Honor the Martyr still isn’t strong enough in my opinion to justify taking considering it only gives +4% power over rising conviction at max stacks. When paired with Holy Fervour the 5 seconds of +20% damage can be beneficial unless you got the buff while getting staggered by ranged, and is great if their is more then one Zealot on a team (so your team still gets the damage reduction).
If it was buffed to add +2% damage to each stack of martyrdom it would bring the bonus up to +10% over rising conviction and give more incentive to use it.
EDIT: Stacks 4-5-6 +2% damage - Bringing it to the +10% over R.C.
That would be both good and bad. It would scale the damage of melee weapons with power bonuses less well because power bonuses are additive with other power bonuses but multiplicative with damage bonuses.
Obviously though power would be huge for your ranged weapon that currently gets 0 bonuses from Martyrdom.
Not really a fan of the idea of buffing it by making it apply to ranged or just changing it to power. Would rather requirements for stacks were lowered and other parts of the tree were made to be based on Martyrdom stacks, especially the Retribution skill.
I want power more because of cleave and stagger, and I don’t want it to apply on ranged, I think it’s good enough already. And I welcome your suggestion about retribution. Maybe I just play evis too much.
Adding a bonus to melee power would be fun, but probably would be OP. The axes would be able to stagger carapace armored enemies with a few light attacks though even after the patch. The cleave does feel lacking on the weapons, I need savage sweep/ brutal momentum on them. If there was a way to increase cleave inside the talent tree, we could run weapons with both decimator and shread/ headtaker!
Found out it’s good with melee weapons designed for 1-shoting crushers and reapers, but have poor cleave. An axe with Limbspliter and Thrust 1 shot crits when paired with Honor the Martyr. With 2 charges of charge, you can take out 2 reapers/ crushers (on T5) with two heavy attacks back to back (no need to build R.C. stacks).
It’s also easier to develop memory on how much damage you do to elites. Your damage is the same at all times with Honor the Martyr as opposed to a varying difference you need to calculate between R.C./ and or Decimator/Headtaker and how many stacks of martyrdom you have. You know how many stacks of Thrust you need to finish an elite.