Critique my CMANs. Which of my CMAN's are the most useless?

[dex]

Skill name             Mnemonic        Ranks
Combat Movement        cmovement         5
Combat Focus           focus             5
Specialization I       wspec1            5
Weapon Bonding         bonding           5
Combat Mobility        mobility          2
Combat Toughness       toughness         1
Parry Mastery          pmastery          3
Cunning Defense        cdefense          5
Spell Parry            sparry            3
Griffin's Voice        griffin           1

I'm trying to recover some CMAN points for other stuff, basically I'm mainly concerned about Cunning Defense, Combat Mobility, and Parry Mastery. I'm a warrior without a shield, btw.

Parry Mastery - is there any actual benefit to having 15% parry chance vs just letting the attack go straight to your DS?

Combat Mobility - I'm questioning this choice because berserk keeps me upright anyway, and even when I'm down, I don't really take much damage. This CMAN also eats up stamina.

Cunning Defense - I still don't fully understand the benefit of having higher CML defense and in which cases that is useful.

Also, I'm missing Surge of Strength because I assume it does nothing when you already have +20 str bonus from enhansives?

[Ososis]

were it me, I would keep parry, keep mobility (at least rank 1) drop cunning defense and combat movement, drop WSPEC down to 3-4, drop spell parry to 2.

[Donquix]

Skill name             Mnemonic        Ranks
Combat Movement        cmovement         5
Combat Focus           focus             5
Specialization I       wspec1            5
Weapon Bonding         bonding           5
Combat Mobility        mobility          2
Combat Toughness       toughness         1
Parry Mastery          pmastery          3
Cunning Defense        cdefense          5
Spell Parry            sparry            3
Griffin's Voice        griffin           1

I'm trying to recover some CMAN points for other stuff, basically I'm mainly concerned about Cunning Defense, Combat Mobility, and Parry Mastery. I'm a warrior without a shield, btw.

Parry Mastery - is there any actual benefit to having 15% parry chance vs just letting the attack go straight to your DS?

Combat Mobility - I'm questioning this choice because berserk keeps me upright anyway, and even when I'm down, I don't really take much damage. This CMAN also eats up stamina.

Cunning Defense - I still don't fully understand the benefit of having higher CML defense and in which cases that is useful.

Also, I'm missing Surge of Strength because I assume it does nothing when you already have +20 str bonus from enhansives?

Do you have low enough DS that things can hit you? If yes, it's still helpful. if no, not really. I thought it was one of the best CMans I had on my TWC (so it double dipped with two parry chances) warrior with shit gear and just massies for spells. My spell-train heavy monk with 7x armor, 3x dodge and a full wizard spellup usually where I could lay down in the room and not even come close to being hit...not so much. The exception to that is if you were to run mongoose, which you aren't.

1 rank of mobility is usually enough, especially if you're berserking more often than not. But if you get caught out and proned by a random ewave or whatever, pretty great return on investment for 5 points.

What do you not understand about CML defense? if things are ever doing CML attacks to you (bandits with groin strike, sweep, etc. critters tackling / bull rushing / charging / etc.) you defend better. Low endrolls = lower damage, lower chance to knock you down, stun you, put you in RT lock, etc. If say, a bandit needs to roll a 60 to knock you down with sweep, if you have cunning defense mastered now they need to roll a ~75 or whatever.

Correct on surge. Your total bonus to a stat can't exceed +20 bonus.

[Gnomad]

Parry Mastery - is there any actual benefit to having 15% parry chance vs just letting the attack go straight to your DS?

Combat Mobility - I'm questioning this choice because berserk keeps me upright anyway, and even when I'm down, I don't really take much damage. This CMAN also eats up stamina.

Cunning Defense - I still don't fully understand the benefit of having higher CML defense and in which cases that is useful.

Also, I'm missing Surge of Strength because I assume it does nothing when you already have +20 str bonus from enhansives?

Parry Mastery - yes, especially with spell parry giving you bolt spell protection, which DS probably won't help you with

Combat Mobility - If you rely on berserk to stand you back up, you'll "waste" a round of berserk and go 10 seconds between attacks. That doesn't always end well. 2 ranks is not necessary, but I took it when I had nothing better to spend points on.

Cunning Defense - I don't love it. 5 ranks of cdef is like having 1 rank of every cman for defensive purposes. Never felt like enough to make a difference by itself.

Combat Movement - I agree with Ososis. Drop it. You've got to have a better use for 20 CM points than +10 DS. Anything is a better use of 20 CM points. Hell, you can trade it straight-up for 4 ranks of Combat Focus and you've gone from +10 DS to +8 TD, which is way more useful for a warrior.

Specialization - I also agree with Oso on WSPEC, 4 and 5 are 8 and 10 CM points for +2 AS and +2 CML attack/defense bonus each, assuming the CM uses a weapon. If you're using weapon-based CMs enough, it might be worth the points, but it's definitely not worth it for the AS. (3 ranks are required for bonding.)

[Archigeek]

I would probably drop the last rank of focus and movement. That last 2 points of TD is pretty pricey for a small amount. If it were me I'd turn around and put those points into griffin's voice, or some coup for entertainment value.

[Stunseed]

Here's my TWC twin star user.


Skill name Mnemonic Ranks
Mighty Blow mblow 1
Sunder Shield sunder 4
Charge charge 3
Subdual Strike sstrike 3
Specialization I wspec1 3
Weapon Bonding bonding 5
Combat Mobility mobility 1
Combat Toughness toughness 2
Bull Rush bullrush 2
Surge of Strength surge 2
Parry Mastery pmastery 3
Cunning Defense cdefense 5
Spell Parry sparry 3
Griffin's Voice griffin 2
Whirling Dervish dervish 2

In my opinion, very little is worth having the maximum amount of ranks. Just bonding, and spell parry are worth it for me. I'd drop down to 4 ranks of CDEF, but there's not much I can do with it to make that much of a difference.

I keep dervish for myself when hunting in a capped area, and Griffin's Voice to help others when they hunt undead.

I have one roleplay manuever I use, which is Sunder Shield. Everything else is passive/defensive.

[dex]

Good feedback. I have currently reworked it as follows:

Skill name             Mnemonic        Ranks
Combat Movement        cmovement         2
Combat Focus           focus             4
Specialization I       wspec1            5
Weapon Bonding         bonding           5
Combat Mobility        mobility          1
Combat Toughness       toughness         1
Parry Mastery          pmastery          3
Cunning Defense        cdefense          4
Stance of the Mongoose mongoose          3
Spell Parry            sparry            3
Tainted Bond           tainted           1

I'm not sold on Tainted Bond though, so may revert back from it and put some points back into mobility (to save that berserk round, which I didn't think about...) as well as back into combat focus for the +2 TD. Being a warrior TD is really the Achilles heel, so need all I can get there.