Poorly designed Charge mechanics?

[Rathia]

I find no problem in noticing the benefits of Charge on my Outlander or Engineer as there is some form of consistency throughout building and maintaining/expending the resource in a battle, but it comes across as less than useful on my Embermage and Berserker. The latter two are the focus of my complaint, although I'll preface my comment with the fact that I'm currently in the level 30 range with both classes.

In general I'll be casting spells with my Embermage which, I'm expecting, is the proposed gameplay of the class. However I find very little charge gain in casting most spells in my arsenal, regardless of how long or short the encounter may be. Somehow though, I gain Charge at a vastly increased rate by mashing my attack button using twin wands to take out enemies. At which point I eventually enter the Charge state which for the class removes mana costs and increases damage dealt. My issue is: What's the point of removing mana costs if I'm not expending mana to load up my Charge bar?

As for the Berserker, I find myself 90% of the time with a full charge bar at the end of most encounters which seems a little counter productive. All those critical hits and all that life recovered would've been REALLY handy when I was facing that elite minion/boss, but it just wasn't so.

Unless the Charge mechanic expands drastically later through enchantments and socketables (which I've seen on other players, such as Charge generation increases as well as decay reduction) I'm finding the system a bit lackluster at least on these two classes. Since the Outlander mostly gains passive benefits that increase as shots land, and the Engineer gains skill enhancement at every Charge tier or so, their use of it remains consistent. But I think the Mage and Berserker could use a little polish on that front.

Thoughts?

[Matthew]

I only have experience with higher level Embermage, but I recall the skill to increase duration and decrease decay of charge to be very effective. Although it is a bit silly that half of the bonus is infinite mana when the class is designed to take advantage of focus (therefore resulting in mana never being an issue with or without charge).

From the little I've played the Zerker, it felt like it had lots of potential. Being able to heal on a critical hit while having every hit critical...

Anyway, my thought is this: One needs to consider why charge bars were implemented in the first place. They are not there because they are vital to playing the game, they are there to give minor incentive for players to chain together kills and keep hacking/slashing. If one classes charge bar effect is not as useful as another's, it doesn't overly bother me.

[Matthew]

Oh, and also consider that the Outlander's charge may purposely be more useful. From what I've played, an Embermage is still more effective than a fully charged Outlander.

Same deal with the Engineer: By design, many of the skills require expenditure of charges. It'd be a bit silly if Engineer's could only use those abilities every once and a while if their charge mechanics were more similar to Embermage/Zerker.

[Ellix]

The Zerker benefits from a near permanent charge bar at higher levels of execute. My zerker uses a Haymaker unique claw (+45% to execute each) and an axe with (+25%) Between that and the passive to increase execute chance also increases charge gains I'm at 100% execute. It takes me less than ~2 seconds to go from empty charge to full. At which point the berzerker becomes ridiculously OP. I abandoned him because he just steamrolled everything.

[Dreams]

Sounds like you're in some weird situation where you have really good wands and not powerful enough spells. My embermage is level 76 now, and my spells have always dealt way more damage (and generated way more charge) than my weapons.
Do just spec into loads of different spells?