Pikeman Archive

I just wanted to say thanks to all the posters, except for the whiney ones.

From perusing these posts, I have remembered things that I had forgotten or dismissed. Things like brawler skills long put away. I had completely removed warcry and intimidate from my bars, since when I first got them they were uninteresting, and really not too helpful against a durni or butterfly.

I never got master brawler, but even the lvl1 warcry makes a huge diff when it sticks on a high level mob. Its these little things that make the game so fun.

I am also a big fan of the dizzy/knockdown move. While I dont have a dizzy move yet, I always watch for it to appear on the bar, then whack him down, hopefully for good. Very satisfying.

Thanks All.

I stuck it out with "brawler" and I had a lot of fun over the weekend

I went out with a buddy of mine who is a marksman and we paired up pretty nicely.

As pikemen, have you thought about which role in a pair or group serves your goals the best?

I take aggro and earn healers lots of experience. I also get back to town a lot faster so I can alert the group if the shuttle is around. At this rate, any role looks good.

right now our role is to die.

we have no accuracy and high HAM along with a 4m range so anything we can do in a group is be a short lasting meat shield to hit maybe hit a bleed and die first

Yah, what psykeman just said. We make decent meatshields until we die. Assuming we're buffed.

One of our issues is class definition....we we're kinda hoping you orthe combat dev (Dan?)could shed some light on this for us.

yes i have....and for some reasion...even if i miss....every creatur guns for ME....i can have a groupe of 10 tka or wht ever...and like im coverd in honey...they make a nice bee line to me and *wap*....combatchat:you skills prevend all the damage from missing you.....

hmm, I've found my long vibro axe makes a goodtool to keep my pets cool. While they kill whatever threatens me, I just fan them.

Doh.

My posts are probably one of the ones Ran was talking about. Don't mean to sound whiney in them, but sometimes you just have to rant out your frustrations!

i think some of my posts get ranty because itd be nice to see some improvements.

I love being a pikeman, we can do some killer damage with the right tool and luck, lots of luck. the problems are listed so I don't need to go over them again. I also have listed things I like and think can improve the profession.

My main gripe is you need CH and/or Medic skills just to be an effective pikeman so I've had to build my character around one profession.

After killing pikemen in about 3 eyeshots i feel too bad for them to DB.

But what the hell you can pair up with someone grinding marsksmen xp so it's all good...LOL

To me a pikemans role in combat is to keep the enemy at range while your ranged pick it apart. Yes thats a simplistic and limited view on the matter but I am trying to keep it simple.

With torton's on rori I find I can do this role reasonably well in that so long as I keep the mob's agro on me, I can keep it pushed back from those behind me.. In fact, its amusing to watch this mob the size of a small hillock being forced back in such a manner.

What would I like to see in game mechanics so as to more fit the role I percieve us to have would be along these lines. (some wishes also included)

Ability to gain and hold agro so as to simulate the difficulty in actually bypassing a person with a big pointy thing waving around in frenzied glee.

Less damage taken from mobs that are over x distance from us, to simulate the same thing.. Yes, more damage from those who get under that range to simulate the difficulty in defending against someone in close would also be suitable.

Longer range on our attacks, I know I can hit mobs over 4m depending on the mob etc, but even 9m when a knuckler gets 5m seems a tad strange.. sure tka's can duck and weave fastlike so that can arguably give them range, it still seems strange to me..

Old Fashioned shields.. Swordsmen would have more claim to this, but in conjunction with a set pike (ie little to no offensive ability at the time) the shield would combine with the holding of agro to allow a pikeman to take a bit more 'damange' while they hold the mob in position in effect..

The 'joust' maneuver when on creatureback. I know this breaches the paradigm of nothing but 'base' maneuvers while mounted, but for a suitable lowering of accuracy I believe an appropriate increase in damage is not conceptually unwarrented.

My biggest gripe with being a pikeman (and it wont stop me being one!) is the range to hit modifiers.. when I had Polearm Accuracy +80 I was -4 to hit with lance, -44 to hit with vibro lance and -50 to hit with LVA against mobs at all ranges. When I made master and in one fell move went to +110 I thought I would hit better but nope.. same mods still apply.. so obviously I need to work out just what this polearm accuracy stat is really about

I like being pike, I'm not going to gripe if other combat professions do more damage or get hit less.. but I would like others to know I had a role to perform, since some groups only occur by formulae and that might help some novice pikepeople to get groups when oitherwise they dont..

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even 9m when a knuckler gets 5m seems a tad strange

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The documentation says knucklers get 5m range but the reality is that they're 3m. If you take any knuckles made ever and examine them you'll see they say max range of 3m despite what the devs tell us about their 5m max range.