Berserker Leveling: Harnessing Your Inner Barbarian

There’s not much to be said about the Primalist: it’s the new kid on the block, the newest Calling and with the fewest Souls to be chosen. It also has less points overall to achieve the same end, which means you don’t get as many choices, and you don’t get Soul Points every level. But it’s still fun, and there isn’t much to be said right now for leveling, because there simply isn’t a leveling guide that focuses on the Primalist. Sure, Vulcanist is the “go to” for leveling, and its fine on single-target fights. But I think we all know that “single-target” doesn’t happen as much as we’d hope for: a lot of it is multiple targets being pulled, whether intentional or inadvertently. While Vulcanist can do the job no issue with the preset, you really need an AoE spec to make use of this gameplay. There’s more risk in pulling groups of mobs, but the payout is also larger in the form of higher experience gain.

The Berserker soul is the melee AoE spec to use for this. It provides great AoE attacks with decent single-target attacks. Hefting your two-hander and cleaving groups of enemies is always fun, no matter who you are! Of course, there’s pros and cons to this playstyle, so we’ll cover it first.

Also, I should mention this is my first guide for this game, despite playing it for a while. Go easy on the criticism (just kidding, come at me bro).

Pros

• AoE and sweeping attacks like there is no tomorrow! Almost every ability in the tree is geared towards an AoE playstyle.
• Solid single-target capabilities, even for an AoE specialization! Decent single-target builder, and some of the other abilities switch between single-target and multiple targets depending on circumstances.
• Little true downtime involved with the build—take on group after group! It’s easy to go after multiple groups one after the other with proper resource management and situational awareness.
• Melee build! Put that two-hander to use! A lot of leveling builds are ranged or pet builds. This is a melee, in-your-face, punch them in the throat build!

Cons

• Gear-dependent. Like any melee build, you need to watch your gear and replace it as it gets out of level. Ranged and pet builds have defenses beyond armor to help them; you do not.
• No passive heals. A lot of leveling builds make use of passive talents to heal while leveling. Primalist doesn’t have that luxury.
• Position is key. Seeing where enemies are is important to making sure you don’t pull too much, too fast.
• Can be slow on single-target and boss fights, even with decent skills to hit one person.

Now, it’s all about making the most out of what you’re given. While this may seem a bit daunting (positioning, gearing, lack of passive heals), it’s still a viable and fun playstyle. But let’s go over some of the skills that you’ll be using.

Cunning Abilities

Icy Cleave: Your bread-and-butter AoE ability, it deals more damage the more enemies it hits. While it caps out at 8 enemies, it is still a substantial amount of damage, and can quickly make short work of groups by itself. Moves your bar 20 points towards FURY when used.

Underworld Shards: Like Icy Cleave, it hits up to 8 enemies, and gains 50% more damage for each enemy it hits beyond the first. It has a five-second cooldown, but it can be lowered by talents and is linked to other skills. Moves your bar 60 points towards FURY when used.

Fury Abilities

Morbid Slash: Your single-target builder, this skill hits for a decent amount of death damage. Moves your bar 40 points towards CUNNING when used.

Creeping Doom: An AoE ability, it has no cooldown, and applies a DoT to up to 8 enemies with-in range. This can pull enemies you didn’t initially pull. The DoT lasts 15 seconds, and had no cooldown to use this ability. Movesd your bar 40 points towards CUNNING when used.

Other Offensive Abilities

Corpsefall: This ability has two functions. While in FURY, the attack is an AoE that deals damage to up to eight enemies, and an additional 60% damage for each enemy past the first. It will push the bar 40 points towards CUNNING when in this form. If CUNNING is active, it instead deals weapon damage plus additional Death damage to a single enemy, and pushes the bar 20 points towards FURY. In either situation, with a talent each time you use Icy Cleave you will reduce the cooldown of this skill by 1 second.

Icefall: Pretty much the same as Corpsefall, except the damage is Water instead of Death. The only difference is that the single-target version deals slightly less damage than Corpsefall.

Whirlpool: A one-minute cooldown, this skill deals Water damage each second for two seconds. However, its primary purpose is to draw all enemies to your primary target, making AoE more effective. Highly situational, but highly amusing and effective if you have casters close-by, or want to drag adds to the boss for cleaving them.

Heart Freeze: In keeping with the AoE nature of this soul, your interrupt is one you’ll pick up later in the tree, and hits multiple enemies. When used, it will interrupt and debilitate up to 10 enemies close-by, so useful in PvP after Whirlpool.

Primal Avatar: Tiger: All Primalist souls have a final talent to be unlocked, called “Primal Avatar”. Yours makes you toight like a toiger! A one-minute cooldown, when activated it immediately sets your bar to 100% FURY no matter where it starts at, reduces the natural cooldown for Corpsefall and Icefall to 0, and applies three stacks of Calculated Action and Restrained Fury. The combat buff lasts 15 seconds.

Planar Spout: Who wants to be Charybdis? With this you can channel your inner water demon thing and deal additional damage! A one-minute cooldown, you get a swirling water animation that moves with you, dealing water damage to enemies around you. It also increases your damage output by 15%. Talk about a swirly!

Rockslide: Two points into Dervish nets you this skill. You lack a closer ability naturally in Berserker, so you dip into Typhoon to get this skill. You close with a target, and damage and root him plus four other nearby targets. It doesn’t push your bar one way or the other.

Healing Abilities

Cultivate: Places a HoT on you that lasts 18 seconds. Because we lack talents that provide passive healing, dipping into Preserver is the only real way to get healing we can use while leveling. Moves your bar 10 points towards CUNNING when used.

Deluge: Your “burst” heal. Doesn’t do much, but it provides a quick infusion of HP if you need it. It has a 10 second cooldown, so it isn’t spammable. Moves your bar 20 points towards FURY when used.

Playstyle

There’s not much to say. This is a leveling build, not a farming build, not an end-game build, not a dedicated PvP build. Really, you want to watch your positioning, as it is easy to pull large groups without meaning to. Especially at earlier levels (sub-25, really), pulling more than four or five mobs at a single time can spell disaster for you, and can lead to huge survivability issues. Even if you stay on top of your gear, it’s simply a question of talents and healing. It’s not impossible, it’s just not likely to mean you can live. And if you do, you’ll be drinking, which isn’t a bad thing.

After level 25 is when you can start doing large groups. You’ll have access to solid poitions, a good amount of talents to maximize damage, and you’ll have a few skills to make use of for quicker gameplay. You can be a bit more reckless, but you must still watch positioning, especially in groups. Adventures and dungeons will be good spots for you to make yourself known, as Whirlpool especially will make AoE grindfests easier on the group as a whole. Speaking of, Whirlpool should be used off cooldown to draw in groups, so you can get kills quicker and expedite leveling, especially when spellcasters and perky ranged mobs are involved.

Hitting Storm Legion at level 48 isn’t exactly advisable, but if you purchased the gear for your character using Void Stones and Planarite, it’s doable. Just not easy. You’ll also not want to pull groups, making this soul subpar until you hit 50 and get some gear.

In PvP…well, I’ll admit I don’t do much PvP. I’m not a huge PvP buff, and maybe someone else can do a rundown on how effective this build is in warfronts. I won’t even speculate.

Talent Trees

Level 20
Level 30
Level 40
Level 50

Reasoning for Soul Choices

I like running melee builds, more-so than I enjoy spellcaster, ranged, and pet builds. If I could, I would run every class I could as melee while leveling, and you generally can. Berserker seemed like a good way to AoE, allowing for farming of mobs for experience gain, as well as maximum killing in dungeons. Dervish provides you with a closer, which you need as a melee build, and doesn’t provide much beyond that. Preserver is self-explanatory: lacking talents that give passive healing, you need actual healing to take over for that portion of the leveling “experience”. Leveling with this build, I have been able to take on groups far in excess of what I could, even on my Cleric when I leveled it, and I didn’t feel like I had much to worry about except when patrols stumbled upon me and I wasn’t ready.

Useful Macros

AoE Spam

Single Target

Healing

Eye of the Tiger (or Kitties Love Water!)

Unfortunately, Creeping Death lacks a cooldown, so you can’t incorporate it into macros. As-such, you’ll have to manually cast it (hey, you can’t make everything easy mode!). Corpsefall and Icefall, being how they are, may not be a good addition to a macro, because you use them at different times.

Please feel free to comment, ask questions, tell me how much of a scrub I am, etc. below!

Thanks for reading!

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Berserker Leveling: Harnessing Your Inner Barbarian