Pikeman Archive
Thread: Focus on Issues
OK. The one issue I would like to focus on is the dreaded -55% chance to hit and accuracy as a whole and where it needs to be fixed. I think there are honestly some pros and cons to it. Allow me to explain:
Damage per second (DPS) is generally the best metric to guage a weapon's effectiveness. However, you cannot just base the weapons effectiveness just on DPS alone, you need to take a look at the hit percentage values as well. Take a look at the weapon examples below which all have a DPS of 40. For those of you unfamiliar of how to calculate DPS here you go: DPS = (Min + Max / 2) / speed.
DPS40 Vibroknuckle Speed=2.0 Damage = 60-100
DPS40 Vibrosword Speed=3.5 Damage = 80-200
DPS40Long Vibroaxe Speed=5.5 Damage = 100-340
In PVE, your damage is roughly 4 times this amount. In PVP, your damage is about this amount. The difference between PVP and PVE is roughly 4 times the damage. My sense is, the reason why the devs placed such a high penalty on to hit % is because of the heavy damage potentional in PVE. Take a look at the same weapons in a PVE environtment:
Vibroknuckle
.... sorry about that.
Take a look at the damage difference in PVE setting. The LVA out damages the other three weapons by a huge amount. Who cares if you are at a 5.5, it doesnt matter when you top end damage is 1200. If the devs did not put this in check, everyone would be using an LVA all the time because of the sheer damage potential over time. To average this out better, it is my opinion that is why they implemented the -55 to cut back on the overall chances of hitting - thus affecting your overall damage done over time. It was a balance issue in my opinion. The real problem is, what happens when you take x 4 damage multiplier away in a PVE setting? You get hosed bad. The DPS is dead even in PVP. However, we still get the penalty in PVP even though our DPS is on par with everyone else. This needs to be fixed.
Again, take the Verdusk challenge. Someone tell me that they our not "outdamaging" their peers in PVE. I don't think that is the big problem. The big problem is see is in PVP.
Again, this was only to address the accuracy problem.
We don't outdamage the other melees in PvE, I don't know what makes you think we do. Someone calculated it earlier and found that we do the worst DPS no matter what we do except I think against fencers we did slightly more against medium armor enemies (since fencers have poor AP) while using normal attacks; the fencers outdamaged us even then if they spammed specials.
The thing is: I don't think theyeven included accuracy in their analysis.
What people are forgetting in the damage comparison in PvE, is that alot of range classes you group with can spam or chain their specials because of super low HAMs of their weapons, thereby outdamaging us easily. I currently group with a commando, now that guy does some serious damage, 1200 every sec or so no special.
BTW on Block- I've seen some NPC weilding polearms *block* me, but I've never seen me do it. How a meatlump has better block skill than me is beyond me, it think it works for npcs and not for pcs, go figure.
Well, the problems with out class are pretty well known, by us anyways. So what is comming out that will help pikeman?
1) The tank ability. This will help us immensely, especially against multiple targets.
2) The HAM adjustments. Hopefully it will be lowered to the point where we don't kill outselfs by trying to hit something.
3) Accuracy. The dev said he didn't like our negative modifyers at all, so hopefully they will be positive after the change.
4) Block wasn't working correctly, and the Dev said he'd fix the numbers so it did.
5) Knockdown. I agree with the 30 second timer, but I also think that the upcomming change that will make the mobs stay down for longer is needed.
Those problems have been acknowledged by the Devs and will be fixed. But what else needs to be done to help out class?
1) Damage. We're supposed to be the hardest hitting melee class, but our DPS and even single attacks are being outdone by the other 3 melee classes. Polearm hit 3 needs to have a x4 modifyer instead of x3. Our area attacks and spin moves need to do at least double what they do now in order to be effective against multiple targets. Polearm hit two needs to be more damaging, as well as our leg hits.
2) Toughness. It needs to be brought in line with the other melee classes.
3) We should be an ap3 class, but we're only ap2.
4) Leg hit 3, IMHO should be a 'crippling' move. A successfull hit should slow the target's running speed by half for 10 seconds. (with a cooldowntimer of 15-20 seconds for balance)
I think that if we could fix the above 4 issues, that we would be a very decent class. Add these fixes in with the ones that are already comming, and I think we'll be the best melee class.
<*cant help myself, struggling, struggle, ahh hell*>
Gunman21, Almost every post you "post" you give kudos the 30 sec KD timer. You are one of two pikeman that I know of that likes this and the ONLY one that advocates it. Except you never provide any reasoning why its a good thing for us pikeman to only be able to use our effective defense once every 30 second. Well, this inst quite true, the only support you've ever provided that I've read, to your argument is that "spamming anything is a bad thing"
Well, I can tell you that I SPAM leghit3 after bleeding my target. Thanks to the loss of all area attacks and KD defense, Im reduced to spamming my moves.
Im asking you to provide some support to your premise.
The 30 second KD timer was a necessary change because KD was 100% overpowered. There's no denying it. Pre-nerf, one could spam KD all day long with a lance, (or E11 carb). It is unbalanced to be able to render your enemy indefinately immobile and unable to return fire or get out of his situation. It's not ok for 0/0/1/0 pikemen to solo gurrecks.
The problem is that the KD tweak needed more than just a timer to make it work right. It was a bad quick fix, that deserved a lot more attention and effort than it got.
Anew tweak on KD is going into test center which willhopefully be somewhere between the overpowered pre-nerf KD and the useless KD we have right now.
Lol, about the same as you advocating to get the timer removed in every post 
I want to play aprofession whos moves work, skill modifyers work, and has variety. I don't want to play in aprofession where only one move works, where everyone in that professions spams that one move, and the rest of the moves in the profession are completely worthless.
As it is now, pikeman is a borken profession.We're inefficientunbuffed and are theworst meleeright now. But, the devs are going to fix us eventually.
Iwant tosee our other movesfixed, our defensive skills worked, our damage increased. So does everyone else.
But if we keep pressing the KD issue, not only are we going to get a no from the designer, we're missing our opportunity to get the other things that we needfixed, fixed.
I don't mindspamming moves such as polearmhit2, leghit, spin or AOE moves. But when it comes to a movewhere you can spam it and prevent themob or PC you're fighting from hitting you back,not only is that unfair, I'd go as far to say that it's an exploit in PVE to get mass amounts of XP with little worry of risk or incap. This is why I support the30 second timer, to make it a challenge to fight in pve, to prevent cheapness in pvp, and tomake the proffessions diffrent by not havingONE move that the entire profession relys on. That's not the way it's supposed tobe, its supposed to be a helpfull addition just like every other moves are supposed to be helpfull additions, not a crutch for a broken profession.
They're keeping the 30 second timer, but increasing the time that a mob stays KD'd, so it will once again be a viable move, but you can't spam it like before. This is a good fix......lets move on to the other, bigger issues that plague our profession.
Maybe I've been unclear in the past. There is no denying that KD was overpwered. but there is also no denying that we were once good in combat (not Uber just good) and now we are crappy. I keep playing with my friends and watch them get better while I stay far behind. Basically my complaint is that we die too fast and it doesnt make for fun game play when u watch while incapped the TKA partner sit there and tank just fine for 75 seconds while im rezzin.
As for my "advertisement", I stand 100% by it. We are the absolute worst in melee and are a joke when it comes to pvp against ranged. (my cynism in place since i just teamed with equivalent skilled TKA and Heavy Swordsman and incapped almost every fight while they shrugged the attacks off)
As I've been stating all along, all the devs need to do is increase KD resist across the board, and/or reduce damage from sweep1 and 2. The tank idea is great and all but I dont want to wait another 3 months for it to be implemented while CYA producers use power point presentations to argue the finer points of this to their 12 lvls of nervous management. I'd just like for them to "temp" us back 1/4 of our skills while they argue away. And besides with a functioning sweep2 i wont be terrified to use AE attacks (which accounts for another 25% of our moves). As it stands now we have 0 defense and 50% of attacks available to us. No wonder we are gimps.
We need lovin and we need it FAST. I dont know how long I can keep deluding myself that fighting with a Polearm is fun.