Pikeman Archive

Well, basically the only way any profession takes more damage than any other can only be determined by fighting an equal amount of time, an equally resistant mob, and all professions do equal type of damage type and damage range. The fact that no two professions will constantly take the same amount of time to kill a target means that sometimes you take more damage, other times you don't. A fencer will take more damage in most situations because of their weak offense which makes all fencers battles last a lot longer than a pikes.....usually twice as long. Pikes have significantly more damage they do per swing effectively taking out their target faster providing that both fencer and pikes are not attacking a vulnerability, in which case the length of the fight last longer or shorter. this changes who takes more damage than others....notany single stat...it's a combination of all stats offensive and defensive.

Now even though the fencers defensive stats are higher than the pikes, he takes more, equal or sometimes less overall damage (even though they dodge) because of the length of time it takes the fencer to do away with a target that if a pike would attack the same target, he would kill the target much faster due to the damage pikes do with each hit. Fencers can only reach 3k damage on a KD oppenent while as a pike I could easily get 3.5k hits on a standing opponent....as a master fencer if I hit for 2.5k damage, that was exceptional.....even if the target is more resistant to the pikes attacks and it is vulnerable to the fencers attacks, the pike still has an advantage......weapons that have max damage of 590 with AP2 (thisis my LVA)compared to fencers having gaderiffis with 330 max and no AP (this is my gaderiffi **not acklay either...this was before acklay was even in the game)......the pike gets a big bonus and still can potentially take out the target faster......only when resistances is extreme (like 90% or so) will the fencer kill faster than a pike for the most part. I know from experience that a pike can KD his opponent a whole lot more effectively than a fencer can....that right there stops all damage you take from the mob......it was extremely hard to KD an opponent as a fencer.....but as a pike......my KD stuck 3 out of 4 times probably maybe 3 out of 5 at the least......in fact I had to be master brawler and do lunge2 (a totallly different profession) to keep my opponent kd'd when I was a master fencer......

Factor in the hit/miss ratio ofyour profession(s), the resist of the target, the HAM level of the target, the hit/miss ratio of the target, all the main, secondary and tertiary defenses each profession has and you have at all times asmall but signigicant enoughbalance in the amount of damage each profession takes over others with the right template tweaking.

Sure a pure pike will take more damage per hit, but at the same time a pike takes less hits overall due to killing his opponent faster than some other professions

for example, when I was a master fencer/master pistoleer I could kill a quenker in 10 seconds max using no armor or buffs. As a master Pike/master pistoleer I could kill the same target in 4 seconds max with no armor and buffs. my fencer took twice the time to take out its target effectively being attacked more. In order for the fencer to take more damage than the pike overall the fencer would have to dodge 4 of the 5 attacks which doesn't happen as often as people think. (Most creatures attack at a minimum of once every 2 seconds, some may vary, though 2 seconds is the most common time delay between creatures attack that i've noticed......npc's are different)

To add to the above, some profession templates you can have that involve pike can actually make the pike have better defenses.......for example, a pike/fencer template will have defense of 104 melee defense and 94 ranged defense while a TKM/Swordsman will only have 82 Melee defense and 60 Ranged defense. Then it comes down to which template does more damage which means the target will go down faster and get in less attacks......I know from experience that TKM/swordsman can take outa lot of targets faster than pike/fencer providing the kinetic resist aren't extremely highand there are some mobs that the pike template could take out faster than the swordsman tkm template. There are many factors for this.

I'm willing to bet that less than 5% of the players in this game walk around with only pikeman as a combat profession and same goes for any other combat profession. I have never ever walked around in this game with only one profession and no dabbling....that's absurd when you have full access and ability to increase any of your stats.

Also, everyone or most everyone who can either afford it or lucky enough to get drops will use SEA's and BE clothing to enhance their defense.

Then theres the fact that there are extremely rare instances wheretwodifferent templatesarebothmaxed out on all of it's defensive stats (MD/RD/Toughness). So it's not feasible to compare the fact that if pike with any other profession and any combination of any two other professions were both maxed on MD and RD.....it just doesn't happen. sure there are some people out there that have 125 MD and RD but what is the percentage of the population that has that.....

pike is far from being the weakest defensive profession in the game.....all ranged professions are weaker simply because they don't get any toughness or third defense to kick in after MD/RD and Dodge,Block and Counterattack have made thier checks.

This is just some of the reasons why I disagree and believe the data is a bit misleading.....because the data is only relevantwhen being asingle profession for which I don't know anyone right now that doesn't dabble. Therefore, it is not an issue because all players have the ability to tweak their templates to improve on any aspect of thier character. The day we can't make our pikes defense better is the day that this thread is 100% true in it's data with no argument from me.

With all of the above, how can anyone say that any profession will always take more damage than any other profession. You simply can't say that. Sure comparing swordsman to pike, fencer to pike, tkm to pike we can say pike is on the short end.....but after everything all factors in (as in the whole combat picture)....The damage any profession takes constantly fluctuates and therefore no one profession will "ALWAYS" take more damage.

Each profession has it's match.....A pike without a hard to get energy lance can't touch a kunga rockshaper, you will be defeated (unless you have a grenade which is a whole other story).....other professions have their match also....A TKM fighting a Super battle droid will take lots more damage than a pike....because that pike can do electricity damage effectively taking down that battle droid faster than a TKM.....the TKM's kinetic damage will be reduced so much, it probably will take about quadruple the time to kill it than a pike can. This is a fact the I myself have went through. my guild went to the corvette and our TKM Could outdamage me, but my VL and LVA did more damage than him, plus he died twice and I didn't die once.I only had 60% special and 50% base armor at the time also. The only difference maker is what other profession, SEA's or BE clothing does the pike have that will decrease the damage he takes long enough for him to kill off the SBD. SBD's only have 25% electricity resist (I think) but they have like 80% - 90% kinetic damage....off the top of my head, been a long time since I've fought one. The TKM only has kinetic damage with AP1 and pike has electricity, kinetic both with AP1 and AP2 respectively and then theres the all too hard to obtain Energy lance. Throw in the fact that pikes can do insane area attacks and effectively be your crowd controller and can apply very nice DOTs and cause multiple status effects in one single hit.......You can see that a pikes offense is the first level of defense for them....Pikes are defensive fighters unlike swordsman who are offensive fighters. That's just my opinion though because that's how I use my Pike.

Hope I've explained the deeper picture than just the pike has 26 toughness and the swordsman have 43.....you can't compare the two to each other honestly without the more important other factors in the game.....for which there are many more than what I've listed here and I haven't even mentioned the differences with wearing various types of armor.........Why do you think the devs need to revamp the whole combat system.....becuase everything ties into each other and changing pikes defense will create more unbalancing issues than already exist. Fact is, even if some of pikes defenses where increased, it would not change the fact they with certain profession combinations youwould still take more damage in specific situations.....all profession templates do....it's how you understand your weakness and figure out how to make your weakness a strength that is the major determining factor.

Other than what I've said, sure pikes have lower defensive stats and if all I had was pikeman as a profession and nothing else....then those stats being the lowest would be more of a factor but due to the nature of being able to dabble this is not a very big issue.

on a final note....yes I know that other professions can be tweaked in the same manner to have better defense than a pike template.....but not every single other combination in the game will have better defenses than every single pike combination....if that were the case, then this game has a bigger problem than we think.

This is what the data in this thread fails to talk about....sometimes theirs more than just the pure numbers of the professions themselves that make the difference....in this case the data of this thread is 100% correct, but only in a very rare instance for which 95% of the server population doesn't play.....that is pure pikeman. I don't care what the numbers in this thread show......as a master pike/master pistoleer I took less damage and my armor (when I did use it) lasted longer than when I was a master fencer/master pistoleer. as a fencer I could barely make it through the geo cave solo with out dying....as a pike, I can go through the whole cave and back out solo without dying or being incapped even once......The damage, area attacks and DOTs pikes do are very strong defensive factors that made the difference for me instead of standing there getting beat on like fencers do, because despite popular belief, fencers dodge doesn't rule like we all think.....esepcially with the stacking nerf.

I don't know, maybe its just me....but all I know is I went through 2 suits of armor a week as a master fencer and cloned an average of 3-4 times a week.....I've only went through 2 suits in a month as a pike and clone an average of once a week.....and all I do is fight 95% of the time and traveling 5% of the time. I know this very well because I keep very aware of everytime I'm defeated and how it happen so I can improve next time.....but that's just me.

See you got me all worked up....LOL