StreamOfTheSky
Adventurer
The problem with combat maneuvers is how ridiculously fast CMD climbs. Look at some monsters at various CRs to see. It is very, very hard to land a maneuver at higher levels, and at lower levels you can usually just kill in -3 hits anyway. Big monsters will have crazy CMD. Even medium sized humanoids will fast grow theirs: not only is it adding two stats instead of one, it's adding all sorts of other random crap, like dodge/insight/deflection AC bonuses...
If you build heavily towards optimizing your bonus on a maneuver, you can make it reliably effective much of the time, but it requires a lot of investment.
And on the note of how difficult succeeding at maneuvers is...
As the guy who made that Ranger build, I just have to say how awful bull rush IS in PF.
Unlike all other maneuvers (except drag now, I guess...a lot of those new maneuvers should've just been folded into existing ones as other applications...), bull rush requires you to do more than win. You want to win by a LOT. You get 5 ft, and then need to win by five(!!!) for each extra square you need to push someone. That's just simply not happening most of the time. In 3E, it was possible to drive someone back a fair distance since it was just an opposed str check and you could easily buff your bonus much higher than a foe's str mod, plus he could roll low and you could roll high (in PF, the foe basically gets to "take 10" every time you try). I just don't see that happening much in PF. So unless your DM has a habit of putting non-mook enemies adjacent to cliff faces and the like, that 5 ft just isn't going to cut it for separating a guy from his pals or just clearing him 10+ ft away so he can't full attack on his turn. I suppose you could use bull rush to grant allies already in melee AoOs...but PF nerfed that, too. You used to be able to do that part at least without any feat at all. Now in PF, you need 3 feats and at least 6 levels to do what an untrained commoner could do in 3E (use bull rush to generate AoOs)!
I would suggest bull rush for only a very very select few hyper specialized builds that can make the best use out of it. My Ranger build (or a ranger two-handing a single heavy shield works, also) is one of those builds. Mostly because he's still attacking and doing damage normally, he basically just gets free bull rushes when he does so, so even if he can't win the checks, he's at least still contributing in the fight.
Another would be an Eidolon (Summoner). They can eventually grow to Huge size (and are a valid target for Enlarge Person!) with strength in the mid to high 40s. I was just in a party with an Eidolon with just such specs. It's really trivially easy to accomplish. IIRC, there's also an Evolution for a Push special ability, too.
At mid/high levels a Druid could also be good for this. Using Elemental Body to turn into an Earth Elemental gives you the Push special attack (good luck figuring out the distance, it's based on a creature's statblock rather than some universal formula, and actual earth elementals don't have push; my DM just ruled it was a distance equal to the elemental's natural reach (before any magic/buffs to extend it), so 15 ft for a huge earth elemental), and you'll eventually get to be size huge. Again, sizeable str and size, and since it's just a free bullrush to add to your attacks you lose nothing for attempting it.
If you build heavily towards optimizing your bonus on a maneuver, you can make it reliably effective much of the time, but it requires a lot of investment.
And on the note of how difficult succeeding at maneuvers is...
As the guy who made that Ranger build, I just have to say how awful bull rush IS in PF.
Unlike all other maneuvers (except drag now, I guess...a lot of those new maneuvers should've just been folded into existing ones as other applications...), bull rush requires you to do more than win. You want to win by a LOT. You get 5 ft, and then need to win by five(!!!) for each extra square you need to push someone. That's just simply not happening most of the time. In 3E, it was possible to drive someone back a fair distance since it was just an opposed str check and you could easily buff your bonus much higher than a foe's str mod, plus he could roll low and you could roll high (in PF, the foe basically gets to "take 10" every time you try). I just don't see that happening much in PF. So unless your DM has a habit of putting non-mook enemies adjacent to cliff faces and the like, that 5 ft just isn't going to cut it for separating a guy from his pals or just clearing him 10+ ft away so he can't full attack on his turn. I suppose you could use bull rush to grant allies already in melee AoOs...but PF nerfed that, too. You used to be able to do that part at least without any feat at all. Now in PF, you need 3 feats and at least 6 levels to do what an untrained commoner could do in 3E (use bull rush to generate AoOs)!
I would suggest bull rush for only a very very select few hyper specialized builds that can make the best use out of it. My Ranger build (or a ranger two-handing a single heavy shield works, also) is one of those builds. Mostly because he's still attacking and doing damage normally, he basically just gets free bull rushes when he does so, so even if he can't win the checks, he's at least still contributing in the fight.
Another would be an Eidolon (Summoner). They can eventually grow to Huge size (and are a valid target for Enlarge Person!) with strength in the mid to high 40s. I was just in a party with an Eidolon with just such specs. It's really trivially easy to accomplish. IIRC, there's also an Evolution for a Push special ability, too.
At mid/high levels a Druid could also be good for this. Using Elemental Body to turn into an Earth Elemental gives you the Push special attack (good luck figuring out the distance, it's based on a creature's statblock rather than some universal formula, and actual earth elementals don't have push; my DM just ruled it was a distance equal to the elemental's natural reach (before any magic/buffs to extend it), so 15 ft for a huge earth elemental), and you'll eventually get to be size huge. Again, sizeable str and size, and since it's just a free bullrush to add to your attacks you lose nothing for attempting it.
