Help with these abilities: Blindside, Accomplice, Presence of Mind, Discerning Eye

Can someone please help me grasp the strategies behind using the following abilities:

Blindside
Accomplice
Presence of Mind
Discerning Eye
Pounce

I am PGL 37 at the moment and play mostly as Damage Dealer. Currently I am not using these abilities but I have some spare action points and I'm wondering if I should be using them. Here is my current action list:

Light Strike
Heavy Strike
Flurry
Featherfoot
Haymaker II
Invigorate
Raging Strike
Ferocity
Hawk's Eye
Concussive Blow II
Seismic Shock II
Aura Pulse
Haymaker
Cure II
Second Wind II

I love playing this class, I love counter attacking when I evade, except in a party with a Gladiator there usually aren't many chances for me to utilize my Jarring Strike/Haymaker as tanks usually prefer to hold hate. And without these attacks I feel like Pugilists really lose their edge, dps wise. Any advice out there on increasing my damage?

Well, I've only ever used Blindside when tanking (buffs give lots of hate). Same with Accomplice and Presence of Mind. You could use Discerning Eye when soloing, especially against enemies that hive high-damage specials, such as imps. Pounce is pretty much useless.

A note on Blindside: You could use it to boost dps, but it gets used on your first attack. Unless you can guarrantee that your next attack is from behind the enemy, there's no sense using it.

Blindside + Hawk's Eye + Raging Strike before you use a weapon skill from behind.

You can then use Ferocity for the other WS while your timers of the previously mentioned skills are down.

On enemies that have AOE attacks, you can still do Featherfoot and evade the AOE if you enjoy counter-attacking.

The other abilities you mentioned in the first paragraph are pretty much useless.

You can always guarantee that your next attack will hit the opponents back side, by moving to the opponents back side. Really quite simple, it's a significant increase in dps and it has no stamina cost.

Precense of Mind = You get evasion from the back the same as you do from the front. Mostly for crowd controlling.
Accomplice = steal enmity from an ally. Mage lifesaver mostly.
Discearning Eye = The more you get beaten while the buff is up, higher your attack become. Good for tanking.
Pounce = Stuns the mob if used on its back. Good for mobs with long casting or readying skills.
Blindside = Sneak attack from XI. Boosts your attack when hitting from behind. Also helps if used with Follow Though since follow though actually hits the opposide orientation so, if you use it at mob's front it will hit its back. Good for tanking (with follow through) and good for DPS.

To be honest pugilist aren't meant to do damage in leve/grind party situations and there isn't a need to use every pugilist ability available. The skills you've mentioned are worthless or near worthless in most situations just stick with what already works for you. Aura pulse for AoE damage and get some of the 500 TP weapon skills from other classes (skull sunder, trammel) and feint for those elusive mobs with a sliver of health that just won't die.

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Originally Posted by Lienn

Discearning Eye = The more you get beaten while the buff is up, higher your attack become. Good for tanking.

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I think this ability increases your damage in proportion to your HP, the lower your HP the more damage you will do. Meaning even if you take a lot of damage but have someone healing you the ability becomes wasted. This is based on personal observations so I may be wrong.

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Originally Posted by Ichi

You can always guarantee that your next attack will hit the opponents back side, by moving to the opponents back side. Really quite simple, it's a significant increase in dps and it has no stamina cost.

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Only enemy I've ever felt a need to use it on was mongrels (back when the group I was with had to fight to get past the healing ability), and those have a tendency to move randomly. Repositioning takes longer than just attacking twice. Like I said, useful if the enemy isn't gonna randomly move away from you, but I've only ever really used it to hold aggro.

Blindside - as someone else mentioned, only really useful with followthrough. Using blindside gets you heavy hate so a lot of the time using bindside will make the mob face you, negating any benefit from the skill. Personally, I don't use blindside, but instead opt for Raging Strike II and/or Ferocity.

Accomplice - Totally not worth using. If you see a mob go to attack someone use Taunt or Provoke on the enemy. Don't wait to see who the enemy is going to attack then try using Accomplice as it will just take a lot longer.

Presence of Mind - Possibly the most useless of all skills. If you have a mob behind you you're doing it wrong.

Discerning Eye - I never really felt the benefit from this skill so I stopped using it, although what Hubert mentioned would make a lot of sense. You just have to ask yourself, in what situation would you keep attacking when low on health instead of healing? I don't know either, so this one stays at the bottom of the bargain bin of skills.

Pounce - I use this skill because of the 500tp cost. I'm not sure what the daze effect does, but it's not a stun. It would be nice to have more info on some of the status effects. But use it from behind, see the word 'Daze' appear above the enemy and feel good about possibly having done something useful but never being quite sure what.

Blindside - Boosts attack of your next rear attack, also may be based on 50% of dex if SE info is correct
Accomplice - Steals 25% enmity from party member and gives it to you.
Presence of Mind - Boosts evasion from attack to your left right and rear. (perception from gear does this as well)
Discerning Eye - Haven't tested this enough, but didn't see any difference to damage in party or solo, and duration is very short
Pounce - 1 min cooldown makes this one very situational, better off sticking to other weapon skills that incapacitate Outer Other. (the daze effect is nothing more than a stun)

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Originally Posted by Gun_Anam

Presence of Mind - Possibly the most useless of all skills. If you have a mob behind you you're doing it wrong.

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Presence of Mind increases evasion on all non-frontal attacks - that is, on side attacks as well. Very useful during leves when you have to fight a lot of mobs at once and you are doomed to be flanked, or when fighting a couple vicious mobs like mongrels regularly adjusting their position during the fight so one of them can attack you from behind.

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Pounce - I use this skill because of the 500tp cost. I'm not sure what the daze effect does, but it's not a stun. It would be nice to have more info on some of the status effects. But use it from behind, see the word 'Daze' appear above the enemy and feel good about possibly having done something useful but never being quite sure what.

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Thank you this is exactly the answer i was looking for. I guess I'm baffled at how many useless skills there are, but hopefully they are working on fixing these problems and giving us really fun awesome abilities, please.