Do Rages need re-balancing?

The title pretty much says it all but I'll add a few points why in my opinion the Rages currently have way too many advantages.

1. First of all, training and maintaining a Rage is significantly easier and cheaper than War and Theatrics.
- The training itself requires mostly Strength and Chi, Intellect is needed only for the weapon, Barreling Attack and Sunder Armour out of which you really need the weapon and Sunder Armour. Hence, you can afford to buy dumb but otherwise very fit slaves for Rages while the would-be War and Theatrics slave has to have some brains or his/her traning will be a nightmare. Intellect is not a combat stat though so the points allocated to it are subtracted from the combat stats, i.e. it's pretty difficult to find a smart slave with excellent combat stats while it's fairly easy to find a dumb one who can perform more than well otherwise.
- Once bought, a Rage gladiator is significantly easier to maintain than the rest. You can equip him/her with green gear only and he/she'll perform just as well and usually better than a purple-clad War or Theatrics until he/she reaches the highest brackets. The reasons are below.

2. Second, Rages have all the skills they need to perform very well in their own skill tree. I've seen a few Rages with Feint but that's all. War and Theatrics very often go for skills in the other trees to remain competitive (the number of Last Stand Wars for example seem to be increasing by the day) and the highest level skills in their own trees thus become unreachable + the higher level skills from the other trees are obviously more difficult and time-consuming to reach than the ones from their own. The quality of the said high level skills doesn't seem equal too. War's entire fifth row is useless, maybe with the exception of Master of Arms, which is however more interesting than practical and Battle Hardened is very tough to reach and involves investing in sub-optimal skills. Theatrics has a good fifth row with Knockout and Heavy Scarring (I guess the latter adds additional armour or defense) but Second Wind is totally useless, given that the fights in the higher brackets rarely take more than 2-3 rounds - except maybe if heavily armoured opponents are fighting with knives. In comparison, Rage has a very nice (and, as mentioned, very reachable) fifth row, particularly Shock & Awe and Overwhelming Presence and a decent ultimate skill in the face of Total Carnage.

3. Third and possibly most important - the access to Berserk. No other class has so powerful unique fighting style. War's Tank is situational and the defence bonus that it gives is certainly not enough to stop a determined attacker and, of course, it's a self-damaging style due to the "dissatisfied crowd". Counterstrike is just as situational, although more widely employed, and by no means guarantees a victory. That's not the case with Berserk. It gives a truckload of additional offensive power - quantitatively and qualitatively - at the expense of the defence which the Rages don't have anyway and somewhat faster tiring but not even close to fast enough to be worth mentioning. All Rages which are not totally clueless start with Berserk from the beginning of the battle and end it long before the negative effects of the style can be felt - and usually before the opponent can even counter-attack. Using Berserk is a no-brainer, it needs no strategy to be effective and overpowers all other fighting styles (especially combined with Rage's own skills) at no cost. That's cheap and boring. I have a 2H Rage in Legends with 80% win:loss ration and I'm considering selling her because she's the most boring of all of my fighters despite her great performance - two to three strikes in berserk mode and the opponent is down, only Rages with Last Stand and 10+ levels stronger Wars and Theatrics with blue and purple items tend to beat her from time to time (and it's not like that I'm spoiling her with purple gear, not at all - just one blue sword and everything else green).

4. Due to 3., Rages essentially use only 2 fighting strategies - Berserk as their Start of Fight and a Last Stand trigger in case the opponent somehow manages to get them to low health. This makes their management too easy, straight-forward and... well, boring (yeah, I know that some will disagree about the last one but that's my opinion). I guess some of the top level Rages use additional strategies against other Rages but from what I've seen, they never bother with more than the above mentioned two against War in Theatrics. I don't think that the other two classes should be forced to employ their full arsenal of tricks while the Rages have access to some cookie-cutters and abuse them all the time.

In the end, I'd like to mention that I've gathered these impressions from both my own Rage gladiators and watching the fights in the higher brackets + the Blood Games. I've seen Theatrics beat Rages occasionally but the opposite seems more frequent and War vs. Rage looks like a totally unfair fight for the War, except if he/she is some Trug with 2000+ health fighting against much less durable Rage. My own Wars and Treatics could say the same. So, what say you

Not sure about re-balancing as much as they need something to give them options, make kill shot viable vs berserk as a usable any round type of skill rather then something you use with last stand, make bash/slash/lunge be a counter vs rampage. If those where true rage on rage fights would be so much more fun to read, and it would put much more strategy into running a rage.

I agree with most of your points:

1. I agree, its easier to find slaves that have stats that are optimal for rages as you get to ignore int, size, pres and now stam (urk race makes having a 50 stam now usable on a speed rage), the other 2 styles take more prime stats then that (give me a 95 50 95 50 75 50 95 and i'll rule the world :) ). Gear is much easier to do as the blacksmith only shows leather on the armor tab for you, where as with a warrior you see leather, chain and plate... it can be a factor in finding good gear to wear.

2. Feint, Called Shot, Signature Move are the only non-rage skills i have ever considered on a Rage also. The rage tree is very friendly, its very easy to get to having Rampage and Last stand, once your to that skill level your very competitive vs any other gladiator really. All three of the top level skills are very blah how ever to me: Total Carnage - does this do anything? If crits got bigger i didn't really notice after getting it to 9, Battle Hardened - by how much? again I just took it to 10 in a war and didn't really notice a huge difference in the damage i take, Second wind - why would you need this, you have show off to drain their endurance I guess for when you fight other theatrics...

3. True, my rages have the simplest strategies of all my glads you really need just 3 lines, 10 Berserk 10, "when about to quit" 10 kill shot 10, "strat vs other rages" something to try and get first hit in :) . That will win a lot of fights.

4. As for easy to manage, probably true, easiest to gear out, simple strategies are effective on them, so yes i'd say compared to a theatrics/warrior they are easier to manage.

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except if he/she is some Trug with 2000+ health fighting against much less durable Rage.

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<-- Black Talon resembles that remark! :) hehe

Second wind helps for those defensive theatrics, combined with show off they can defend at activity 10 bloodlust 10 and still wear the opponent out.

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Originally Posted by Kreegan

1. First of all, training and maintaining a Rage is significantly easier and cheaper than War and Theatrics.
- The training itself requires mostly Strength and Chi, Intellect is needed only for the weapon, Barreling Attack and Sunder Armour out of which you really need the weapon and Sunder Armour. Hence, you can afford to buy dumb but otherwise very fit slaves for Rages while the would-be War and Theatrics slave has to have some brains or his/her traning will be a nightmare. Intellect is not a combat stat though so the points allocated to it are subtracted from the combat stats, i.e. it's pretty difficult to find a smart slave with excellent combat stats while it's fairly easy to find a dumb one who can perform more than well otherwise.

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each style has dump stats. while int and pres are dump stats for rage, war dumps pres/chi and theatrics dumps chi. it's just part of how the stat pie works out. while theatrics only has 1 real dump skill, they need a more rounded set of stats so it's less important imo. Yes, a high str glad is appealing for rage, especially when dumb as a post, but High agility is a possible candidate for all classes. high agility means more attacks, which is awesome for any gladiator.

Int does have fight applications, specifically Feint and Create Distance. both of these allow a good war to deal a good chunk of damage w/o taking much in return, and a theatrics with Create Distance is a nightmare for rage.

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Originally Posted by Kreegan

Once bought, a Rage gladiator is significantly easier to maintain than the rest. You can equip him/her with green gear only and he/she'll perform just as well and usually better than a purple-clad War or Theatrics until he/she reaches the highest brackets. The reasons are below.

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while you can simply set their strategy and forget, it's a bit of a 1 trick pony. as for gear, yes you can get away with purple blades and green armor, but you still go down when you're hit. Yes, war almost needs purple armor as great armor is a focus of their style, but the reason that war gets beaten is because of the inherent game of scissors/paper/rock in the game. rage beats war. war beats theatrics. theatrics beat rage. my rage glads routinely lose to theatrics, but beat war for the most part. Alternatively I have a theatrics glad for fun on another account who has an 85% win ratio because of the abundance of ragers. wars in good armor are a lost cause and that's where her losses come from.

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Originally Posted by Kreegan

2. Second, Rages have all the skills they need to perform very well in their own skill tree. I've seen a few Rages with Feint but that's all. War and Theatrics very often go for skills in the other trees to remain competitive (the number of Last Stand Wars for example seem to be increasing by the day) and the highest level skills in their own trees thus become unreachable + the higher level skills from the other trees are obviously more difficult and time-consuming to reach than the ones from their own. The quality of the said high level skills doesn't seem equal too. War's entire fifth row is useless, maybe with the exception of Master of Arms, which is however more interesting than practical and Battle Hardened is very tough to reach and involves investing in sub-optimal skills. Theatrics has a good fifth row with Knockout and Heavy Scarring (I guess the latter adds additional armour or defense) but Second Wind is totally useless, given that the fights in the higher brackets rarely take more than 2-3 rounds - except maybe if heavily armoured opponents are fighting with knives. In comparison, Rage has a very nice (and, as mentioned, very reachable) fifth row, particularly Shock & Awe and Overwhelming Presence and a decent ultimate skill in the face of Total Carnage.

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the current metagame is very aggressive, so having skills that compliment this are a bonus. rage unsurprisingly has most of these and that is why other classes dip into it. Last stand and Brute Force are accessible to anyone so you cant really say rage is unfair for that. you need to consider the skills that are restricted by class. that means Sunder Armor and Rampage. War gets hamstring which is an amazing skill, but only they can get it. Theatrics get Gratuitous Violence as one of theirs which is pretty damn amazing at lower levels.

Have you used a gladiator that has 4th and 5th tier skills? all the 5th tier skills suck. Total Carnage sounds amazing, but it does SFA. i even know a few glads that spent the 120 tokens to unlearn it. All the T5 skills need a serious buff.

T4 skills, same sort of boat, and each tree only really gets 1 good skill. Shock and Awe is pretty amazing, I'll give you that. Overwhelming Presence is not as great. it gives an attack power bonus that is dependant on presence, which isnt really needed for anything else, so the boost isnt that big in a min/max gladiator. Crippling might is just a piece of crap.

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Originally Posted by Kreegan

3. Third and possibly most important - the access to Berserk. No other class has so powerful unique fighting style. War's Tank is situational and the defence bonus that it gives is certainly not enough to stop a determined attacker and, of course, it's a self-damaging style due to the "dissatisfied crowd". Counterstrike is just as situational, although more widely employed, and by no means guarantees a victory. That's not the case with Berserk. It gives a truckload of additional offensive power - quantitatively and qualitatively - at the expense of the defence which the Rages don't have anyway and somewhat faster tiring but not even close to fast enough to be worth mentioning. All Rages which are not totally clueless start with Berserk from the beginning of the battle and end it long before the negative effects of the style can be felt - and usually before the opponent can even counter-attack. Using Berserk is a no-brainer, it needs no strategy to be effective and overpowers all other fighting styles (especially combined with Rage's own skills) at no cost. That's cheap and boring. I have a 2H Rage in Legends with 80% win:loss ration and I'm considering selling her because she's the most boring of all of my fighters despite her great performance - two to three strikes in berserk mode and the opponent is down, only Rages with Last Stand and 10+ levels stronger Wars and Theatrics with blue and purple items tend to beat her from time to time (and it's not like that I'm spoiling her with purple gear, not at all - just one blue sword and everything else green).

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ever tried taking a 'zerk rage against a counterattacking theatrics? it completely monsters 'zerk. while zerk is the most useful at lower levels, it is in line with everything else once you reach blood gods and higher.

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Originally Posted by Kreegan

4. Due to 3., Rages essentially use only 2 fighting strategies - Berserk as their Start of Fight and a Last Stand trigger in case the opponent somehow manages to get them to low health. This makes their management too easy, straight-forward and... well, boring (yeah, I know that some will disagree about the last one but that's my opinion). I guess some of the top level Rages use additional strategies against other Rages but from what I've seen, they never bother with more than the above mentioned two against War in Theatrics. I don't think that the other two classes should be forced to employ their full arsenal of tricks while the Rages have access to some cookie-cutters and abuse them all the time.

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this is true of 2H rage, which is a 1 trick pony. makes them pretty easy to beat if you make a strategy for this. Once someone has a setup that beats this, there's not much you can do but hope for a lucky swing or 2. i would like to see Kill Shot become better so that there can actually be some diversity in strategies.

DW rage pretty much only has 1 strategy as well. learn how to beat it and you're set. this is tricky for a war glad, but theatrics will again be enjoying themselves.

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Originally Posted by Kreegan

In the end, I'd like to mention that I've gathered these impressions from both my own Rage gladiators and watching the fights in the higher brackets + the Blood Games. I've seen Theatrics beat Rages occasionally but the opposite seems more frequent and War vs. Rage looks like a totally unfair fight for the War, except if he/she is some Trug with 2000+ health fighting against much less durable Rage. My own Wars and Treatics could say the same. So, what say you

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since the game's beginning it's been scissors/paper/rock. occasionally someone finds a way to break out of that mold. Foxtrot (defensive war) for example was slaughtering Wargh (speed rage) no matter what I do. the lack in rage strategies has made it very hard for me to beat him. it took a totally different build for rage to beat foxtrot - Belgarad (power rage) to punch through, but then he gets beaten by speed ragers like Wargh. Throw theatrics in the mix as well and it becomes hairy!


I'd like to add that the costs for running a rage are interesting. they get injuries and deaths far more often which is expensive. This hits home when you run a full rage stable like I do. I had to go a few months of only healing 1 glad just so that I could afford weapon repairs for everyone. having multiple glads with lvl 4 injuries is not fun....

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Originally Posted by Cynaidh

1. I agree, its easier to find slaves that have stats that are optimal for rages as you get to ignore int, size, pres and now stam (urk race makes having a 50 stam now usable on a speed rage), the other 2 styles take more prime stats then that (give me a 95 50 95 50 75 50 95 and i'll rule the world :) ). Gear is much easier to do as the blacksmith only shows leather on the armor tab for you, where as with a warrior you see leather, chain and plate... it can be a factor in finding good gear to wear.

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I agree that it's frustrating to find gear as already i'll spend an hour equipping a rage glad, but really it's just a time thing as it's cheap enough to view new stock. I would like a function that allowed you to select what type of armor you were looking for (light/med/heavy) and same for weapons (blade/axe/2H/polearm etc)

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Originally Posted by Cynaidh

As for easy to manage, probably true, easiest to gear out, simple strategies are effective on them, so yes i'd say compared to a theatrics/warrior they are easier to manage.

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I'll agree that rage is the most user friendly, but if you learn understand how theatrics and war work, you're going to kick some ass and take names. for the majority of this game's lifetime, theatrics have sat on top of the throne, followed by war. Rage is only starting to make it's presence properly felt outside of the odd glad.

Apoc pretty much laid it all out. If rage was overpowered they would have been crowding the top which as anyone who has been playing for the last year knows is not the case. Rage has a glory zone in the lower levels when they get berserk and the others have to play catch up, but that is about it. As far as being easy to run, I see no problem with that, many games usually have an "easier" option. Classic fantasy archetypes have this. The Fighter is usually easier to run than the magic user since the fighter just needs to worry about his health whereas the magic user has to worry about health, spell points, spell lists, etc. For those of you who played Magic the Gathering, Red and Black were the "easy" options (more so Red). Almost all mindless direct damage. Whereas Blue took a lot more thinking and as a result the game appealed to all types and was still balanced for the most part.

DW rage is probably the easiest to pull off with the least amount of thinking, but it fits the specialty and makes sense. 2H rage needs a bit more. Many have shat upon kill shot, but I've found 2H rage to do quite well with it against certain types of opponents, so they are not a one trick pony in this regard and the manager must know when to use kill strike vs berserk and this has become much more effective since the 2H boost. Now I will say that I see little reason to use bash/slash/lunge with rage, so perhaps something could be done there, however if someone wanted to have a go with a defensive minded rage gladiator than those fighting styles would see more defensive skills proc, but not sure if this is a viable build or not, my guess is not currently.

War is great for people who like flexibility having the ability to go offensive and defensive, and theatrics is great for the real "thinkers" as they require a lot more smarts to do well against everyone I think. I can't wait for the new school to be introduced as that should turn everything on its ear! :)

I'm not saying that they are unbeatable but that they have more advantages than the other classes in terms of management and overall performance. I don't think that the game should be "rock-scissor-paper" just because that's how it's been since the beginning - this just proves that the balance is imperfect, which is normal but only as long as the aim is to remove as many imbalances as possible. Now you suggest making Kill Shot viable and that's OK but it has to be at the expense of Berserk, otherwise the Rages will just have another tool to win while losing nothing in the process.
I disagree that Berserk is not as powerful as it seems - your own gladiators use it all the time as their default style and I don't think they would do that if it wasn't a cookie-cutter. If some Theatrics manages to counter it - well, it happens. But it's not like Theatrics are always winning against berserking Rages, quite on the contrary - they lose quite a lot and War just doesn't stand a chance, except if he/she's some monster twice the size of the Rage and with significantly better gear.
As for the Rages emerging on the scene just now - I guess you are right but they are swarming Maximus, Primus and respectively the Blood Games at the moment. Doesn't this show that they are shining a bit too much?

rage, specifically 2H rage has been stuck in the bloodgod ranks for a very long time. for example Kharn is one of the oldest glads in the arena and he was in bloodgods for 4 months. with the changes to 2H weapons, 2H rage is finally starting to advance. the proverbial floodgate has opened, but the waters will eventually subside. The update did not bolster DW rage however. the only change that's really happened to them since launch was the reduction in bastard sword damage, which affected all specialties.

theatrics has always had excellent tools to beat it rage. also #1 spot has been held by theatrics gladiators for more time than any other specialty.

If rage was so unfair, why have they spent the least time on top of the charts despite being the most played style.

Theatrics atm only got an edge on the Prey style rage(many light hits) any other kind of rage is hard to beat for most theatrics. I now find it a lot more easy to beat rage with my new War gladiators than with any of my theatrics. Another thing is that since most theatrics use blades they no longer got a real tool to break open war gladiators, so atm axe/mace and exotic are the natural choices for the theatrics.
But i digress its actually not this i wanted to say.
Im starting to get very tired of all the changes, its impossible to set long term goals when at half way the rules change.
So id like to say please no more changes to the actual game engine. So what if the rage are somewhat overpowered right now, give us some time and this will even out again when everyone adapt. If there are bad designs let them be bad design and die out. If there are great designs, let them be that, and instead of crying for help to beat them use your time to find a new strat to beat it.
With all the possibilities between gladiator stats, skills, strats, and weapon/armor it will always be a way. But in the last few months its been so many changes that its not really been possible to adapt.

Even if DW Ragers like Belgarad are currently holding the top of Primus and the BG, I expect the new generation of defensive wars (Toddler, Zmash, Black Talon, Tourach, Zerotwenty one) to take the power soon...

My own Ragers have always a very hard time against them, as they are so heavily armored that damages/hit are often small or hits deflected, and the use of Hamstring and Warcry allows them to counter-attack fast with big two handed weapons that hurt a lot on ragers wearing only leather...

At least two of those power-levelled to Primus, it helps getting ahead of the competition for sure... But that's the rules we have to play by...

Actually it might save Belgarad if they make it to the top!!! Bel is a power rage he is set up for defensive warriors, its the quick fast rage/theatrics that kick his ass. Belgarad was designed to take on Laharl and Eruption, they where the top glads when he was made, so i found a slave with a huge natural str and Chi. 180 str/124 chi and a pair of heavy maces goes threw that heavy armor really well.

Delta, Wargh, Prey, Ormgar are the glads that i know if they attack belgarad i am 90% looking at a loss unless Bel gets lucky with a stun or a huge hit and jumps their last stand. But since those are speed demon's the guys you listed have a good chance to beat them, its all a nice circle of pain. :)

However I'm curious to see if Zmash can beat Belgarad tomorrow for the leading place in the Blood Games...

Both are yours so you are probably the one who can figure it out better, what's your pronostic Cynaidh ?

I don't know :)

Bel does well vs defensive warriors but Zmash isn't a defensive warrior.

Zmash was planned up in nov/dec when a bunch of us decided in a chat room that a war could be set up to be a better 2 handed offensive gladiator then a rage ever could be, in theory :) . Caine had this design in the works already with Tourach (i think he has gone more defensive since then though) and I swapped Zmash over to the design of a hard hitting offensive 2 handed warrior with last stand. The theory was with war cry and armor movement you can get the jump on about anyone if your not overly encumbered, Foxtrot is a great example of this, its way hard to out jump him. So you would get 1 good hit in, then even if you didn't attack again till last stand went off where you'd get 2-3 attacks, those 3-4 attacks total would be enough to finish off any one in the game (this was before trugs). So i run Zmash hot, and he gets multiple attacks some rounds with a two-handed sword, doesn't happen a lot but normally once per fight he will attack twice in round 2 or 3, in a long fight will happen again somewhere in rounds 4-6, when LS goes off he normally attacks 3 times, last stand gets him a lot of his wins.

So if they where max builds i'd put Zmash as my favorite to win, but he is a long way from a max build, Belgarad has a lot more 10's then Zmash does, so that kinda evens it out for me.

Well that stun settled that fit, rematch tonight :)