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