Oh boy, it's a (overly ambitious) Knight Rework Idea

MagicJoe

I don’t know about you, but I really, really like the Knight. 

That was a lie, or at least the “don’t know about you” part was. I know everyone hates this character. You who is reading this probably hates this character. But because of this (and also because there are people that really like him), there’s been a lot of ideas on how to rework him to make his power feel better and more engaging. And this giant post is no exception. The following is an idea I had in my mind for a long time that I wanted to share with the public for… I don’t know… Peace of mind I guess. Anyways, let’s start this.

First, let’s talk about what I think are the fun parts about playing the Knight currently (as someone who plays and likes him a bunch):

• Macro gameplay that allows the killer to be in multiple places at once.
• Predicting and figuring out the routes survivors take to catch them with the Guards.
• Flanking and pincering survivors to end chases quickly.
• Kool sword dude.

Now, let’s mention the parts that suck about the Knight:

• His power can be very unreliable when it comes to detection (survivors can out-run the detection radius easily) and in the Hunt (Guard AI kinda poopy). Plus his power has a lot of clunkiness such as not being able to start a trail if he’s too close to an object or wall.

And beyond that, his power can sometimes feel very hands-off, understandable given that it consists of summoning minions to fight with him, but it can make him feel very “automated”, in the sense that he doesn’t have a lot of room for experimenting or thinking outside the box, and makes his skill ceiling and expression very lackluster.

• Sucks to play against. Whether the Knight is strong or not, Survivors have almost no agency when it comes to playing around his power. The Banner is a very unreliable and inconsistent counter for the Guards that only works if either the Knight player himself messes up and allows the survivor to grab it, or, if the Killer isn’t nearby, the survivors exploit the good AI of the Guards by getting them stuck on something or messing up their pathfinding in order to have plenty of time to grab the banner. But this method depends entirely on where the survivor is when they get detected, which is often not under his control. This means that the best way to counter the Knight’s power is to simply not get detected by the guards to bypass the Hunt. If they DO get detected, then they simply have to make as much distance from them as humanly possible, which is where the dreaded “hold forward” strat comes into play.

Plus, there’s the whole 3-gen thing, and while it’s not as powerful now as it was when he was released, it still is something very strong (and very annoying) that Knights can do.

This rework idea plans to tackle some of these issues in a pretty-ambitious-but-somewhat-plausible rework that will make him more rewarding to play, give him a ton more room for decision making and skill expression, and make him a little more interesting to verse for the survivors WITHOUT changing the core of the character, which is heavy macro gameplay where you utilize minions to be in two places at once, making him a fun time for the whole family and (hopefully) somewhat balanced.

Power Changes:

For starters, let’s talk about what I’ll change from the power as it is now, before I move on to spicier stuff:

Call to Arms, Horse meat and Map of the Realm will be partially base kit, since the Knight feels naked without having any of those:

- Guards’ Patrol Path will be 7 meters longer (Live seems to be 32 meters*, so it will be 39 meters now, current Call to Arms is +10 meters)

This will increase the Knight’s pressure since he can activate his power from further away.

*(according to the wiki, so apologies if it's wrong)

- Jailer and Assassin now Hunt for 2 seconds longer (Live = 12 seconds, so now it will be 14, current Horse meat is +4 seconds)

- Carnifex, however, will chase for 4 seconds less (Live = 24 seconds, so now it will be 20)

The reason why I’m nerfing his Hunt duration is pretty straight forward: holding W for almost half a minute as survivor is pretty goddamn tedious, so this reduction will make it slightly-less-tedious while still keeping some of his utility.

- Increase all the Guard’s Detection Radius by a whopping 1 meter (Live = 8 meters for Assy and Carny, 14 meters for Jaily, current Map of the Realm is +4 meters)

- On the other hand, and I think this is the main reason why people want this addon to be base kit, the Detection Radius expansion will not exist anymore, and instead, it will appear immediately at the maximum range the moment a Guard starts his Patrol.

The reason why I don’t want to increase the detection radius much is a bit complicated (and has a bit to do with preventing survivors from offing themselves). Simply put, making it too easy for the Guards to detect survivors will make them very, very, VERY obnoxious to deal with due to the low cooldown of the power and the fact that during the Hunt they’re practically out of the game. On the other hand, making it too easy to start the Hunt will make the Knight gameplay a lot more boring and less skillful I feel, since the player won’t have to predict where the survivors are and where they’re going as much in order to get the Hunt, it will just happen a lot more often and more easily.

And lastly, and maybe most importantly, making the radius too big will then allow the “drop guard on loop” playstyle to be even more viable, since it will be harder for the survivor to get away from the loop before they get tagged, and I don’t think I have to tell you why we don’t want that to be the case.

You could argue that making the detection radius appear instantly also contributes to this and I kinda agree to an extent, but not having that hurts his “snipe” and “patrol” playstyle a lot more than it hurts the “press m2 next to loop” style. 

I might be completely off on this and just getting worked up over nothing, but I feel like there could be some unforeseen consequences due to buffing the detection range.

Additionally, for this rework, the Knight gains a new command WHILE a Guard is Hunting someone: by pressing the Secondary Power button (CTRL on PC, L1/LB on Console I think, God knows what it is on Switch), the Knight will be able to stop the Guard from moving.

This doesn’t stop the timer of the Hunt, it just stops the Guard from moving.

And if the Knight presses the secondary button again (CTRL on PC, yada yada yada), the Guard will resume moving…

This is important and will make sense later, don’t worry.

Now before we move on I would like to mention some Guard specific changes that will help them feel more consistent and useful, inspired by some things I’ve read online:

Carny:

No changes here other than the Hunt duration mentioned previously. He's a good boy. He works good enough.

Assy:

• His Hunt speed will increase from 110% (Live) to 112.5%, but only if:

1. The Knight isn’t chasing the Hunted survivor.
2. The Hunted survivor is already injured.

This will help the Knight end stalemates (where survivors are constantly retreating and healing) in his favor, and increase his snowball potential since getting someone downed at a critical moment can be huge. Plus it will help give the Assassin a stronger niche.

The “doesn’t work if the killer is chasing the survivor too” could honestly be used for all three guards (as in, they get less speed when the Knight is also chasing that survivor), but this rework idea is already long and girthy enough and I can’t be bothered. I won’t argue against it tho.

And if you think this is too unfair for survivors, wait until I mention my ideas for the new counters they have for the Hunt (hint: it’s not an awful capture the flag anymore).

• On the other hand, when he damages a generator, Assassin will now take 1.5% progress off it instead of the 2.5% he takes on Live.

For those who don’t know (shame on you), when any guard damages a gen, any repairing survivor is pushed out and unable to continue repairing until their animation is done. This means that to stop a gen from popping, Snorlax is, ironically, the worst one, since his Order animation is the quickest of the three, while the other two are fantastic, since their animations are slow as molasses.

This change is mostly to make up for the time survivors waste waiting for his animation to finish, and to push Assassin away from being defensive and make him more of the chasing machine he’s supposed to be.

• Everything else stays the same.

Jaily:

• When summoned his Patrol Path is 8 meters longer than the other two guards, which means you can send him further than the other two.

The idea for this is twofold:

One, it will make his niche of being the Patrol guard stronger since he’ll be able to cover more of the map per Patrol.

And two, it will help make him the main guard for stopping gens from popping (in relation to what I mentioned previously): if a survivor is about to pop a gen that’s far away, the Knight will be able to send the Jailer to interrupt it where the other couldn’t reach.

• Other than that, no more changes.

Holy moly I just wrote half a bible and I haven’t even gotten into the main course of this rework idea, which is the addition of a new mechanic for the Knight’s power that I like to call Effigies. They are objects scattered all over the map in various, fixed places, the amount of which varying depending on the size of the map (example, smaller maps like Dead Dawg will have 4-5 Effigies while big, thicc maps like Swamp and Mother’s Dwelling will have 6-7)

Yes reader, this rework puts the Knight in the “stupid character that has a dumb prop you need to interact with” category. However, I feel like my idea for the Effigies could be a lot more engaging and exciting for both sides than, say, the EMPs of Single Larry or the flamethrowers and tunnels of the Alien.

What do Effigy do??:

For starters, the dumb Banners that appear during a Hunt are no more, because they’re dumb (see the top of the post for my reasoning for why they’re dumb).

Instead, Effigies will be stationary objects that survivors can interact with, similar to how they interact with other killer specific objects (like Wesker/Nemy crates). After 2 seconds of interacting with an Effigy, the survivor will gain 3 stacks of Spirits and the Effigy will deactivate for 60 seconds for that survivor. If a survivor already has at least 1 stack of Spirits, they won’t be able to interact with another Effigy.

Lore wise, the spirits inhabiting the Effigies are the ghostly remnants of the villagers that the Knight massacred in the Shattered Square map, who now want to aid the survivors in escaping his grasp, or something like that idk.

Survivors can use the stacks of spirits for two things:

1) Ethereal pallets: For the cost of 1 stack, a survivor will be able to create an Ethereal pallet in any empty spot of the map where pallets can spawn (similar to how Pallet Freddy works), which, after 10 seconds, will finish forming and be available for use. When they’re formed, both survivors and the killer get an unique sound queue, and survivors will also be able to see the aura of the pallet when they’re 10 meters from it. Creating an Ethereal pallet puts the stacks of Spirits of that survivor on a 10 second cooldown, meaning a survivor can’t create more pallets until that cooldown finishes.

These pallets work the exact same way as the special golden pallets from the Masquerade Event, aka, they will disappear immediately after a survivor drops them. They have two effects: they can stun the Knight, which works like any regular pallet stun or they can stun a Guard when they’re hunting, immediately ending the Hunt.

The pallets will be the new counter-measure survivors will have to deal with the Hunt, replacing the banners. The 1 stack cost is meant to incentivize survivors to put these everywhere constantly, and the aura reading is to help solo players coordinate better, since they won’t have to be constantly wondering where them pallets are. The 10 second activation time is there to make the pallets not so much as a clutch for when you get Hunted, but instead something you and your team sets up in advance, as well as being a nice number that can be buffed or nerfed easily. If the map being filled with spooky pallets ends up being too powerful, then we can slap a limit to how many pallets a survivor can create, having the oldest one disappear when a new one is placed over the limit (like how Hag traps and Larry pods work).

And, if you remember about the stop command the Knight has during a Hunt (in which case, good job, you win), it is meant to help the Knight save the Guards from getting stunned. What I personally like about this is that it will increase the Knight’s skill ceiling dramatically, given that he can now micromanage how the Guards Hunt in order to chase more efficiently. And the best part is that he can do this WHILE he does other stuff, like, for example, chase another survivor! Maybe it won’t be as cool in practice, but in theory it sounds pretty ######### fun, in my not-so-humble opinion.

2) Phantom Blacksmith: A survivor that’s performing the repair generator option can use 2 stacks to summon a Phantom Blacksmith on that gen. This phantom will prevent any other survivor or phantom from repairing that gen (a bit like blocking it with a perk like Thrilling Tremors or Repressed Alliance), and will constantly repair it at 1/4 of a survivor’s repair speed (a generator takes 90 charges to be completed, and one survivor’s repair speed is 1 charge per second, so the phantom will repair 0.25 charges per second) until the generator is completed. Creating the Phantom puts the Stacks on a 15 second cooldown, meaning a survivor can’t place more Phantoms or create more Ethereal pallets until the cooldown ends.

The only way to destroy the Phantom is either if the survivor that spawned it taps the gen or if the Knight himself kicks the gen. Note that Guards can damage a gen with a phantom on it, reducing it’s progress, but they can’t destroy the phantom itself, meaning it will simply continue repairing after getting attacked.

The idea of the Phantoms is to give survivors a built-in counter-measure to a defensive, 3-genning Knight. While it doesn’t break a 3-gen directly, it will help put pressure on a gen that the Knight player might not be focused on, which in turn allows your full team to deal with the 3-gen. And this will force the Knight player to make a decision: leave the Phantomed gen untouched, allowing survivors to get it for basically free, or go there and kick it, preventing the gen from getting done but making the Knight leave the 3-gen zone. Plus, the Knight can try to keep it in check, but he’ll have to constantly use his power to regress it, which will leave him without one.

Plus, it gives survivors something else to use their stacks on that’s not putting up a pallet, giving them more options.

Personally, I kinda like this idea since it opens up new and fun back-and-forth decision making for both killer and survivor, but, alongside the Map of the Realm base kit change, this is the one that I am most iffy about. The main reason for it being the fact that it doesn’t stop a survivor from being a massive, raging c*** with it. I can easily see someone place the phantom on a gen 3 people are trying to repair quickly just to be an douchebag, and I honestly couldn’t figure out a way to prevent this that wouldn’t open up more ways to be a dickhead. It’s honestly bad enough that I want to scrap this idea, but I still think it could add a lot to the survivor gameplay when dealing with the Knight.

Well, now that we mentioned what the Effigy does, I think it would be good to mention why I think it would be a good idea.

I spent a while trying to think of a change that will make the Knight gameplay more fun and interactive for survivors instead of being so hands-off as it is now, but I couldn’t think of any small change that will help that wouldn’t just gut the character or make him feel clunkier than he already is in the process. That’s why I thought that, instead of neutering the Knight’s power to make him more fair for survivors, the survivors themselves should be buffed up, in order to give them the same level of options that the Knight has with all the other changes (and another one that I haven’t even mentioned yet Jesus Christ this rework is too ######### long) mentioned on this rework. Plus, survivors having more consistent counter options means that the Knight also has more things to play around, which will make him more engaging hopefully.

This is also what I think was the design philosophy behind Larry’s EMPs and Xeno’s turrets (hence the comparison). However, I think these two have some problems when it comes to how each side interacts with them: for EMPs, the killer don’t have a way to “stop” or “avoid” them, he just has to eat them without being able to do much about it, and it’s only “counter” from what I know is to just grit your teeth and infect them faster than they can disable your power, which is pretty silly considering how relatively easy and cost efficient it is for survivors to use them. Turrets are a little better, but they still don’t offer a lot of choice for both sides: for the killer, all you can do is either ignore them and lose your tail whip or break them and let any nearby survivors make some distance. Survivors don’t have much input (since the turret acts automatically), aside from placing it somewhere hidden like in a bush, which is still not much, all things considered.

The main idea for the Effigies is to give BOTH sides chances to outplay each other, and making the prop something that requires skill to use and counter for both sides, and hopefully the last change delivers on that.

TL;DR: The effigies are there so survivors can have more options, which in turn makes the Knight more engaging, and everybody is happy.

Lastly, there is another new mechanic to this rework, which ties into the Effigies mentioned previously. And this time it favors the Knight.

Haunted Effigies: Getting hits as the Knight (either by M1ing normally or by Guard hits) will power up something that I’ll call the Ghosty Meter™ (because I’m lazy), which has different milestones of progression. When one of these milestones is reached, the Knight will be able to target any Effigy on the map and press the Secondary Power button to Haunt it for the rest of the game.

If the Knight has his power off cooldown, he can target one of those Haunted Effigies (similar to how Sadako or Freddy target their TVs and generators respectively by looking at them) and, by pressing the secondary power button, will start to create a Patrol Path FROM the Haunted Effigy instead of from himself. The rest of the power will work as it does normally, except that it will all be done with the Effigy as a starting point, meaning that a Guard will Patrol between the point the Patrol Path ended to the Haunted Effigy.

The first milestone in the Ghosty Meter is the first 2 hits, the second is 3 more hits after that, the third is 4 hits, and so on.

The idea behind this is to allow the Knight player to be able to truly be in multiple places at once. It is also what would (in theory) make the entire rework come together: if you buff the Guards up so they’re more consistent, you risk being too oppressive for survivors, so we give them the Spirits to be able to counter them; however, since they now have tools to completely negate the guards, The Knight gets ways to control how they chase more directly and gets cross-map Hunts and Patrols for extra pressure.

And if you think this power will be absolutely busted… I mean yeah probably. But I still think I added enough drawbacks to kinda make up for it. The whole Ghosty Meter™ mechanic is there so that he doesn’t immediately start harassing survivors across the map, but instead to be something he builds up to as the game goes on. Plus, the fact that each new Effigy costs more than the last means that you most likely won’t see that many per match unless you’re losing really badly.

It also helps to add more decision making to the Knight, since he has to choose which Effigy to Haunt, which could be the only one he gets for a long time, making it a very important decision.

Lastly, it’s also something you could easily buff or nerf by decreasing or increasing the amount of hits he needs to Haunt the Effigy.

CONCLUSION

i hope you enjoyd this essay as much as i enjoyed righting it.

Jokes aside, the idea behind this rework is to add more depth and decision making to both the killer player and the survivors while adding on to the idea of summoning minions to do your bidding that the Knight has and toning down the bad parts about him.

The big problems it has, or at least from what I can think of, are the big increase in complexity and the fact that it might be a little broken.

The Knight is already a somewhat complex killer when it comes to decision making, since every guard is built for different situations, but the Effigies could theoretically open up a bunch of more decisions that could feel overwhelming for the killer player and ESPECIALLY survivors (newer survivors in particular), since it gives them a bunch of new mechanics and decisions that they don’t otherwise have.

Plus there’s the bugs. If this were in the actual game it would probably be buggy as #########. I tried to repurpose mechanics that already kinda exist, like the pallets that break after dropping and the Haunted Effigy being basically a Sadako teleport but for your power, but I’m pretty sure it would still be a mess if his power was actually like this.

Sorry for making it so long, I swear it’s because I wanted to explain my reasoning behind every change and not because the actual reworked power description is longer than Atlas Shrugged. If I took out all the author notes it might end up having a somewhat reasonable length, but I wanted to show what my thought process was behind everything.

But what do you think about this abomination of a rework? Did you like some of it? Did you hate all of it and myself by association? If you have any ideas or feedback I would love to hear it.

And please don’t ask me about the add-ons. This is already long enough as it is. Just now that Map of the Realm, Call to Arms and Horse Meat will have different effects or numbers, so they don’t stack with the basekit changes.

Thank you for taking the time to read this!