So this post is part question, then part suggestion based on what I currently know about combat maneuvers.

Why are combat maneuvers currently on a timer? I understand not wanting to be able to use them ALL the time, but the I feel the timer is a little much for each - especially since there is a "warm up" period when starting a combat maneuver.

Instead, why do we not utilize stamina? Each combat maneuver takes X stamina in order to do. Obviously if you chain them together you'll get tired pretty quick, but this will at least a) give some sort of practical "use" for Stamina and b) having higher stamina gives a benefit over a flat rate timer.

I think the idea behind the timer is that these attacks should be more powerful than regular attacks.

If you can do 50 damage in 6 seconds by regular attacks, then the maneuver should do 50+X damage during the 6 second warm up and RT.

The only way they can have them be more powerful is to put a timer on them, or else people would use them constantly. I'm not convinced that they are significantly more powerful than regular attacks. DR makes it hard to be sure of efficiency of things.

> The "warm up" + "cool down" rally makes these maneuvers meh. I can use normal attacks in that span of time to get an equal or better outcome.

I utilize maneuvers for each weapon pretty close to cooldown. I have not tried gathering data to support this but I too feel I can train and kill faster with normal combat.

The only toon I use these more with is my barb. By cycling through various weapons it is not too tough to use maneuvers 100% of the time, provided that you train enough weapons. What I am saying here is the if you train a weapon class for each maneuver you can keep maneuvers going without too much difficulty. palmstrike (brawling), doublestrike (needs one or two weapon classes along with offhand), twirl (staves), impale (polearm), cleave (I prefer 2HE as can use the LE with doublestrike on barb or main hand with everyone else), crash (I prefer 2HB for this for the same reasons as cleave). So that is 6 manuevers that each have a ramp up time + cooldown. When you factor in killing/skinning/looting/buffing/etc. it is not hard to cycle through these maneuvers.

All that being said my kill rate suffers when doing this. Also, I have to admit I have been backtraining some of these weapon classes so that should be taken into account as well.

I keep meaning to do some testing with powershot. Just based off of feel I suspect that ammo either does not factor into this or factors in too low as I can do significantly more damage with normal aim. Granted this is using high end ammo. This is accomplished with using just fire and gets a little worse when incorporating poach/snipe vs powershot.

All in all I like the concept of charged maneuvers and have no problem with a cooldown. Nor would I have a problem with stamina playing a stronger roll with the cooldowns either removed or scaled back.

Some how some way, barbarians do need to a way to generate more damage.

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