Pikeman Archive

This comes up fairly often, and I've finally gotten tired of seeing the link to that old "pikeman damage calculator" with totally incorrect information. Below you will find what should be the correct damage and delay modifiers for pikemen's special attacks as of today, not a year ago.

Damage mods below were obtained by spamming the specials on a lair using a wooden staff with a max damage of 62. Dividing the highest hit by 62 and again by 1.86 (standard damage mod) gave the values below.

Delay mods were obtained by using a 4.5 speed VL which had failed a repair and attacking a lair 100 times (as measured by a powerup). The baseline autoattack time was 107 seconds, just barely over the speed cap. The delay mods below are calculated by spamming each special 100 times and dividing the time it took by the baseline.

I've also included the damage/delay ratio. Until you hit the speed cap, a higher dmg/delay ratio means higher DPS.

Finally, I added the state effects of what each attack does, since questions about them also come up fairly often from new pikemen.

Attack      Damage Mod      Delay Mod      Dmg/Delay      Notes
hit1           2.0             1.5            1.33
hit2           2.5             2.0            1.25        stun
hit3           4.0             3.0            1.33        stun, posture down
 
leghit1        1.5             1.5            1.0         action pool attack
leghit2        2.0             2.0            1.0         action pool attack
leghit3        2.5             3.0            0.83        action pool attack
 
area1          2.0             2.2            0.91        area
area2          2.75            3.0            0.92        area stun & dizzy
 
spin1          1.5             1.5            1.0         area
spin2          2.5             3.0            0.83        area dizzy
 
stun1          1.5             1.6            0.94        stun
stun2          2.0             2.0            1.0         area stun
 
sweep1         2.0             1.5            1.33        knockdown
sweep2         2.5             3.0            0.83        area knockdown
 
action1        1.0             2.0            0.5         action bleed (ticks at 1/5 strength of hit)
action2        2.0             3.0            0.67        action bleed (ticks at 1/5 strength of hit)
 
lunge1         1.0             1.5            0.67        20m range, posture down
lunge2         2.0             1.5            1.33        20m range, knockdown

If anything here seems off to you (especially the odd delays on area1 and stun1), feel free to test them yourself and offer corrections.

There's absolutely no guarantee that these values will be correct next month, next week, or even tomorrow. They've already been changed at least once without any warning, and almost certainly will be changed with the upcoming combat rebalance. In the meantime, hopefully this will help clear up some confusion.

I've made a fairly simple pikeman DPS calculator with these updated figures. It's available here.

Message Edited by annelid0 on 02-16-2005 11:30 PM

Yes, below the speed cap spin1 beats both area attacks and spin2. Stun2 actually comes out the same, but doesn't hit the cap as early as spin1 does.

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Dyvim1674 wrote:

I would have to argue that the delay mod hit3 should be < (i think that's the right symbol for less than, lol) Area2, leghit3, and spin2

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It seems logical to me for it to be (tied for) the slowest attack, since it's also the highest damage. Leghit3 being so lousy is more annoying, especially when you consider that swordsmen's headhit3 has a 3.5x damage and 2.5x delay mod.

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Dyvim1674 wrote:

Well in my experiments, i've noticed that Area2 is acutally quite a bit slower then hit3... which doesn't quite make sense but that's just what i've learn...

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Are you sure it's not just the lengthy animation of area2 throwing you off? Quite often I'll do more than one attack in the time it takes for the area2 animation to end.

By all means test it out for yourself though. If I'm wrong I'll gladly correct it.

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Vincentarasin wrote:

Note on this, This is ignoring the speed cap

It appears, that for the damage/delay trade off, Spin 1, is more damage over less time, then spin2, and area 1/2, (Again see note)

Is that correct?

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Yup, that is how it has always been.