Teras Kasi Archive

State of the Pikeman Melee Profession, as evidenced by recent posts.

Pikemen

"What I did was make a macro for both the wooden staff and the lance. Now, for PVE, Pull out your wooden staff and sweep down the target. Click your lance or prefered weapon and beat them down with it, not using any special moves. By knocking them down with your wooden staff, you are using virtually no HAMcost compared to what you would loose if you had your prefered weapon equipted. Whale on your target for a few shots, switch back to your wooden staff and sweep them again. Rinse and Repeat... I do this, and monsters i fight hit me maybe 3 times to NONE and they die withme still able to walk away with 90% HAM."

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=pikeman&message.id=1791

"Now if you ever
fought baz nitches you know when you knock them down they do fly away
and I was doing this to 10-11 at once depending on if I hit and I
usually managed to get most of them."

"Let me know what you think, course I can already here the 11 mobs knocked
at once with 100 ham cost "NERF" so shhh dont let the other professions know
but if you go through the "fun" of getting the speed , support , and defensive
lines I think we deserve a little fun once in a while. "

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=pikeman&message.id=1740

"anyone else notice that they hit a target much harder on the first attack after a successcull sweep? i kept doing sweep followed up by a polearmhit2 and hit several times at 1700-1800 when the target was down. also i do notice a little bit of a speed boost with my VL and the ham cost on my sweep has definelty gone down. i swear that sweep used to cost 170-180 ham and now its down to 112. i cant remember what hit2 usedbefore the patchbut it uses 135 as of last night so it actualy costs more than sweep now."

"After playing some more, I think the changes are all good. I just seem to be a LOT more effective in combat now. The pack mobs can be a real problem, but if you're careful it can all still be done (it helps to have traps too). "

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=pikeman&message.id=1657

"Well I dont really want to write up a whole new post so I'll just paste"

Please dont even try to say polearms have it better than you I'm a master Pikeman/Master Ch & currently going up the Balance & Precision tree's for the defense, so you want know what we have?

Knockdown - Yes we have it too & it was the first skill in Pikeman & Tk that I took & want to know something even with a good lance I could only hit the thing I knockdown just ONCE before it started hitting back & god help you if you miss any of your targets with aoe kd. When I got to TK intermediate balanceI could hit whatever I kd 7-10 **edit** times at only two thirds the cost to my HAM I was crazy with power I used to unequip my lance kd then re-equip so I wouldnt kill my self with our high cost kd (though not anymore and you know why). Even at master I only hit 5-7 times after a kd with my LVA.

High damage - Yes most of our weapons hit for alot more than your one ,but take a look at them for crying out loud speed I've already mentioned but our to hit for our good weapons are astronomically low -30 at all ranges for a vibro lance & -57 for a Long Vibro Axe which is just plain rediculous & while I'll be the first to admit that the insane to hit ratio's are (mostly) offset by getting support 4 that tree uses combat experience & was the 2nd to last one I got before masterso thats a long **edit** time before you can start relying on your best weapon to get you through a fight without being scared you'll go on a missing streak & lose to a high blue con.

And as for overall damage well I already stated I am a master ch and used to use 3 Gurrecks when I hunted Biz Natches (It made killing the nests faster) so I competed with them for xp constantly & with my VL I averaged around 200-230 combat xp per and I was 2-0-4-2 in pikeman when I started doing them but when I started leveling up in tk I was still averaging around 180-210 per and was 0-1-0-0the only specials I used most of the time for both proffesions was kd & beserk.

I'm not going to list all of our pikeman cons to your pluses but just be glad for what you have & while I really feel for you guys with the unarmed kd bug (It better **edit** well be a bug 400+ for kd is crazy) you should'nt be trying to bring other melee classes down except try to get yours fixed.

Ps. If your still not convinced on your superiority over Pikemen check this out http://www.rit.edu/~iwm7380/swg/meleebreakdown.html& 1 little tid bit I found on the strat guide is that ALL MELEE CLASSES HIT3 DMG is x4 EXCEPT POLEARMS x3.

Adding my reply here as well Drago - maybe we can centralize discussion here:

Drago I realize you're upset, but I have been doing research on the other melee professions post-patch and I am sorry, but this is what your own folks are posting. TK don't exist in a vacuum. We will only be adjusted vis a vis other classes with similar abilities, such as Pikemen.

I am not trying to get you nerfed, I am trying to show that our knockdown is a joke compared to yours, and our ham costs should be toned waaaay down.

Your claims of the TK kd costing 2/3 what it did for a pike KD are probably true - PRE-PATCH. Our knockdown now costs far far more than yours. That is what we are trying to get fixed. We are basically crippled as KD was the best thing we had going for us.

I am happy the devs did not up the costs of your knockdown like they did with TK, like they did to a lesser extent with Pistoleer. At least they showed enough foresight (or did they just forget about pikemen entirely?) to not penalize you guys any further.

With this evidence in hand, we can ask them why in god's name a vibroknuckler costs 680 to perform and 210 ham bare handed when it costs a pikeman 112?

I really hope they don't reply with "oops we forgot to nerf pikemen in the rush to nerf you guys", but if it happens, it would have happened anyway without my help. I am trying to get my class fixed, not yours broken. A risky and unpopular move, I know, but honestly, we are so borked atm there's no sense in playing.

No offense, but Tk's were much better than all other melee professions. Key word being were. No we're second class citizens to everyone. If we can't knock things down (and we can't) then we are useless. You can have all the defense modifiers, speed and damage multipliers on your hit3's in the world and it won't be as effective as knockdown, even at a slower rate. I myself have given up on my master TK and am working on a Pikeman/doctor on another server because of this nerf.

My advise would be to leave 'em be.

Pikemen go through enough crap without a few overzealous TKAs torturing them.

Heck, all melee classes go throughtheir ownlittle version of hell. As melee classes we should be supporting one another, not attempting to raise some type of classenvy.

We shouldjoin with our brothers in melee for the good of all, and not bicker over such things.

i still prefer tk over pikeman, but dont say yo uare slower than tka.

until i got master power my friend with his 3.3 350 dmg lance attacked 1:1 with me on normal attacks. difference? i hit for 180-300 while he hit for 180-600

if i dont wear my 1.8 knucklers it's still 1:1 we attack at the same speed.

ae knockdown is the shiznit, but i wouldn want it nerfed.

"Heck, all melee classes go throughtheir ownlittle version of hell. As melee classes we should be supporting one another, not attempting to raise some type of classenvy."

Guess I better give up on the state of the fencer and state of the swordsmen bits I was planning to follow up with.

Look, I dont want any other class nerfed, but we are in NO position to ask for anythign unless we can give them proof of just how badly this nerf makes us perform. When we said we can't take white cons, the responses was "good, white cons should kill you most of the time" or, "good, find a group then".

Obviously, the only way we are going to get anywhere is if they look at us compared to the other melee classes. Traditionally, we had KD + med; fencers had dizzy+lunge, bleeds and good attacks; 2h had mind bleeds and mind pool attacks, as well as aoe posture changing attacks; and polearm had - knockdown and aoe knockdown. Pikemen used to be the lowest in the foodchain, though 2h would argue with them for that position.

I don't want to see pikemen get their knockdown screwed, but it's very good ammunition for us to use to justify lowering our ham costs significantly. *We* are now at the bottom of the melee foodchain. I say boost us back up and boost pikemen as well - give *them* something other than knockdown too to make them on par with fencers and 2h swordsmen.

I think it would be GREAT if we NOT start infighting with other melee classes who are, more or less, in the same general boat of disadvantage and not being taken seriously by Devs in many cases. I don't see this as productive.

You also don't see anything wrong with us as a profession, so kindly please step aside. I don't find your input very productive either, frankly.

And from another thread you state:

"Yeah I'm pretty sure that Point one is going to be totally ignored, because we are not going to get "pre-nerf" KD back - EVER. Instead I think we should have focused on why is our KD more expernsive than pistolers knockdown? Why are we signled out? "

So it's okay to compare our knockdown to pistoleersbut not pikemen?