Suggestions for Buffing the Knight

JacksonWise

Happy Turkey and Green Bean Casserole Day, everyone! As a fan of For Honor and Dark Souls, I am grateful for the addition of the Knight to the game. Unfortunately, while his visual design is top notch, there are currently issues with his power that make him A) very weak/easy to counter and B) make players use his power in an anti-loop way similar to 'The Artist' rather than the "strategic" killer he is meant to be.

So here are some ideas I thought of to try and make the Knight play a bit more unique and closer to the way his design was intended. Note: I'm not saying implement all of these changes, but even just a few would be welcome.

DEPLOYING A GUARD

When pressing the power button and setting up a patrol path for a guard, you are still limited to the physical realm and must maneuver around objects. This can waste valuable time, especially if the player gets caught on something and tries to go around it (which, for whatever reason, feels extremely slow).

My suggestion: Setting up a patrol path should allow the player to pass through whatever structures they desire. If the patrol path ends when the player is inside a structure, the guard will spawn at the closest point outside of that structure. Additionally, when guards patrol, they can patrol through these structures since they are ghostly apparitions anyway. However, when a guard detects a survivor, they will then need to chase normally as they currently do.

Additionally, the Knight can now recall his guards early by tapping the power button again which will immediately start the cooldown. This will essentially work identically to how players can recall Victor when using The Twins.

INFORMATION GIVEN TO THE SURVIVORS

Survivors can see:

A) When the Knight uses his power

B) The floating orb of the patrol path he sets up

C) The radius of the guards' detection range as they patrol

My suggestion: This is simply too much information being given to the survivor, allowing for an easy 'shift W' counter. How is the killer supposed to strategize against the survivors when they know his every move? My suggestion is to completely remove the survivors being able to see part B. For Part C, I would suggest the detection radius be seen intermittently. Perhaps when the guard initially spawns and then every 5 seconds or so afterwards. The survivors will have an idea of where the guards are, but won't know their exact pathing.

BUFFS FOR THE KNIGHT'S GUARDS

The guards are simply not enough of a threat to the survivors. Their movement speed is barely any faster and their pathfinding also isn't great at the moment (but that's an entirely separate issue).

My suggestions:

The Carnifex:

A) Movement speed buffed to 110%

B) Now applies mangled/hemorrhage for up to 60 seconds when hitting a survivor (this just fits with his character given his design)

The Assassin:

A) Movement speed buffed to 115%

B) The Assassin now acts like a mini-Legion. After successfully hitting a survivor, the Assassin will detect within 32 meters of where the survivor was hit. If another survivor is detected, the Assassin will reset his chase timer and begin chasing that survivor.

The Jailer:

A) Movement speed buffed to 110%

B) Now applies Broken for up to 60 seconds when hitting a survivor (I also feel like this fits with his design and makes him feel like more of a threat in chase).

INCENTIVES TO MAKE THE KNIGHT MORE STRATEGIC THAN ANTI-LOOP

To encourage the player to use the guards for strategy rather than anti-loop, the additional status effects suggested will be much weaker if a guard spots a survivor immediately. For example, if the Carnifex or Jailer are placed in a loop and hit a survivor, the mangled/hemorrhage or broken status effects applied will only be 30 seconds. However, if the guards detect and hit a survivor towards the end of their patrol, these status effects would last up to 60 seconds.

Essentially, the timer of these status effects would scale up depending on how long the guard has been on patrol before detecting a survivor. The same principle can be applied for the suggestions to the Assassin by scaling up his detection range after hitting a survivor.

An additional suggestion: Have the guards detection range slowly increase over time. This makes them more dangerous the longer they are on patrol, especially if the survivors can only see the detection range intermittently as suggested.

SECONDARY POWER BUTTON FOR THE KNIGHT

This one is simple. After setting up a guard on a patrol, press the secondary power button to have a guard reverse the direction of their patrol path. This will create more fun strategies and keep the survivors guessing.

ADDITIONAL COUNTERPLAY FOR THE GUARDS

Since I am suggesting tons of buffs to make the guards more of a threat in chase, I want the survivors to have some additional counterplay to make things more interesting

My suggestion: Survivors can now stun the guards using pallets and Head On to immediately banish them and puts the Knight's power on cooldown. This would work identically to The Nemesis' zombies. It would create more interesting gameplay ("Do I use this pallet/exhaustion perk on the guard or save it for the killer?") and give players more choice in how to counter the guards other than running away.

I am only suggesting stuns and not blinds because that may be too strong of a counter. The guards are the Knight's main power while the zombies act more as a secondary passive power for Nemesis so I don't think they are quite the same.

Potential side effect for this suggestion: This suggestion would probably shadow buff the Flint and Steel add-on where the Knight can see auras of survivors within 24 meters of dropped pallets after summoning the Carnifex.

TL;DR:

1. Patrol paths for guards now go through objects and guards will patrol through objects until they detect a survivor
2. Survivors can no longer see the patrol path the Knight sets and now only see the detection range of guards intermittently
3. The Knight can now recall his guards by tapping the power button again just like the Twins can do with Victor
4. Carnifex and Jailer now move at 110% and apply mangled/hemorrhage or broken, respectively.
5. The Assassin moves at 115% and will detect nearby survivors after a hit. If spotted, he starts chasing them (basically a mini Legion)
6. The status effects applied by Carnifex/Jailer and detection range of the Assassin will increase over time based on how long they have been on patrol before spotting a survivor to de-incentivize the anti-loop strat (Mangled/hemorrhage and Broken go from 30 seconds up to 60 seconds and Assassin's detection range post hit will increase from 12 meters up to 32 meters).
7. Guards' detection range slowly increases over time, making them more of a threat the longer on patrol
8. The Knight can now use the secondary power button to reverse the direction of a guard's patrol path
9. Survivors can now choose to stun the guards with pallets/head on for more fun risk/reward counterplay
10. Suggestion 9 would most likely shadow buff the Flint and Steel add-on.

And those are all the ideas I have at the moment! If you read through the whole thing or even just the TL;DR I thank you for your time and would love to know what you think in the comments.

MrKrabsArgArgArg

Whether or not some or all of what I say could be added, here are a few I also thought of

To start I feel like a cool ability would be to have it so that you can create a guard path by walking the route, and then when you either max out the patrol length, or decide to spawn the guard, it will spawn on where you started from, survivors would be able to see the green path, and there should maybe be a minimum distance you need to walk in order to summon guards

Another thing is that rather than kicking one object at a time, I think guards should just stop and break any objects in their patrol path. As of right now those little circles pop up, maybe they could make them larger, and patrol paths inside the circle will be kicked during the patrol. Without factoring in walking time, the Carnifex could damage 6 objects, the Assassin could damage 2, and the jailer could damage 4. However as I said, the walking speed would need to be taken into consideration, and I feel like at the absolute most, 3 objects could be potentially damaged

The Knight should also be able to just walk up to a kickable object, and be able to have his guards kick things without needing to stop and go into patrol mode, it's just slow and a waste of time. Maybe he could get slowed down during this, or the guard summon takes longer, but patrol mode to kick objects with guards every time feels repetitive

Survivors picking up standards should slowly buff the guards the more standards you pick up. Creating a situation where if you feel like you NEED the standard, pick it up, and if you don't, you'll just have to leave it. However once the guards reach maximum buff status, they should no longer drop standards

zeromorph

I agree with most of the things you specified. I like the idea of the guards giving mangled/hemorrhage and broken it does really fit since the assassin already gives deep wound, it would create a lot more strategic options of not only which guard to use but also which status effect you would like to apply to a given survivor.

I also agree that the guards should start off weak or their current base and get stronger the longer they patrol, this is a change i have heard many people in the community say would really improve the knight. As for the guard speeds i think that these are a bit too high, while i do agree they should be faster i think they should increase their speed by 2.5%, the guards are not meant to guarantee hits but they should hit a survivor if they make too many mistakes or the survivor does not make any effort to outplay them, as of now i have seen a carnifex chase a survivor for the full 24s in a straight line and for the last 10s he was right on their heels and still never hit them. By increasing them by 2.5% this would make the guards a lot more useful but still not strong enough to guarantee hits on their own. The assassin working like a mini legion is a very interesting concept but i feel like that would make him a bit too strong and more dominant than the other guards.

In terms of the green orb yes I fully agree it should not be shown to survivors. During the ptb the community almost unanimously said that survivors should not see the green orb, i dont know why this wasnt done. The radius on the other hand once the orb is not shown anymore i feel like it wouldnt really make a huge difference whether it was kept as is or showed intermittently as the orb is the main reason why the power is so easy to outplay.

"the Knight can now recall his guards early by tapping the power button again which will immediately start the cooldown." - yes please, since you cant cancel the power once you activate it, if you place a useless guard and suddenly you find a survivor you essentially have no power for 12s or 24s if its jailer. They already added the ability to cancel guards by hitting them so why not just make it easier and let us just right click again. Its also really annoying that the only way to cancel a guard is to go up to them and bonk them on the head and if you miss or he goes through you while swinging you are just left trying to hit the guard multiple times.

An addition i would make is something i also said during the ptb which is being able to switch guards with ctrl when you dont have any guards summoned. The way it would work is you can switch the guards but you have to use all the guards in your current rotation in order to use the same guard again as i strongly feel that you should use all 3 guards as that is his power and not just use 1 guard throughout the whole match. So for example say you start the match and you use ctrl to switch to the assassin, then use him in a chase or however you want. After he disappears you can still switch between guards but you can only choose between carnifex and jailer, then you switch to jailer maybe for gen control as some survivors tried to gen-rush you so you would like for the gen to regress for a bit longer. After he disappears you only have carnifex left so you cant switch between guards, you then use the carnifex to destroy a door or pallet and after he disappears the rotation resets and you can choose between all 3 guards again and so on. He is described as a strategic killer but since you cant swap between the guards his strategy is very limited and i feel this would fix the problem (right person for the job and all that) while still keeping him on pretty much the same level. You can already do this very tediously of summoning a guard, hitting him, summon guard, hit him to get a specific guard so again why not just make it easier and let us switch using a button.