Melee Tactics: Do any of the other stuff matter?

[Boromirs]

Apart from Stunning Blow (sorta neutered U9) and possibly improved trip (Although this has effectively been neutered post U9). Is there really any other use for the other types of "special attacks"? Really, how useful are ANY of the special attacks in non-epics and epic mode?

[Nick_RC]

1. Stunning Blow - still useful but needs a cooldown tweak.
2. Impr trip - Depends who you ask but with vertigo wraps/weapons and a good lvl split + enhancements STILL drops caster mobs on their butts for a good period of time. Have to build for a good trip tho. Which is quite tough the way AP's are these days.
3. Sunder - Spam it every time its off timer. Especially with epic mari chain you will typically get every raid boss. Adding substantial dps if running with poorly equipped pugs who have a hard time hitting.

4. Sap - still very useful - especially in these days of splitting the group up in epics to get things done faster. In tight quests like EDA its pretty junk but things like Into the deep/ADQ1 its nice being able to clear rooms on a melee and completely negate one epic mob.
5. Hamstring (Only with 1+ lvls of rog tho). Best horoth/harry debuff you can get now.

Nice to see you post something other than - 'is this max dps'.

N

[Thrudh]

Nice to see you post something other than - 'is this max dps'.

Nice to see he asked an actual question instead of a statement disguised as a question.

Good break down in your answer N.

[Shade]

1. Stunning Blow - still useful but needs a cooldown tweak.
2. Impr trip - Depends who you ask but with vertigo wraps/weapons and a good lvl split + enhancements STILL drops caster mobs on their butts for a good period of time. Have to build for a good trip tho. Which is quite tough the way AP's are these days.
3. Sunder - Spam it every time its off timer. Especially with epic mari chain you will typically get every raid boss. Adding substantial dps if running with poorly equipped pugs who have a hard time hitting.

4. Sap - still very useful - especially in these days of splitting the group up in epics to get things done faster. In tight quests like EDA its pretty junk but things like Into the deep/ADQ1 its nice being able to clear rooms on a melee and completely negate one epic mob.
5. Hamstring (Only with 1+ lvls of rog tho). Best horoth/harry debuff you can get now.

Nice to see you post something other than - 'is this max dps'.

N

Yea mostly agree with nick.
1. Kinda sucks we lost our double chance/multi stun ability.. But still ultra useful. A stun + 1200 point crit = dead epic mob.. Fun.
2. Trips, especially improved. Always use this on my fighter lives, its awesome. (I go 11 int, and get a +2 int tome for lvl7, then respec to get it) Too bad more pure barbs generally cant fit it =/. While leveling, with improve trip I found it landed on EVERYTHING. Plus with the enhanced duration and cooldown, you end up knocking down a lot more mobs.. Cant say the same for regular trip. Endgame trip works quite well on anything elite.. Epics.. Not really, they put there str/dex stats too high. But a fully maxxed out ftr with Improved trip and vert wep will land trip on epic, just sucks using a vertigo weapon. I keep suggesting they adde vetigo to a set of armor, if they finally do that.. Yea it will work on epic.
Regular trip:
Works on casters at least now, even without a vertigo wep, so its useful to at least try it. Generally on my barbs ill hit it everytime I can for epic casters, then leave them on the ground and move to the next guy. If its just melee mobs, ill just ignore it since it never works without pulling out the vertigo axe.
But was helping friends with elite amrath last night ,and its still quite effective there.. Elite sins you can trip those cinderspawns and they just stay down forever, very useful.

3. Sunder: At low lvl, I tend to use it constantly for anything I might miss. At high lvl, I probably should use it more often, but it has a horrible slow swing speed for THF now, so I honestly dont anymore. About the only place I think its really important to use it abbot, as his AC is beyond what a lot of pug melee are easily hitting, so I try to sunder him.. Especially since his fort save is ****, and sunder was actaully improved in u9 slightly (Duration is up to 12 seconds now, and cooldown is 10 seconds, so its maintainable permamently)

4. Sap: Good on a pure fighter with tons of a feats to spare. I tried it out, but when I used it it was rather useless. As with thf - it proced glancing blows, so I had to use it while moving, ot hte glance would unsap the mob heh. Guess thats fixed now, but still limited usefullnes, so really only for ppl with tons of feats to burn.

5. Useful, but yea not many builds can fit it besides nicks build due to the prereq of having rogue lvls, along with a spare feat slot. I kinda feel we shouldn't talk too much about this one, else it will end up being nerfed lol.

[Masadique]

5. Hamstring (Only with 1+ lvls of rog tho). Best horoth/harry debuff you can get now.

N

So hamstring DOES work on red names still? I'd heard this was changed.

[Nick_RC]

So hamstring DOES work on red names still? I'd heard this was changed.

Yeah the feat itself does. Only the weapon procs got nerfed. Honestly its quite a strange feat. It seems to work really well on Horoth, Harry, puppetmaster, EDA red dude (Basically those big red devils) but gives minimal changes to 'sulu' type horned devils and lailat.

I honestly am not worried about a nerf to the feat. So few builds can accomodate it because of the need for a rog level/feat starved that its something of a forgotten feat. If they nerfed it in any way they may as well just remove the feat from DDO.

N

[morticianjohn]

it seems like they stand up so quickly after getting tripped end game that it's hardly noticable. Maybe they're down for 3 seconds or so.... I don't have a ton of experience with improved trip as I TR'd my fighter quickly after him reaching 20 but it seems like they stand up so fast they don't lose out on much.

[Missing_Minds]

5. Hamstring (Only with 1+ lvls of rog tho). Best horoth/harry debuff you can get now.

Half elf dil of rogue won't work for it? If not, need to see about getting that changed.

[Nick_RC]

Half elf dil of rogue won't work for it? If not, need to see about getting that changed.

Couldnt tell ya man. Only experience with it is on a half orc and warforged.

[Missing_Minds]

Couldnt tell ya man. Only experience with it is on a half orc and warforged.

Fair enough, I'll try to remember to try one tonight.

[taospark]

I've found Stunning Blow to be pretty useful in the runup to Level 18 (Vale and Gianthold quests) to use on melees while you save Trip for an enemy caster or Cleric.

Hamstring is definitely useful if you're trying to keep a monster from running down a caster that took aggro first and even more if you're doing quick favor runs while trying to avoid Dungeon Alert.

[Missing_Minds]

Half elf dil of rogue won't work for it? If not, need to see about getting that changed.

Couldnt tell ya man. Only experience with it is on a half orc and warforged.

Well, rolled up a vet character last night. Half elf, pure fighter with rogue dil. Couldn't take hamstring. I'll have to bug that and suggest that.

[SensaiRyu]

For my last 2 feats on my Monk... I plan on taking gtwf and toughness.

Any thoughts on changing these 2 out for Cleave and Greater Cleave post U9?