard to evaluate, honestly...

One of my guys has Called Shot to level 5 and seems to hit the head between 25% and 50% of the times when he aims for it, but only a few of those hits generated stuns...

I would need to raise Called Shot to level 10 to really test this strategy to the fullest, but some more experienced managers probably know better than me and can tell you if it's really efficient. Luckily for me, my guy has stun as signature move so he stuns often overall anyway even when he doesn't hit the head.

[Loki]

Yeah, that is why I ask, like you say it is hard to evaluate if it is the head shot causing the stun or just the critical hit to any body part. Anyway, thanks for putting it out there, it is certainly something to look into.

While I am on a roll getting questions answered. Does anyone have any experience or thoughts on using level 10 called shot and 10 devastating power as a combo. Seems like an obvious combo to get more hits and damage on an injury but don't see many high level glads use it.

[oedi]

this aint as powerful as it used to be now with the automatic heal option. I use this combination on Oedi: called shot, knock out, devastating power.

[Loki]

good to know. did not think about the fact that auto heal would significantly reduce the injured glads making less damage fuel for DP.

[Kreegan]

I think I found sort of a cure for speed Rages, berserk or not (it seems to work against dual-wielding power Rages with axes & maces too but the evidences so far aren't too many). It still needs some testing and possibly fine-tuning but so far the results look promising - two of my Wars - two-handed and polearms - now win some 80% of the fights against speed Rages which previously took them out without breaking a sweat.
2H Rages are still a problem though...