Maul is dangerous, it is a good thing. It used to be that there was a reduction in accuracy for each next attack. I am not sure if that is still there or not, just make sure it isn't bugged and it is good to go. The heightened anxiety when facing a Mauler is cool. Having the option to take advantage of it as a build is also cool, though not one I have tried.

Yeah, it does seem like the penalty to accuracy is gone.  After having run an army of bears thanks to Beastlord, I'll sometimes get strings of 8 consecutive hits.   It's supposed to be 15 accuracy off each hit, but starting with 87 accuracy...

1 - 87

2 - 72

3 - 57

4 - 42

5 - 27

6 - 12

7 - -3%?

8 - how am I even hitting an 8th time?

I did a trial with maul and commander with the + accuracy and Lucky trait, so they had something like 130+ accuracy and they seemed to hit until they killed what they were hitting.  I haven't found anything real powerful like a dragon to test that on, but Maul is still being a problem.

Cave Bears always had horns, or do you mean they have MORE horns now?

Anyways those are some nice synergies people posted. I like Altar Custom Horsemen Units with Cleave /Impale + Rush + Charge + Impulsive, and a couple Swordsman for Counterattacks on the Defending turn. Basically Charge gives me boosted attack and move the first turn, Impulsive lets the units go first, and if they still can't reach the enemy then they pop Rush and finally base them. Then it's Cleave or Impale time! With my swordsman just doing a single patient slash, and if by some miracle enemy units are still standing then when they attack my swordsmen get to do 1-2 counterattacks in to seal the deal.

Bears are useless against Fire Elementals unless the Bears have fire resistance - each strike they get in reduces their health by about 5.

I really don't care. I edited in the scepter of dominion to my sovereign and also gave him rank five in every school of magic.

^^^ hax are OP

I'd differ hax with editing game files and stuff and "creative use of game mechanics (C) Blizzard" You don't do anything other than stuff game suggests in latter case.

OK replying to my own post, just saw the new Cave Bear model, those Mofos are scary as hell looking, more like Bear Demons! the old cave bear model was cool cuz it looked like he had horns all over his body, this new one just has two, two very big, very scary looking ones.

I disagree because this is what makes the Beastlord a good choice to begin with. If Cavebears didn't have the unlimited mauls it would never be worth taking BeastLord.

If this game had multiplayer I might agree with you since it would be an overpowering ability in the early game and griefers would use it constantly to rush with. But, it's not multiplayer so it's up to the individual player how they want to use it. If you don't like it don't use it. Simple as that.

Allright! So After reading your post Suntechnique, I decided to try out a Commander build with a Trog custom faction.

Reaching as high as 184 accuracy on Juggernauts I was able to claim a Sub 200 Master Quest victory in Ridiculous difficulty.

And I noticed today they planned for v 0.52 on changing the -15 accuracy from each successful maul strike to -15%, which is probably a good thing if you know what I mean ...

Thank you for the idea!

Wow, great result! Thanks for trying and you are welcome

Exactly!

Dear EG, please, return good old less horny bears back to caves 

Enough bears, and you can kill anything. IN REAL LIFE, BRAH. 

I think good human strategy players and Optimzers are OP in FE...

There is another thread discussing relaods...

I think what makes the Beastmaster so strong is mainly that we with reloading have the chance to tame nearly every animal and we never loose some beasts in fights.

This thread talks about the Beastmaster-Governor-Combo: After my experience it is hard to tame "interesting" beasts without much Spell mastery (Mage)

So you must have the luck, plan or "reload-Plan" to get/create a Governor as second hero.

Some thoughts concerning Beastmaster+reloading:

You have to "translate" what we do with raloading to understand how dramatic the effect could be:

• We change the chance of 60 or 70 % to tame to 100 %.
• We can count all the animals in our surroundings as members of our future army, so Power Rating is rising very strong resulting in better trades with the AI and I seldom get attacked.
• When we even reload fights where we lost Beasts, the effect is even stronger, normally the Beastmaster would have a problem with supplys, because normally the amount of animals to replace your losses would be limited.
• We get more stuff by the possibiliy to go for harder quests earlier, getting stronger, Power Rating, taking cities, Game Over...

So on one hand there would be the possibility to change the Beastmaster-Concept to make it more "reload resistant" or to play more...honestly...

When we are talking about changes I would change sth. like limits or possibilities:

There could be sth like a "Pool" that a Beastmaker can support, for example a "basic" Beastmaster can control Beasts with the worth of 5.

So for example one bear cup (1) and two normal spiders (2x2). When you level up and take stronger Beastmaster-Traits your pool rises.

Or you can just have one type of each animal in one army, because they would fight each other or some other reason...

Or you can simply set limits: As stronger you are as Beastmaster, the higher the "class" of beast you can tame.

Or you have to maintain your "Tame control" with mana...more mana for stronger beasts...more mana to control them and more mana to tame them., when you run out of mana they are liberated ..with this concept the beastmaster would have a nice challenge to deal with, because he needs mana to tame, but when he tames to much,

The maintanance decelerates the time till the next tame...yes, this could be interesting... this could come near to the summoner.

About the "Maul-incident": The "problem" is that there is no reaction in the world, concerning your beast-army, no hunters/Archers-Armies to wipe you out, when I fight against bears or wolfes I try to "dodge them out".

On the other hand I think the whole game sends you on a voyage to get OP, how to kill a dragon or going on the Master quest without being OP...

Try making a Sov with +accuracy traits AND accuracy booster for his race etc. Then get lucky and get the Berserker sword (which gives you the maul ability). You can kill basically anything in 1 round that way.

But I read that in an upcoming patch they will change the maul ability to take off 15% of your accuracy each hit, rather than -15, which may fix this.

I agree with this. Just pretend one bear represents 100's.

That will suck and ruin Beastmaster.

If it was only 1 thing that made the Beastmaster trait worth taking, then it was broken. It does not ruin, so much as fix it.

I disagree of course Beastmaster if fine just the way it is.