Pikeman Archive
Thread: Melee defensive calculations (Updated)
ArkMindSpear wrote:
i always thought it'd be really awesome if we blocked with our bracers.....
We should block pretty much 100% of the time, and damage is reduced by 50% and then suffers the defense of our bracers....
so lets say you had some nice 80% kinetic bracers....
You equip those two things, and then when damage is delt to you, if +Block+ fires, teh damage is reduced by 50% then 80% so you take about 10% of the final damage....
This would help us to do lots of things, becouse we would not require a full suit of armor to have most of the benifits from it....
maybe it's a silly idea, but i think it's somthing that could be worked out into a good idea.
Message Edited by CLab2021 on 05-04-2004 12:02 AM
we could all look like clones of THIS guy!
As a note, I updated this to be correct with block/counter/dodge being secondary defenses. I also made ratios of damage taken between the professions. It's interesting, check it out.
antares
master pikeman
hope this is stickied 
CLab2021 wrote:
I like it, I have always suggested to have block be balanced, with the taking 50% of the damage, have it fire 100% of the time at Master Pikeman, still tkae 50% damage, and block states....Id be happy with that
Only problem with this is that I did some testing and in a low-miss (less than 5%) situation both pikemen and swordsmen blocked 75% of the hits. If we blocked 100% of the time we'd still be letting twice as much damage through (50% to their 25%). Personally, I'd rather be suffering from every state in the book than get that kind of damage penalty.
To make matters worse, in a test with a lot of misses, it broke down to be 35% misses, 60% blocks/counterattacks, and 5% clean hits. The swordsman only got 5% of the damage while we took 35%, and that's without even considering toughness.
The are only two ways block can be balanced with counterattack (I assume dodge works the same way but didn't test it). Either counterattack can be badly nerfed, or block can be changed to avoid 100% of the damage. Seems to me avoiding 100% of the damage would be the easy and sensible way to go. If dodge and counterattack both do it, there's absolutely no reason block shouldn't.
annelid0 wrote:
CLab2021 wrote:
I like it, I have always suggested to have block be balanced, with the taking 50% of the damage, have it fire 100% of the time at Master Pikeman, still tkae 50% damage, and block states....Id be happy with that
Only problem with this is that I did some testing and in a low-miss (less than 5%) situation both pikemen and swordsmen blocked 75% of the hits. If we blocked 100% of the time we'd still be letting twice as much damage through (50% to their 25%). Personally, I'd rather be suffering from every state in the book than get that kind of damage penalty.
To make matters worse, in a test with a lot of misses, it broke down to be 35% misses, 60% blocks/counterattacks, and 5% clean hits. The swordsman only got 5% of the damage while we took 35%, and that's without even considering toughness.
The are only two ways block can be balanced with counterattack (I assume dodge works the same way but didn't test it). Either counterattack can be badly nerfed, or block can be changed to avoid 100% of the damage. Seems to me avoiding 100% of the damage would be the easy and sensible way to go. If dodge and counterattack both do it, there's absolutely no reason block shouldn't.
Only problem is the Devs have said that Block is working and they will not be changing the taking of 50% damage. 
That means we need to come up with something else to help balance it. Giving us the highest toughness would be a start. Making block fire more often than dodge/counterattack would also make sense. Then I think they'd also have to give block something unique that dodge/counterattack does not have, like blocking states or something like that. Either that or they need to balance it out in other ways, by increasing damage or something along those lines.
As it is it is painfully obvious that Pikemen are the worst tanks. Perhaps if they just modified the toughness numbers for all professions it would help out. And of course we'll have to wait for the "Combat Balance" for that, which who knows when or what it will actually address.
Exactly. If it did something different than counterattack or dodge, besides just being worse, then it would be alright. I like the idea of blocking states unlike the others...whatever it is, it needs to do something different to make it worth being 50% less effective.
antares
master pikeman
As I see it we have three options for ways to make block viable.
The first is to make it avoid 100% of damage, just like dodge and counterattack. State effects would be nice to avoid, sure, but they're not what kills us. A dizzied/knocked down swordsman with CoB still active still tanks better than a pikeman with no state effects on him.
The second option is that we accept block giving us 50% damage. We should then forget about the possibility of ever tanking. It just won't happen. Instead, why not make CoB give an offensive bonus too? Give us +50 accuracy and increase all our damage mods by 1-2x. If we're going to die, we should at least do it while beating the hell out of our opponent.
The third option is to stay the way we are and nerf the hell out of the other melees until we're balanced. I don't care for this one personally, but it may be the most likely to actually happen.
A blind Pikeman is a dead Pikeman. Its even worse if you're using looted weapons with anywhere from -25 to -55 range modifiers.
annelid0 wrote:
State effects would be nice to avoid, sure, but they're not what kills us.
Dynastar wrote:
A blind Pikeman is a dead Pikeman.
Not really. A blind pikeman is simply a pikeman who can't hit anything (unless you switch to a staff or basic lance, anyway). In PvP which is almost pure offense that often equals death, but it has very little to do with our ability to tank effectively. Stun does hurt our defenses, but we already have a reasonable resistance to that one. And obviously we're better off not getting dizzied and knocked down, but dizzy alone is pretty meaningless.
I don't know about you, but when I go to the corvette my main concern is not what state effects I'm going to get hit with, it's that I'm going to get hit for 2k and block is going to allow 1000 of that to hit me. If that's how it has to be fine, but not getting hit by state effects isn't going to change the fact that a few of those hits in quick succession and I'll be incapped.
For the sake of disclosure, I'm a doctor and therefore don't have to worry about states now anyway. But just like that, there are things we can do (and every other class can do) to avoid state effects already, and we still don't come close to being on equal ground. There's nothing we can do about block's 50%. Blocking states would be nice, just not nearly nice enough to justify the damage we'll still take.