Pikeman Archive

Honestly: what the hell is the deal with us being the area/crowd control melee profession?

2h sword gets higher damage weaponsAND higher damage mod area attacks. Our best area attack is spin2 with a damage modifier of 3x and stun+dizzy, and the dizzy length is insanely short. Their best attack is area3 with 4x damage and blind and posture down. Now based on those two attacks, who is calling us the masters of crowd control???

Did I mention they also can target mind if they want to?Or that we get -12 toughness? Or that block,our defensive ability, is broken? I don't care if swordsmen are a better overall class than we are, but make us better than them at SOMETHING.

I'm not saying nerf swordsmen, I'm sayingour profession needs dev attention IMMEJIATELY!

Opeth: I can honestly say there's not a single Pikeman I've met yet, that felt Pikemen didn't need help. But, have YOU ever seen a dev even COMMENT about pike? Ever? I haven't cept when they first brought up the servers and posted the threads at the top of this forum. That's it.

Good post, but I'm still not over the KD nerf. I got a pet and am learning rifle. Pike is nowmy secondary combat skill (but much better than rifle, still have too much boiling Pike in my blood) I personally would like to see the KD timer fixed. I've posted some work arounds to se it implemented back into the game. My big problem with keeping the timer is thus; without it 1/4 of the Pike tree is ineffective, in addition, the Area attacks are seriously set back if you cant throw sweep2 into the fray everyonce and a while to slow down the crowd hitting away at you. This has adversely affected over 50% of our attacks! Therefore, what we need to decide is whether we ask for new skills to replace those that were lost or we ask the Devs to fix KD so it works again. I'll leave asking for new skills, and/or weapons ideasto you guys.

Since the game already has seperate PvE and PvP rules, I can't see what's wrong with the following (to fix KD timer gimp);

PVP

Solution A) Make two successive KD's impossible. Raise/modify/adjust KD resist of attacked player so it reflects their profession and combat skill (it already has some of this element but is it enough). As a Master Pikeman we should be able to sweep an Entertianer off his/her feet on the first try (hands down, unless of course we're using an LVA:smileytongue. Whereas, if say they were a Master <insert Combat Proff> it should be much much harder. Regardless, successive KDs should say be impossible. This solves the big problem of "kicking a man who's already down." Which I 100% agree with.

Solution B) Keep things are they are and just reduce damage by 50-75%. Although, people will cry again on forums about it, this isn't practical. and I think solution A) is much better. Rather a combo of A) and B) maybe more pragmatic. I'm not sure on this.

PvE

I personally think it should go back to it's original state. Hard mobs were rarely KD'd on the first, second or third try. I fought Tusken Warlords (grouped) and I tried spamming KD at times, the result was that I did damage to it but it barely ever went down (sometimes never). The better strategy was bleeding it, Polehit2 for stuns and damand depending people i was grouped with either health or action hits thereafter. Commoners, went down about 75-85% (assuming you hit) as the should've since they are a much lower lvl.

I'm not sure how people feel about this. I'm stillopen to an across the board KD resist boost for mobs, but inserting a Timer has had a severe gimping on my Pikeman figthing abiilties.

Anyway, I didnt mean to throw all this KD stuff at your post to hijack it, rather, it appears that this could become a "comprehensive" Pikeman issue thread. If thats the case, I want to toss my 2 creds in since the Pikeman has lost so much in terms of combat potency.

Koomba writes:

" You can buff mind/focus/will power quite a bit with food(working on chef as we speak). "

Yes but that is a separate thing. Food, spice, and medical buffs should all be stackable so the mind pool is still lacking. I also don't know of a food that buffs as well as medical buffs. For those that don't know top notch medical buffs can raise your stats by 2500+ and last over 2 hours. Still food is better than nothing, but it isn't enough to solve all the current problems Mind damage is causing in the game.

Ok ok... let us sit back and refocus here. We all know that Brawlers are the 2nd class citizens in SWG. Most of us are willing to accept that just to be different from the vast majority of players in this game. However, the Pikeman is a 2nd class citizen among brawlers, so where does this leave us in the overall scheme of things?

Every profession has their gripes and every combat profession has their own unique problems, but none are worse off than the Pikeman. What we need to do is not just bitch and moan that "We Suck!", we need to show the devs some facts, numbers, etc and make it VERY obvious why we are a hurting profession.

Below is a list of issues that I have with Pikeman or issues that I've gleaned from other posts in this forum. Please post other issues or possible solutions in this thread. There is no need to post 100s of times about the same issues over and over. If you agree with what I or anyone else posts, just rate the post with a high score.

Please let us keep this useful and constructive.

ISSUES

The 30-second knockdown timer. I'm not even going to get into my opinions on this matter. Heated debates are all over the forums regarding this topic. It is pretty obvious that many people would like to see this looked at. However, IF SOE does NOT change this, how can we fix our profession to make up for this loss?

Higher level 2h weapons do similar damage as polearms but are much faster and much more accurate.

The combo of short range, accuracy modifiers of -58/-58/-58, slow weapon speed, and HAM costs around 50/90/40 clearly make Pikeman the worst off in game.

We have only 3 advanced weapons; lance, vibro lance, long vibro axe.

How does a character that fights bare handed have the same range as one that fights with a 6 foot long pole?

The majority of our advanced combat moves have a posture change or knockdown worked into them, supposedly making Pikeman a good crowd control class. Now with the 30-second timer these moves have become redundant and ineffective which has severely weakened the profession. If Pikeman are no long supposed to be good at crowd control, then our class needs to be redefined.

The 3 other brawler professions all get a x4 multiplier to their Hit3 attack. Pikeman are the only class to get a x3 multiplier.

Pikeman have the lowest toughness of any brawler profession.

Block does not work.

- a General Issue -

To my knowledge you can NOT buff the mind pool and you can NOT heal mind damage, but special attacks use mind pool, healing used mind pool, and higher level mobs normal attacks often damage the mind pool (excluding aimed special attacks). I suggest that higher level medics/doctors are made able to heal mind damage (their greatest frustration as well as the combatants) but not mind wounds. This will not affect Entertainers because they do not heal mind damage as it is now.

So in a nutshell here is the current class description of the Pikeman Profession as it is today. (I hereby authorize SOE and Prima Guides permissions to copy and paste this description into their Profession pages.)

The Pikeman is a wonderful addition to any group in Star Wars Galaxies. The have crowd control capabilities which might help the group every 30 seconds (assuming the ranged classes haven't used a posture change attack 1st while you run the 50+ meters before tryingto score your first hit). And although they are the least defensive class they make up for this by doing the least amount of damage at the slowest rate. In addition, Pikeman are a Medic/Doctor's dream for power leveling. No class will need as much healing as a Pikeman when you combine their poor defensive skills with their unmatched ability to kill themselves by using special attack moves.

You can buff mind/focus/will power quite a bit with food(working on chef as we speak).

I think one thing that would be cool and appropriate for pikeman is to give us a AP3 weapon, seeing as how were suppose to be heavy hitter.

As for block, how much block skill do people have? maybe it only comes into affect if you have a lot of it?

I'm already over the KD.. I just use a pet now, they are just as cheap.

Also i think polearm hit two needs a damage bump for its insane slow speed. I use spin2 now cuz its faster and consistently does way more damage on a single target.

Koomba

Intrepid

Greetings fellow pikemen,

I am pleased to see a thread that deals with the issues at hand instead of throwing unfounded accusations around. In order to help with this as much as I can, with my still limited pikeman abilities, I will offer a few notes on what has been said and add a few new things to think about.

First, in addition to foods, mind pool can be buffed by elite entertainers. Watching a dancer or listening to a musician, at least novice I think, will buff your mind a certain amount based on their level, and for however long you watched/listened... not sure of the max, since Ive never been in the cantina long enough to find out.

Second, accuracy needs be adjusted to reflect the reality of actual combat. Polearms, despite their size, are far more closely related to martial arts than either one or two handed swords. That is not a statement meant to lower our damage rating, rather, it is an indication of the ability of a polearm user to rebound from a "miss". The user of this weapon will always keep in mind the dual sided capability that he/she posesses. So, that being said, is a vibro weapon less accurate than a normal weapon? The answer is probably yes, due to the vibrations created in the blades, but then shouldn't a master be able to overcome that? If a rifle or some other weapon can get a +35 for instance, why does the long vibro axe need to be at -55? It is simply too large an obstacle to be overcome in comparison to the other combat professions.

Third, yes, the dreaded knockdown discussion. The defensive tree is completely useless as it stands now. I don't know about the rest of you, but I enjoyed knockdown because of the cooldown time that it gave me against creatures. I could knock down that gualama and then it wouldn't attack me for three or four combat rounds. That might mean an additional hit or two I would get in. I understand and agree with the position that this ability was being greatly abused in pvp, but surely the general removal of this was not the only option. Perhaps giving increased resistance to this as you progress in an elite combat profession so that reaching master would make it extremely improbable that a knockdown would be successful. The same thinking should also apply to the actual ability to knock down an opponent as well. Surely a master pikeman is far more capable of performing a knockdown than for instance, a novice pikeman with sweep1 learned. In addition to this is something Ive seen in pve but not pvp so I am not sure if it applies however I will bring it up. Range fighters are given various abilitites to keep opponents at bay and therefore, vulnerable to their form of attack. Brawlers at increasing levels and especially elite professions should be given a resistance to this because their training should allow them to overcome intimidation tactics and get right into the face of a prospective enemy. Range have plenty of options to defend themselves against a brawler without this (read: kiting).

Ok I think thats plenty for today... Hope that some of you weren't intimidated by the length of this post and offer some thoughts of your own... As of now I am not sure if I should wait things out and see if this profession will be fixed or start spending time and attention developing a new combat role for myself. Perhaps a new day brings new answers.

Bal Rozguul
Naritus Galaxy
Pikeman 3/1/2/2
Ranger 2/1/1/1

Excellent post. It is time that we organize something significant, all or nothing. If Silver Surfer has the time, maybe it would have some more impact, a petition being started by a correspondent before he stepped down...

Anyone remember episode 1 anymore? i havent seen it brought up once.. Darth Maul.. yes, it was a lightsabre, but it was a light sabre that represented a staff.. hence polearm.. and he kicked butt.. til he got sliced in half and all.. remember in the old starwars movie.. the emporers imperial guards.. all in red.. with lances!!!!!!!! if pikes where supposed to be POS's then why in gods name would the emporers elite guards use them??????

Rand, yes the shouldn't be a POS.... Ok now we have that figured out. How about problems or better yet fixes for our problems.

Or a simple yes this post pretty much covers our main problems at this time.

Any other problems to address?

If not type a /agree and rate the post high. Keep it up top along with our petition thread. Maybe some lost Dev will stumble on the forum.

Personally, I dont' think this should be rated high and bumped.

It needs to be posted on the discussion board, and then rated high and /signed, since that seems to be the only forum the devs even glance at. Dunno if there are enough pikemen left to keep it bumped to the first page though :/

Well I'll bump this one. Awsome post!

All my SWG friends, 90% who are CH's now, are begging me to drop pikeman. I'm such a hindrance to them in group they hate having me with them other then my doctor skills. If that dosnt say it all I dont know what does. As I've stated in an earlier post, "Why did SOE make this class?"

My roomate is so adament about me changing to a range or CH. I refuse to give up atm. I think the pikeman class has a huge potential of being a key member of any group if SOE fix's most what all our pikeman brothers and sisters have stated in this post and all the others. Just watch if this class is made right how many players will switch to pikeman. Look at comando now that its fixed.

I fear since we are such a small population of players compared to CH and other popular class's that SOE will not care about us. There are over 60,000 post on CH to our 4000ish. If its all about the $$ I see us at the bottom of the barrel.

Another thing i would like to add to the mix of fix's/changes is a better weapon selection. At the master lvl I think we should have an elite weapon making all our efforts worth while. I also believe the pikeman class should have the skill that makes armor less of a burden to wear.

Aloha,

Kapu

Doctor/Pikeman