Wall of text warning...
So the berserker is now a melee carry or a heavy damage bruiser or what have you... his gameplay has changed considerably.
I've played the secondary tank and engager role. Since I'm not building pure tank I can't just pop R and run to the carry. I wait for the engage, go in without R and only activate it if there is enough heavy CC on me to negate me from coming close to the squishies.
Ravenous Hydra and Maw of Malmortius are a must IMO, since they both provide much needed stuff like LS, AoE damage, insane waveclear, a shield, MR, AD, a very helpful AA reset and synergy, in Maw's case, with the passive. This makes for massive damage as you take damage, which is ridiculous in a duel. The more you take damage, the faster you attack and get AD, the faster you attack, the faster you reset Reckless Swing... you almost WANT to take damage just to see berserking in action. Not to mention how ridiculous his W gets with the Hydra.
I've been building Youmuu's Ghostblade for the extra MS/AS (the CDR is kinda nice too) and having the benefit of ArPen is icing on the cake. And that's about it for damage. You need 225 total AD to make E the same as before, and this gets ~290+ depending on runes.
Sunfire Aegis I've used for splitpushing, in which he is a monster once he gets this and Ravenous Hydra. I dueled a Jax at lv18 and won. Barely and needing to LS off of creeps to survive ignite, but I outlasted him and pushed for inhib.
All this with Spirit Visage and Ninja Tabi or Mercury's Treads and you have a nice mix of damage output and tankyness.
9/21/0, flat AD marks and quints, armor seals and a mix of MR and MR/lvl glyphs.
Feeling better about him the more games I play.
TL;DR: he doesn't suck.
So the berserker is now a melee carry or a heavy damage bruiser or what have you... his gameplay has changed considerably.
I've played the secondary tank and engager role. Since I'm not building pure tank I can't just pop R and run to the carry. I wait for the engage, go in without R and only activate it if there is enough heavy CC on me to negate me from coming close to the squishies.
Ravenous Hydra and Maw of Malmortius are a must IMO, since they both provide much needed stuff like LS, AoE damage, insane waveclear, a shield, MR, AD, a very helpful AA reset and synergy, in Maw's case, with the passive. This makes for massive damage as you take damage, which is ridiculous in a duel. The more you take damage, the faster you attack and get AD, the faster you attack, the faster you reset Reckless Swing... you almost WANT to take damage just to see berserking in action. Not to mention how ridiculous his W gets with the Hydra.
I've been building Youmuu's Ghostblade for the extra MS/AS (the CDR is kinda nice too) and having the benefit of ArPen is icing on the cake. And that's about it for damage. You need 225 total AD to make E the same as before, and this gets ~290+ depending on runes.
Sunfire Aegis I've used for splitpushing, in which he is a monster once he gets this and Ravenous Hydra. I dueled a Jax at lv18 and won. Barely and needing to LS off of creeps to survive ignite, but I outlasted him and pushed for inhib.
All this with Spirit Visage and Ninja Tabi or Mercury's Treads and you have a nice mix of damage output and tankyness.
9/21/0, flat AD marks and quints, armor seals and a mix of MR and MR/lvl glyphs.
Feeling better about him the more games I play.
TL;DR: he doesn't suck.
Same here, definitely better than before, but I can't see how MoM is like a must to you and Hydra is imo more of 5.-6. pick.
Both aren't bad items, I'd simply put them second in line as situational picks or to give more pressing stuff priority.
Reckless Swing doesn't seem to be the best idea to max first anymore if you wanna have the smoothest early against another melee top. Better force the enemy into a duel and the moment you hit 50%, you pop Tough It Out and start melting him.
Even while everyone seems to have buried it already, Zeke's Herald seems more to be the first item to buy,(while Zeke still needs some buff/tweak)
plus even while he still hurts himself with Reckless, HP isn't that important anymore on him. Get some on the side with Zeke/TF and mainly on SV and that's more than enough already.
Lifesteal + Armor and MR seems more valuable.
Only problem he still has: He can only do something for 6 secs (Ulti) and then he's CC Foc #1 again.
Therefore you need to make the most out of those 6 secs:
- Don't be the first to iniate.
- Use Flash not to waste a part of your Ulti to get close.(OFC dumb idea if your target has Flash rdy too)
- Your axe is nothing more than a ONE TIME SLOW. If you can't pick it up while chasing the target directly, don't pick it up.
Both aren't bad items, I'd simply put them second in line as situational picks or to give more pressing stuff priority.
Reckless Swing doesn't seem to be the best idea to max first anymore if you wanna have the smoothest early against another melee top. Better force the enemy into a duel and the moment you hit 50%, you pop Tough It Out and start melting him.
Even while everyone seems to have buried it already, Zeke's Herald seems more to be the first item to buy,(while Zeke still needs some buff/tweak)
plus even while he still hurts himself with Reckless, HP isn't that important anymore on him. Get some on the side with Zeke/TF and mainly on SV and that's more than enough already.
Lifesteal + Armor and MR seems more valuable.
Only problem he still has: He can only do something for 6 secs (Ulti) and then he's CC Foc #1 again.
Therefore you need to make the most out of those 6 secs:
- Don't be the first to iniate.
- Use Flash not to waste a part of your Ulti to get close.(OFC dumb idea if your target has Flash rdy too)
- Your axe is nothing more than a ONE TIME SLOW. If you can't pick it up while chasing the target directly, don't pick it up.
Darcurse wrote:
Same here, definitely better than before, but I can't see how MoM is like a must to you and Hydra is imo more of 5.-6. pick.
Both aren't bad items, I'd simply put them second in line as situational picks or to give more pressing stuff priority.
I guess we have different priorities. I noticed I didn't put anything in order so here goes, it's not 100% accurate, this is from memory over a heap of games and not including pots/wards:
Start with Doran's Shield, get a Doran's Blade, then get a Vampiric Scepter and Boots. From then on it's purchasing build-up items like The Brutalizer, Hexdrinker and Tiamat in whatever order to eventually finish items in this order: Ninja Tabi/ Mercury's Treads, Ravenous Hydra, Sunfire Aegis. By then I'll have The Brutalizer and Hexdrinker and decide what I need to finish first: Youmuu's Ghostblade, Maw of Malmortius or Spirit Visage.
Need to test it more though, against tougher matchups especially, where I might need more Armor/HP.
Maw of Malmortius builds off a Hexdrinker, a great purchase early-mid game against double AP comps, which usually happens 9 out of 10 games for me. Olaf benefits from AD in that it adds to his true damage. His passive grants you extra attack speed as you lose health and Maw of Malmortius not only grants you a shield, 60 AD and 40 MR, but gives you extra AD as you lose health. It's a beast of an item on a character that needs high damage and enough beefyness to be effective.
Will not purchase against full AD comp, I'll grant you that one.
Haven't tested Trinity Force and to be honest, zeke's herald seems very lackluster, especially as a first-buy.
And I disagree on HP not being important anymore. It certainly is, especially since you'll be trading with E a lot. Unless you have enough LS, your W alone won't cut it (10% LS from Zeke's isn't enough either).
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First impressions... early game was nerfed a bit. The old lv9 INSANE power is, well, old and utterly gone. You need to stack ****loads of AD to make E its old self, which was early on a harrassment tool that chunked heavily, now you AA hoping people stay on you (or you get furor/phage/mallet or something) so you can E more often.
CDR doesn't have the impact it once had. I miss the health ratio on W because you still need HP to spam E effectively and R is now a gamble if you don't build tanky.
As for jungling, his clear speed is still very good IMO. His skillshot reliant ganks are still what it used to be and it was hard getting the kill most of the time without other CC from laner, but I did have an easy time shoving lanes.
Overall, I'm tempted to say he needs way too many stats to make him good. I played full tank and couldn't kill anyone without being on very low HP. I played bruiser and had an easier time killing the carries, but with R active I got focused hard and couldn't quite impact teamfights the way he used to. He seems to do little whislt a pure tank, not enough as a bruiser and goes down too fast as a melee carry.
I'm underwhelmed honestly. Or maybe his kit has changed so much you just can't play him the way you used to. Less of focus on the carry and more on the peeling side? I dunno... =/