Pikeman Archive

After several weeks playing with the new combat upgrade, it seems to me that the pikeman role has not turned out the way it was intended. This post is an attempt to examine that in more detail and perhaps give solutions to some of the problems.

First, note our role as stated by the official documents, reproduced in the bold parts here.

Primary Role: Melee Opponent Control (Attacker Modifiers)
This of course refers to our "debuffing specials." There are some obvious issues here which need to be addressed, and although the devs are apparently aware of the problems, there has been no noticable improvement.

• Intimidate: Our biggest debuff, drops the attacker's damage output by 20%. This is a unique and potentially very powerful ability, but has flaws. First, it doesn't stick as effectively as most master pikemen believe it should. Second, it doesn't stick at all versus certain enemies (droids are a perfect example, but it may also apply to very-high level mobs in general). This state needs to be
  possible to stick versus all enemies, and should have a much better chance of sticking on average enemies.


• Warcry: Has two different in-game descriptions. One says it prevents attacking (false), the other says it drops the attacker's attack speed by 15 points. This is just not a useful skill against anything but the weakest of opponents. The diminishing returns equation means that 15 points off a high-level enemy will barely even be noticable. This ability also requires clarification, and whichever documentation is false needs to be removed from the game.


• Stunning blow: Drops the attacker's damage output by 10% (stackable with intim.), does damage, and supposedly prevents action pool regeneration for a short time. This actually works fairly well, but suffers from the same problem that intimidate has with not affecting droids and certain other mobs. It also needs to be able to be applied to any enemy.

So there we have our three primary "Attacker Modifier" attacks. Warcry is in my opinion outright broken. Intimidate and stun, while good in principle both seem weaker than they should be and too hard to stick. Additionally, while it may be "logical" for enemies like droids to be immune to intimidation and stunning blow it totally eliminates the primary role of pikemen against these enemies.

While not truly an "Attacker Modifier", the armor break ability granted by our 2-handed pre-requisite actually seems a more desirable debuff than the above.

Secondary Role: Melee Crowd Control (Attacker Control)
How we are intended to fill this role is a mystery to me, it seems to mean we have area attacks, so let's examine them.

• Spin attack: Nothing much to say here. It's an area attack that hits anything within range. Seems to be more useful for draining your own action pool than for actually dealing any damage. No noticeable "Attacker Control" element.


• Sweep attack: Area knockdown. It works well in that capacity, but knockdown itself is considerably weaker than it once was. In PvE, it delays the enemy by perhaps 2 seconds, making it nothing more than an extremely short duration root. It does not cause them to change aggro to you and it doesn't last long enough to escape a bad situation. In PvP, knockdown recovery is granted at novice brawler and novice
  marksman, so everyone has the ability. By comparison, nobody has an anti-root or anti-snare ability. Therefore, knockdown by itself is nearly useless.

That's about it for our crowd control abilities. We also have the basic version of taunt. TKA gets taunt bonuses and swordsman gets area taunt, though neither class lists crowd control as a role. That's fairly immaterial now as taunt is totally ineffective at keeping aggro on us.

To improve our crowd control abilities it would make sense for our primary role abilities to get area equivalents. Area intimidate would make a great deal of sense. I would also suggest that spin attack be replaced with an area stun that does less damage than spin attack currently does. Knockdown in general needs attention, it currently serves no purpose at all.


It appears to me that the reality of the post-CU game doesn't meet the goals laid out with our profession. In the end I'm left with much the same feeling that I had in the early days of pikeman. We can do most things pretty adequately but there's nothing we excel at, we're not even that good at doing what we were supposedly designed to do.

Any opinions or suggestions out there?


edit: It's never good to spell "pikeman" wrong in the title of your post.

Message Edited by annelid0 on 05-31-2005 08:18 PM

I wont realy comment on what you have becouse you clearley have more time with the CU than me.

But one thing that bugs me. Why are all the discriptions so short for our skills now? Some of them are just badley worded, or way to short in its discription of what they do now. Going from what we had, to what we have...we are missing alot of infromation about WHAT the new skills do.

2c

Compared to the "Spin attack" of yester year...that thing is so gimped. I miss my bleeds too

And...with this new combat system...knockdown is worthless. It dosnt even grant you enough time to do anything...with the whole cool down stuff...i dont even bother.

and where is our red streakey thingys?

Over all i like the combat upgrade, but it fells like we as a class are back to square one, same flys, diffrent..bantha poo.

And gunman, i hope you read what i wrot, i wasnt joking, the discriptions of the skills are very lacking and or worded very oddley.

Consideing this is like a new game to me, i did not find the discriptions very usefull in helping me get back to knowing the class.

Think of the noobs....... --> ?

Message Edited by vonbloodworth on 05-31-2005 08:26 PM

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Gunman21 wrote:

Very nice writeup.

Intimidate/Warcry is on the list I submitted earlier today, they're both supposed to be the heart and soul of pikeman yet they are hardly noticiable. This is definatly something that needs to change in order to give pikeman that tanking and opponent control feeling.

Stunning blow is fine with me, since action regeneration is very important in pvp combat.

Spin is definatly not something to do alone. In a group of pikeman/jedi/others w/ area attacks it's more beneficial. But, I agree the damage could be improved on it some, I'll add it to the list.

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Thanks Gunman.

Glad to hear you're on the same page with intim/warcry. For profession-defining attacks they're mediocre at best.

I agree, Stunning blow is probably the best-functioning of all of our attacks at the moment. Are we sure it does prevent action regeneration though? I've confirmed it drops the attacker's damage by 10% (in itself worthwhile), I haven't yet been able to confirm that it actually does stop action regeneration, but I've not had a chance to test that either.

I'm not sure it's the damage on spin that's really the issue. I'd rather its damage remain where it is and a state effect be added (sort of like the old stun2 or area2). I definitely agree that it's best used in a group, but we're not supposed to be the damage dealers in a group anyway, we're supposed to be the debuffers.

Any thoughts on KD? What was once the gem of the profession (area sweep) is now a master level attack that is seldom useful, and is far inferior to other professions' roots and snares which do the same thing but vastly better.

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vonbloodworth wrote:
i wasnt joking, the discriptions of the skills are very lacking and or worded very oddley.

Consideing this is like a new game to me, i did not find the discriptions very usefull in helping me get back to knowing the class.

Think of the noobs....... --> ?

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I agree, but documentation has been a longstanding problem with this game. Things often just don't do what they say they do. It's up to us to figure it out for ourselves, and that can be very tricky in some cases.

I'd love to see better documentation too, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Luckily we have people like Acaila who test things and give us more in-depth information. As time goes on, I fully expect others (including myself if I ever get the time) to expand this knowledge base. I'd encourage anyone who has the desire and aptitude to test some of our skills to do so and post the results.

I agree with most of what you said here, except the bit about Aggro control. Aggro isn't necessarily part of crowd control. Crowd control "Refers to a set of spells / abilities that temporarily paralyze or stun other mobs or players. Crowd control is an important group support ability when fighting multiple mobs." according to the Daedlus project, and that definition is echoed most everywhere.

Pikemen have that in area knockdown, which is clearly crowd control. I do think they should have another area control, though, as a single ability isn't really a defining characteristic. Area Stun/Area Dizzy, sure.

Taunt is all about aggro. Aggro is all about tanking, so it makes sense for TKA to have taunt bonuses, and I'd think Area Taunt as well, esp. given their lack of damage output.

Swordsman have no need for Area Taunt, though. That's entirely offbase, but beyond your scope.

Honestly, to me, Pikemen are the jack of all trades of the melee group - they have some tanking/aggro, some high damage, some states. They aren't master of any of the 3, but they are mid level in all of them. That doesn't fit at all with the defined role, but that's what I see after my 3 weeks of respec testing.

well annelid, a great write-up as you always do i dropped pikeman post-CU because i wanted to try BH and my pre-CU template of BH/Pikeman didnt work out so great. but i do still look here and i agree. all of these problems need to be adressed because it is making pikeman a simple supporting profession, not a primary profession.

however, doc/pikeman is still a very good template from what i hear.

Yes, it realy does feel like we are right back where we started again (im old)

i think they should have it so kd makes an opponent stay down for like 8 seconds so it actually does something

I agree with near enough everything most people have said here.

One of the area attacks needs to be changed to do some sort of stun or dizzy.
Knockdown Area attack needs a much longer duration (currently i can only get one special in before they stand)
Warcry needs improving.
Intim needs improving.

Another question that i have. If we our secondary role is 'Crowd Control' why dont we get a version of the Snare which fencers get. Maybe the basic specials not an Improved or Advanced. A root is still what on of the melee professions still need im thinking or like what someone else said and up the time of knockdown to 'effectivly' work like a root.

Pikeman is all about combining templates as near enough all other combat professions are. I find the most effective to be TKM.MP.Swords 0040 and whatever else you like (force stuff for me). You get the debuff which WE WE WE WE WE should have (advanced armor break) not the swordsman and you gain a nice boost in melee/ranged defense.

Did i mention WE should be getting advanced armor break and not them in one of our branches?

peace out.

Message Edited by kudil on 06-05-2005 01:51 PM

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quitch wrote:
i think they should have it so kd makes an opponent stay down for like 8 seconds so it actually does something

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8 seconds and you are dead unless your opponent sucks