Polearms need some love

[strycio]

After some testing i conclude for my part, that polearms are very underwhelming right now, the range advantage is in fights non existent especially if you fight 2h Swords. Furthermore are pole swings and animations so slow and telegraphed in comparison to other weapons, that blocking them is far too easy. Due to the lack of range they also cant be really utilized in group fights, swinging a comparable slow hammer brings far more in.

and why poleswords with light/straight glaive heads don’t reach comparable piercing dmg as spears is imo beyond any logic of this weapons physique.

what are your thoughts? Any tipps and tricks to make them work? Looking for advice, as i like this weapon style very much.

thanks and kind regards

stryc

 

[Gronil]

I used them quite a bit previously, I actually thought they performed rather well in general. I wanted to use them in persistent but I just don't have the primaries for them sadly. I'd almost say it kind of makes sense that they aren't great at dueling but are better in group fights. However I will say poleswords felt a little meh, poleaxes mainly just had a lot of reach and hit very hard. I can't remember the names as it's been a few months since I used them, but there's one or two handles that are a decent amount longer than the others, and there is one head that adds a decent amount of length as well. I mainly found halberds worked the best for me.

Many of them do good enough piercing damage for it to a viable option in a fight which is a massive pro. Generally when I was using them I spent most of my time back peddling or walking sideways to try and keep my range, and if they get to close try to aim for far parts of their body to avoid handle hits. If you fight someone on the same skill level or better than you with a sword you will have a rough time due to speed, but they generally slap players worse than you. You will probably have to turtle in most situations where you are fighting people with faster weapons, and just swing after parries when you have the chance.

I find especially if the other player is winning they will start playing worse which makes it easier to come back so don't ever give up, especially since you can make up for several of their hits in one good hit. People may also get flustered and start taking questionable swings or missing if you parry all or most of their hits. If someone tries to run from you, as long as they aren't way way faster you've basically killed them because your weapon is so long. If you are fighting someone who is just hit trading you, as long as you hit very hard you win. They may hit you for 1-2 15s but it doesn't matter when you hit a 65 head. You generally want to bait people into bad positions or taking bad hits.

Just remember even if you are winning be patient and only attack during windows where you will have the advantage. It doesn't matter if they are 1 hit, if you spam swing and they parry you every hit you are dead, if you stam yourself at a bad time you are dead, you've only won once they are in mercy. Wait for them to put their weapon away to bandage, wait for them to try to run, wait for them to take a bad panic swing.

It can be very hard to win in a 1v1 just due to how slow you are, but it is possible. Just because it isn't the most viable option doesn't mean you can't find tactics that make it work. My main advice is to be patient even if you are winning.

In small scale group fights where you are matched or have a numbers advantage pole weapons can be quite pesky since they hit like axes, which is where I feel like axes shine as well. It doesn't matter how slow your weapon is when they can't block you, you just need to be aware that if someone gets on you, you are probably swinging slower than them. Try to just keep them at bay until a group member can help you since you generally don't want to 1v1. It might sound kind of scummy but this is mortal, everyone else is going to use every advantage they have over you, you might as well do the same. Just because I play with one other person and use unmeta builds, that has never stopped 15 man mounted zergs from fisting us.

On the flip side, you can also swap to a much faster weapon like a spear since you already have the primaries, but again spears can be kind of questionable in a 1v1 if the other person knows what they are doing. Swapping to an axe doesn't really gain you any more speed, which defeats the point of carrying another weapon. Generally you kind of want to skirmish and hit people that are already engaged, or distract someone with your big scary weapon while someone else hits them.

TLDR: They aren't the best in 1v1, but can be scary in group fights or fighting people who don't know how to fight you. If they try to run you get a free kill. If they only hit and never block you've won. Your weapon is slow, so you might as well take it slow. Be patient and be on your toes to exploit openings.

Playing this way has worked for me, but might not work for you. The real advice is to practice, practice, and practice some more until you find a way to use the weapon to your advantage. An underrated pro to using something off meta is people may not know how to fight you.

Also I agree I'd like to see straight sword blades meant for stabbing buffed in general, at least last time I checked they were all kind of awful at everything. It would be nice if they were actually usable in this game.

Good luck out in Nave!

 

[strycio]

Hi Gronil,

thank you for detailed opinion, your advices are making a lot of sense in the context of my experiences, you certainly have invested more time in testing this weapon type than i have so will try to pick up your words! Generally i have experienced that in 1v1 situation a defensive playstyle with focus on reposting, countering and generating space between the enemy and yourself was the safest way to fight. What struggled me was, that this style was very slow, and gave me the feeling doing something wrong, or the weapon was bad/extremley hard to utilize.

So reading your opinion and experiences soothes me a little, that you really have to adapt around this defensive type of play and punishing mistakes and the fact that poles are not the perfect weapons for dueling (which i kinda expected but didnt reckon with this amount).

As i am a pole crafter i will try to find out which combinations yield the highest ranges and post here as soon i have the data, but i guess it will evolves around a straight glaive. But i still think there is a little room for improving the range of pole weapons on the balancing sides in comparison to 2h Swords, the average range difference feels like two small steps while testing this quite sloppy which is no range difference in a fight. The next thing is the range window you have, to land a clean swing with a pole weapon: compared to a 2h Sword its rather small which leads again to disadvantageous situations while playing offensive.

You actually have to wait, for a mistake and hope, that you are in the right range when the mistake happens AND that you are quick enough to make use of it AND that your opponent makes the next mistake (not parrying). All this makes playing poles so damn hard i guess

Well i will keep practicing and gather more data,

good luck aswell and kind regards

 

[Gronil]

Hi Gronil,

thank you for detailed opinion, your advices are making a lot of sense in the context of my experiences, you certainly have invested more time in testing this weapon type than i have so will try to pick up your words! Generally i have experienced that in 1v1 situation a defensive playstyle with focus on reposting, countering and generating space between the enemy and yourself was the safest way to fight. What struggled me was, that this style was very slow, and gave me the feeling doing something wrong, or the weapon was bad/extremley hard to utilize.

So reading your opinion and experiences soothes me a little, that you really have to adapt around this defensive type of play and punishing mistakes and the fact that poles are not the perfect weapons for dueling (which i kinda expected but didnt reckon with this amount).

As i am a pole crafter i will try to find out which combinations yield the highest ranges and post here as soon i have the data, but i guess it will evolves around a straight glaive. But i still think there is a little room for improving the range of pole weapons on the balancing sides in comparison to 2h Swords, the average range difference feels like two small steps while testing this quite sloppy which is no range difference in a fight. The next thing is the range window you have, to land a clean swing with a pole weapon: compared to a 2h Sword its rather small which leads again to disadvantageous situations while playing offensive.

You actually have to wait, for a mistake and hope, that you are in the right range when the mistake happens AND that you are quick enough to make use of it AND that your opponent makes the next mistake (not parrying). All this makes playing poles so damn hard i guess

Well i will keep practicing and gather more data,

good luck aswell and kind regards

My friend is my weapon crafter so I’m a bit bad at remembering the names of parts lol. I didn’t get quite as much testing in with pole sword but I used the curved glaive on the shaft with a katana looking guard the most. Generally the shaft you put the weapon head on will effect the length more than the blade does, I’m not sure how big of a deal polesword shafts are tho. Poleaxes specifically had 1 or 2 that were noticeably longer than the rest. I think the really long pole axe head was literally called a great pole axe or something. It adds more shaft after a little metal plate that counts as part of the weapon head hit box. (Or it used to, I’m not sure if this is still the case.)

Overall poleswords definitely felt shorter than poleaxes tho, I complained quite a few times when I was dueling my friend that his 2h sword felt as long as my polesword lol. There were still several times where I’d be just out of his reach and he’d miss while I would land a hard hit.

There are definitely times where it pays off to play more aggressively, but it’s usually because the other person doesn’t know what they are doing lol.

I know what you mean, it can feel extremely bad playing so defensively but I can’t really say they are awful weapons when all it takes is one mistake and you hit 1/4+ of your opponents health. Generally they are probably technically worse than a 2h swords in a lot of situations, it’s just they also have some niche advantages compared to other weapons.

Also I’ve found that if your opponent gets too close it can help to aim for their legs to prevent handle hits. Obviously best practice is still to try to hit the head or any poorly armored part of their body tho.

I would definitely do in depth testing for yourself tho as my info could be outdated or inaccurate for

 

[Truthshower]

if someone ever says a weapon is good but u never see it used then you should know not to listen to that person. polearms are terrible, the damage doesn't make up for it. ppl will try to tell you speed in attacks and movement don't matter but they still do, cause game is super defensive with little offensive options.

poles used to be one of the best in mo1 but now are just neglected and obsolete weapons, idek why they added them at this point

 

[Gronil]

The issue is they have a reach advantage and hit very hard, they can’t also be fast. I’ll agree in most dueling situations you want to have a fast weapon.

Also just because people don’t use a weapon doesn’t make it bad, warhammers have always been extremely fast and hit consistently even on most armor. However I’ve fought very few people using them in either version of Mortal. Same with daggers, they were insanely potent in the first game but I rarely saw them outside people back stabbing or dual striking mounts at the bank. Generally most people use whatever is easy to use with little downside. (In this case Swords and Spears.)

As I said I think poles are usable with a few niche applications. I’d like to see them make poleaxes good at dismounting. I do think it would also be good if they increased the speed of poleswords a bit as they seem a little slower than they should be considering they hit less hard than a poleaxe.

 

[Jatix]

Poleswords are a little eh because its a harder to use sword with minimal reach advantage. Poleaxes while too slow for 1v1 smack ass if you hit someone. so for playing defensive and hit trading the things work well. Also a big poleaxe user can probobly dismount, or also use a dismount axe, where a sword user cant. So they have some uses.

if someone ever says a weapon is good but u never see it used then you should know not to listen to that person. polearms are terrible, the damage doesn't make up for it. ppl will try to tell you speed in attacks and movement don't matter but they still do, cause game is super defensive with little offensive options.

poles used to be one of the best in mo1 but now are just neglected and obsolete weapons, idek why they added them at this point

And most players are little meta kids who cant think for themselves. Daggers could be the best weapon in the game and nobody will even notice because they are all too busy with their sword meta. So 'if people dont use it its not good' doesnt mean much. MO1 had many super broken things that nobody even tried, to realize that they were broken for years. Like dual strike pre nerf because it was bugged. But nobody even realized it was bugged and could 1 shot because they didnt try it.

 

[strycio]

Did some tests, while the combination of "sturdy" / "long" / "clean" handles and "heavy poleaxe" heads yield the highest range with poleaxes, the polesword with "heavy" handle and "straight glaive" head is the overall range winner. second highest range on poleswords is the heavy handle with backsword glaive. i have to admit i did quick tests, and this are my first impressions but i wouldnt bet my steel weapons on the results next step is to build a high dex char to get full advantage of the range and see how this performs in dueling and groupfights.