1) The cheesiest, most immersion breaking tactic, for me, is the backward jump. I use it all the time with my pike, I see xbowmen and archers do it a lot too. It's obvious that we need jumping, because there is no climbing obstacles. But, jumping backwards really serves no real purpose, and just adds a cheesey fight tactic to polearms and archers (mainly). I do not know if it is possible, but simply removing all jumping backwards, or maybe even in side to side, too, would solve some gameplay issues. If you want to turn your back and jump away: good luck. But no more jump back and pike to the face to escape a rush. That's just kinda silly.
2) Is there any sort of swing bonus for linking opposing combos? Like the overhead-stab link, or the right-to-left? In my experience swinging shit around IRL, it is much easier for a scimitar user to say, turn his wrist after a slash from the right and then cut right across the face (while the sword and its inertia is still over on the left), then it is for him to bring the weapon all the way back to the right and slash again. Same with overhead and stab: once the spear is down low, it is quick to stab up. So if there is no speed bonus for doing this, then I think there should be, and the weapon speeds (or WPF speed bonus) be rebalanced to reflect this.
3) If possible, Pikes should be given pike couching, which deals damage, based more on speed bonus than on the damage of the weapon, on the first enemy the tip of the pike touches. So it would allow us to "pike press" guys into corners, because if they run at us, they will impale themselves on the pike! It would also allow us to set the pikes for killing Cav. Pike couching should be like horse couching, you press a button when moving or standing still and you enter Couch Mode. If standing still, you crouch down and can turn, and the couch lasts until you move (then it has a recharge time). If you Couch while moving forward, your speed is reduced to an absolute crawl, and the couch has a time limit (up to the wisdom of chadz, but I think 20 secs to give it a good holding time, but not making it a walking death trap). The couch of course ends the moment the pike touches an enemy or friendly, and again: damage and penetration should be based more on the relative speed of the two characters, not the pierce of the pike. I don't think this would be too overpowered (there would be lots of whiffing/chambering, and both of those would end the couch and start the recharge). Thoughts?