Swordsman Archive

I am a rifleman taking Swordsmanfor melee combat. Since they are both 2H weapons, will my swordsman block with the rifle skills? And will my rifleman counterattack?

No. Block is a Rifle/Polearm specific ability, and Counterattack is a Carbine/2-Hand specific ability with dodge being a Pistol/Fencer specific ability. There is no overlap between weapons besides those.

Actually, it should if you go to your skill screen and look under the block mods for rifleman you will notice it says; "this mod increases the chance of sucessfully blocking an attack." Notice how it doesnt say you need to have rifle equiped to use it (unlike COB which is weapon specific). Same idea applies to counterattack, this means you can mix and match to your hearts content.

I have a friend who is a master rifleman and fencer, he says the combo works pretty well. First he has the chance to block an attack, whatever goes through his block then has to deal with his dodge modifiers.

If that's happening something is broken. You should only be using your secondary defenses when one of the appropriate weapons classes for it is equipped. So it doesn't matter how much Dodge you have, if you're carrying a VibroAxe you'll never dodge.

I am sword 0-4-4-4 and master pikeman now, and I never block. When I hit COB all the PVE hits go away, but I am counter attacking or they are missing me all together, but no blocks. That is if I hold a sword or my pike.

Here's the deal. They are weapons specific and don't stack. The reason that there is some confusion is that sometimes there's an error it the message shown. Sometimes when you block you get the same message as counterattack, but with the block effect. So no, they don't stack, but the melee and ranged defense does.

Block is rifleman/pikeman.. but I've been a master rifleman for 4 months and never blocked.. only counterattacked (instead of saying you blocked, it says you counterattack, same effect just miswording), and interestingly enough looted rifles often have +counterattack mods on them, but never +block. Someonehas got to be asleep at the wheel at SoE to have not noticed this for months.