If you need to move 2 then, surely, having a Dancing Cut in your hand is better than having a Lunging Bash. But the whole picture is much more complicated. 1) The step attacks generally deal less damage than non-step attacks, but we appreciate them for the versatility (and tech, if they have it). Versatility means you can move or deal damage, or even both. Prior to the rebalance, the game had some powerful step attacks, and everybody played them. Now the step attacks are nerfed, so we cannot play a lot of them if we want to deal enough damage. 2). While Dancing Cut has better move than Lunging Bash, the latter has two important advantages: Lunging Bash deals more damage with Crusher (or Bruiser). That's very important, since that's what enables me to run 8 Lunging Bashes and deal the decent damage with them. There are no such skills to pump Dancing Cuts, and that's why people have to play with much less number of them - say 4, like peonprop suggested. Lunging Bash bashes the enemy away. This is especially good if you have a lot of bashes and your number of bashes is greater than their number of moves: you can grab the victory area. 3). If we compare a warrior with 4 Dancing Cuts to a warrior with 8 Lunging Bashes (and Focused Crushing), we can decide that if he really needs to move 2+ additional squares per turn, besides his racial move, then Dancing Cuts are slightly better - but only slightly, since you have just 4 of them, and you cannot rely on having it when you will need it. Still, your chance of drawing it are higher than my chance of drawing two Lunging Bashes. But when you need to move just 1 extra square or don't need the extra moves at all, Lunging Bashes are much better (see #2). 4). If you deal more damage per turn, you generally need much less movement than a warrior dealing less damage, since you don't have to chase somebody for several turns. One turn may be enough That's why Energizing Move is golden for my Mad Dog: if he has it, chasing the enemy wizard is usually easy: move for 4 with the racial move, then move for 4 more with Energizing Move, then the wizard is dead. And that's why I expect that he has enough movement for the most tasks. I am glad if that cleared the whole picture for you.
But doesn't lunging bash hit people away from you, thus not allowing you to deal addition damage through Range 1 Melee attacks? By bashing someone away you would have to chase them again to deal addition damage, either this round or next round, thus giving up tempo. Of course, you could chain Lunging Bashes but haven't we concluded that drawing 2 Lunging Bashes is harder than drawing 1 Dancing Cut? How I see it is that Dancing Cut moves you next to an opponent, from either 2 steps away or 1 step away, deals damage, and then you stay there. Lunging Bashes, however, is like you step 1, attack them, and then move them away again. I mean if utility is not what you're going for here and damage is the main focus of the warrior build, wouldn't Dancing Cut allow for further combos and thus more damage?
I feel like I dove on a live grenade only to find out there was another one a couple feet away. Walk away while you still can. If you keep on trying to reason with him you'll both still be in the same place except you'll be a few shades redder with steam coming out your ears.
Yes, this is a problem. If you have one Lunging Bash + some strong attacks and need to move just 1 square to the enemy, you may want to cancel the bash attack. Losing one attack is rarely a problem if you have 20 attacks though - but if you have 11 attacks, then burning even one Dancing Cut to reach the victory area on turn one would be quite painful. You don't need to cancel your bashing attack if you have another Lunging Bash or don't have other attacks, or the target is staying near a wall, so the problem isn't critical. If you agree that the main warrior's task is fighting with the enemy warriors for the victory areas (though they should be able to chase and kill a wizard), you will have to admit that Lunging Bashes help much more than Dancing Cuts there. You will want to bash the enemy warriors away! Thus, we can assume that Mad Dog is slightly worse in chasing wizards compared to a Dancing Cut warrior, but slightly better vs warriors.
