Predictably, Knight is still Not Fun

Knight still is the worst Killer to experience in both the Survivor and the Killer role and it's for good reason. No offense to the balance or design teams of The Knight, but no amount of changes you make to him in his current state will keep him from being played in the scummiest way, because that way is the most viable way to use him.
What is worse is that you made the scummiest way to play him even stronger by adding an additional 2.5% regression to the damage generator action of The Guards, which adds up over time.
Listen, I understand your design idea behind The Knight. It's to have a Killer who has three other characters doing different tasks from long ranges. But the execution of this Killer is just beyond miserable for the player experience on both sides. You guys need to stop acting like you can fix this with band-aids, because this cannot be fixed with simple patches to his base kit; he needs a full on rework to his power similarly to Trickster or Freddy.
If you guys actually value the potential of this Killer, and if you guys actually read these threads, heed these next suggestions and you will make everyone happy over the following months. It will cost money and development time, but this will pay off in the end.
- Rework: The Knight can now summon Guards by holding the Power Button and releasing it forward. Each Guard has a different method of casting and their own unique abilities to them.
- Rework: The Knight can now select between which of the Guards at will, and can cancel his power in the charging phase if he does not want to use them.
- Rework - Carnifex: Press and hold the Power Button to charge up the Carnifex. After fully charging the ability, release the button to unleash him and have him charge forward at breakneck speed.
- The Carnifex moves at 20m/s with a maximum range of 15 meters.
- The Carnifex will home in on Survivors within a 10 degree cone.
- The Carnifex will destroy any pallets, walls or damage generators in his path before dematerializing. If he damages a Generator, he will apply a 5% regression penalty to it.
- The Carnifex has a cooldown of 15 seconds after sending out.
- Rework - Assassin: Press and hold the Power Button to charge up the Assassin and generate a green spirit orb that you can plant up to a range of 64 meters. After charging the ability, release the button to cast the Assassin, who moves on a circular patrol path to look for Survivors.
- The Assassin will initiate a Hunt toward Survivors, similar to how he functions now.
- The Assassin will hunt Survivors for approximately 30 seconds, and has the capacity to hit the same Survivor twice before dematerializing.
- The Assassin can be stunned by pallets or Head-On, and will dematerialize if that occurs.
- The Assassin moves at 4.4m/s while chasing Survivors, and can vault windows and pallets.
- The Assassin has a cooldown of 15 seconds after he finishes chasing or patrolling.
- Rework - Jailer: Press and hold the Power Button to charge up the Jailer and generate a blue fire you can plant up to a range of 64 meters. After charging the ability, release the button to cast the Jailer, who slowly moves about a 32 meter range.
- Upon detecting a Survivor or multiple Survivors, the Jailer will shriek and any Survivor he finds will have Killer Instinct applied to them while within the 32 meter range of his location.
- The Jailer will injure any Survivor that attempts to walk too close to him.
- The Jailer grants The Knight a stack-able 5% increase in movement speed per Survivor located by him. This effect lasts 10 seconds.
- The Jailer will remain on patrol for up to 30 seconds before dematerializing.
- The Carnifex and Assassin can still be used while the Jailer is active.
- The Jailer has a cooldown of 10 seconds after he finishes patrolling or alerting.
You know what these changes would do? These would make The Knight a significantly more interesting Killer than he is at the moment. His design is, for lack of a better word, lame.
And you can try to add so many things to try and prevent the lame gameplay loop of his, but nothing will fix the issue that the most optimal way to play him is to play like a scumbag. The above suggestions would make the Knight feel like he's an interesting Killer with a lot of depth and choice he needs to make in order to play at his most effective. And I think that is what most players want; a Killer who has choices and who can make good plays while still allowing Survivors to be able to play the game properly.
A suggestion like this is a tall order, but I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is and say that this would be better in execution than the current Knight we have in the game.
Comments
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Eh. I like knight now. Jump scaring survivors off gens is a lot of fun and the faster deploy time makes his guards more of a threat. The 5% gen thing literally doesn't matter. If the knight is using his guys to kick gens then he's not using the vastly superior gen kick perks. I'd be pretty disappointed if they changed him substantially at this point.
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The regression from his guards is pretty bad.
5% is less than 5 seconds of survivor time, you gain much more by just having a guard chase them off the gen.
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For defending a 3-gen, it's actually really good. It's 5% regression (4.5 seconds), and is essentially Jolt on command.
And you know what is also bad about this for Survivors? The fact that the Assassin and the Jailer take 6 whole seconds to complete their damage Generator action. Now it may not cause regression, but this effectively locks the Generator down for 6 seconds, time which adds up more and more.
If the Knight is running double Assassin and double Jailer, for instance, if he is doing a 3-Gen strategy, then he can effectively cause the equivalent of 22.5 seconds of total regression from instant hits, while also adding an additional 26 seconds of lockdown, in a full cycle of his Guards being ordered to damage generators.
So he can essentially take away 48.5 seconds of overall time on generators in a complete cycle if he so pleases to do it, and that's if Survivors are too scared to let a Guard proc on them, and that's not even counting the Perks and regression he may have applied himself beforehand.
Sure, you can scare Survivors off by using a Guard, but if they are already pushed off before you set it, you gain more value simply by ordering them to kick it than you would by setting them to Hunt, unless you have Eruption and someone is injured.
Regression from his guards may be "bad" if you're looking at it from a lens of just stats, but his overall slowdown potential is better than you can imagine with this change.
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The problem is that if your purposely 3 gen with the killer. your going run kick perks for 3 generator gameplay because default kicking for over-time regression is pathetic. The kick perks are better then knight power kicks. The only way you will ever use the knight's guard for kicking is if you DO NOT run regression kick perks.
I think knight only has 1 issue currently in kit which is that none of the guards are able to get hits even if you successfully start a guard chase with the survivor from 20 meters away. Like regardless of how you place the guard, the survivor physically has no opportunity to get hit by the guard if they do not wish to get hit by the guard. They're mathematically too slow. All of them. You can physically run forward and the guard can never hit the survivor without you(the main killer) being there to hit the survivor. This makes him weak towards hold-w strategies because they waste his time and he does not really have a counter to it. there is basically no punishment for running away from him when he is using his power. He does not lose as much distance with haste but its just net-loss for him. I think if they just gave a 5% haste to his guards when he draw a 10 meter path, the change would remedy that issue for him.
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So many awesome ideas. Knight is currently powerless, hopefully he could have the features you introduce here some day!
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I actually really like Knight now. The green orb disappearing is huge and let’s you ambush survivors so much easier now that I can easily be pressuring multiple survivors at once. He kind of reminds me of the original Freddy play style.
The main issue have with him though is how clunky his power feels. You have to be really far away from a wall in order to use your power, which makes is awkward sometimes as you have to step back a bit just to use your power because you can’t use it if something is close to you. If they made it so the orb appears inside of the Knight so I can use my power anywhere, that would be great.
Also make Call to Arms base kit. The added range and speed is so good.
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