I've been playing for over a year now... have read a lot on the boards, but haven't posted much. I'll never claim to be God's Gift to the Knight class by any stretch, but I do try hard to be a student of the game's mechanics and my friends know me as someone they can come to for technical & playstyle advice. I'd like to make a couple of suggestions that would "fix" many of the garishly broken Knight abilities, while retaining Knights' identity as defense/bleed focused, so no, this isn't about adding ridiculous healing or giving knights extra AOE attacks, a freeze ability, and WB insta-kill.
1) Enhanced Block: if this were tweaked to "+10% Block rating (note: NOT block chance!), 100% chance to restore 3% HP after block" (1/2 pts), and 5% HP after block (2/2 pts)... this would be a slight boon to lower level knights, and a small but serviceable boost to high level knights, helping carve out our defensive persona while not encroaching on the Mage's healing identity.
2) Reverse Damage: this ability is completely worthless by the time it's maxed out, because it simply doesn't scale with skyrocketing character HP from L50+. Since this is a defensive tree, reward Knights for concentrating on their defense! Keep the same Rage cost and perhaps increase the cooldown to 15-20sec, change the effect to: "Spikes erupt from your armor; for the next 3 attacks, your attacker takes 15% of your PDEF in damage" (1/3 pts), 25% (2/3 pts), 30% (3/3 pts). The highest Knights in the game have just over 30-33k PDEF, but for most of the rank & file it's in the mid-upper 20k range; this would give the typical defensive Knight a strategic ability that would deal 5-8k reverse dmg per attack for 3 attacks, revitalizing a currently unused ability. Scattershot and Purge effects would still neutralize this buff.
3) Whirlwind: in its current form, the dmg-to-rage cost ratio is horrific. We're not Archers, and we're not Mages, so the ability shouldn't get a huge boost, but it needs to at least be worth using... and that means it needs to either do a little more damage and/or have a lower rage cost. I would suggest lower the rage cost to 35-40 and give it a 5-10% bump in dmg output.
4) Puncture: this Talent's bleed effect (% chance on Whirlwind) needs to NOT be subject to opponent PDEF damage reduction; it currently seems to be. When coupled with the issues that Whirlwind has to begin with, this Talent loses its viability quickly.
5) Shadow Thrasher: the damage is reasonable for its Rage cost, but the flat-damage bleed QTE on this (similar to the situation with Reverse Damage) makes this ability lose its luster even before L40. This is supposed to be the Knight's rage-dump ability, in the same vein as Thunderer (slow) and Armor Pierce (PDEF reduction); instead of 5-stackable of flat 120dmg, change it to either 5-stackable of 1% opponent MAX HP or 5-stackable of 2% your PATK, duration 5 turns. Purification effects would still neutralize the debuff.
6) Intercept: once players are in their PvE set, this ability loses much of its sting; I'd propose increasing the ability's base Rage reduction by 10 (basically make the current QTE a permanent effect) and also change the QTE to a 3-stroke combo "opponent suffers -10 rage per action for the next three actions." Sylph form would still grant immunity to the Rage-reduction effects of Intercept, and the proposed debuff would be removable with Purification effects.
I know not everyone will agree with my ideas, and I also know there are plenty of trolls lurking around here, but I welcome constructive feedback and hope that the gods-that-be will see this and seriously consider (maybe even fast-track!) at least some of these proposed Knight improvements.
Respectfully,
Steele
L68 Knight, originally of S322
Asst. Guild Master of chaos
1) Enhanced Block: if this were tweaked to "+10% Block rating (note: NOT block chance!), 100% chance to restore 3% HP after block" (1/2 pts), and 5% HP after block (2/2 pts)... this would be a slight boon to lower level knights, and a small but serviceable boost to high level knights, helping carve out our defensive persona while not encroaching on the Mage's healing identity.
2) Reverse Damage: this ability is completely worthless by the time it's maxed out, because it simply doesn't scale with skyrocketing character HP from L50+. Since this is a defensive tree, reward Knights for concentrating on their defense! Keep the same Rage cost and perhaps increase the cooldown to 15-20sec, change the effect to: "Spikes erupt from your armor; for the next 3 attacks, your attacker takes 15% of your PDEF in damage" (1/3 pts), 25% (2/3 pts), 30% (3/3 pts). The highest Knights in the game have just over 30-33k PDEF, but for most of the rank & file it's in the mid-upper 20k range; this would give the typical defensive Knight a strategic ability that would deal 5-8k reverse dmg per attack for 3 attacks, revitalizing a currently unused ability. Scattershot and Purge effects would still neutralize this buff.
3) Whirlwind: in its current form, the dmg-to-rage cost ratio is horrific. We're not Archers, and we're not Mages, so the ability shouldn't get a huge boost, but it needs to at least be worth using... and that means it needs to either do a little more damage and/or have a lower rage cost. I would suggest lower the rage cost to 35-40 and give it a 5-10% bump in dmg output.
4) Puncture: this Talent's bleed effect (% chance on Whirlwind) needs to NOT be subject to opponent PDEF damage reduction; it currently seems to be. When coupled with the issues that Whirlwind has to begin with, this Talent loses its viability quickly.
5) Shadow Thrasher: the damage is reasonable for its Rage cost, but the flat-damage bleed QTE on this (similar to the situation with Reverse Damage) makes this ability lose its luster even before L40. This is supposed to be the Knight's rage-dump ability, in the same vein as Thunderer (slow) and Armor Pierce (PDEF reduction); instead of 5-stackable of flat 120dmg, change it to either 5-stackable of 1% opponent MAX HP or 5-stackable of 2% your PATK, duration 5 turns. Purification effects would still neutralize the debuff.
6) Intercept: once players are in their PvE set, this ability loses much of its sting; I'd propose increasing the ability's base Rage reduction by 10 (basically make the current QTE a permanent effect) and also change the QTE to a 3-stroke combo "opponent suffers -10 rage per action for the next three actions." Sylph form would still grant immunity to the Rage-reduction effects of Intercept, and the proposed debuff would be removable with Purification effects.
I know not everyone will agree with my ideas, and I also know there are plenty of trolls lurking around here, but I welcome constructive feedback and hope that the gods-that-be will see this and seriously consider (maybe even fast-track!) at least some of these proposed Knight improvements.
Respectfully,
Steele
L68 Knight, originally of S322
Asst. Guild Master of chaos
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