So all martial skills focus on one of three traits, being Bruiser, Impaler, or Slicer. My problem is that chops cap out at 5 or 6 damage, vicious trust was nerfed, and I can't find that many weapons with a large number of good bashes. Leaving me wondering what martial skill to use... Any help would be appreciated!
In a different discussion, on making Warrior characters more distinct, I reported what I've been doing these days: You can find Chops that do more than 6, like Massive Chop, but that's not really the point: you get way more of the 5/6 damage cards, and small-boosts-to-most-of-your-cards really adds up. That's the logic behind the "puny" 2 damage from basic Frenzy cards, after all. Or then again, Chops mean two opportunities to flush Blocks, which ticks off your enemies. For Bashes, I've been lamenting how hard it is to get the things. But as reported above, I totally did it.
I've just seldom found Chop to be that useful for two targets, and my usual strategy is to mutilate one target with my warrior, then jump to the next. It could also be that my main party is level 19 currently, and so there are few of the "outnumbered against multiple weaker melee enemies" maps.
With the current warrior attacks the traits are a little bit fuzzy but if you look at mage they are pretty fuzzy there as well the most noticable one being the burning increase and thats still 2 damage at most to something thats already completely negated by armor so i think they work like they should card cycling and minor boosts.
But I'm still unsure of which to grab. Impaler is tempting just to get the range 2 penetrating 9 damage card...
I guess it would totally depend on what weapon you can get your hands on. The only good bash weapon I can manage to find is Heavyweight Mace If I could find another one I would totally use bash. Right now using Impaler because I have a couple of Flashing Longspear
I mostly choose martial skills for reasons other than traits: All Out Attack for SP and Team Run for MP, specifically.
I had similar experience really. Bashes I stacked hard on a warrior early on, and while I could get quite a few at once, it was rare for an enemy to be dumb enough to sit with his back to a wall more than once. And since the +2 to all other Bash cards show themselves, the enemy KNOWS he is in for a massive beating, so you cannot come at them until they are for certain out of move/step cards. Encumber mage helped make the Bash guy work by preventing a bit of the running away when I did manage to corner someone. I don't have any mage cards with the ability to create walls, but that would also help with a Bash deck. Chop I had a lot more fun with. Running a Chop elven deck means you can wait for the enemy to think they have their priest/mage shielded behind their warrior, then you pop a free move and step right between the two and go to town. Same drawback with Strong Chop revealing itself when applying the +1 to other chops though. And the MASSIVE drawback of putting your frail elven warrior in melee range and line of sight of two enemies. It was rare I had enough Chops to do anything worthwhile, and those few times I had multiples I died faster than I killed. So... I have given up on Chop in MP, and am waiting on the ability to create walls to return to Bashing.