I was running some numbers for my Lunging Strike and Whirlwind builds yesterday and noticed that the damage I saw in-game was a lot lower than expected.
After a while I traced the issue back to Wrath of the Berserker (WotB) and realize it was only giving me about a 35% buff on LS and a 20% buff on WW, although I expected it to double my damage.
At this point you might think: why did he expect a 100% buff?. If that is the case, congratulations, you never made the same mistake I did and probably already know what is coming next ^^. For everyone else, here is what I’ve learned.
WotB’s tooltip says:
‘every 50 Fury you spend increases Berserker’s damage bonus by 25% [x]’.
I thought about this exact wording many seasons ago, but for some reason, I just started believing, that it means ‘every 50 fury you spent increases your damage by 25/50/75/100% [x]’ when it in fact means exactly what it says (which is sometimes surprising in D4 ^^):
- If your Berserking bonus is 25% it will be increased to 50% at max. stacks, which is a 20% damage buff (1.5/1.25 = 1.2).
- If you use ‘Unconstrained’, your Berserking bonus is 60% instead of 25% and it will be increased to 120%, which is a 37.5% damage buff (2.2/1.6 = 1.375).
It is important to understand, that your Berserking damage is EITHER 25% OR 60% OR 120% in combination with Unconstrained!
If we compare this to other combinations of key passives and ultimate skills, we get a surprising picture (at least for me):
- Unconstrained + WotB → 76% more damage compared to regular Berserking (2.2/1.25)
- CotA + Unbridled Rage → 88.5% damage buff (1.3*1.45) + 20% attack speed
- CotA + Walking Arsenal → 97.7% damage buff (1.15^3*1.3) + 25% attack speed
I always thought WotB is by far the best damage buff you can get, but now it looks to me like the utility (pull-in, 30% resource generation, perma-berserking) and the option to use the WotB additive damage temper, are the actual reasons to use it.
Again, maybe you already knew this, but for me it was quite a revelation 
. Even after 9 seasons, I’m constantly learning new stuff about D4 (well, ok, most of the things are bugs or changes introduced later ^^).
