Weaponmaster vs. Berserker

[klofft]

Am I missing something or is the Berserker's Defender Aura just completely better than the Weaponmaster's Combat Challenge?

They both seem to allow a free melee basic with shift or attack, but the Berserker does +1d8 damage. What does the Weaponmaster get?

 

[Rune]

First of all, combat challenge marks any creature the fighter (weaponmaster) attacks--hit or miss, at range or not! That can be very useful, tactically.

Furthermore, a defender aura doesn't do very much if the defender gets pushed around with forced movement. The fighter who marks an enemy might not be able to punish that enemy if he gets moved out of position, but that marked enemy will still have -2 to hit other targets. That's a big deal.

In addition, the fighter (weaponmaster) has combat superiority--which is tremendous! When an enemy provokes an opportunity attack, that opportunity attack is with a bonus to hit and, if successful, stops that enemy cold in their tracks. A fighter is very hard to get past--or run away from!

 

[Obryn]

The weaponmaster gets a ton more stickiness.

The berserker in Defender mode is capable of defending, no doubt. But that aura is very, very limiting.

Also, of note is that using OAs for your defender smacks has benefits and deficits. Normally, it's a positive - you can enforce your mark multiple times per round. But with a lot of skirmishers, they specifically state that OA's either don't work or have some sort of penalties. So it's a plus and a minus.

-O

 

[Breaks]

It's worth noting that aura punishment, while an opportunity action, is not strictly speaking an opportunity attack.

There are more downsides to this fact (the plethora of fighter feats that boost OAs), than upsides (skirmishers don't get their OA defense bonuses on punishment swings (just on real OAs)).

 

[Neonchameleon]

Am I missing something or is the Berserker's Defender Aura just completely better than the Weaponmaster's Combat Challenge?

They both seem to allow a free melee basic with shift or attack, but the Berserker does +1d8 damage. What does the Weaponmaster get?

+1 to hit on all attacks for starters.

Also marking works at range meaning it's much harder to escape a fighter - first the fighter can mark with e.g. javelins, second teleports and forced movement simply escape the aura, and third even if they escape with a teleport the target is still taking the -2 to hit.

 

[Zaran]

You do have to remember that almost all essentials characters were made to a bit more damage. This is to make combat take less time, to make up for lack of daily powers and powerful encoutners, and so the player doesn't have to depend on feats that were designed to make core classes have a bit more oomph.

While I do think that the berserker might be a little better than the cFighter I think the cFighter will make up for it in variety of options. Just doing lots of damage every battle gets old.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Zaran: The Berserker is an AEDU Barbarian sub-class, it has a variety of encounters and dailies, and can take any Barbarian power.

 

[Breaks]

I am really confused at how many people agree that the berserker is more powerful a defender than the fighter.

The berserker punishment is, particularly at epic, awesome. Barbarian powers are excellent for striking, but so greatly inferior to fighter defending powers for defending that there's just no way the berserker nets better than the fighter. Add to this better armor enchants (because light armor enchants tend to not be about defending), better feat support (some of which is poachable), and a wide array of class feature options (almost all of which are better than the berserker homeland features), and you have a really powerful class.

The berserker is solid, don't get me wrong. And in an itemless low-op campaign might be better than a fighter. But optimized? Naw.