I think he meant the DM will just ignore you and focus on the other PCs. A high AC Paladin or fighter for example is better off ignored in favour of hitting the barbaian who deals more damage and is alot easier to hit.
I see all these people say "Vital Strike is bad" and "It's weaker than a Full Attack Option in every way," and that just doesn't ring true.
So we're facing a DR 15/-- creature, and I make my full attack. Lucky for me, I hit with all my attacks by rolling pretty dang good, because my Power Attack provides major penalties, and my Furious Focus only works for the first attack I make in a given turn. So I roll up a total of 200 damage, but guess what? That DR 15/-- is applied to my total damage equivalent to the amount of attacks I made, which is 4 (or 5 if you want to include Haste); equating to 60-75 points of damage reduced, leaving me only dealing 125-140 points of damage. That's a pretty bogus thing to happen, and I have no means to bypass it! So what do I do?
Instead of making a Full Attack, I decide to use a Greater Vital Strike option. I only make one attack, but I have a much better chance at succeeding with consistency on this attack than my Full Attack due to Furious Focus, while still retaining the damaging benefits of Vital Strike. On top of this, I can still use a Movement Action if I so needed, and I still deal big damage; a great help in the Action Economy.
I easily hit the creature, so now I roll damage. With my Damage, I roll a good 160 points of damage; not far from my Full Attack Option, since my Damage Dice with my 3D6 Impact Greatsword now becomes 12D6, and I still apply my regular bonuses. The best part is that now I only suffer a 15 damage reduction since it was just one attack, reducing the damage to a nice total of 145, without having much risk to my DPR consistency, yet equating to that Full Attack Option damage output.
I'm not convinced that's a safe statement to say, although I'd love to see a survey on that.
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I thought I should mention that the "bestial leaper" rage power is essentially what you want. Take a move action, and get one standard action at any point during the move.
Plays well with Vital Strike, (Great) Cleave and maneuvers.
I see all these people say "Vital Strike is bad" and "It's weaker than a Full Attack Option in every way," and that just doesn't ring true.
So we're facing a DR 15/-- creature, and I make my full attack. Lucky for me, I hit with all my attacks by rolling pretty dang good, because my Power Attack provides major penalties, and my Furious Focus only works for the first attack I make in a given turn. So I roll up a total of 200 damage, but guess what? That DR 15/-- is applied to my total damage equivalent to the amount of attacks I made, which is 4 (or 5 if you want to include Haste); equating to 60-75 points of damage reduced, leaving me only dealing 125-140 points of damage. That's a pretty bogus thing to happen, and I have no means to bypass it! So what do I do?
Instead of making a Full Attack, I decide to use a Greater Vital Strike option. I only make one attack, but I have a much better chance at succeeding with consistency on this attack than my Full Attack due to Furious Focus, while still retaining the damaging benefits of Vital Strike. On top of this, I can still use a Movement Action if I so needed, and I still deal big damage; a great help in the Action Economy.
I easily hit the creature, so now I roll damage. With my Damage, I roll a good 160 points of damage; not far from my Full Attack Option, since my Damage Dice with my 3D6 Impact Greatsword now becomes 12D6, and I still apply my regular bonuses. The best part is that now I only suffer a 15 damage reduction since it was just one attack, reducing the damage to a nice total of 145, without having much risk to my DPR consistency, yet equating to that Full Attack Option damage output.
This story doesn't really seem possible.
First, I have no idea what an Impact Greatsword is or why you're dealing 3d6 with it--I can't find anything about it looking on the srd and my only memory of the Impact enchant from 3.5 was that it did +5 static damage.
That said, even though I doubt you should be multiplying that 3rd d6, I'll just trust you that this is a thing. Now, you're basically saying that 9d6 (an average of only 31.5) is equal to the amount of damage you could do with three additional attacks? What? This does not compute, especially considering we're told you dealt 160 damage in that one swing.
Let's assume the best--let's assume you rolled 6s on every single d6 you rolled. That means, of your 160 damage, 72 of it came from dice. That puts your static damage mods at ~90. In fact, I'm a little confused as to how you did only 200 with your full attack...
There is literally no scenario in which the math of this works out. Even with just a 50% chance for your second attack to hit, you're dealing more damage average than you are using Greater Vital Strike--including the DR.
The Impact weapon property is from UE and it deals damage as if one size larger.
I see all these people say "Vital Strike is bad" and "It's weaker than a Full Attack Option in every way," and that just doesn't ring true.
So we're facing a DR 15/-- creature, and I make my full attack. Lucky for me, I hit with all my attacks by rolling pretty dang good, because my Power Attack provides major penalties, and my Furious Focus only works for the first attack I make in a given turn. So I roll up a total of 200 damage, but guess what? That DR 15/-- is applied to my total damage equivalent to the amount of attacks I made, which is 4 (or 5 if you want to include Haste); equating to 60-75 points of damage reduced, leaving me only dealing 125-140 points of damage. That's a pretty bogus thing to happen, and I have no means to bypass it! So what do I do?
Instead of making a Full Attack, I decide to use a Greater Vital Strike option. I only make one attack, but I have a much better chance at succeeding with consistency on this attack than my Full Attack due to Furious Focus, while still retaining the damaging benefits of Vital Strike. On top of this, I can still use a Movement Action if I so needed, and I still deal big damage; a great help in the Action Economy.
I easily hit the creature, so now I roll damage. With my Damage, I roll a good 160 points of damage; not far from my Full Attack Option, since my Damage Dice with my 3D6 Impact Greatsword now becomes 12D6, and I still apply my regular bonuses. The best part is that now I only suffer a 15 damage reduction since it was just one attack, reducing the damage to a nice total of 145, without having much risk to my DPR consistency, yet equating to that Full Attack Option damage output.
I'm goinmg to ask for a build here.
The math doesn't seem likely.
It's merely an example. The point is that DR from a creature is going to beat down your Full Attack damage output much more than it would a single attack. That 15 DR, V.S. the 60-75 DR total for your Full Attack would pretty much equal out, and in fact, the Vital Strike option would work better with damage consistency than it would a Full Attack, especially considering that not all hits of your Full Attack are a guaranteed hit as per my example; the same as it would be your statement of me "rolling all 6's" on my weapon damage dice, which also applies to the Full Attack Option.
It's also good for the Action Economy, in that if you need to move but still want to have that "Full Attack," this helps succeed in that, and makes the whole "Single Attack" option not so lackluster, especially when you play with Critical Hit/Fumble Card rules.
If Vital Strike is really a bad/worthless feat, then why does it offer a lot more than what you make it out to be? I can list several feats off the top of my head that are utter garbage compared to Vital Strike.
Oooh, do you still have a link to that suggestion, or would you be able to dig it up? I'd like to see the discussion it generated.
I suggested long ago to base VS damage on the user's base attack bonus, with a cap to the max possible damage bonus to help keep it from getting too obscene with "piles of HD" monsters. But this suggestion was ignored.
I talked about it here, I forget if i also made a thread in the paizo forums or just hijacked someone else's thread.
(ENWorld's been down for maintenance a lot, if you can't get it up, try googling "enworld pathfinder vital strike changes" and it should be the first result; choose to view a cached version of the page from there)
If Vital Strike is really a bad/worthless feat, then why does it offer a lot more than what you make it out to be? I can list several feats off the top of my head that are utter garbage compared to Vital Strike.
Okay, list them but they can't be Prone Shooter category feats.
You have to list feats that give a benefit even if only minor (Death or Glory count as Prone shooter Category).
Vital Strike plays well with Enlarge Person. For the price of a 50gp potion you can be doing some useful damage (up to +10.5 for a 2HS). Otherwise it's weak and (as noted above) badly implemented.
Not sure whether it should be a flat bonus (scaling by BAB or whatever) or a fraction of your total damage, eg +1/3 for VS, +2/3 for IVS, x2 for GVS. I can see how it might be broken either way.
If Vital Strike is really a bad/worthless feat, then why does it offer a lot more than what you make it out to be? I can list several feats off the top of my head that are utter garbage compared to Vital Strike.
Okay, list them but they can't be Prone Shooter category feats.
You have to list feats that give a benefit even if only minor (Death or Glory count as Prone shooter Category).
I have no idea what the whole "Prone Shooter" thing is, but let me see here...Toughness only equates to an extra +1 hit point per level at some point, meaning 20 hit points (at the best, mind you) is pretty much going to be slaughtered by Vital Strike attacks, which can scale quite nastily with big creatures/characters.
Sidestep and its Improved version are garbage since it's only good to avoid/set up flank, and unless you specialize in it or absolutely need it to function well (i.e. Rogue), you won't need it, when Vital Strike and its upgrades will pretty much give you the extra damage you need.
Some of the Combat Maneuver and (quite a few) Teamwork feats are also quite garbage compared to Vital Strike; Teamwork even moreso since normally it requires 2 people to spend feats for super-situational purposes. That is to say that Teamwork feats themselves aren't bad, but that generally many of them aren't that great to pick in the first place. Trip feats can be helpful, but by the endgame, trip is going to be garbage when everything can fly, is a giant crazy monster, etc. And we all know how Teamwork feats operate...
There are probably even more that I didn't even list off the top of my head that would still apply.
@ Mudfoot
There is a feat that allows a flat-out bonus when using Vital Strike. Devastating Strike applies an extra +2 base damage per dice multiple (+6 total), but that scaling is kind of weak, even if that damage is multiplied on a critical. I think that it should grant a +2 for each dice set, and per +4 base attack, and scale like Power Attack does, but chances are that would be "too broken" for Vital Strike, even though it's "apparently" garbage.
how about everyone forgets about what is "most optimal" for a second.
look if im playing a rogue, a bard, or even a strength based monk with a low ac, spring attack is a boon to my character by allowing the tank, to tank and me to still do damage without getting my clock cleaned in one hit by the giant with the huge sized great sword and the 40 strength.
but the problem is that spring attack suck as is, and vital strike would make that feat more of a worthwhile choice of how to spend 3 feats.
When I GM, almost all of my humanoid NPCs have some option to Vital Strike. It speeds up combat and adds enough damage to be dangerous towards the PCs. Without having to roll a crud ton of to hit dice and various modifiers. Ashiel has a thread about that explains this much better than what I wrote.
The universe would implode if those two feats worked together.
You know this to be true. Jokes aside, I don't see the problem myself.
Considering that casting is still better than melee, the combination hardly shocks me.
I think later adding the phrase, "As a full-round action," to Spring attack wasn't needed. If you move, you can only make one attack, so why put that in there? It was pretty clear what that meant in my opinion.
It was a pretty natural train of thought to pair this with the Vital Strike chain of feats when I first opened my Core Rule Book and as I have always enjoyed playing more mobile characters it greatly appealed to me. I don't see any harm in allowing Spring Attack or Shot on the Run to work with the Vital Strike Feats because I think it is just tactical hit and run thinking. If I can move up and hit the "slugger" and do him damage and retreat without taking damage and prevent him from utilizing his advantage of the full attack and continue to "put the pointy end in the other man" until he dies well then what is the problem? So what if I missed out on 5-15 damage-if I didn't take 25 damage myself and have to waste actions on healing then in my eyes that is a victory.
I admit I am not up to date on all of the optimization that the cool kids are running these days but I think that just running up and trading punches has got to catch up to you eventually. If this combo is clearly so bad then why nerf it in the errata and punish people who favor that sort of character build?
I agree with those that say this is just the trend in GMing for those folks that just favor rolling high damage output and not really challenging the players. I assume these are the same parties that don't see too many puzzles and traps and have never had to wade through a room with 150 Kobolds.
I've always viewed the Vital Strike chain as an anti-DR measure; and, for that, they're pretty great feats. Mind you, I ONLY ever select them as Fighter bonus feats, so it's not like they're taking up space in my standard feat list...
That said, I would probably let Spring Attack and Vital Strike be applied together; the universe would NOT implode if this happened. :P
Feats of Strenght by Abandoned Arts has a feat, Headlong Charge, which allows the Vital Strike chain to work with a charge action. Something similar could be made for Spring Attack and Shot on the Run. Personally I feel anything that makes mobile combat more attractive is good. The stand and deliver style of combat gets boring after a while.
I was following the Pathfinerization of Iron Heroes last year and one of the things they did was limit everyone to poor BAB to get rid of iterative attacks. All of classes got speical bonuses to hit making up for the loss of BAB. The effort was to force players to use a more mobile fighting style and improve flavor of the game.