Greetings, smoothbrain thursar polesword dude, back again. Great patch, thank you devs, but I really wish you'd waited a little longer to collect feedback before pushing the patch through, most of the decluttering of the skill trees was great work for new players. The only changes that I think you might have expected reasonable pushback on were the changes to polearms are armor training requiring multiple primary prerequisites. I'm not a mounted player, so an extra 100 primaries on a mounted probably won't change whether I live or die, so I'll leave it to them to complain about it. I am, however, a polearm player on both characters and this change sucks.
Polearms are better than the other weapons for two reasons: they have range and do damage with all directions. Swords are faster, cheaper, and less likely to handle hit, but if you're chasing someone faster than you, you'll get off one or two fewer hits than a polearm. That's a very meaningful sacrifice, especially when an extra hit on a fleeing mage is a HUGE deal. A spear doesn't sacrifice range, but it's hard to hit people that are looking at you for meaningful damage, so it sacrifices versatility. The left swing sucks in regards to collision and friendly fire, its true, but IMO given the strength of the right swing/stab with swing reset on flash, I think that landing hits is a player skill issue. Poleaxes are the strongest weapons in the game. Given all this, the investment of skill points into polearms kept them from being used by classes that were already tight on points. If I encounter a beastmaster hybrid, I can at least expect to have a better melee weapon than he does. It kept the niche of dedicated foot fighter in a good place by giving us special weapons and, at the same time, we could use two other strong weapons too. Axes, swords, and spears are all excellent non niche weapons that would be easily found on the battlefield if our primary weapon should break, and give us access to 1h weapons to be used with shields when that is the best option for a given situation.
Polearms are better than the other weapons for two reasons: they have range and do damage with all directions. Swords are faster, cheaper, and less likely to handle hit, but if you're chasing someone faster than you, you'll get off one or two fewer hits than a polearm. That's a very meaningful sacrifice, especially when an extra hit on a fleeing mage is a HUGE deal. A spear doesn't sacrifice range, but it's hard to hit people that are looking at you for meaningful damage, so it sacrifices versatility. The left swing sucks in regards to collision and friendly fire, its true, but IMO given the strength of the right swing/stab with swing reset on flash, I think that landing hits is a player skill issue. Poleaxes are the strongest weapons in the game. Given all this, the investment of skill points into polearms kept them from being used by classes that were already tight on points. If I encounter a beastmaster hybrid, I can at least expect to have a better melee weapon than he does. It kept the niche of dedicated foot fighter in a good place by giving us special weapons and, at the same time, we could use two other strong weapons too. Axes, swords, and spears are all excellent non niche weapons that would be easily found on the battlefield if our primary weapon should break, and give us access to 1h weapons to be used with shields when that is the best option for a given situation.