Pikeman Archive

Hello all!

My primary character has been a Rifleman on Lowca, however, a friend of mine has been playing on Sunrunner & was looking for company. I made a Wookie Brawler & decided to see what the deal was with Pikes.

I noticed, that the Pikeman forum was one of the least populated combat professions. Carbineer was the other lonely profession, which coincidentally my friend is playing a Carbineer. I figured I would tank for him & we could both hit the action pool.

I have to say, that the Pike is an extremely cool weapon. I went from Novice Brawler to Pike 4 with relative quickness. Having played Rifles, I know that the low level tree is nothing like grinding the elite profession. But Pike melee has been a real blast. The mentality is so different from what I am used to, it's a real challenge. I am seriously thinking of ditching my Lowca character since I was having so much fun tanking.

Anyway, I read a lot of the posts on here & see that it is no bed of roses playing Pikeman. I admire all of you who ground up to Master. Trust me, it is painful to go up the Rifleman tree as well. I see you guys talking about missing 50% of your shots & HAM costs being insane. It is very similar for Rifles, but having done some LVA action, I can see that it is much more painful for you all (and prolly soon to be me).

Well, there is a question at the end of all of this. I searched some of the old posts to see where there are some good XP spots for soloing. Nothing really recent (within the last month) that I could find. There have been so many game changes that I wouldn't think about trusting some of the older advice. My friend is moving up the Carbineer tree pretty quick & I want to catch up

What is the best way to go about picking your skill boxes? For Rifles, there is a pretty standard way of doing things: Go up to Countersnipe 3, then Sniping 4, then finish Countersnipe & Concealment - The combat xp branches along the way.

Also, it was my impression that you have to rely on auto-attack more often with the pole arm weapons. The specials seem more like initial debuf & finishing moves since the HAM is so high.

So any advice (aside from "Don't play a Pikeman!") would be greatly appreciated!

First thing I would do is ditch the wookie. Without the ability to wear armor, it's even more difficult to be a melee. I'd suggest trandoshan. They can wear armor (minus gloves and boots) have +10 melee defense and good brawling attributes. Wish I had gone trandoshan instead of twi'lek Zabrak is also a good choice.

Next: find a master doctor and get him to buff you. With 2-3k ham you can level much, much faster. (without having to worry about the dang ham costs too!) Also get a master musician to buff your mind secondaries, since spice and food buffs don't currently work as they should.

I ground out baz nitches on dathomir once I hit novice. Hurrtons on dantooine are also good for xp (they're a little weaker than baz's and give a little less xp, but it's easier at the novice level).

Honestly, go CH. At 3/2/0/0(or 2/2 if Wookie) you can wield a graul mauler. With that, go take piket longhorn missions on Dantooine. Around 4k xp per longhorn, and 5k on the lair. 9 longhorns, 1 lair, so about 40k xp per, along with 10k creds. I have having to tell you to take up another profession to do our profession, but thats the way it is right now.

As for skills, go up stances. The speed helps. Save every bit of combat xp you can get for the Support line, because the accuracy is our game-breaker.