Second Look : Review of Knight since major update

[bois]

It is end of year so I decided to give a few opinions about my favourite class the knight.

It has been an interesting year for the tanks of Regnum. The knight started the year pretty much as the last few preceding. The knight was stuck in a virtual limbo or 5th wheel in RvR. Neither damage dealer or proper support, the knight struggled to find a place in the war zone and most settled for the only available role which was Knarb. Others switched to more palatable classes and a few like me held fast to support role with the few tools at our disposal.
Enter the major update. It was like a breath of fresh air for the class. At long last the knight was able to fulfil all its roles of support, tanking (to some extent) and knarbism if the player desired. This was truly a great update and a tick in the win column for NGD.
In one swoop , NGD found a solution for the random blocking issue, the sickening aura and area arcs, gave knights a option to deal damage and proper support tools with which a knight can operate.

I will now go step by step and review the sections with my opinions and suggestions.
Before I go forward, I must raise my constant concern with the shared trees. In my humble opinion there are simply too many spells unified under "warrior". At some point in the future NGD will have to bite the bullet and address this. The spells are nice but are a bitch to balance the way they are. I really do not know if this is technically feasible but I see 2 ways forward.
A. Cut the unified trees to 8 spells and form a new tree for knight and barb with the remaining eight. Balance using this new organisation.
B. Leave the trees as is but the top 6 spells of the shared trees are separated into knight and barb as you choose your subclass. Both classes have the same spells but these top 6 can be arranged differently according to sub class and the formulas on them are separate for each class.
Example: Kick remains as same on knight but barb gets duration of 1,2,3,4,5 seconds. They remain same otherwise (hypothetical , don't harp on this imaginary formula).
With this said I move forward.

Slash tree:
This is a shared tree and as such balancing this would be a real task. There was nothing done to this tree.
I do think that it needs to be looked at though (knight perspective). Consideration should be given to Southern Cross to go to 0.5 cast time. Crash should become an instant cast. Fatal strike needs a rework. Disabling just makes this spell obsolete. I strongly believe that this spell should be made into a DoT of some sort either wicking away health or mana in small increments. It could have an initial damage ratio.

Blunt Tree:
Probably one of the most balanced weapon trees of the lot. I see precious little improvement here but I would like to see the introduction of medium blunt weapons that could be range 2 . A good example would be a flail. The balance would come in making these weapons do less damage and only allow the debuff spells or CC to be range 2.

Pierce Tree:
This tree is in need of some severe TLC. I will not go into spears in any detail as my focus is on knight and as such , one handed weapons come into play. Rapiers. The most reviled drop nowadays. The problem with rapiers is that they do little damage (although fast) they have no range (pierce is all about range) and because pierce is the most common defense it makes things even worse. My proposals here are radical. I propose that balestra, impale, and brain piercing become range 2 spells and not weapon range. The rest remain as they are.
Ripost chance attack damage becomes 50% and the cast is dropped to 0.5 seconds. Lastly , rapiers use a formula that incorporates dexterity (with strength) into its specific damage formula. This will not apply to spears. Dexterity is basically obsolete with warriors due to reductions in evasions and the total absence of same when knocked. Time to give the dexterity passives some use again.
Players using rapiers will have the opportunity to boost damage with dexterity gears and passives.

Tactics:
This tree more than any other needs a separation similar to what I proposed above. Special mention comes in for kick , feint and Defensive support (the most inelegant of names). I like to call this spell "Defiance" as you all know.
Kick and feint effect should be reduced for both classes but barb should take the bigger hit. Defensive support really really needs that speed malus removed. It could be replaced with a -100% evasion instead. Because the knight is now so slow and has no speed spells , I think this one should be seriously reviewed. If the speed malus must stay, consider 5% or 10% malus. If nothing else is possible, take it off this tree entirely and put it in place of rigorous preparation (aka :Preparation H). In my view the rest of the spells are fine and they can stay as is.

Knight Specific:
The way the game is constructed, Challenge is much less useful today as in days past. I have no comment on it now.
Taunt is a great spell. My understanding is that it woks as advertised. Excellent.
Intimidate is the little spell that tried but not quite ready for the big times. The thought process behind it is good but the numbers are still a bit off. I would modify the speed penalty at the top end to -14% and the lower scale -9%. Give it a test and see how that goes. Casting over and over while either hit with a level one speed malus or the opponent self boosting makes this a waste of time spell as is. Needs review.
Offensive stance is a decent spell for knarbs. I would have preferred to see it constructed a bit better though. A 5% gain for 95% malus is a little bit ridiculous considering the level 5 gives you a 25% for the same self debuff. A 75%-95% malus on protection would have been better in my view. so you get 5% for 75% malus and so on.
Rigorous preparation. Well what can I say about this one. This should be carried out back and shot in the head. Cast some concrete shoes and throw in the river.
Ethereal mantle should be changed to resist physical damage instead of magical.

The rest of the knight spells are well done and Kudos to NGD on that. They solved the random block issue very nicely. Defensive stance is good as is.

My last words are that this is a very good update for Knights. It is actually much better than appears because , for a number of spells, the terrible network code overshadows excellently devised close quarter spells.
Spells like protect ally, kick, shield bash, ethereal mantle, precise block would work so much better if the visual feedback matched up with what was happening behind. I wish them best of luck on the code fixes. Knight will be even better then.

That is all for me for now. Best regards and compliments of the season.

Artec

[backe]

Originally Posted by bois

I see precious little improvement here but I would like to see the introduction of medium blunt weapons that could be range 2 . A good example would be a flail. The balance would come in making these weapons do less damage and only allow the debuff spells or CC to be range 2.

This is such a cool idea! I'd imagine that if this was implemented I would have to re-level a knight by the name of Simon Belmont and cruise around smacking skeletons with a morningstar.

Originally Posted by bois

Lastly , rapiers use a formula that incorporates dexterity (with strength) into its specific damage formula. This will not apply to spears. Dexterity is basically obsolete with warriors due to reductions in evasions and the total absence of same when knocked. Time to give the dexterity passives some use again.
Players using rapiers will have the opportunity to boost damage with dexterity gears and passives.

Also a fantastic idea that would actually allow rapiers (and Dex, to a minor effect) to be somewhat useful again instead of the LOLweapons that GCD has made them.

All in all, +1, however I would still like to see feint moved into Vanguard.

[Znurre]

Good summary, I still think moving Kick to level 15 in spears would do wonders for balance

[Gabburtjuh]

Replacing it for the passive dmg resist wouldn't be nice, I'd rather see it replaced for like brain pierce, and then get brain pierce upgraded

[bois]

Undeniable that feint and kick in the same tree is a problem that must be addressed.

I did not touch on it much because I like to have some kind of solution and I had none. I thought about feint going to Vanguard but we have a tiny problem. That spell is vital for the low level warrior grinder. If we move that from there they will be hurt for the low level mob CC. Feint is a staple.
Putting it in Vanguard will put low level barbs at a disadvantage early on. Personally, if I had to move one to keep barbs in check I would go with kick.
I would curb feint to 2,3,4,5,6 seconds. Or better yet change the level 5 attack to a different CC type so 2,3,4,5 Knock, level 5 stun 5 seconds(an example not for real). Is there any rule that states a CC has to be one type all the way through?
Of course NGD could go even more radical and decide that knocks become conditional. You must be dizzy or stunned for knock to work or something like that. But then that would require skill and timing. We all hate that don't we? It would also require the animations to work properly, highly visible, don't stick on you and act in a timely fashion.
The conditional thing could go the other way too. Your knock spell is greyed out until the trigger condition is met to free the spell. The knock then becomes available for use. After use it greys out again till the condition is met again. In such a case the GCD could be fast with appropriate cool down. Just another way to work it.

Znurre is sneaky sneaky. Putting the kick on the pierce tree is really going to piss the slashers off (mostly barbs) but then again I may already be marked for death by saying SC should be 0.5 cast.
I like Gabbur's suggestion. Moving brain pierce may be a better move if we had to go that way. Hard to see myself brain piercing with a mace though. We may have to rename that skill "amnesia" if we went that way. Leave bendable where it is.
Points are really scarce so moving bendable down 1 slot would not hurt as much then. No freebie points. No doubt the tricky spells are Kick and feint.

Art.

Btw Seher I read your post . I was typing my response while you posted yours. Question is , do you think that we are getting close to the time when either your suggestion or mine may be necessary to be looked at seriously? My feeling is that NGD may eventually hit a wall as they try to refine these unified trees. Evidence is creeping in especially regarding that Tactics tree. That one is the biggest concern and should be looked at first for partition.

[Syd_Vicious]

Originally Posted by bois

curb feint to 2,3,4,5,6 seconds.

I would just recommend if you are advertising the lowering of skill times that you take into account that the skill effect time should be a reflection of the effect after the player has finished their animation sequence. Some of the animation sequences paired with lower level skill times makes using some skills not really worth it.

An example: low level warrior casts feint, feint effect starts from beginning of animation, animation finishes with .75 seconds of effect left, and due to attack cycle the warrior will strike the mob the same time the mob gets up and hits the warrior. No attack initiative lost by the mob and nothing gained from using the spell. To some new players this may appear then as a broken skill and just give them one more reason to leave for another game.

As far as the OP I agree that knights are a lot more fun to play now.

[Seher]

Originally Posted by bois

Before I go forward, I must raise my constant concern with the shared trees. In my humble opinion there are simply too many spells unified under "warrior". At some point in the future NGD will have to bite the bullet and address this. The spells are nice but are a bitch to balance the way they are. I really do not know if this is technically feasible but I see 2 ways forward.
A. Cut the unified trees to 8 spells and form a new tree for knight and barb with the remaining eight. Balance using this new organisation.
B. Leave the trees as is but the top 6 spells of the shared trees are separated into knight and barb as you choose your subclass. Both classes have the same spells but these top 6 can be arranged differently according to sub class and the formulas on them are separate for each class.
Example: Kick remains as same on knight but barb gets duration of 1,2,3,4,5 seconds. They remain same otherwise (hypothetical , don't harp on this imaginary formula).

Warriors are less affected by this than other classes, as they usually just use one weapon and don't put that many points in the other disciplines - way less than the other classes do.
Nevertheless warriors suffer extremely from this, it should be clear what this means for the other classes...

Anyway, there's a third way of how to solve this: Adding more <subclass specific> spell trees that gain in importance then, while the others get less and less used. You can even remove some of the old trees then without making it feel like a huge nerf and game play change.
Why that complicated? Because community is a bitch, and bitches dislike nerfs :P Radical changes are good where they are needed but should be avoided if possible.

[Kyrottimus]

Great assessment and concepts.

I love knight now, it's leaps and bounds more fun than it used to be and it's far more relevant as a melee class and gives the player a huge pallet of skills and abilities to allow one to focus on any role they prefer.

It's a really fun and versatile melee class; can't say the same for Barb any longer (in my opinion).

I still think things like ripost and shield bash should be made more fluid to cast, as the attack timer causes 1-3 seconds of delay before either even begin the casting-timer.

But other than that, Knights as a sub-class have come a LONG way and are way more fun than ever before!

*insert sound effect of coconut halves clopping together as I gallop away on an imaginary horse*

[Gawyn_Trakkand]

I must say i love the changes knight immensely and the suggestions made by artec can only make it better.

The biggest point touched on for me was the malus on Defensive stance. A knights strength comes from him being an unstoppable force (granted not a hard hitting force), so Defensive support and Steadiness 5 is almost like having UM active. The movement speed of this spell though kills a knight, a caltrops arrow makes our speed -75% making us laughable to hunters, even worse -50% when slowed by a warlock.

I like the idea of it being -100% evade chance, on the otherhand it could add a perameter to steadiness and defensive support of % chance to resist reduced movement speed (except for the malus on Def support) though i know mages and hunters will whine "slow is our only defence against warriors now take that away and we're done" but its just frustrating that we cant use one of our best defensive spells or we'll be slowed and CC'd into a slow and painful death.

we used to be able to nulify the effect of def stance with spring but no longer it needs looking at.

as for weapon trees i believe they should all stay as they are with the spells inside them tweaked. Not fussed what you do with brain pierce as tbh feint and kick stop a spell much more effectively.