Pikeman Archive

As a positive note in the midst of everything else, I whole-heartedly recommend any current pikeman that can, keep going until master. There is a light, my friends.

Once you hit master, things do get easier. In PvE. We still have a tendency to hit the floor first in a group due to a noxious combination of high HAM costs, suicidal area/spin attacks coupled with super-low defense, but if you can somehow circumvent these issues via doctor buffs, simply not using any specials and weaing armor, or whatever...master is encouraging. polearmhit3 is wonderful and your speed is fast enough that you can have enough leeway to use combinations of moves, such as spin2 followed by sweep2 or hit3, etc. effectively. With a speed sliced LVA you can get autoattack down near 1.0s after speed mods. (However, if the devs implement a pike 3.0s speed cap, this will be nullified and we'll have to see what happens) Accuracy is also better, although I think I still miss about 20% of the time or so. At the very least, the damage is very fun to watch with polearmhit3.

PvP is different, of course. The best thing we have in PvP is actionhit. I cannot recommend pikemen, master or otherwise doing PvP with the expectation of doing any good at all, but this follows pretty much the same for all melee classes in general. I try to participate, but am totally useless outside of trying to rush in and get a bleed or hit on someone busy shooting someone else. Although, I am very good at taking down creatures or faction pets (they won't kite you as often). I can't do much to players, but these I can handily defeat, so maybe we should stick with a support role for the moment...

Also, yes we are in bad shape, but so are fencers and swordsman and TKA to an extent. Let's keep *all* melee in mind and not slip into a state where we are soley focused on ourselves and get stuck in a bad self-pity and exaggeration cycle. Let's try to stick with as many facts and numbers as we can. We do not have enough members to use emotion or outcry to get anything done, we have to let the facts stand for themselves, they are self-evident enough to show our case. There are some from each the other melee classes that have no sympathy for pikemen at all. I for one do not want to be seen as a "whiner," hence, let the facts speak for themselves.

Be sure to support our fellow melee'ers at every chance we get. I read the post put on the TKA board about how pikemen need help and, while greatly appreciated, it simply seemed to ruffle some feathers over there, so let's keep in mind that all melee have issues and troubles and anything that benefits melee as a whole will benefit us.

The path to master is terrible at the moment, we all know, but if you can stand it and stay with it, I believe you will find some reason for hope at master. Not to mention our animations are the best. Let's turn some of this negativity around and start looking at more positives or ways we can work with the negatives we are currently stuck with. I'm not talking complacency, just not so much utter hopelessness. We have hope.

antares
master pikeman

Congrats Antares! /clap we have 3 active masters on KAuri now =)

grats m8... I'm hoping to hit master soon myself. I hope I look at this class in a better light when I get there. ATM I do feel we got the short end of the stick. I'm already using action 3 and its decent especially after you bleedan opponent. In my small group I play with nightly my pikeman roll is bleeder, damage dealer, and lair destroyer.

Kapu

Master Doc/Footsoldier

Thanks Antares. It's always reassuring something good about the class.

Your animations are the best and so are the sound effects!

Is the pikeman board moving fast enough I actually have to shamelessly bump a post? Excellent!

antares
master pikeman

I'm glad your optimistic, but Atimes is right...we need help, even at the master level.

at the rate i am going i will be master within about 2 days of game play.....i will REALLY enjoy that +30 to accuracy i get from 0/0/0/4 and master. I am currently 4/3/4/3.

Yes, 15-20% misses at master level may seem like a lot, but it's refreshing after working up from novice pikeman, believe me. There isn't much we can do when our most powerful weapon has the infamous -55/-55/-55 range mods, and our next most powerful weapon has -32/-32/-32.

And I am trying to be positive. It's not too hard to be positive in PvE most of the time, but my most recent attempts at PvP made me sorely upset and saddened. It's really depressing. To the best of my attempts, I got in a couple of lunges (which changed their posture for all of 1 second, shorter than the time it took for the lunge animation to finish) and an action bleed that was quickly healed up after my eye shot/flaming. I lost 300 fp in 2 hours of a large fight. I almost retracted this whole thread.

I think more hope lies in getting the defensive bonuses from TKA and fencer, which is what I'm currently working on. This still won't affect much in PvP, though. These problems are general melee issues, even though TKAs can still manage fairly well in PvP, which is encouraging.

antares
master pikeman

Hey Ark,

The accuracy and slight speed boosts at master are noticeably. I still miss have some awful runs of luck though. Missed a giant gubbur 4 times in a row today thenit counterattacked once. Took 7 swings to kill a giant gubbur as a master pikeman with a long vibro ax.

Elsifr - Master Pikeman - Kettemoor

Grr. My grammar is far worse since I became a pikeman too.

Elsifr - Master Pikeman - Kettemoor

That accuracy is horrible. As a novice bounty hunter with 2 boxes in BH carbine I barely missed. By "barely" I mean just that. I would barely miss. I'd kneel down and just start firing and I would see hit after hit after hit. You are telling me that a Master Pikeman the master of the pike weapon is missing 1 in 5. That is horrible. You are a MASTER Pikeman if I as a noob Bounty Hunter have better accuracy than a Master pikeman something is wrong. Man you guys need some love from the devs big time. I tried pikeman and I hated it. I would love to be a pikeman but the horrible accuracy has kept me from that weapon. Back when anyone could equip vibro knuckles I tried out pikeman and unarmed. This is what I found.

It took me 2 hours to get to polearms2. It took me 15 minutes to get to unarmed2.

I don't know about you but it seems to me that pikemen need work. You guys are awesome, your weapon is great you hit for a ton, you are friendly and there isn't back biting on your forums.

Simply put you DESERVE better treatment from the devs for your profession.

I'm a master pikeman on bria, I love it, things do get better. But I believe with a few minor changes, pikeman will become a very valuble profession. I see things heading back to the roll we played before the knock down nerf, where we were all about crowd control. It just depends if they decrease the KD delay correctlly as well as the ham cost. If they do it the way I am hoping for, things will be very nice for master pikemen.

-Crime-Wave