Titan Quest Builds part 37: Berserker

[@renangoncalvesflores]

Thank you, smoker! Funniest build I tried until now. Great guide!

[@jhonnyegusquiza421]

Months waiting for that!! Welcome back master!

[@MatthewAshworth]

Thanks. :D Wow, honoured to be called a master.

[@redelfshotthefood8213]

Ah! KZbin! You’ve done me dirty by not letting me know Matthew came back to us!!

[@MatthewAshworth]

Ahah yes. I made the videos on the new classes (and also the new skills in each mastery) a few years ago when the new DLCs came out. :)

[@TXHuyIcefrzzy]

- After Shock (Seal of Fate) is the great RR skill, don't use it is big cons. - Battle Rage and Crushing Blow added bonus physical dmg that can get benefit from Str and +%physical/total dmg. - Unleash (Thunder Strike) not worth to max out with str build (it get benefit from Int). - Ancestral Horn + Doom Horn (War Horn)+ Battle Standard tree is very effective combo vs all.

[@MatthewAshworth]

There are many viable combos for most builds. So the suggestions you made can be useful too. The number of points you'd go for in Battle Rage tree would depend on how much gear you use that has +%str and +%phys/total dmg on it. Aftershock is a great skill on paper, but whenever you put Seal of Fate on the ground, enemies often walk out of it by the time it loads itself. It's the main reason why I'm not fond of that tree. Unleash has a benefit of a skill disruption and confusion bonuses, but yeah, I'd say it's not mandatory for a Str build. Yeah, Ancestral Horn can be made viable with the right gear and skill combination, and especially with the newly added skill in Atlantis, which increases the time of Ancestral Warriors, it's become even more useful.

[@TXHuyIcefrzzy]

@@MatthewAshworth- After Shock use: + Vs Melee enemies: just set it up and stand in it place. + Vs Range enemies: set Menhir's Wall between you and enemies, close to enemies than you, run close to the wall, then set Seal of Fate. However Seal of Fate best vs bosses or using by range charater combine with Menhir's Wall.

[@poco12345678900]

Thanks! I've waiting for this

[@MatthewAshworth]

You're welcome. :)

[@ilquerxanier]

Holy Zeus... been waiting for rune mastery builds from you, thank you Mat ;) (looking forwad for rune+storm.)

[@MatthewAshworth]

Thanks and you are welcome. :D

[@blackout225]

Just found these build videos. I decided to do berserker for my first run. I'm trying cater my build to be something like an elemental aoe/axe build. Not sure if that's ideal, but wish me luck

[@MatthewAshworth]

Good luck! I think for elemental damage something like storm, earth or dream might've been better as one of the masteries. But berserker is a really fun class!

[@mausolus8466]

I would really struggle as Berserker class, due to the choice between Rune Weapon and Onslaught trees. With every character I played with Rune mastery, I found always Rune Weapon increadibly usefull (for me almost mandatory), even with melee. During its effects skill itself temporalily increase character intelligence by percentage, so after attacking, all your elemental damages (from spells as well) do more damage than normaly. Its first synergy is (at least for me) awesome - every time enemy strikes you during its effects, he/she/it gets flat elemental damage as payback - in Act III, I remember being charged by five Draconians - my character killed one of them manualy, and during that time, remaining four "killed" themselfs by striking me. Third synergy allows you to leach life and energy with every strike (can help to maintain energy level). Also, combination of Rune Weapon (due to intelligence buff) can help with other skills - Rune Mines became much more powerfull after striking oponent first and than casting them (also, you can lure oponent into all five of them for maximum effect). I also used Sacred Rage, but after while, I was forced to go to Mystic with it - for me, it was too tempting to let my health drop to those 40% to activate it, and sometimes such temptation was fatal. Honestly, I would prefer more if Sacred Rage would be like Adrenaline in Defense, with percentage chance on every hit. And, as I mentioned before, due to my bitter memory of fighting ghosts with physical, pierce, poison and bleeding (for first and second they have big resistence nad for third and fourth even complete imunity), I also prefer to have some elemental backup even as a melee class.

[@MatthewAshworth]

Very interesting. Thanks for describing your experience of using it. It does seem like a decent tree from what I notice so far, though I've got virtually no experience with it right now. I can see it can be a gift from the gods to mage and hybrid characters though with all those %ge increases to elemental and total dmg, and intelligence, and the debuffs Energy Drain offers. I'm curious if Magical Charge (2nd skill) will be any good on higher difficulty modes. At max level it only deals 102 elemental dmg retaliation (and that requires a whooping 16 skill points). From what I remember, retaliation type damage wasn't affected by %ge bonuses on gear (unless they updated it recently). So 102 retaliation dmg might be very little in legendary.

[@mausolus8466]

Yeah, thats correct, my experiences are still only from normal difficulty. Also, what I forgot to mention, that retaliation applies only for melee attacks (so on some really nasty ranged oponents, such as Machae Master and Grandmaster Archers, it wont help). But the retaliation is more or less (at least in my opinion) kind of side-kick of Magical Charge (though both funny and usefull, no doubt) - main reason of this synergy is that it actualy adds elemental damage to your attacks - you see, Rune Weapon by itself just add that inteligence bonus, plus % increase of both physical and elemental damage during its effect. However, you need to have some other elemental damage source, if it should work by itself. however, once you have that synergy, your attacks automaticly have added elemetal damage during its effects. From my own experiences, Rune Weapon itself (without synergies) can appear preaty weak at the begining, but once you got that Magical Charge synergy, it alters its usefulness dramaticly. Personaly, I think Rune Weapon shows interesting approach to mages and hybrids - instead of just casting spells from the begining, you charge to the enemy, hit him few times (to get that inteligence boost) and than your spells became even deadlier. After all, if I racall correctly, desciption of in game runemasters says something like that they "gain their power from the fury of combat", which express the nature of Rune Weapon. And if you choose second mastery with elemental or vitality damage (since AE, even vitality damage is dependent on inteligence level), even melee character can turn into crushing spellcaster (at least on normal difficulty, but stronger gear and artefacts on epic and legendary could help to balance the odds)

[@MatthewAshworth]

Yeah, that added elemental damage definitely helps. Though I think there's always more of an advantage when you stack bonuses. So a character who doesn't deal any elemental damage to begin with, could get some from this skill tree, but he/she will still be kind of underpowered compared to one who already deals elemental damage from other sources (e.g. earth enchantment or a weapon with elem dmg bonus). Of course, this is also where Transmutation synergy comes in, being able to convert physical damage to elemental. So I can see melee classes becoming powerful users of elemental damage too. Though when doing some research online, I came across a few places that mentioned how the transmuted damage does not factor into the critical hit damage or something.

[@mausolus8466]

Yeah, and biggest problem is that Rune Weapon skill cant be used (according to wiki) with staff, so those who would have the best elemental damage potencial would find no use of it. But I guess for balance reasons its justified (i mean, fully upgraded Rune Weapon doubles your inteligence stat for the duration of skill, plus adds some additional elemental damage, and with powerful staff, I could almost say it would chew even through Typhons healt in matters of seconds, if it would be enabled to use with staff). However, the entire Rune Weapon tree has one major downside - despite it is left mouse button skill, it still consumes energy, and fully upgraded it will eat quite a big chunk of it with every hit (in that case, second synergy with energy leech is very helpfull, however, not every foe has its own energy pool to leach from), and since Rune mastery increase every stats except for energy, it can be preaty potion hungry mastery, expecialy if combined with Warfare, Defence, Rogue or Hunting, than every increased energy pool would be only with equipment, artifacts or paid with skill points.

[@mausolus8466]

Truth is, as a Rune Mastery character, I mostly skip the Transmutate synergy. Its just a matter of personal taste, but reason why i like hybrids (appart from breaking the archetype of weak, soft mage or warlock :) )is that they can have answer for both foes that are either resistant to "natural" damage (physical, piercing, bleeding and poison, most notably ghosts) and "supernatural" (elemental and vitality), and Transmutate take that versatility away. It is also interesting, how game shift with recent changes in AE and Ragnarog in atributes - as said before, with inteligence now governing also vitality damege (so even melee Dream users will now profit from inteligence skill, since most of their psionic abilitie deal either vitality or electrical burn damage) and dexterity also governs poison and bleeding damage (so bleeding skills in Hunting mastery, such as Eviscerate and Gouge, can now be more usefull, and for Bone Charmers with Necrosis, potency of bleedinh havoc can be really fatal). Personaly, Im really glad that TQ franchise, even under new company, is getting care even after so much time since its first release, not just with the new expansion, but also improvements of modification of damage types, that were previously more or less flat

[@trentfire5873]

Hi Matthew! I have to say I was happy too see you are also covering all rune combinations. Got a question for you: I'm considering a Warfare + Rune class and want to go Dual Wield with throwing weapons. Do you know if the dual wield passive skills like Hew trigger off with throwing weapons? Because I would assume not. And if the passives don't trigger, do you think it's even worth it to go dual wield Throwing weapons?

[@MatthewAshworth]

Hiya. I wasn't 100% sure, so I had a look around the net a bit, and from what I've read, it seems Hew, Cross Cut, and Tumult do not trigger in the same way for throwing weapons as they would with melee. They do not hit more than 1 enemy in an arc and instead only apply a chance to dual wield %ge. So there is still some benefit from them, but much less so than for melee. But overall, I think it can make for a nice build to go dual wield throwing weapons. It might require for you to have good movement speed to be able to keep your range and to have nice gear of course. And you know, Berserker is the not the only viable class for this build style, because Dragon Hunter (Rune + Hunting) can also be pretty good since Volley can apply to throwing weapons. :)

[@trentfire5873]

Thanks so much for the reply Matthew. Yes, I have started considering Dragon Hunter as of late as well. I saw your video on that combination as well. I'm pretty sure it does (though the wording makes me doubt it), but do you know if Puncture Shot Arrows and Scatter Shot Arrows from the Marksmanship tree work with Throwing Weapons? I'm a bit unsure as the wording in the skills specifically lists ''arrow head'' and ''arrow shafts''. However, after some testing I do think they work on throwing weapons. Would love your confirmation on that. Now that I've got the chance: thank you so much for all of the class video's you've done over the years. Whenever I would look into a new build, your video's would be the first thing I'd look at.

[@MatthewAshworth]

Sorry for a late reply. I wasn't sure about the Marksmanship tree working with throwing weapons. Upon searching online, it seems that it does, including Puncture Shot and Scatter Shot. Not 100% sure, but from what I've found, throwing weapons are treated a bit like bows (and so they do not factor in the OA either). The skill description is old, and since throwing weapons were only added recently, it's likely that they just didn't update the skill description. And thank you very much. I am glad you're finding my build videos useful. :)

[@dragonassassins1]

Yesss! I was hoping you would do the runemaster! I have watched all your other guides a few years ago! Can you help me out once more? Playing at the moment runemaster+dream. Melee, wich one is better Psionic touch or rune weapon? Thank you for making all the great video's!! 💪🏻👍🏻

[@MatthewAshworth]

Of course. Well, firstly it would depend on how many skill points you have available and also what damage types you deal. Psionic Touch takes up less skill points, but Rune Weapon has more useful stuff for more skill points. I think in the overall sense, Rune Weapon is better. For a Dream + Rune character, you might not get much chance to use elemental type damage, but the +% to total damage bonus on Rune as well as a %ge increase to intelligence, and also OA + speed debuffs to enemies that its 3rd skill in the tree grants would make it a better choice than Psionic Touch, I think. So I'd pick Rune Weapon + Energy Drain synergy, and ignore Magical Charge and Transmutation.

[@dragonassassins1]

+Matthew Ashworth thank you So much!! I am level 17 now and i was already putting points in rune weapon. I keep on going this direction!! Love dream and runemaster So far! Awesome combo of melee and magic! I look foreward for your next video. Thanks again!

[@MatthewAshworth]

You're welcome. Yeah, it does sound like a fun mastery combo. Quite a number of ways that this class can be taken in since both masteries are pretty versatile. :)

[@jantokar9211]

Nice work, thanx.

[@MatthewAshworth]

You're welcome. :)

[@gianmelo2353]

Always great reviews! Any set suggestions for a Oracle? Had no problem on normal until Typhoon, wanted to perfect the build before tackling him and going to harder difficulties. Currently using Necromancer set(missing the bracers, using scholar's bangle.) and Elafros. Vitality damage is becoming a little outclassed on the endgame, was looking for other alternatives. Thanks!

[@MatthewAshworth]

Thanks. :) Well, I'd personally not restrict myself to a set, since set pieces can take a while to find. There is a Raiment of the Storm set that should fit this class. Even if you find just 1 or 2 pieces of it, that would be a great help since it gives boosts to cold and lightning damage types, and some pieces grant +1 to skills in Storm mastery. It drops in epic though. Umbral Raiment is also not bad, but that one favours Spirit mastery more. I'd personally focus more on cold and lightning damage types with the Oracle. What act/difficulty are you at right now?

[@gianmelo2353]

Matthew Ashworth Thanks! Normal. Preparing for Typhoon as i've mentioned, no big options for farming and nothing decent from vendors so far, unfortunately. Using Necro mainly due to the lack of options, didn't find anything useful for this mage other than Elafros and blue rings/amulets. The +1 boosts to spirit skills are really useful, though.

[@lad4415]

here it is

[@MatthewAshworth]

Indeed!

[@nathanexplosion94]

I keep searching for normal build help and everything is legendary builds.

[@MatthewAshworth]

Generally, if something is made to work in legendary, it should work in normal too. For normal, just focus on the earlier skills that you get. It will also differ a bit on which mastery you start with.

[@MrGeorge102]

Can y do one for Thunderer plz?

[@MatthewAshworth]

Sure thing. I'll keep that in mind. :)

[@thevdende]

Are you sure dual wield tree is necessary in warfare tree? When I tried it only the first skill procced, none of the others work with throwing weapons...

[@MatthewAshworth]

For throwing weapon builds, you're right, only the base dual wield skill works. So it depends if you're mainly concentrating on melee style or throwing weapons. Sorry for a late reply. I somehow missed your comment.

[@cestor]

did they change rune of life ??? because I see it at 10 and on your vid its at 6 I guess I should still max it right

[@MatthewAshworth]

Not entirely sure. Maybe titancalc has it wrong. But yeah, maxing it would be a good idea. :)

[@tiengli392]

How about rune weapon instead of onslauhht

[@MatthewAshworth]

I think that's reasonable too. Depends on if you prioritise physical damage more (Onslaught) or elemental damage more (Rune weapon).

[@MrEndrius79]

Can you refresh the build after last skills added/changed? Tnx

[@MatthewAshworth]

I think realistically I wouldn't have the time to change each build video (and there might be also more updates to the game in the future). But I mentioned some tips in the video where I analysed the new skills that came with Atlantis and which builds each of them will be suitable for. :)

[@MrEndrius79]

@@MatthewAshworth Thank you for your good work with TQ builds. My question was only for masteries cap increased from 32 to 40 and new top skills added.

[@MatthewAshworth]

@@MrEndrius79 Yeah, that's what I figured you meant. I talked about each of the new skills individually in that video which I made about them. :) For Berserker class, if I was to say how useful each of the new skills would be: - Slam: pretty useful. It's a good skill for melee characters as it offers a good number of debuffs on the enemies and it cools down very quickly, so you can keep using it a lot, especially as a nice opener when going against an enemy group. - Lasting Legacy: average usefulness. I think Berserker class might not have enough spare skill points for the Ancestral warriors, but with Lasting Legacy, this temporary pet can be pretty useful and a nice support which lasts for longer. So that's why I say it has some use, but not absolutely necessary for this class. - Rune Storm: pretty useful. It's a decent area skill that hurts enemies around you repeatedly for several seconds and inflicts a lot of debuffs on them. It's good for melee characters like this especially who are always in the middle of enemy groups. Only drawback would be its high energy cost, and melee characters usually have smaller energy pools than mages, so you might have to invest some attribute points into energy to be able to use this skill a lot. - Rune Field: not very useful. This one would be better for mages and ranged characters I'd say as it gets enemies to walk through more mines to get closer to you, and also because mines deal elemental damage and are affected by intelligence stat mainly. Certainly not a bad skill, but Berserker can find more use in other skills.

[@MrEndrius79]

@@MatthewAshworth Good! Thank you for your time :)

[@MatthewAshworth]

@@MrEndrius79 You are very welcome. :)

[@matheusjacob7833]

Sorry, but what 2-1 means?

[@MatthewAshworth]

Oh, that's the ratio. So for every 2 points in Str, you'd roughly go for 1 point in Dex.

[@fenix766]

how many points in vitality?

[@MatthewAshworth]

Do you mean vitality resistance or vitality as in health points?

[@ViolosD2I]

Enemies being able to walk away from it is the entire point of Seal of Fate. That is why it rewards you with so much damage / debuff power if you manage to have them where you want them when it goes off.

[@ДмитрийРмовнер]

good gue have right

[@MatthewAshworth]

Thanks.