Torchlight 2 Shadow Berserker Build Guide by Takka

credits: This Torchlight 2 Berserker build guide was brought to us by Takku

The Berserker is usually interpreted as a physical melee class, but it is not a tank. Your survivability comes from selfhealing (lifeleech gems/weapons, Shadow Burst, Wolf Shade), Dodge (Dexterity, items) and passives (Shred Armor, Blood Hunger).

While high Dexterity seems like a good idea (big crit and dodge chance), dodge is not a reliable source for your survivability and as for the crit chance, you have to realize two things:

1. Your crits don't hurt unless your base damage and crit damage are high (high Strength, crit damage from items, etc.)

2. You always crit while Frenzy is up (by filling your Charge bar), so a high basic crit chance is only viable up to a certain point

Therefore, I consider Strength to be superior to Dexterity mostly (see Stats to find out more).

Focus increases your mana, magic damage and execute chance. Your damage is mostly physical, and by raising your Focus too much you will seriously gimp your damage - do not. Your execute chance will be high enough on it's own, so there's no point in raising focus for this either.

Vitality is the most reliable base attribute for survivability, but the increase in health and armor only seems huge early on, where you don't receive much armor/health/resistances from items and gems yet.

The Berserker class, as I picture it, is mostly about physical dps. A while ago, I stumbled upon a really helpful thread on the runic games forums about Maximizing Damage with Stats[forums.runicgames.com] which basically says that Strength is superior to Dexterity when it comes to maximizing your damage.

At level 100 you have 495 attribute points to allocate, and the gist of the mentioned thread is that 373 points should go into Strength while 122 should go into Dexterity.

However, the Berserker starts at 15 Strength and 15 Dexterity, which means you'll have 30 points left. You can still put them into Strength/Dexterity, but I decided to put them into Focus early on to get a bit more execute chance and also a bit more mana. This is entirely up to you.

My idea of allocating attribute points results in the following (without gear, of course):

373 Strength

122 Dexterity

35 Focus

5 Vitality

Now I realize 5 Vitality seems incredibly low, but I'm doing fine with it. Read the Skills and Gameplay sections to find out why.

While leveling up: I put nothing into dexterity before I had about 160 strength. At level 30 or so, I decided to put 30 points into Focus because my spamming of Shadow Burst to stay alive resulted in a shortage of mana at times. In NG+ Act II, I raised my base Dexterity from 30 to 70 so I would crit more often and thereby survive better from Blood Hunger's procs. At level 75, I was at

300 Strength, 70 Dexterity and 35 Focus. To give you a better idea of how to balance Strength vs Dexterity, here's a short list from the thread I linked above:

Originally posted by Caspid:

Rules of thumb:

If you have 100 points available to spec into Strength or Dex and are looking to maximize physical damage, the distribution will be 100 Str/ 0 Dex.

@155, 154/1.

@200, 181/19.

@250, 211/39.

@300, 242/58.

@350, 274/76.

@400, 308/92.

@450, 342/108.

@495, 373/122.

As I mentioned above, the build is a work in progess that is doing fine so far. The allocation I have in mind results in a 27/30/75 build (100 skill points from levels, 32 points from fame).

By following my build, you'll end up with 4 active and 6 passive skills, namely:

Active Skills:

Stormclaw (15/15)

Your basic chainlightning from melee hits ability. 40s duration with a 20s cooldown, so you can always keep it up and blast through huge groups of enemies. Also, it seems that every bounce can crit and thereby proc the Blood Hunger passive, although I still have to verify this.

Shadow Burst (15/15)

This ability comes with a lot of utility. It let's you escape from traps and also from being cornered, it breaks shields (100% chance with the T3 bonus) and it keeps your health bar up where Bloodhunger proves to be insufficient... and while you're healing yourself with this, you can also escape attacks from certain monsters with low attackspeed but high damage (usually those carry big mace or something of the likes) or cone/beam attacks from bosses. Awesome.

Wolf Shade (15/15)

Not only does this little guy attack your enemies, but he also buffs your damage and heals you whenever he deals damage. With the T3 bonus you can basically always have him around, until then you don't really need him for anything that is not a boss or a very strong champion mob.

Wolf Pack (15/15)

This ability is awesome, but I'm still not sure if I want to keep it. The damage is insane and it's my only way of taking out enemies from afar (in this build), but it comes with a few problems: It's not easy to use (the wolves may simply run into a wall and despawn if you're doing it wrong) and the mana cost is huge for a physical damage character. For the time being, I'm keeping (and loving) it.

Passive Skills:

Blood Hunger (11/15)

10% lifesteal per critical strike. It's only 11 points because the 4 missing ones are better used somewhere else in my opinion.

Executioner (1/15)

Only one point here because further points do not increase the time your charge gain is increased but simply the execute chance and the rate. 1/15 gives you 6% increased charge gain for 2 seconds while 15/15 gives you 42% increased charge gain for 2 seconds. The difference might seem big, but it's not as big as you might think, and you don't need +30% execute chance from a passive at higher levels (I found my first weapon with +25% chance to execute in Act 1 NG+ if I recall correctly).

Rampage (15/15)

This is one awesome passive to have as a duel-wielding Berserker. 33% chance on kill to gain 25% increased attack-, casting- and movement speed? Yes, please!

Cold Steel Mastery (15/15)

I'm not too sure about this one. 30% more physical damage seems awesome, but then again I don't know if maxing out something else (Blood Hunger or Executioner, for example) wouldn't be more rewarding. The 60% to Ice damage sound nice, but I don't really do any Ice damage in this build unless I pick up a weapon dealing high amounts of Ice damage on it's own already. Don't worry, I'll keep you posted on this.

Frenzy Mastery (15/15)

Increases your frenzy duration to 13,5 seconds when maxed. I'm not all that sure about this one either because high-end gear (possibly combined with more points in Executioner) would let me gain charge a lot faster, and that would make me gain Frenzy more often and thereby make a longer Frenzy duration redundant (or at least less effective than other options). I'll keep you posted on this as well.

Shred Armor (15/15)

This decreases your targets armor with every strike, letting you deal more physical damage. Since claws already ignore 50% of the target's armor, this alone wouldn't be awesome enough to justify 15/15 - but this skill is actually an armor leeching one. High attackspeed will result in more survivability for you, because this passive will allow you to "steal" some of the armor you remove from your target (which is awesome).

While leveling up: The general idea is to always max Shadow Burst over Stormclaw over Wolf Shade while also getting a lot of points into awesome passives such as Blood Hunger and Rampage. The other abilities mentioned are nice additions, but you'll already have your basic tools of the trade readily available with these. It is important to keep in mind that you should invest more into Blood Hunger and Shred Armor if you feel that you're dying too much even though you're spamming Shadow Burst.

At level 100, I'd go with the Harbinger Set[torchlight2armory.com] because it is simply amazing. Attackspeed, Critical Damage, Execute Chance, Lifesteal and more awesome bonuses await. As for weapons, I definitely favor claws due to the 50% armor ignored and the lack of splash damage is easily made up for with Stormclaw. If you feel like you want to use any other kind of weapon, feel free to do so but make sure you always wield two of the same kind - you cannot Execute otherwise, which would seriously hurt your overall dps.

Some awesome claws to choose from at level 100 are:

Iceshard Dominator[torchlight2armory.com] (Highest Attackspeed)

Sunglaze Needle[torchlight2armory.com] (Highest DPS)

Not of This Earth[torchlight2armory.com] (Legendary)

While leveling up: I didn't find it particularly necessary to grind for a better weapon while levelling up. I always used the claws I found most appealing to my playstyle, which meant that the base attackspeed had to be 0,8 or lower, preferrably as low as possible.

However, at some point I wanted to go with higher base damage so I picked up a Snakebite[torchlight2armory.com] which I got from the Gambler in The Mapworks while I was farming Act II in NG+ (around level 65-70) as my mainhand, and soon after I got a second one which dropped from Vyrax, the boss of a sidequest in Act III (and a few hours after I wrote this, a third one dropped from Bloatfang). It's an awesome weapon, really!

As for armor, I wasn't too picky until I stumbled upon a few pieces of the Highridge Set[torchlight2armory.com], also while farming Act II in NG+. Note that the set pieces are actually blue, not green as the link suggests. I found a helmet with +26 Strength and +18 Dexterity and a friend gave me Shoulders with +557 Health and +8 Dexterity. The bonuses on the set pieces can vary, but they were usually fine. I only got 6/9 pieces, however, because I already made level 70 and moved on to Act III.

As a general rule of thumb, always favor Strength and Dexterity over Vitality and Focus, and grab a few pieces that give you attackspeed, critdamage and bonus to dual-wielding or melee damage.

There are a lot of Gems to choose from, so I will just provide you with a brief overview of viable ones. In general, you should always use gems to raise whatever you are lacking. The common games will mostly be interesting while levelling up. At higher levels, you will hunt for the unique gems listed below them in order to replace the common ones you had until then.

Note that every item can have 2 sockets if you find the enchanter whose only purpose is to add sockets to your items! See Enchants to find out more.

Also note that the common gems have various grades. the highest being "Giant ... Ember" and requiring level 100.

Iron Ember

Physical damage or armor reduction per hit in weapons, both are nice for a Berserker. In armor, they can sometimes add melee weapon damage (among other less viable bonuses).

Chaos Ember

Perhaps the gem with the most varying bonuses. Among the viable bonuses it can have for weapons are attackspeed, critical chance, critical damage, dual-wielding damage and execute chance. As for armor, there's dodge chance, movement speed, knockback resistance and other stuff. While those are also nice to have, they are not as good as benefits from different gems.

Blood Ember

In weapons, these will add lifesteal on hit which adds survivability. Socketed into armor it adds health or health regeneration, which are not that viable in my opinion.

Void Ember

The same as Blood Ember but with mana rather than health. Might be useful to a certain extent since more mana means more Shadow Bursts, but other than that you can probably stay away from these.

Yololo Skull

Better version of the Blood Ember (in weapons), and awesome name.

Skull of Umbarmun

Better ersion of the Void Ember (in weapons).

Skull of X'n!troph

Same as Iron Ember's armor reduction version, but on steroids.

Skull of Yanfeer

+10% to all damage in armor/trinkets.

Skull of Whorlbarb

+10% crit chance in weapons.

Vellinque Skull

Same as Iron Ember's physical damage version, just better.

Skull of Vastok

+18% attackspeed in weapons.

Rambren Skull

+60% critical damage. Boom.

Skull of Limoany

-5% all damage taken in armor/trinkets.

Skull of Riechliu

Same as Blood Ember in armor/trinkets, just better. Gets the most out of the healing received from Blood Hunger and Shadow Burst.

There's also gems increasing charge rate, decreasing charge decay rate, reducing fumble chance or adding to strength/dexterity, but none of them are high-end gems and therefore negligible, although they are really awesome while playing on lower levels. Speaking of which...

While levelling up: As mentioned above, you will usually find yourself using the common gems until you get the high-powered unique ones at level 100. You may find a unique gem every now and then while levelling up, so feel free to use them if they appeal to your playstyle and/or current needs. However, there are a few gems that actually help you level up faster:

The Eye of the Artificer & The Eye of Cacklespit

Each provides you with 1% more experience gained. Hooray!

Use them if you find one, but they are not worth farming in my opinion. Better pick up Adventuring[torchlight2armory.com]!