Pikeman Archive

To all,

There is a lot of talk about balance, especially among the melee classes. To that end, I've been trying to correlate some of what I've gathered about SW:G's combat system with other gaming systems I've encountered. This is NOT entirely fleshed out, but I would like to ask that you all give your opinions/additions to make what is below a viable system. Pardon the apparent jumpiness, but they are scattered thoughts.

defensive moves
dodge - avoid the blow, no damage done, small delay to combat of defender
block - absorb the blow with your weapon, no/small damage to person, some damage to weapon, small delay to combat, both sides
disarm - I'd love this work as writ, a disarm, weapon unequipped (can be reequipped)
counterattack - advanced form of dodge/block where defender delay is not incurred

damage types
concussive - non-piercing. Bone shattering , these strikes will wound
thrust - piercing, light bleeds
slash - piercing, heavy bleeds

damage effects
Stun - combat delay
Dizzy - all specials done at negative modifier, posture change can occur on any special/posture change
Bleed - Damage over time
knockdown (posture change) - as written, no specials allowed (possible exception might be TKA)

TKA/unarmed
fast, concussive
- primary focus head and body (mind/health)
- primary defense - dodge, disarm

Fencer/1 hand sword
fast, thrust/slash
- primary focus body (health)
- primary defense counterattack, dodge

Swordsman/2 hand sword
slow, slash
- primary focus body (health)
- primary defense block

Pikeman/polearm
slow, concussive
- primary focus body and legs (health/action)
- primary defense block

They way I feel it SHOULD work is that thrust and slash attacks are your primary bleed attacks, while concussive attacks are your wound attacks. To that end, a summary of the professions would be as follows:

TKA - specialize in not taking damage. Will deal light damage with high speed. Mainly dodge, some small amount of posture change, light wound potential, moderate dizzy and stun.

Fencer - specialize in quick thrusts. Will deal light damage with high speed. Mainly dodge and counterattack, no posture change, bleed potential

Swordsman - specialize in hard slashing. Will deal heavy damage with low speed. Mainly block, some posture change, high bleed potential

Pikeman - specialize in hard concussive. Will deal heavy damage with low speed. Mainly block, high posture change, high wound potential, some dizzy and stun.

Moreover - each would be unique... The TKA would work to avoid the damage, and keeping his opponent off balance. The fencer would try to avoid damage while "pricking" his opponent to death. The swordsman would try to get you down and cut you open like a pig. The Pikeman will try to knock you down and break every bone in your body. As a balance to one another you would need just bring the DPS ratings of the two concussives in line, the DPS of the swords in-line (slightly less than the concussives for the bleed potential). Then, work out the specials.

I'd like to get your ideas on this before bringing it to the general discussion board.

Thank you,

PBN

The problem with bringing DPS inline is that there is no real way to factor in our horrible accuracy accurately.

Hypothetically, if a TKA and Pikeman both have a theoretical DPS of 100, they have an accuracy adjusted DPS of 95 and 50, respectively. That might be a little bloated, but can't be far off.

As I've said, every problem with Pikeman stems from accuracy. If we are more accurate, we can kill quicker, thus reducing the damage we take because of our horrible toughness. Our HAM costs also become less of a concern since we no longer have to do a special twice to get one hit.

Above all else,our weaponaccuracy must be fixed. Until that happens, we truly have no idea where we stand in relation to the other classes.

"The Pikeman will try to knock you down and break every bone in your body."

That sounds fun.

good post and i do agree that melee needs revamped and this looks great. i think we should have our own damage types that ranged dont get, like youve listed and i think that one thing is stun needs to become more useful in general.

Agreed, entirely.

In the above I am actually considering more than just that, though. As I stated elsewhere, my primary is a chef. I've been living under the promise of a "complete balance pass" for quite some time. Since day one, in fact. In that vein, I was thinking that perhaps that is what is also needed for Melee. At current, if the accuracy for the Pikeman line (polearm included) is fixed, what will truly distinguish us? (I include myself, even though I am only 1/4 way to Novice - I'm a bit slow)

PBN

I don't know what will distinguish us if we get accuracy fixed, but I know for **edit** sure that we'll never have anything distinguishing if we don't fix it first.

Fix the accuracy, then we can see what our abilities really are, and go from there.

any other comments/criticisms/additions?

PBN

for one I don't give or look at stars, don't worry about those, just turn them off.

I enjoyed reading this, brought up a few good points. I still lean towards our character having low accuracy, but I am starting to come around to the others point of view. My one argument is that if we become more accurate we will loose something in return. I would like to see Pikeman as a defensive class, not primarily offensive, leave that to the 2-handed swordman. Pikeman were generally the defensive units in battle, keeping charging horses at bay, that kind of thing, the 2-handed swordsmen were offensive (watch braveheart) charging onto the field and swinging madly at people till no one moved around you. I know most of you disagree with me, wanting to be more of an offensive character, since that is how you actually win solo and gain xp in groups. One more argument for defense is that one of our roles then could be crowd control, in a group we could gain agro of multiple mobs with out ae attacks and then the rest of the group could pick off the mobs one at a time while we stand firm in the middle of the pack being all defensive like and once in a while doing some great damage. Accuracy in that situation would still be nice, but at the cost of defense would probably get us killed.

One thing I am for is to spread out our skill mods alittle more, as it is there are 4 boxes that are important to a upcoming pikeman, Stances2&4 Support2&4, if we made the columns look more like:

Stances:

1. +5 speed

2. +10 speed

3 +5 speed

4 +10 speed

Support

1. +10 accuracy

2. +20 accuracy

3. +10 accuracy

4. +20 accuracy

Then our characters would feel a slight advancement all the time, instead of a large jump every couple boxes.

Anyway, back to the main question, Defining the classes would definitly be nice, I don't know if what you are proposing would work well or not, I haven't thought much about it, but first impression was that it was a good start. Thank you.