Wide Blow and crit stun are best SA's (until haste and health on A grade)
basically long blow sucks cause if the mob is hitting u, u sure can hit it. Sometimes in trains the mob with be behind others and u aren't hitting it but u just target that mob as your target and your good to go
Now that I know the difference, I think so too that wide blow is a little better.
Because further the target, even if you are hitting it you really arent doing 'enough' damage to it. With wide blow, atleast you'll be able to hit 4+ mobs simultaneously with adequate damage that are right in front of you.
my own personal opinion would be critstun, to be honest. Its the only SA i've had up to this day, I'm going to try out health if i get my hands on an a grade pole.. more HP have always seemed interesting to me, lol. But looking back, would i have changed from critstun to wideblow? never. Pulling larger trains and keeping 4-6 mobs constantly stunned out of 15-20 worked much better than being able to hit the 2 mobs that always slipped out of my range on the sides of the train, lol
I much prefer Crt stun over wide blow or long blow. But the change from orcish pole to lance sucks.
I think even on a WL that crt stun is best; even tho they have a stun skill.
I don't think crt stun would work out well on a destro because of their low dex, but wide blow mite be nice.
I liked crt stun on my BH, made sweeping a lil easier when a few mobs are stunned. And if your BH has +4 str it's hard for a WL to pull argo off of you.
How ever when you get to A/g I'd diffidently would make the switch to haste SA, and maybe Health SA for pulling. Specially which the changes to DoF and DW in Interlude!
Your going to need that extra atk speed to get your HP back up fast, and keep it up.
I went through all of the SA's on my polearm, crit stun was the only one that kept me alive :P Like kitty mentioned, its better to keep a few mobs from whailing on you while you get your hp back from vr.
Doesn't look like many people figured out the use of Long Blow.
I don't know how to explain it...
If the player had a group of mobs in front of him, some mobs will be very near, some mobs will be farther.
When you target a mob and hit it with a pole, there is a radius around the targeted mob that makes you hit the mob behind it and the mob in front.
Say you have 5 mobs in front of you, one behind each other.
Call them mob A (range 10), B (range 30), C (range 50), D (range 70), E (range 90).
If you target C without Long Blow, you will hit only B, C and D. With Long Blow you will hit them all.
If you target A without long blow you will only hit A and B.
With Long Blow you will hit A, B and C.
The max range of the targetable mob won't change. If a mob is rooted and 2 poles hit it, one with Long Blow, one without, they will be at the same distance from the mob.
Long Blow has nothing to do with the Longshort passive skill of archers.
I still need to check some details about these infos, but that's how I understand it works in my warlord shoes.
So, Long Blow isn't bad. I have it on my Lance and I find it better with than without. I'd still prefer Wide Blow but that was not possible on the Lance. And on a warlord I'm not fan of crit stun, I tried it with an orcish poleaxe and the crit rate was really ridiculous compared to Thunder Storm. I like having the crit stun for my dwarf though.
Call them mob A (range 10), B (range 30), C (range 50), D (range 70), E (range 90).
if you are pulling and the mobs always have those range differences, then you are a bad poler
wide blow and long blow are absolutely useless if you can pull right and stack the mobs properly (like you should be doing), i've never had a need for those SA's, and i levelled too fast for crit stun to be of use aswell, that was just a waste of money,
for A grade, pve wise i'd go halberd haste, for the VR heal, but atm i have a tallum glaive waiting for health to be put on it, cause i can't afford two weps =)
I have pulled 20 mobs at a time and never had a problem hitting them all without longblow...If you know how to position corectly crit stun is the most useable SA out there,however with the changes coming in interlude that may not be the case.
Call them mob A (range 10), B (range 30), C (range 50), D (range 70), E (range 90).
if you are pulling and the mobs always have those range differences, then you are a bad poler
wide blow and long blow are absolutely useless if you can pull right and stack the mobs properly (like you should be doing), i've never had a need for those SA's, and i levelled too fast for crit stun to be of use aswell, that was just a waste of money,
for A grade, pve wise i'd go halberd haste, for the VR heal, but atm i have a tallum glaive waiting for health to be put on it, cause i can't afford two weps =)
I have to say i somewhat disagree with you, not about the choice of SA's on A grade but the person being a bad poler.
I've been poling since lvl 17 on my WS and never switched back to single mob type weapons ever (i love poling, hehe) and pulling like that and how guurdul explains the range differences i can see more how longblow would be somewhat useful for a WL. Considering no matter how skilled a poler may be there will always be some outside factor or lagspike.. etc to occasionally and randomly screw up the train and positioning of mobs, lol.
My perspective is a dwarfs perspective though and critstun works best for me since i have no other means of stunning multiple mobs, my critrate is redicioulus but its high enough to keep me alive.. especially with +4-4 str/con and +4-4 dex/con. But as a WL you have thunderstorm which stuns mobs with the same range around you as wildsweep and i've seen it in effect.. it gives helluvalot better results than a critstun would give 'em so if longblow works like explained that would be good for WL's for those 'oh ****e' situations where there's some outside factor that player cant control that screws up the train.
Agreed, the ranges specified do seem redicioulus though but i'm just assuming that its numbers only picked in order to better try and explain how the SA would work so i disregarded those myself :P hehe
i used crit stun in Cgrade and Bgrade, best SA for a pole user, like a warlord, because they have the furthest area of attack with a polearm. in Agrade i have a health sa on my pole arm, because that extra 1k hp keeps me alive alot longer.
long blow or wide blow, i think are used or should be used for classes that don't have pole arm masteries. so they can hit more mobs.
and if you need long blow or wide blow (if you're a poler, like warlord, destroyer or dwarf) then you are not stacking your mobs right, or you have too many of them.
If you play the same types of mobs long enough, you will learn to line them up properly. some mobs are fatter, and if you dont have nice corners, you might have to use wide blow, if you are only going to fight those types of mobs for however long you are using the pole.
Crit stun has saved my ascii many a time.
My suggestion to anyone reading this thread. listen to the people who sound like they have killed hundreds of thousands of mobs with the pole.