Pikeman Archive

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Sneeuwlok wrote:

I think lvl 50+ is not tuned yet.

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That is correct. You can't expect to beat a lvl 80 creature/NPC right now. They just started high level testing, so it will be about a week before it all falls into line.

Ok, got to do some more serious testing last night. I soloed some level 80's, tanked for some friends, dueled a jedi or 2. Fun times. My template was unusual. Built around accuracy, defense, and states. I had stun, dizzy, blind, bleed, armor break, intim, and warcry (maybe another I'm forgeting). It was something like Master Pike, master brawler, 0444 TKA, 0030 Fencer, 0234 Sword...that's close to it, don't have a CU tree to check, but that's close enough. Basically a big mix.

Solo: Grabbed some lvl 78-80 missions on tat. As long as I only pulled 1 creature on me at a time, I could do it. I basically used CoB and Perry for defense, while hiting them with all the states. Then I used leg hit and impale until the states wore off and reapplied. I would win with health ranging from half to almost dead.
Conclusion: It should not take a complex stacking template like this to beat a level 80 creature. As a Pike/TKA, I couldn't beat level 80 creature for the life of me. As a Pike/Sword, I could win, but it was always very very close. When you are a double elite, your CL is 80...you should have a tough but winable fight if you con white to a creature. I'm going back on today (no work, YEAHHH!) to test again.

Group: Fought with my guildmates. Just 1 at first: carbineer/BH. Together, level 80 was a breaze. We never pulled more than 1 creature though. I was able to tank, but had trouble keeping the aggro on me. Taunt doesn't seem to hold the creature very long. The only yeah I could hold aggro was to make every other attack a leg hit or impale. So putting states on took longer.
Conclusion: This felt ok, but the taunting needs fixing. I even had the taunt bonus from my TKA skills.
Bigger Group: Group of 3. I'm the only melee. Others: Carb/BH and Rifle/(not sure). Pulling level 80 creatures. Very hard time holding the aggro. The only way I could hold it was to spam leg hit/impale...the moment I would use a state, the creature would receive more damage from one of the other members of the group and go attack them.

Jedi: Dueled 2 Jedi, then helped them test abilities/bugs. Both beat me. I don't know their exact templates. One of them I got from 5100 force down to 1000 force. So it wasn't to bad of a fight. The cloaking ability is annoying, but you can still see them move if you have a UI effect on them (dizzy, stun, bleed). Force attacks are borked right now, so who knows how it will turn out later. I basically used my states and dizzy/kd. MAKE SURE YOU PUT KD RECOVER IN ALL YOUR COMBAT TOOLBARS FOR PVP...VERY VERY IMPORTANT. After that we tested for bugs. The worse by far caused everyone near the jedi to CTD. I won't go into details...don't want to have someone exploit it on the masses by the frogs. Seriously, you could CTD every person nearby.
Conclusion: A bunch of jedi stuff still has to be fix/tweaked, so it's hard to tell anything right now.

Message Edited by RPMayhem on 04-20-2005 08:29 AM

when i went out and tried to tank with my master Pike, brawler, rifle, in a group of 2 with a Pike-Sword fotm, i honestly felt like i was totaly wasting my time. the swordsman had all of my abilities, and could use them with his scythe, making our state-based-control meaningless, plus he did twice as much damage as i did, and without burning action half as fast as i did... our ability to deal damage is pathetic, and our ability to tank is negated by the fact that any one can pick up the good parts (intimidate, stun, etc) and use them with any weapon.

imho, the special-with-any-weapon thing realy realy needs to go. people just get the best damage from sword, best states from pike, best defence from fencer, then use whatever weapon does the highest dps, and they can do every roll in combat without needing any support. not fun.

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Gunman21 wrote:

Please use this thread to discuss pikeman tanking. Do you feel more like a tank and able to last longer in combat when you have pikeman as compared to having a template w/o a defensive profession?

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I havent done MUCH in test center due to the *CONSTANT* crashes, but with the time I have been able to stay connected I've fought some lvl 30's and felt I was pretty solid.

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Gunman21 wrote:

Please use this thread to discuss pikeman tanking. Do you feel more like a tank and able to last longer in combat when you have pikeman as compared to having a template w/o a defensive profession?

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I focused on this question tonight, trying to see if there was an actual difference between the supposedly defense-weak swordsman/brawler template and the defense-strong pikeman/brawler template. On both I had no other skills aside from novice medic and used no specials aside from melee strike, intimidate, and warcry (the last two for pikeman only, obviously). I was level 56 in both cases. The pike template had 160 melee defense and the swords template had 145 melee defense.

I fought several white or yellow mobs (intending to be killed) to see whether I could be a pure tank better as a pikeman or a swordsman. I timed how long it took me to die. Frankly it wasn't long even against white cons.

What I came up with was that there was absolutely no significant difference in my survival time as a pikeman from my that of a swordsman, even though I was intimidating as a pikeman. In fact, in several instances I actually survived longer with the swords template.

Pikeman are now supposed to be tanks? Not going to work with the current functionality of the con system. As it is, I'd say we're currently destined merely to be an auxilliary profession for people who want intimidate and a spin attack.

Against creatures our tanking ability seems to kick in ok. It could be better in my opinion but I'll have to test it out more. However fighting any ranged npc's at all makes our tanking obsolete. For example I am a level 80 pikeman and fought a level 25 ST with a rifle. He pretty much wiped the floor with me. It was very very irritating because the effects placed onto him either did not stick or were not even working. If he's a blue con to me that means I should be able to take care of him. In fact I did better as a rifleman at 5m away than I did with my pike. That was when I got a little upset. As it is we don't stand a chance against a ranged npc in the way it's set up. I tried /bugging and whatever else I could do to inform the dev's of this so I really hope they look at what a tank is actually supposed to do. I don't want to give up pikes at all but it seems that they are trying to gimp the melee more and more to make it a primarily ranged combat game. Perhaps you can helps us Gunman21.

CU is very weird for pikeman right now. Owned by everything in PvP, but fairly good in PvE compared to others.

Message Edited by motox33 on 04-24-2005 01:14 AM

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motox33 wrote:
CU is very weird for pikeman right now. Owned by everything in PvP, but fairly good in PvE compared to others.

Message Edited by motox33 on 04-24-2005 01:14 AM

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just like you in live