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Just spent 30 minutes typing a response only to have it go poofie ... seems Ryzom forums don't support Lazarus add on :(.

Many moons ago, killing plods was much slower than it is today:

a) Cats were in very short supply, especially 250s.

b) Enchantments hadn't come into play as yet.

So in a plod hunt, ya had much more time to chat, observe, discuss and examine / evaluate options. Of course the real challenge to working plods was / is dealing with their "special skill" of cloning. There were many things that we observed affected clones peeling off on mage pods. These observations were undertaken in the early days of Ryzom right after the Weapons Adjustment patch.

1. Obviously circular attack with a count = to the number of clones was essential.

2. As the tank's job w/ plods was primarily as a meat shield, making sure you don't miss was more important than doing damage. So accurate attack was a key action component and generally given preference over Inc Damage.

3. I'm sure many old timers will remember that, at one time, all 2H weapons had the same damage as far as damage and hit rate. You can see some of the old values in the Crafting Ranges Tool threads as they have been modified several times over the years. As with most things Ryzom, there is not very many "what is the best ?" answers ... only "what is the best in which situation ?".

4. When the weapon stats were 1st adjusted, the patch notes included explanations. Obviously dev's goal was not to have 98% of the player bases all using the same weapon. Post patch, Mace and Axe now gave more damage but had a lower hit rate. While DPM was the statistic in most players held in highest regard when choosing a weapon, the oft ignored stat was that higher hit rates used more creds and therefore increased healer's load.

But as the goal of the patch was to provide more specialized selection of weapons, the idea was to still maintain a balance and not have a "best weapon" in the game. The notations on pike were less obvious and at first glance it is the poorest weapon as it has the lowest DPM. So what was pike's + side that the dev's figured made it a compelling choice (other then advantage offered by it being "pointy"?

According to the patch notes and other information released post patch ...

a) The increased reach of pike was to be an advantage ... the implication was that this kept the mob off the tank and at a greater distance, it would do less damage making it easier on the healer. I was never able to figure a way to observe / confirm this as to magnitude of effect or even if it was real.

b) The benefit of this feature that was directly observable, was in "holding" the clones and keeping them from peeling off to the mage pod. When the clone would peel off and start for the mage pod, circular attack, gave the tank another shot at getting / maintaining their attention because the weapon had a longer reach.

c) The pike also had a slightly higher hit rate than other 2H alternatives so the combination compounded the tank's ability to catch it before it got away.

Back then, never found pike to be much of an issue with 2 or 3 plods, 4 required attention and 5 was a challenge ... if you could hold 5 for more than 30 seconds, you did very well.

5. While I don't know what the 'mechanic' is, it certainly seemed that there was a benefit to rotating the primary target. I dunno if the tank's hit % is lower with secondary targets , whether again, the claimed distance advantage figured in to the %, it certainly seemed that if you changed primary targets you had less clones peel off to the pod.

6. These observations were made shortly after that weapon patch and as we rotated who served as tank and what weapon was used, we did come to a consensus that we had less "peel off's" with pike than any other 2H weapon.

7. However, distance to the mage pod seemed to be the primary factor in how often the cloned peeled off. With most spells in use having a range of 42 - 43m that became the default starting point .... but any distance above 25m was certainly workable.

8. Another factor also seemed to be team size / kill rate. We seemed to get more clones the faster we killed and the fewer mobs left in the spawn. As the years have gone buy and I have participated in Plod teams, the teams are smaller, the kills are slower and so the amount of clones appearing is much lower than it was when we were chasing our 1st masters.

9. Finally another factor that was noticed is one we still see today w/ every NPC Hunt. When killing the cats at Aen, the guard cats are much easier for the tank to hold when a)

a) The tank is 20-25m away from mages.

b) The tank healer and damage mages do not hit the mob before the tank gets a shot or 2 in for each cat. This goes back to the rotating targets observation above ... when a new plod appeared, always found it best to "hit the new guy" and get their attention ... you already have the other one's attention.

Now one thing that must be mentioned I'll again equate with the Crafting Ranges Tool. If you look at the CR Tool threads, after that 1st weapons patch, there were several later changes to weapon properties and stats. Most of them were documented in patch notes, some were not. Other than where noted otherwise, these observations for Plods come from experiences and observations from over a decade ago.

Now plod killing is much changed with smaller teams, cats, enchants, etc which have provided much less opportunity to observe cloning behavior. Last time I participated we had teams of 4 - 5, and we almost never saw more than a single clone, rarely would have a 3rd plod to deal with. Holding the clone(s) (2 - 3 total) was no problem even when I tried pistol and CC.

So in recent years, not having advanced any 2H skills (208 and 228 left as I recall) much in 5 years or more ... can't really speak to what may have changed which was not described in patch notes. So, when speaking of plods, I certainly can not speak from experience **post merge** as not enough "plate appearances" so o speak post merge. If things have changed, I didn't notice in the few instances that I have participated since then.