Pikeman Archive

Sorry Antares, but I believe you thinking of staff vs staff combat, which does involve a lot of blocking. But I would like everyone to think about this. If you were a pikeman, and a TK/fencer/swordsman started charging youwith anattack, would you wait to block... or impale him before he reached into striking range??? Since we have the longest melee weapons, we would not allow someone to get so close that we need to block a punch or a knife or a creature's teeth, we would use our superior range to counterattack...

Also, we do not need more toughness, but more melee defense. Someone like a TK in theory endures body conditioning so I could understand why they have a higher toughness. But our melee defense should realistically be the highest. And I base this on my above arguement, we have the longest weapons. A pike was traditionally used to keep an opponent at bay. It should be very difficult to strike a pikeman, because we have the range. A TK should not tank creatures the way a pikeman can. With a large pike weapon, we should have superior skills at avoiding melee damage. This would make us unique as opposed to raising our toughness, with no logic needed, just to make us more equal with other melee classes. It is amazing how this game gives gun fighters such an advantage in combat because of their range, yet has NO concept of range when it comes to melee combat...

Yes, a counterattack is just what it says it is, it's attacking while you are being attacked. Basically, among the Devs there were advocates for the other melee professions (TKA-nuff said, Swordsman gets two AP2 weapons, one of which does Blast combined with mind damage, Fencers Dodge everything) but not Pike so no one was there to say hey this is bad game design to make this profession supposedly equal or have a complimentary role without giving them adequate tools for that. Counterattack does not inherently involve any defense, being skilled at your weapon means that you are probably trying to sidestep while attacking or attacking in such a way so as to take the hit on your weapon while forcing past with your hit i.e. BLOCKING. Devs play TKA's and Swordsmen, have a nice day!

Padre

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Ciao wrote:

Please set me straight on this!!

1) So, we take 50% damage on block while other melees dont?

2) Our Block only works while COB is on while all the other melee's secondary defenses work all the time??

3) We have the lowest toughness out of all the melee profession???

4) We have the greatest spread on our weapons to allow Damage Mitigation to work better vs our attacks????

5) Our "Master Level" attack, PolearmHit3 (PH3), has a posture down so if you lower the target with that attack and do it again they are on their feet, or if you KD and dizzy them you cant use your "supposed" best attack or they will pop to their feet again; while this does not occur with other melee's "master level" attack????? (Thanks to the KD nerf, the left hand didnt know what the right hand was doing)

6) Our "Master" attack, PH3, only has a2.5 damage modifier while the other melee "master level" attacks get a multiplier of 3??????

And now they will look at the profession??????? According to the "State of the Game" There is NO TIME listed for the Combat Revamp nor is there a profession revisit scheduled for the Pikeman as there is for several other professions. I have been gone from the game for over 2 months and remember the First Phase was implemented and that was the creature overhaul. Well, weapons were nexted followed by a rework of the HAM and then the professions. As it stands now, there really is no date set for the remainder of this "Combat Pass" and I honestly dont think it will happen. They are waiting for the Space Expansion as it should divert everyones attention. Heck, the Jedi path will be live before the Pike Profession gets any fix. Just look how long it took to get the accuracy mods adjusted!! Bad tidings for the Pikeman.

So, I think I know why there are so few pikemen, hehe. You are a Pikeman because you love the look and not for the combat prowess, or lack there of.

Anyway, I just dont understand how the Pike profession was able to launch so screwed up and not get fixed.It cant be that hard, all they have to do is tell the janitor to stop cleaning and put his one hour a month into his part time Dev position as the Pikeman Developer now!Thenhe can return to his full time job. (No slight on janitors intended, just an example of the resources, well.. lack of resources, dedicated to the Pikeman Profession. I have said this several months ago and will say it again, "If you don't want to support a Profession and make it a viable choice, just DELETE it!!! The 5 people who get mad are insignificant, you have angered more people with all the other nerfs/changes/modifications already done, the 5 pikeman should be insignificant. This will free up more developers to focus on other, Obviously, more important issues. Oh......wait, there are no resources dedicated to the Pikeman, I forgot. See, just drop the profession then, you dont support it anyway. Stop fooling yourselves. I honestly believe that it is the best solution base on all that you have on your plate. You can reintroduce the Profession at a latter date in another publish or expansion and do it justice and make it sexy. I am sure the Pikemen wont mind waiting 8 months for your staff to create a really balanced Pikeman Profession with a variety of capable skills and weapons. I personally think it would be worth the wait. So DELETE the Pikeman and reintroduce him later as a real Melee Profession

Think it will happen?
Oh well, such is life. /shrug

Soon to Retire Again Pikman
Imperial, Ahazi

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Ex..fing..actly!

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RoyceCattemara wrote:
Well, if we have to take 50% damage through block, why don't we get higher polearm toughness to absorb more of that excess damage?

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or just make it so block has twice the chance of trigering as the other defences. Ya the others would have the chance of not geting dammaged altogeather with a lucky streak on the RNG but in the long run the amount of damage avoided would avrage to the same amount.

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TheStarWarsKid wrote:

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PadreBook wrote:

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RoyceCattemara wrote:
Well, if we have to take 50% damage through block, why don't we get higher polearm toughness to absorb more of that excess damage?

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Oooo, darn good question! Well the fact of the matter is that we got the low draw on developers. I wish we could get the Creature Handler Developer here as he actually cares about his job and communication with players.

Padre

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Gunman does a very good job IMHO. He communicates with us (he made this thread about new info on block didn't he? ) And from what I see, he cares about his job. I dont see why you're taking your anger out on Gunman.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but Gunman21 is the Pikeman correspondent, not a Developer. That means he is one of us, the players, not an employee of SOE. So what PadreBook is referring to is Keldarin, which turns out to be the same developer responsible for Bio-Engineer and Pikeman professions, which can explain why things are taking ages before they get recognized/looked into/tested/implemented...