Balanced Attacks

[moo_cow]

I am curious how many unarmed users out there use this as a twist.

Balanced Attacks: Passive- You gain a +[2/4/6] Primal bonus to Attack as long as you are shapeshifted into an animal form, wielding two weapons, or unarmed. Rank 3: Knock down enemies for 2 seconds on vorpal hit. Enemies knocked down by this effect are helpless.

I see a lot of people saying this is the bestamest twist for any twf character. I am curious how many people actually find it useful, because I must say a knockdown every 20 seconds for 2 seconds of helpless damage sounds awful. I have been using it for a while now and it seems quite trivial, every 5-9 seconds it knocks an enemy down for 2 seconds of extra damage. So what is so great about it exactly? I am not trying to knock the ability, or anyone that uses it, this is a serious question.

[LordTigerDawn]

I am curious how many unarmed users out there use this as a twist.

Balanced Attacks: Passive- You gain a +[2/4/6] Primal bonus to Attack as long as you are shapeshifted into an animal form, wielding two weapons, or unarmed. Rank 3: Knock down enemies for 2 seconds on vorpal hit. Enemies knocked down by this effect are helpless.

I see a lot of people saying this is the bestamest twist for any twf character. I am curious how many people actually find it useful, because I must say a knockdown every 20 seconds for 2 seconds of helpless damage sounds awful. I have been using it for a while now and it seems quite trivial, every 5-9 seconds it knocks an enemy down for 2 seconds of extra damage. So what is so great about it exactly? I am not trying to knock the ability, or anyone that uses it, this is a serious question.

Keyword: Vorpal

Stack dmg effects with sense weakness and other dmg on helpless enhancements that proc on vorpal. It pretty much is a one shot to a lot of mobs.

[JamesNiels]

It is a pretty good twist for twf indeed. However... monks can make helpless by stunning/tomb of jade. Which makes balanced attacks useless against anything that is stunned. With 6 second cooldown and 6 second duration of stunning fist AND kukando as backup stun... yeah...

The stunning abilities of a monk pretty much make these twists more beneficial for a monk.

Cocoon.
Sense weakness. +30% damage against helpless and a load of untyped damage based on mob health % left.
Legendary tactics. (+6 tactics DC) in anything but legendary dreadnought ED / Dance of flowers (+1.5 W dice) while in legendary dreadnought ED.

Note that with sense weakness and no mercy (ninja spy) u get +110% dps on stunned. Which is incredible u can hit for over 250 easily with every punch, + sneak attacks and weapon effects which are also multiplied against helpless.
Also, if u got it all u can get a 76 DC stunning fist (achievable on a 2nd life, subtract 1-2 for first life). Which has a 95% succes rate on all ee's except for stormhorns and wheloon, in which u will have a semi reliable DC. (Yes, im talking about the high fort saves melees which generally mess u up)

[thegreatneil]

It is a pretty good twist for twf indeed. However... monks can make helpless by stunning/tomb of jade. Which makes balanced attacks useless against anything that is stunned. With 6 second cooldown and 6 second duration of stunning fist AND kukando as backup stun... yeah...

Use it against undead, as jade is a 1 min? cool down.

[JamesNiels]

Use it against undead, as jade is a 1 min? cool down.

Yup. Left that out but obviously u can twist it instead of the tactics if ur mainly facing undead, or constructs.

[Robbenklopper]

Yup. Left that out but obviously u can twist it instead of the tactics if ur mainly facing undead, or constructs.

For being a big fan of getting Mobs imobilized, i checked out balanced attacks immediatly when coming home and was - a bit disappointed. I can´t say it was that big Thing i imagined in my Fantasy (...) , some fell but would have died anyway. In Addition that those who fell weren´t always counted as "helpless". But:
Talking about effect on undead or constructs, it can be of good use. ToJ has a horrible Long CD and JadeStrike locks too seldom for my taste. As far as i dont have my 4th fate Slot and am going 431, there are far better feats to swap, but on a 4321, it could be fun.

[Saekee]

It works on orange-named

[Monkey-Boy]

it's fantastic, I normally don't bother with it as I have a ridiculous stunning-fist DC but in situations where I'm fighter more undead/constructs than living targets I find it more valuable than Sense Weakness.