Pikeman Archive
Thread: Pikeman and Master Brawler
nm found out myself... had to do a little more reading though 
Just another short update.
I'm now novice fencer/swordsman/tka. Getting my xp on dathomir as rancor lair after rancor lair fall to my might. I actually had to whip my pike out against an ancient bull rancor (or something like that). Boy was that guy tough with the disease and the bleeds. Oy vey. 800 action wounds from one battle that was something.
Anyways, this is all in the hopes of becoming an ultimate pikeman. I really want to become viable in pvp and I hope leveling in these other professions will make me better.
So, I've noticed that the other melee profs have their defenses spread out over several trees (unlike pikers who have them conveniently in one branch).
I've used my 300k of combat xp to level up to 0003 TKA.
Any suggestions of what to level in the other professions TO BECOME A BETTER PIKEMAN? I don't want someone saying 'master fencer it rocks' or something like that. I'm just looking to be better at pikeman.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanx.
A given setup currently includes fencer defenses and 4004 TKA for meditate/powerboost and defenses. With the rest of your skill points, you can add rifleman/swordsman for more melee/ranged def (rifleman has 72/45 ranged/melee, pistol has 45 melee also) and mind bleeds, although mind bleeds are not really helping you to be a better pikeman...
I made this post about a pure brawler setup that will give you 181 melee, 154 ranged defenses. You can get better melee/ranged def if you ditch swordsman and add rifleman and pistoleer, i.e. TKA/fencer/pistoleer/rifleman/pike = 200+ melee/ranged defenses and melee/ranged mitigation. That's not really helping you be a better pikeman, though...
antares
master pikeman
antares
master pikeman
The only place where ANY offensive skills stack is with the Bounty Hunter class. There are some double-purpose specials - for example, Smuggler/Pistoleer, but fundamentally the game is designed in a manner that isolates offensive skills from each other.
The maximum possible accuracy rating is 215, taken by adding Master Carbineer and the BH-Carbine line, then supplementing with +25 Carbine accuracy. That's a VERY tight build, with absolutely no slack or capability to do anything else built into it.
The maximum possible defense rating is over 200, taken by combining TKA/Fencer/Rifleman/Pistoleer. It's pretty much impossible to hit this template reliably unless you're a TKM or a BH/Carbineer combo - Rifleman can hit it less often, but not quite as reliably.
The design of the game is supposed to be that anyone with an elite class, unmodified, is competitive in combat. Not just uber optimaxed templates, but the vast majority of players who do something else and fight as well.
Thus, I think you'll see the following:
Fencer Melee Defense
Fencer Ranged Defense
Teras Kasi Melee Defense
Teras Kasi Ranged Defense
etc...
That will destroy the stacks and bring back the scenario in which it's possible for any Elite to compete in PvP unassisted.
The advantage to cross-training will be back to the original design, where you acquire access to different class-based tools, with both the advantages and disadvantages inherent to them. So you get some Carbineer for the knockdown, but that comes at the price of being a partial-Carbineer while you're holding a Carbine. You are a TKM, but it comes at the price of only getting TKM defenses while doing that.
This is the only real concievable way that the system could or should work - to think otherwise is to essentially restrict PvP effectiveness to only those players who do nothing besides combat - clearly not the designers' intent.
Salahsur wrote:
That will destroy the stacks and bring back the scenario in which it's possible for any Elite to compete in PvP unassisted.
Wrong. Pikeman would be the weakest class and there would be nothing you could ever do about it. You could not improve your pikeman character. I stand by what I said about the most we would see are caps on melee/ranged defenses. Maybe melee professions will get ranged defenses cut down some and raned classes will lose some melee defenses. Melee/ranged and state defenses will remain stackable. Or else classes like Pikeman will be terrible forever with absolutley no hope. And the Master Brawler skill mods description would be horribly long.
antares
master pikeman
Salahsur wrote:
Don't expect stacking defenses to last. No way the developers are going to let something like that stand...
I really hope this isn't going to happen. I'm really starting to enjoy having stacked mods.
Oh, BTW Antares, sorry to take advantage of you pal but I do remember you posting that but I didn't remember where and I'm far to lazy to go look for it. Thanks buddy.
1) Why is it that only 1 class has stacking offensive modifiers, and that class consumes more skill points than any other in the game? Noting, of course, that a MBH only gets 33 skill points to put into utility and those modifiers, making them even out a lot. If stacked defenses were planned, then stacked offenses would have been supported as well - and they're not.
2) Why is it that the development team originally thought high stacking defenses was an exploit and banned people for it? If they had intended for the defenses to get that high, there's no way in hell they'd have ever been banning for it.
3) The developers made it clear from early on that they expected people to be able to function in PvP and PvE combat with just the skill modifiers from a single elite combat profession, while spending the rest of their points in crafting, medicine, entertaining, or a number of other support classes. The present system compels people to invest entirely in combat skills to be competitive in PvP - this is obviously not the developers' intent.
And, to respond to your point, stacking elite combat masteries does give you an edge over a person with only one elite combat profession mastered. Any Pikeman/Carbineer is much more deadly and flexible than a person who's just a Pikeman or just a Carbineer. Unless the person behind the controls is a complete idiot, the stacked professions are an advantage anyhow. A little extra investment gets you some Teras Kasi, and the ability to dabble just for Meditation, or Medic skills to heal you as well - up to 3.5 professions can be mastered.
Why else would the developers have created 10 combat professions, when only 3 combinations become feasible in PvP? It just makes no sense that the development team would have created a class like Fencer with the sole purpose of being dabbled in...
Be logical here - does this system, from a mastery-oriented design standpoint, appear to support stacking defenses, or oppose it? The developers expected most people to master only 2-3 professions, and for the majority to master 2. The system is designed to promote elite mastery, rather than dabbling - hence the diminishing skill point costs as you progress through a profession's skill onion. They clearly never expected people to go on end-runs around the system, picking up little snippets of defensive modifers here and there to make a really good Pikeman, Swordsman, or whatever else...
If anything, they expected dabbling for specials - and that's why the specials go in odd sequences to try to hold geometrically more powerful specials for masters and near-masters.
Come on, people - this is obvious.
You're trying to convince us that the developer's intent was that, a Master Pistoleer/Weaponsmith/Tailor would be 100% the exact same in combat as a Master Pistoleer/Master TKA/Master Fencer, if he used a pistol. The only way to improve your skills in a ranged weapon is to get master marksman...the only way to improve your melee skills is to get Master Brawler. You can do absolutely nothing else to distinguish your character outside of slightly better weapons.
I don't buy it completely. It goes against the whole skill point design, as Braglor pointed out (Thanks for the quote, by the way)
antares
master pikeman
Salahsur wrote:
Why is it that the development team originally thought high stacking defenses was an exploit and banned people for it?
The developers made it clear from early on that they expected people to be able to function in PvP and PvE combat with just the skill modifiers from a single elite combat profession, while spending the rest of their points in crafting, medicine, entertaining, or a number of other support classes. The present system compels people to invest entirely in combat skills to be competitive in PvP - this is obviously not the developers' intent.
Be logical here
They clearly never expected people to go on end-runs around the system, picking up little snippets of defensive modifers here and there to make a really good Pikeman, Swordsman, or whatever else...
If anything, they expected dabbling for specials - and that's why the specials go in odd sequences to try to hold geometrically more powerful specials for masters and near-masters.
Can you back up your claim that the DEVs banned a person from dabbeling some professions? Please post a link, I would love to see something that backs that up. For all it's worth, I might as well claim it too...
Being logical here would mean not trying to state anything without having something to back it up with. As far as it goes now, this is nothing more but hearsay 
As for the dabbeling elite professions part, another reasoning could perhaps be: Why would they make exclusive defensive skills for one specific profession(dodge, counterattack, block)and not change the rest of the professions defenses(ranged, melee, defense vs. etc)to the same restriction as well? It must have been because they wanted people to create differenttemplates and be creative. Once you make restrictions, you loose creativity...
Salahsur wrote:
The design of the game is supposed to be that anyone with an elite class, unmodified, is competitive in combat. Not just uber optimaxed templates, but the vast majority of players who do something else and fight as well.
That will destroy the stacks and bring back the scenario in which it's possible for any Elite to compete in PvP unassisted.
This is the only real concievable way that the system could or should work - to think otherwise is to essentially restrict PvP effectiveness to only those players who do nothing besides combat - clearly not the designers' intent.
Interesting ideas you got there, can you back them up with something?
The skillsystem in this game is designed like this:
"You may decide to make your character a jack-of-all-trades by learning many different professions, though each time you add a new profession, the skill point cost for gaining new skills increases. Instead you may concentrate on just a few areas for specialization, achieving mastery in just one or two professions."
I draw the conclusion that one can become eithera marksman/Brawler/Entertainer/PikeMan/Artisan/Politican-type of character, or bea masterin Brawler/PikeMan/TKA.What you aresaying is that a master in melee combat should have the exact combat abilities that a master in Jack-of-all-trades has? To me, that sounds rather silly and not quite thought through.
The statement, "To essentially restrict PvP effectiveness to only those players who do nothing besides combat..." is also somewhat unclear to me. Sure"those" playerscan just as well as anyone else choose /duel; it will just not be viable against a high end duelist specialized in either ranged or melee combat. Let's not forget that a large portion of the funin PvP is the diversity between the players, both in difficulty and tactics; aka the Challenge, the Duel, the Player Vs. Player, PVP.