The Tavern

Berserk is really, really good. Maybe a little too good. Slow and exhaustion and hunger aren't enough of a cost if you know how to use it carefully.

Similarly, clarity is really, really good. Maybe a little too good.

Unintentional berserk from enemies like moths of wrath is already blocked. Yet somehow, your amulet of clarity/Ash benefit/mutation knows when berserk is intentionally caused by quaffing a potion/god ability/evoking ammy, and lets those cases through. It would be more consistent if all berserk was blocked.

This would also make the clarity mutation more of a double-edged sword, which I think would be nice.

Oh, to prevent Hypothetical Optimal players from resorting to switching out the amulet whenever they wanted to zerk, and putting it back on afterward, you could give clarity a timer like gourmand. (Or else a chance of confusing the player upon removal "You feel less certain of everything. You are confused!" )

One more reason not to drink potions of beneficial mutation.

Pssssht! This is one of the things we dont tell the devs about so they dont change it!

Clarity is not good enough for me, the only time i bother using it is when doing spider nest. Having the clarity mut preventing berzerk is a interesting deal though, we need more handcapping muts.

But not handicapping muts conferred by potions of beneficial mutation.

I guess you don't like Necromutation and casters with CBoE. Clarity is very nice to have for some characters.

Clarity is completely useless most of the time. But sure, let's nerf Ash!

make clarity enable ambrosia

This is a tough one to me, because on the one hand, it's kind of dumb there's a special case for purposeful berserk with clarity. On the other hand, preventing that special case is equally obnoxious, since both of the solutions elmdor mentions in his last paragraph are kind of purposeless nerfs.

If the berserk/clarity interaction really needs some kind of nerf, it'd be preferable to apply some kind of debuff. Post-berserk confusion, stat drain, contam, etc.

I like stacking my MR high and avoiding the sight of confusing things. Maybe thats also something to be taken in consideration, the number of confusing enemies is too damn low for me to care.

Hell effect and CBoE ignore MR

Oh, the humanity.

Doesn't berserk already give you resistance to confusion and mesmerisation?

Nope.

never got confused by a satyr while mesmerized by a siren during berserk? try it, its fun.

The first suggestion also stops swapping to Clarity at the sight of an enemy with confusion or a Moth of Wrath, though, and isn't being able to do that an entirely intended mechanic? Gourmand has mechanics to prevent swapping it around all the time because, without them, it would be optimal to swap gourmand on and off all the time out of combat. Most jewelry with combat effects, such as clarity, is intended to be swappable mid-combat. While many consider it tedious, to my knowledge jewelry swapping is currently still considered an intended part of the game's strategy - just not silly, out-of-combat jewelry swapping like putting on Gourmand or rPois to eat some chunks.

Nerfing clarity has issues in general as others have pointed out, but at the very least I don't like nerfing clarity even for people who aren't try to berserk just so it can't be "abused" with berserk (based on responses in this thread, I don't think swapping out clarity to berserk would even be seen as abusive, just annoying).

How about just...removing the interaction between clarity and berserk? It does two things:
1. make a mutation do nothing
2. remove the intended drawback of a few artefacts
Neither of these seem very good. And of course, technically, you could still get them from stasis, although it's never used because stasis is so awful to wear.

Hear, hear!
Clarity is a fancy name for rConfuse. It shouldn't have any effect on Berzerk in the first place.

If clarity needs a drawback, is it enough that it usually occupies an amulet slot, or possibly a god slot?
If it needs more downside, let attempts to confuse consume small amounts of MP and HP when clarity Is active.

Clarity is good, it's drawback is that most of the time it does nothing.

If this ever gets anywhere, please special-case troglodytes to still zerk. My clarity mut would be worse than any other possible mut.

Well, there is still Mesmerize. Should that stay?