Thank you everyone for responding!
HammerJack wrote:
Snagging Strike - you talk about it being a way to make a target flat-footed to a 3rd attack, but this isn't a Press.
Assisting Shot is clearly referring to the pre-errata version. The basic mechanic of the feat isn't what you rated, anymore.
Mauler Dedication - one of the main purposes of this for a fighter is to make using TWF feats with sword and board actually work properly from levels 5-18, by giving you full proficiency on anything with a 2H trait.
You are right, I will have to make some corrections. I will have to reconsider some things in light of this use of the Mauler archetype. Using it would also grant a considerable buff to characters using parrying weapons with TWF, and buff one-handed styles by allowing unarmed and 2H trait weapons to be used more effectively together.
Pyrurge wrote:
Sudden Charge is good just because it often saves an action. It's really powerful even if done only once per combat, mostly because most combats are very short, and the first round is the one that matters most.
I agree, but the reason that I don't rate Sudden Charge higher is due to the fact that, if you are improving your movement speed via items and feats, then there are plenty of encounters where you will not need 2 movement actions to close the distance.
Pyrurge wrote:
Knockdown is better than Trip + Exacting Strike against opponents with low AC
This is also true, but makes Knockdown at best situational against low-AC (and usually lower level) opponents. To give an example, if you have a 65% chance of hitting on a first attack, and a 75% chance of tripping using the Athletics action, then Knockdown will give you a 35% chance of doing nothing, and only a 48.75% chance of tripping - worse than the 50% trip chance that you would have by performing a trip with a -5 penalty. The 10th level feat to improve Knockdown does make it a lot better, but at that point you have to consider whether or not it is worth taking for 2 feats. Killing someone with Knockdown always feels bad, I think I would only use it on a relatively fresh opponent and the impact it has is also probably dependent on the initiative order.
Pyrurge wrote:
Advanced Weapon Training is a waste of a feat. Just take a Red Mantis Assassin dedication.
Red Mantis Assassin, unless I am missing something, is an archetype where you have to meet the right person in-game to have access to it. For the most part, I have avoided rating these types of character options, which strike me as mostly offering campaign-specific flavour. However, even if your GM obliges you, I think that the requirement that you must be LE and worship a specific god, while forcing you to join a in-game organisation, makes this bad character-building advice. AWT also doesn't require you to take another archetype, assuming that you are already using one.
Pyrurge wrote:
Savage Critical is not that good too, because it very often does nothing on your first (and sometimes second) attack, and because Doubling Rings exist. Thus, you spend an 18th level feat for a 5% damage increase on your follow-up attacks, and you generally want to avoid the third one anyway. A damage increase is a damage increase, but that's rather pathetic - just take a lower level feat instead.
Savage Critical is not a 5% damage boost. Consider a situation where you are making a single attack, and need a 10 to hit. You have (base) a 5% chance of doing double damage, and a 50% chance of doing normal damage, which means that you are doing, on average, 55% of normal damage. Savage Critical would increase that to 60% of normal damage, which is around a 9% increase in damage. This situation is sort of a worst-case scenario for Savage Critical, which becomes more impactful as you take more attacks with increasing MAP. I think that having an expanded critical range is more useful than that especially if you have Deadly or Fatal, or value crit specialization effects.
Pyrurge wrote:
Archer archetype has a secondary bebefit of making you as accurate with bows as with finesse weapons, so Archer Fighter becomes a competent switch-hitter. Rather good with occasional Felling Strike taken with Combat Flexibility when flying enemies inevitably show up. Blessed One is an incredible option for out-of-combat healing, giving Lay on Hands at the cost of a 2nd level feat - a focus spell that blows Treat Wounds out of the water. Marshal is immensely good with other martials in the party, especially if you don't have a Bard.
In my opinion, by building for Dexterity, you will take a damage decrease on what you are good at (melee combat) in exchange for better performance with something that is only useful situationally (Archery). Finesse weapons are mostly terrible, since they are designed to do similar damage as a two-handed weapon when wielded by a Rogue with sneak attack. The only build that I think would get away with this approach would be a 2W fighting build, and at that point you are committing to taking a LOT of diverse class feats to make both of them work side-by-side. On a side note, I think that Rangers with Flurry are probably the highest-damage archers at the moment.
In my experience, Treat Wounds with the proper skill feats will provide more out-of-combat party healing than Lay On Hands after 7th level. The main advantage of Treat Wounds is that it will heal everyone in your party at once. I think that for speeding out-of-combat healing, the Medic is probably the archetype that I would default to.
I think that most of the other comments pertain to criticism of my ratings of Exacting Strike, and especially Certain Strike. The consensus here appears to be that third attacks are useless, and that one is better off finding some other action to take. My approach is instead to find ways of making third attacks more useful. Some of you have pointed out that the failure effects do not apply on critical misses. In light of the fact that it says in the core rulebook that "If a feat, magic item, spell, or other effect does not list a critical success or critical failure, treat it as an ordinary success or failure instead", my assessment is that this assertion is not true. My ratings are given with the assumption that the failure effects apply on critical misses. If this were not true, Certain Strike would be rated yellow or green, and Power Attack would provide more DPR than Exacting Strike after picking up Brutal Finish. (the rating of Furious Finish would therefore improve)
Imagine there was a 10th level class feat that said "improve your damage output by 20 to 30%". My feeling is that a lot of people would jump on that as being quite good. To me, this is where Certain Strike lies. It is even better than that against tough opponents, while admittedly being less effective against easier enemies. The only downside is the lack of impact against DR, which can be mitigated to an extent by using weapons made out of special materials. Unfortunately, one of the detractions of PF2 is that it is not always obvious which feats are actually an improvement, and which are not, which is one reason why I attempted this guide. The worst culprit in this regard that I have found is Ranger's Deadly Aim feat, which is almost always a damage decrease (+2 to hit being more valuable than approx. +2 damage/die).
I rate Exacting Strike highly because it is the highest damage increase available to most builds before Certain Strike. Also, it gives the player the ability to hedge in the sense that, if your Exacting Strike hits, you can proceed with another non-attack action, whereas if you miss then you can attack a third time.
