The pike could easily be fixed but people seem to be against the idea.
The pike is, however, as broken and messed up as can be. It's meant to be a weapon that's easy to manufacture and use, a weapon you could arm hordes of peasants with. At the moment it is way too expensive, it has only one attack, it can block and it cannot be braced. It's all stupid and ridiculous. The thing is that some idiots decided that it had to be a viable "main" weapon. It had to be able to block and be used at extremely close range to satisfy those morons and now we're stuck with a broken pike. The way to fix the pike is to make it a lot cheaper so that those who actually need it can use it. Having a pike so you can stand behind your more powerful allies is great for a low-level pesant struggling to learn how cRPG is. Giving it a high stab would allow two pikemen to work together and defend each other from charging enemies, it'd promote team work! Making it unable to block would mean that it'll have to STAY a support weapon so you can't simply use it point blank. It'd be necessary to have a sidearm but if the pike got more affordable you could easily have both. Make it braceable. This worked great in Deluge and it would allow pikemen to defend valuable allies from horsemen or to protect choke points. The pike could easily be fixed but the problem is that some high-level oafs don't want the pike to be fixed, because those kuyak-dimwits like their messed up fantasy looks.
FIX THE PIKE ALREADY! It's not meant to work like this and you could easily fix it in terms of realism AND balance. Why bother having historically accurate names if all you're keeping is the name and the looks? Make it work like it should
Also, Guiness is a lovely beer.