CM's and their tiers of greatness

[Enuch]

Okay so I am curious what everyone has on their must have CM's, fun CM's and useless CM's. There are so many to choose from, and so many points to plink into whatever.

I had a 67 warrior, but CM stuff came out right before I left, and I am new to the whole CM game presently. I know wspec and surge are must haves, and until I get into the warrior guild I have been digging feint. What might be some other must haves, what can I avoid, and as a two hander what might be fun to experiment with? Thoughts appreciated and snide remarks adored and supported with hugs! If you can make me frown with sadness due to the degree of emotional sniping I may even give you 5k in game for the ability to tear up this "morbidly obese" gentleman.

[Gnomad]

I have a level 67 elf THW warrior, but he mostly uses passives.


Skill name Mnemonic Ranks
Combat Focus focus 1 (2 TD for 2 CM points feels like a no-brainer)
Mighty Blow mblow 2 (prereq for Executioner)
Specialization II wspec2 3 (Prereq for bond)
Weapon Bonding bonding 5 (no-brainer)
Combat Mobility mobility 1 (50% chance to stand when attacked on the ground, super useful)
Combat Toughness toughness 1 (Elves need HP!)
Surge of Strength surge 5
Parry Mastery pmastery 3 (+15% parry)
Griffin's Voice griffin 1 (more uses of holler in the field; I set this up in town and then in the field switch to...)
Executioner's Stance executioner 2 (35% chance to attack another dude if I kill one, saving up for rank 3 for a flat 50%)


I love coup de grace, and it has brutal as hell messages if you stow your weapon before using it, but I haven't trained it since martial stances came out. Headbutt is cool but has height issues for me. Bearhug is fun for fucking with casters.

[Androidpk]

CM Mobility for sure. Parry mastery for THW.

[Carsyn]

I'm a THW giant warrior with high strength, so I never got Surge.

My character never had too much problem with offense, so other than Bonding and the 3 ranks of Wspec it requires (cause who doesn't want double strike flares and auto-returning when disarmed?), so the rest of mine are passive defensive...

Parry Mastery
Spell Parry (goes nice with Parry Mastery)
Combat Mobility
Combat Focus
Stance of the Mongoose (able to attack even when in roundtime hell, goes nice with Parry Mastery)

[Warriorbird]

All five ranks of wspec (for feint/disarm boosts), bonding, parry mastery, griffin's voice (for warcries/training).

[Donut]

I second the above vote for griffin's voice if you're going to master warcries. I've also played with mongoose and disarming presence (shield maneuver), but I didn't like the RT associated with the procs in those stances.

I'm digging griffin cause I can't get enough of things like this:

You let loose a nerve-shattering bellow!
A gremlock is startled enough to lose initiative!
A gremlock is startled enough to lose initiative!
A stooped being is startled enough to lose initiative!
A stooped being is startled enough to lose initiative!
A festering taint is startled enough to lose initiative!
A festering taint is startled enough to lose initiative!
A gremlock is startled enough to lose initiative!
A festering taint is startled enough to lose initiative!

Roundtime: 3 sec.

[Gnomad]

Man, I totally forgot they added bellow/growl/cry all. Thanks for the reminder.

[Jeril]

I don't like parry mastery, or mongoose stance. I'd only pick up those two if I was going to hunt warcamps exclusively and only use berserk on top of that.

I honestly don't know why one would have spell parry. Only time I had an issue with bolts was when I was uphunting a good ways and it was always the damn splash which I couldn't do anything about. Shield maneuvers do give some options for those these days though.

For must haves. I'd say 5 bonding, 3 wspec, 2 mobility, 3 focus( I prefer 5). I've picked up a number of maneuvers to better defend against them and while I have 4 ranks of cunning defense I don't see it as a must have. Some people also go with just 1 rank of mobility, but eh, I want my chances of it activating to be 100% not 50.

[Androidpk]

Mongoose stance rocks against bandits.

[Jeril]

Mongoose stance rocks against bandits.

I could fight bandits with a toothpick and still kick their asses.

[Neovik1]

You can poke someone's eye out with that!

[Enuch]

love all the insights and definitely will be taking the to heart! The stance things are new to me and I definitely will be inspecting those. I do do plan to do warcamps so parry mastery will probably be in my future for sure!

[MrMortimur]

It's less powerful than Dervish IMO but I really like executioner's stance on my HK warrior that uses a greataxe I also got Staggering blow(both of these cmans have the same prereq of Mightyblow rank 2) which is a great fit for him. I love being able to knock creatures into adjacent rooms when I don't want to deal with a particular one right that moment.
The rest of his stuff is cookie cutter passives with possibly the exception of Sidebyside which I benefit a lot from having.