It is four hits, but none of them are as strong as a swing. In fact, they are substantially weaker. Have someone hit the same limb with two lunges, then try a haymaker. The haymaker will probably only do marginally more damage/wounding. In addition to this, haymaker either has a terrible hit rate or does not bypass stance/parry. Missing a hit does not reduce the power cost at all - even if you only hit once, it is still 10 power.

It is far better to manage lunges wisely than to blow your offense on a haymaker. I've yet to hear of anyone actually using it to good effect.

I agree, heartpierce should give burst vessels.

Let HeartPierce crit.

This burst vessels thing actually gives me some ideas. Why not make some of the bonecrusher wounds cause internal bleeding in the form of burst vessels? That would give it something unique that other specializations don't have, make sense thematically, and probably be fairly easy to balance since bonecrusher wounds don't cause bleeding unlike all the other specialization's wounds.

So for example, crush chest could be renamed crush heart, or break heart (<3), and in addition to its normal effect it would give 1-2 burst vessels.
Break wrist, since it involves /wrists, would give 1 burst vessel.

This would put useful things in the two areas of the body otherwise not targeted as often as other areas (chest and arms) that is different from what hitting other areas does and which, like I said, would probably be fairly well balanced since there's no bleeding otherwise in bonecrusher.

Kind of like the Nekotai weapon form?

Basically yeah, though if that involves anything I didn't already mention, I'm not suggesting that go in.

So, any other opinions on this idea?

While I generally like the burst vessels idea, it would have to be restricted enough not to impact wound curing so strongly (by having you sip health constantly for the vessels instead of applying it) that it gets too powerful. But some minor vessels on certain afflictions sounds like an interesting idea.

I concur.

I like that the way of 'fixing' BC would be to go ezmode TK with burstvessels.

It's not like he's asking for the instakill that goes with the burst vessels. And, sure, it might be OP when a BC and a TK are both beating on a person, but we all know everything is OP when fighting as a group and this game isn't balanced around group combat.

You have a better idea? I'm interested.

The instant kill is definitely not what makes vessels powerful. Usually when people pull off the instant, it is considered impressive because the target had not already managed to die yet.

So long as it is only applied on a critical wound condition, and only one vessel at a time, I don't think it'd be too terrible, though. Warriors can swing a lot faster than psions get their channels back. Then again, I am definitely not the combat expert, so I'll leave it at that and scurry away now.

You don't need the instakill (though it helps) to kill people with burst vessels.

Giving them to a warrior as wound affliction to many different parts all but ensures the that when it comes to applying wounds, you lose much faster when compared to other warriors. Imagine, having to only eat sparkle to cure vessels because you're too busy applying to keep your wounds low. And believe you, you're applying at that point because your bodyparts are at critical already. Giving them to the critical wound afflictions helps with this, and I can imagine giving it to one part, but not more than that. Especially with BC, who can KD easily and give mangled leg at medium wounds.

You want my idea? Remove the chance for mangled leg to be given at medium wounds, then you can buff up crush leg to a jab. From there, you can just spam breaknose/break chest until you get them bashbrained.

A more interesting idea for me would be to somehow alter BC to where their main kill is through burst organs, but I haven't really thought that out yet. It's kind of disappointing that NJ can pull that off better than the original class.

I'm less concerned about the end-game of a BC than the begin-game part, though. I have more issues just keeping a person from fleeing two seconds after I find them than killing them once they're there to stay for a while. Knockdown is completely worthless against any acrobat and doesn't seem to phase most non-acrobats much, making the mangle difficult to get or nearly useless because they're not prone.

Maybe my strategies (borrowed from some of the self-proclaimed top-tier BC warriors) are just sub-par now, but I've been trying different combinations of poisons, beast attacks, and weapon stats to make them work better. Whether BC gets a buff or not, I'm still trying new things because I still have ideas on how to improve just a teeny amount yet.

That's a general warrior problem. It's just affecting BCs now like it does other specs; warriors generally aren't really good at hindering without having built up wounds.

Heavy-tendon that you can assault for in PB is nice though.

That's a general problem with everyone. I have no idea how I'd hold down someone 1v1 if they didn't want to be there.

That's probably more a problem with acrobatics being awesome (too awesome?) than warriors sucking. You're right though that all warriors have issues keeping someone who doesn't want to stay with you.

Also, don't you still use flails? If so, try going hammers, heh.

I use flails, but they're geared towards speed and I'm going to shift some of the damage to precision yet. They've got every rune under the sun on them (plus Drawdown now). Still just wish the disparity between hammers/rapiers and the other weapons would be fixed, except the admins don't acknowledge that it's an issue. (My hammers only have bleeding runes, so I'd be losing a lot of investment at this point.)

I'm just jealous of the grapple, perfect fifth, and even the pinleg, I guess.