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
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 02-16-200511:30 PM
------ Ilykerrimo Grumpy Old Pikeman Masochistic Wookiee
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
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.
------ Ilykerrimo Grumpy Old Pikeman Masochistic Wookiee
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... As a non-M Brawler Pikeman with 85 speed I hit hit3 cap with my 4.2 260-1089 but just short of cap with area2... it's like area2 every 1.4 or so... I'll look into it s'more
Dy'vim Slorm ~ Force Hunter ~ ~ Elite Mercenary / Asassian and an Irish Vigilante~ Remember the Boondock Saints...
Very nicely put together. The incomplete data I had compiled before getting side-tracked with other things matches what you have here.
antares
master pikeman
|Pikeman non-stop since July, 2003| |combatUpgrade::alpha :: JTL::beta :: RotW::beta :: ToOW::beta| SOE Producer Dallas Dickinson says: "I mean, what is a pikeman and why is it something in the game?"
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...
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.
------ Ilykerrimo Grumpy Old Pikeman Masochistic Wookiee
Searching for a new dps calculation i found this spreadsheet at Carbineer forum, its good and well formatted. Worth taking a look. Specialy because we can ajust it to our weapons.