Nope, it's the higher. A bashbrain/behead maneuver is useless unless you are aiming to fool curing that keys off of wound types for wounding values.

Desitrus already addressed very well the shielding vs. raze argument with the miss rate and all the things a warrior has to get through and still might just fail miserably.

On the side topic of maneuvers and wound afflictions, I don't think the higher ones always win when you're not using a maneuver. You still have a random chance to do the lower afflictions, but that chance is increased when you use a maneuver which leaves out the higher afflictions...

Right.

If you have, say, wounded their leg enough to get a 25% chance for a heavy wound... then you might have about a 60% chance of getting a medium and a 10% chance of getting a light (with a 5% of getting none). If you use a maneuver against the same wounding level that can only do the heavy and light, you have a 25% chance of the heavy and a 70% chance of the light. If you use just the medium affliction, you have an 85% chance of getting the medium (with a 15% chance of getting nothing).


PS: These numbers are not actually calculated out, but do demonstrate how it works in general.

So, basically it's better to not use maneuvers for the higher afflictions and use maneuvers for the lower? I'm not really understanding this.

You use it to get better control over what afflictions you want.

One of the best examples for a blademaster is this:

Collapselungs (heavy), puncturechest (medium), and puncturelung (light).

To get a collapselungs, they have to have a punctured lung first.

So, let's say you have them at critical wounds. Chance of getting no wound might be 5%. Chance of light, 5%. Chance of medium, 15%. Chance of heavy, 75%.

However, since the heavy can't actually fire without the light in place, you're just almost always going to get the medium. That way you can cut out the medium affliction, be almost assured of getting the light, and then your heavy can fire.

I was under the impression that it is better to use maneuvers for higher afflictions and list them as the only wounds that they will occur more frequently.

Given this new information, none of which I understand... I think I am going to be bugging Shuyin and Iasmos for a long time about how this stuff works.

No. *points above*

Which parts don't you understand? I'm more than happy to go through it and actually try putting in some more accurate numbers if that helps make it more clear.

I'll PM you to save the thread.