Pikeman Archive

All right here goes. This will be a fairly long read. If nothing else, I would ask people skip down to the 'General Combat' section, which I think is the most key of suggestions.

I am by no means an expert on the pikeman class, but I have been playing SWG since beta, have observed and played all classes, and have some thoughts on Pikeman.

The pikeman profession has always interested me, but there have also always been roadblocks that kept me from enjoying it. I'm currently playing a pikeman now while I'm mastering professions for Jedi (not a holocron, just profession #13). I enjoy the class to some extent, but it still has many glaring issues that have been present since the time I first got interested in it early in retail.

Here's my observations and suggestions. I hope the Correspondent takes time to read this and can provide some feedback, or perhaps take some things from this. I apologize in advance if some of these suggestions have already been already been settled.

Pikeman is completely underpowered until master, and even at master it pales in comparison to the other melee classes, especially Teras Kasi Artist. I was a Teras Kasi Master for a time, my other melee friends refused to duel me because I would always beat them simply using power boost and auto-attack. However I don't feel TKA needs a nerf, but rather other melee professions need to be brought up to the same level.

Accuracy First and foremost issue that I've been reporting since early retail, is pikeman accuracy is off the charts pathetic. Currently with my 2nd best weapon, a Vibro Lance, I get a -46 to-hit modifier at all times. If I attempt to use my LVA, it caps at -50 at all times. It is simply obscene that a melee profession gets the same penalty at melee range that a ranged user does if they run around like a chicken with their head cut off.

As it stands as a 3-1-0-3 pikeman, I estimate I miss roughly 40% of the time on averageagainst opponents of any difficult level. My friend was a master pikeman for a long time, yet she still had accuracy issues as well.

Solution: polearm-type weapons need an accuracy fix, the problem doesn't necessarily lie within the pikeman profession, but rather in the weapons that are used. My current Vibro lance has a -31 at all ranges, this is unaccpetable. WhileI think the combat exp tree could use a Polearm Accuracy +10 in each of the boxes that are currently empty, simply fixing the weapons themselves would be a huge step in the right direction.

Skills/Abilities This is another huge sticking point with me. I look at the Pikeman profession, review what I have as available skills, see what my Master Pikeman friend used, and notice there's a ton of overlapping. A huge number of the pikeman combat abilities are area attacks, however aside from a couple status effects here and there (which really don't make a difference outside of KD) there is very little reason to use one over another. The damage does not ramp up enough until much later to make a difference in which ability is used.

There is also an extreme lack of skill modifiers within the tree. If you look at Teras Kasi Artist, and even Fencer, almost all boxes have some form of skill modifiers. Within Pikeman at least 50% of the boxes are completely lacking of offensive/defensive/supportive skill modifiers. As it stands, if the skill were to work, a Teras Kasi Artist would be able to Block more effectively than a Pikeman. While a TKM should have this ability, a Pikeman should be much better at it.

Block in itself, simply needs to function. I see my opponents (mobs) block and 'partial block' all the time. Partial block appears to be relatively new in that it blocks around half the damage from an incoming attack. I have never seen myself or my Master Pikeman friend ever get a '+Block+' over their heads, or seen an attack Block'd in combat spam.

Pikemen also have no special skills. Center of Balance is mostly a gamble, making an inaccurate and slow profession even slower usually does more harm than good, regardless of how much is blocked. There is no reason to use this in a group as it simply further detracts from your gained experience, and in a raid situation it is not nearly enough to save the Pikeman.

Teras Kasi get meditate, an infinitely useful skill, Pikemen need something unique to them as well. I saw something about a "Pin" attack posted here recently, which I thought was a pretty good idea.

Solution Pikemen should be getting more defensive and offensive modifiers throughout their tree. Also of high priority should be getting Block to actually work. If it is actually working, it is simply not working nearly as well as it should. Center of Balance needs to be reevaluted in my opinion, as the mind cost and the reduced speed is too great of a penalty for the very short duration of a mediocre skill. Also, Pikemen current abilities need to be looked at and adjusted. Highly similar skills either need to be changed or removed, while the remaining skills need to be upgraded to be in line with other professions.

Last but not least in this section, Pikemen need an ability to call their own. As I mentioned, I like the idea of 'Pin'. I was thinking of something a little more offensive myself. I was thinking of 'Impale' a skill where the Pikeman would thrust his/her pike through the target. The target would be stunned/unable to actfor the duration of the skill, perhaps 10-15 seconds, as well as a temporary DoT being placed on them. The pikeman would be unable to take further actions until the duration of the skill was up, or it was manually cancelled. Put this on a short recycle like KD/delay/posture and I feel it would be pretty well balanced.

Defense wise, personally I'd rather see CoB removed all together and more class specific skills put in as a replacement. Example, forPikeman, a new skill addedalong the similar lines that would cause a large majority of attacks to be Block'd for a certain duration.

General Combat Here's my biggest point. I was playing my Pikeman today, soloing some mobs, and I noticed my combat progression was simply not efficient. I would stack my two action bleeds, and then generally auto-attack. Sometimes I would start using Leg Hit 2, but that can't be done for too long as the HAM costs add up very very quickly. The main thing I have a problem with however, is all weapons auto-attack the same way. Auto-attack generally seems to hit Health 60% of the time, Action 30% of the time, and Mind 10% of the time. To a Pikeman (and carbineer for that matter), hits to health pool are completely worthless. Its of no use to me if my opponent bleeds down to10% action if their health has already gotten to 20% all on its own from auto-attacks. It would have been more efficient for me to skip the HAM costs on the bleeds.

My main proposal here is the Devs look into making professions have different HAM hit percentages.

A Pikeman/Carbineer should be 70% action, 20% health, 10% mind, in the same way that a Fencer now can be 60%/30%/10% with no changes. It is simply unfair to non-health targetted professions.

Overall this would make all professions more effective as an individual because they would be further focused on a particular pool, thereby simply being more efficient in combat. This way instead of everybody going after random pools with some bias to health (thereby making non pistoleer/fencer attacks a waste of HAM), all players in combat are contributing equally in combat.

Well anyways, that was long and drawn out

I hope folks take time to read this, and the Correspondent can take some ideas from it. For those simply browsing from other professions, I will most likely be making similar threads in other combat profession boards if this one goes over well, as I do have experience with all classes.

-Nahela Nira'te, Ahazi.

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Nishu wrote:

Accuracy

Skills/Abilities

General Combat

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The accuracy issue will most likely according to the recent updates from the DEV be solved with the new patch containing the combat system "revamp".

I totally aggree we need something special as our main "thing", and the impale, or move thing, sounds very intriguing and would at least give us some definition(to some extent at least).

The halfway thought through system of how we attack each part ofthe HAM system is also an important part not to be forgotten. As you stated it seems almost like we're lost somewhere in between action and health with notquite focusing on either. I would love to se some resoultions in this area.

I agree with everything, but CoB doesn't cause a speed change, and it's quite useful all the time. Granted, due to block, not as useful as fencers' CoB, but it still helps all the time tremendously.

Adding in more accuracy bonuses in the combat tree is not a real solution. It helps those farther along, but those in the lower levels suffer as before. We can only hope they actually change the weapons in upcoming combat/weapons passes...we'll see.

We do have a lot of overlapping specials.At master, we have no need to use many specials that are simply overridden by others, and we have 2 top-level specials that are too similar to each other tomake a difference,really (spin2/area2).

Hitting health most of the time is a drag when we focus on action, very very true there. I doubt this will change though, maybe in the combat passes, who knows.

antares
master pikeman

This would be information you'll want to include in the "Wishlist" thread. This is the kind of concerns the Devs want to hear.

Just double check to make sure all your facts are "accurate."