Turnin on urself while stabbing does not require much skills... I dont see why you keep defending them by saying it requires skill to exploit a bug 0.0" dueling with any other kind of weapon requires much much more than just running around-turnin-stabbing somebody in their face with a bug.
You say that as if their single attack direction is the most difficult to defend against, when in reality you're just not blocking down when you should be. When you face a pike or what-have-you the defensive strategy is extremely simple: you block down. The only thing you have to watch for is when they overhead, which is an extremely predictable attack direction as well, given the slow speed of these weapons. In fact, the longspear(ye olde pike) is so slow that if your weapon is fast enough and you attack right after blocking their thrust, it's nearly impossible for the pikeman to block you, because the thrust getting blocked stuns them far longer than any other attack direction being interrupted.
If you know they can spin and attack you with a thrust, there's no excuse not to be prepared for it. Just because they turn away from you doesn't mean they're not still trying to attack you! Be ready, block down. It's
easy.
That said, sure, the snake-stab around corners and through people are bullshit, but there's very little about this game that someone doesn't consider bullshit(not to justify bullshit, oh no). As for longspears and other thrust/overhead-only weapons becoming entirely not viable in 1 vs 1 situations, which you guys are seeming to harp on about, how precisely is it fair to people who use those weapons? Okay, so they're also better (theoretical) support weapons, but they're absolutely not better 1 on 1 weapons. You die to a spinthrust because you don't notice it coming and aren't ready for it; it's like a feint that takes twice as long to perform, it's not some magical attack that guarantees they hit you. If you are fighting someone by yourself and they have a long polearm that can't sideswing, they're already at a disadvantage for several reasons (their weapon is slower, they have less directions of attack, their overhead typically deals very low damage, they have to spin into an attack for it to work at all, if they whiff you can get a guaranteed hit before they can recover in time to block) and you're saying it shouldn't be possible for them to retaliate against you
at all? Okay, so that'd increase the amount of people using a sidearm with a pike or longspear, that would force people who main polearms for pikes to carry another weapon at all times, is that really better? (Most people using pikes already do this, I reckon)
The situation you're advocating, however, brings to light another fundamental flaw that pike weapons have: You can walk right through them. They have no collision. Pikes are very threatening when you're outside their maximum range, yes, and especially when in groups, but it's so easy to walk right through their weapon that they get one viable attack at you before you're near enough to them to facehug because they can't keep you at bay. If they can spinstab (which, believe it or not, does require practice and a manner of skill to execute succesfully) their chance to survive (beyond merely spamming blocks) goes from non-existent to possible. Without spinstab, walking through a the shaft of a pike is effectively an auto-win for you. Perhaps if you couldn't just clip right through their shaft it'd be okay for them not to be able to spin and stab you, because they could keep your from reaching point-blank range so easily, but as it stands now: It's buggy, it's annoying, but it's easy as hell to defeat.
