All good points but consider you seem to be comparing apples to oranges a bit, Bluesman. SA's against Skills. The better question would be are AOI and Pummel detracting from the build because winning the moral battle sure does seem to lead to a lot of wins.
I think if GLB could go back and rethink bits and pieces of their approach they would re-do just what morale effects and how potent the effect is. Against many power rushing teams, the cumulative effect of moral damage from AOI & Pummel does seem to have an effect. I've seen the slow increase of sustained offensive drives, longer runs, and a general wearing down of a defense by the 4th quarter and when you check the morale/stamina at the end of the game it shows the damage done. Some of that could just be the style of the offense but it seems a little off that you can hold someone down for 3 quarters then watch as they bust off bigger and bigger runs in the 4th quarter (if you consider all other things equal in the way dot builders do Stamina on their dots).
All that said, again, I come back to the question "are the SP's you're spending (and the time and effort) to get AOI & Pummel seriously detracting from the build (mainly the skills)?" I mean, we (the dot builders) pretty much have certain SA's in the tree we'll be taking to 10... and a few we tend to take to what we can get... so we're really talking only Bonus SA's here and since almost every builder gets and uses at least one on their dots, then ProRobber made the right query...
Originally posted by ProRobber
The next question would be... if not Pummel, then what?What would you replace AOI/Pummel with that would have as much of, if not more, effect on the game?
I could see maybe trying to make a dual purpose O-lineman and snag a Pass (block) type of SA if building a Run Block dot... or vise versa... but most of those are in the SA trees anyways and we're talking about BONUS SA's. TBH, I don't know of a better bonus SA to get for an O-lineman... but then again I've pretty much just been building according to the Pummel/AOI mantra for quite a long time now and haven't given it a ton of thought.