Pike lower received damages by 10%: is it working?

[ffxjosh]

I think that if it was a seriously bad thing to have done there would have been a billion posts on the forums already.

The way i see it most people level pike when they cant be bothered to level 2h sword..

I personlay have not seen a major change in pike - but then i havent leveled it much..

Tyilin

xxx

[savvy]

I think there is balance to the change as it was proposed but I do not think it is working properly. I was hoping other pike users would tell me different so I would not need to do more testing and harp on the subject.

After reading the patch notes again I am starting to think it is not intended to work all of the time. The way it is stated "that allows to lower", implies it may not work all of the time. If it said "that lowers", it would imply all of the time.

In either case from what I have seen it never works.

[roninpvp]

IThe way i see it most people level pike when they cant be bothered to level 2h sword..

2h pike was better than 2h sword in duels. I believe the change came from all the Master Swordsman complaining about losing to ignore armour Booster was very upset about this one btw and tested it.

I've been hunting a little and I see nothing that leads me to believe there is any reduction of damage i'm taking. I can see it all ready "working as intendeded"

[savvy]

I am really surprised there are not more pike users speaking up. If it's not working we need to let the devs know so they can fix it...and if it is "working as intended" then I would like some details on how it "works".

[jared96]

I think that if it was a seriously bad thing to have done there would have been a billion posts on the forums already.

I was on the final stretch run for 250 when they nerfed the pike and I noticed the nerf big time. Damage in my most used stanza went from about 1050 to 847 "overnight" (day after patch). There were plenty of posts on the topic.

Increasing speed by 10% does not offset the decrease in damage of 20%. Methinks it was some effort to satisfy the PvP contingent as w/ ignore armor, pike was a pretty devastating PvP weapon. But if you never do PvP, then you got hammered badly.

OTOH, melee players are not really allowed to be real "damage doers". If you accept the fact that, as the game is designed, your value as a melee player is more as a "meat shield".... your function is to keep the mobs off the mages so they can do the damage, you might as well use a wiffle ball bat.

In team however, against mobs that add or clone themselves (like ploderos), a pike user is a real advantage. I have found that the extended reach of the pike has a real strong advantage with circular attack when the plods start to clone and suddenly you go from fighting 1 ... to 2 or 3 ..... even 4 or 5. It becomes pretty routine for a single melee player to be able to hold 2 or 3 for an entire fight w/ circular attack, alternating primary targets and using taunt every time it times out. You can even hold 4 or 5 on occasion but that's tough. I have not had similar success witha axes and swords.

Plods also resist slashing weapons so on that run to 250, where plods are the primary target, pike is a good weapon to use for that stretch run.

[sidusar]

Heh, thanks for the laugh, Jamela

Anyways, this isn't about whether the changes made to pikes were a good thing or not, but whether it's working as it's supposed to. Pikes are supposed to have "20 in reach (3 others weapons have 10) that allows to lower received damages by 10%", and I've never noticed such a damage lowering effect.

Actually there's a more general question here: Just what is the effect of 'reach' on melee weapons? Curently daggers have reach 0, 1-handed weapons and amplifiers have reach 5, except for the spear which has reach 10, the 2-handed weapons also have reach 10 except for the pike having reach 20. What is the benefit of a higher reach?

I took a look in the ingame manual and it says about reach: "The more this reach is higher than the enemy's reach, the more your hits succeed." So it sounds like a higher reach works like an accurate attack, increasing the odds of you placing a hit. Would make sense to me that the lower damage on the pike is compensated by an increased chance of hitting.

Apparenly it's the difference in reach that makes the difference. If your weapon has a higher reach than your enemy's weapon, it doesn't only increase your chances of hitting him but also decreases his chances of hitting you. I think by saying "20 in reach that allows to lower received damages by 10%", they don't mean that wielding a pike actually takes 10% off the damage the way armor does, but that it decreases your enemy's chances of hitting you by 10%, compared to if you were wielding an axe or mace.

Ofcourse, with the randomness involved in dodges, parries, and missed attacks, it would be very hard to test if this is working

[iphdrunk]

Apparenly it's the difference in reach that makes the difference. If your weapon has a higher reach than your enemy's weapon, it doesn't only increase your chances of hitting him but also decreases his chances of hitting you. I think by saying "20 in reach that allows to lower received damages by 10%", they don't mean that wielding a pike actually takes 10% off the damage the way armor does, but that it decreases your enemy's chances of hitting you by 10%, compared to if you were wielding an axe or mace.

Ofcourse, with the randomness involved in dodges, parries, and missed attacks, it would be very hard to test if this is working

Makes sense. Only two cents more:

- the manual isn't a very reliable and ultimate source of info. They are working on improving it. I promise, that's what they said

- it wouldn't be the first time some feature has been half implemented or the patch note contained information that didn't go live.

- As several posters, I don't have formal data to back this up, but nothing makes me think the damage reduction (with the actual damage) is applied

- also the manual seems to state the impact of reach w.r.t. your attacks, the higher your reach, the more your hits succeed. Maybe a reach difference is computed (being only recomputed if the player wields another weapon) at the beginnging and that difference would determine and increase/decrease of either dodge/parry or hit/miss pobability.

- the patch notes does however stated "received damages", but I agree, it could be interpreted as an averaged value, takin into accoun the miss increase of the opponent.

- if reach acted that way, it would be weird it was it affecting your dodge, since it's redundant with the dodge attribute of the weapon. It seems more approproate that it concerns the hit or miss roll previous to the damage computation.

I am still unsure if the system is checking if the adversary is wielding specifically a 2H pike at each roll to increase the miss probabilty, rather than a generic computation taking into account the dodge or parry attribute, common of every weapon. However, as I stated, maybe this check is made once and some modifiers are applied at every action until the player switched weapons, but it would mean that it should be recomputed if the opponent also switched weapons, and it is assuming the mobs have also a reach value.

Nevertheless, reach is also taken into account ( afaik ) with aggro -- daggers being known as aggro magnets -- . Maybe one can say that a pikester would attract less aggro given his reach?

[roninpvp]

I am still unsure if the system is checking if the adversary is wielding specifically a 2H pike at each roll to increase the miss probabilty, rather than a generic computation taking into account the dodge or parry attribute, common of every weapon. However, as I stated, maybe this check is made once and some modifiers

I believe we all have agreed what it means. I too suspect that the 10% value they gave us was worded horribly. I'm assuming that the meaning is that the increased reach reduces my chances of getting hit by 10% more than if i was using another weapon.

The point anissa brings up is of great concern to me and bothers me cause there is no way for us to reliably obseve this. We as players arent give what exactly the % is to begin with. If I'm a 250 parrr/dodge player what are my base chances of getting hit. Without even base missess to compare to there is nothing we can do but assume they haven't messed it up again.

[sidusar]

Well, the manual states that the more your reach is higher than the enemy's reach, the more your hits succeed. So it stands to reason that the opposite is true too: The more your reach is lower than the enemy's reach, the less your hits succeed. So against a pikewielder who has a high reach, your hits would succeed less, no?

The patch notes also said:

Sword: has a parry bonus that allows to lower received damages by 10% (comparing to axe and mace).

And we know a parry bonus doesn't actually lower the received damages either, it just makes the enemy less likely to hit you. Here they must be talking about the average damage received over time, including the chance that your enemy misses you. So I assume they meant the same when they said pikes lowered the received damage.

Agreed with everything you said though. I'm not saying it works the way I described, just that I think that's how they meant it to work. And I'm not really sure how this 'reach difference' is supposed to calculate into the normal dodge/parry either. Like with anything involving the chance to hit, we can't really test whether it works or not, the differences are just too subtle and the effect too random.

EDIT: Since the max parry bonus on swords is 20 iirc, apparently 20 difference in parry means 10% less damage received. The 20 reach that pikes have is also supposed to lower received damage by 10%, so perhaps the reach difference between you and your opponent is simply added to your skill level in calculating both your chances to hit? This is just speculating though.

[sumoman]

Ive always thought that the lower your reach the more likely your are to hold agro in a fight.
Back in the day when there used 2 be loads of melee fighters teamin in Dyron those that used 1 handed weapons always seemed to get attackd by the mobs.
So im guessin that if a pike and a dagger user were the same lvl and fightin against the same mob then the mob would attack the dagger wielder