Pikeman Archive
Thread: State of Pikemen.
The State of Pikemen.
Ranged > Melee. This was made clear a long time ago: if you are going to be melee, accept that ranged players will generally be better overall due to the advantage of their increased range (page 99 of game manual). This is ACCEPTABLE because it fits with the Star Wars universe.
What is unacceptable, is that melee professions receive too little developer attention. A minor but telling example is melee skill names compared to ranged skill names. For instance the master-level skills:
Melee- Unarmed Hit 3, One-hand Hit 3, Two-hand Hit 3, Polearm Hit 3.
Ranged- Strafe Shot 2, Multi Target Pistol Shot, Disarming Shot 2, Fast Blast, Spray Shot.
Skill names are almost insignificant (please do not think changing skill names will fix our problems 
), but I use this examplebecause it is indicative ofa much more important issue. In fact, let's go a little deeper than skill names. Let's look at someunique skills for the elite combatprofessions.
Ranged- Take Cover, Conceal shot,Sniper shot (ranged DB), Sneak, Disarming shot, Panic Shot, Set people on fire.
Melee- TKA havea few (meditate, FoW, Power Boost), Fencers, Swordsmen and Pikemen have no unique skills.
Our number 1 issue is not unblanced DPS,bad^H^H^Hinsanely terrible accuracy, kiting, or lack of tanking. It is unbalanced developer attention. Fixing this would help us the most.
Well the above stated main issue leads to a number of other problems for pikemen. In addition to a common complaint about lack of class definitionwhich is directly related to what's written above, pikemen have the following complaints:
Currently pikemen have outrageous HAM costs. Many moves cost over 250 HAM. A fellow correspondent once mentioned one of his "high HAM cost weapons" as having 30/60/30 HAM, and I had to chuckle to myself because those are the HAM costs on a basic lance which most pikemen consider to be our LOW-COST ham weapon. Pikemen would like to see HAM costs adjusted with a heavy decrease.
Another big issue for pikemen is terrible weapon accuracy. Not including accuracy, our DPS is on par with other professions, but when accounting for constant misses, pikemen are simply out-classed. There is no apparent reason for this, or anything that would balance us to make up for poor accuracy. In fact, the opposite seems to be true: to make up for having poorer accuracy, we were given less powerful damage modifiers on our specials, and the worst defensive mods. Pikemen don't understand what the deal is here.
We have lower toughness than the other melee professions. If for no other reason, this needs to be addressed simply because pikemen have been asking about it since prior to the game's release. A simple response would suffice... something like, "This is intentional, and here's our reason for it..." or , "This is a mistake and has been fixed." Both of which are EASY solutions, so we don't understand why we've never received a response to this question.
On the same point, we are not just low in defense when compared to the other professions, but pikemen think that all melee classes have poor defense and should be toughened up in order to able to tank (we'll even settle for simply surviving) at higher levels. It's discouraging to see ranged counterparts in our groups battling high-level creatures or NPCs and being unable to provide meaningful assistance.
My last point on defense is our block mod. Pikemen have never blocked. My MASTER pikeman has NEVER blocked. Ever. Including on Test Center with the new block bonuses and using CoB. Please examine block. I suspect it may be as simple as an error where when we are supposed to block, we counterattack instead.
This is the state of pikeman and the major issues affecting us.
Excellent point, too, with the names of the moves. I have long wondered about that, minor thought it is, it is indicative of the effort put into melee by the developers.
I would also like to add that mentioning the up-coming center of balance move or possible extended attack range is not a solution to these issues. And aside from general melee issues, our specific problems must be recognized as distinct.
Eventhough we are obviously few in numbers, we still deserve at least a little attention and recognition of problems. After all, it's a class that many of us really enjoy and chose at the beginning.
antares
master pikeman
/salute
well said. You have beautifully summarized the state of things for us and what we need. Here's hoping you get the response you deserve.
/pray the dev's look at this and respond.
Excellent summary of what alot of us have been feeling!
I will take a small exception to your first statement in that you ignored what else was said on pg 99: "those characters using ranged weapons are extremely vulnerable to melee attacks". This is where I see the unbalance rearing it's ugly head! The ranged profession is NOT in my opinion that vulnerable to melee attacks. I play a rifleman on a different server, and while he has a tough time shooting an enemy that is right next to him, it seems that that enemy also doesn't strike him much worse that when my pikeman is up close to another meleer. In my opinion, the TWO things that are most required are a boost in melee defense (esp at the lower end of the tree) and the decreased HAM (although, I do think the HAM costs should be higher than they are for ranged weapons).
/HI
Give them them hell for there blatent avodence/ignoreing of us!
Thanks Opeth
Good post, I just hope that they listen and then -fix- the issues instead of just prentending we don't exist like they have for the last 4 months.