SM gets all the hate when Knight is the real villain here
Say what you will about SM at least you can interact with her power and you can beat her consistently if you're willing to play differently and her community just loves their character and wants the community to like her to, even if you will never like SM that part is at least slightly endearing. The SM community was worse pre-rework sure but those bad elements mostly left after they couldn't hold games hostage for 50 minutes anymore. I've never met a BM merchant since then.
Now take Knight a killer whose entire power is AI and just "I make my guard go one way and I go the other and the survivor can't do anything". SM isn't really a skill expressive killer this is known but at least I've seen some get somewhat creative with drone placement and there's that laser tag thing, there is literally nothing cool you can do with knight either they're in a place to trap you or the guard just wastes your time. Then you get to knight players that maybe I've just been unlucky but they literally all just camp, tunnel and BM like they didn't just have an AI play the game for them.
This is a call to arms so Knight can catch the smoke they deserve because this is the real killer that needs a rework. I'm not saying SM needs no changes she can def be fine tuned some but Knight is a much bigger mess and in need of attention because the character is literally just forcing you into unwinnable situations with AI. Also not saying Knight is like A tier or unbeatable or anything just that when the character does do well that's the reason and that's not good design.
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Knight really needs bugfixes before I accept, valid, criticisms.
Buddy just barely functions
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I mean even if they fix the bugs he'll still just be "trapping people with AI" the killer just more consistent with it. Bugs don't change the fact the core design is terrible.
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Not denying that, just also saying that bro is so bugged it hardly matters
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He barely functions right now, let him be fixed and see how he is before we change him
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Neither Knight or SM have much skill expression, SM has laser-tagging but that's about it.
Tbh the only reason I think Knight is more tolerable to face is because he isn't actually that good, he pretty much needs 2 specific addons to even function and unlike SM he doesn't just get free tracking and free Broken status all for just pressing m2. And SM gets way too much free speedboosts too, Knight's haste effect is only for placing guards and serves more as a catch-up tool and not a chase tool so it's not unhealthy. Further, Knight can't just place a guard on the go, he can do it quickly but even that split-second of having to stop and drop a guard at a loop gives survivors a chance to react and leave the loop. You can't do that nearly as much against SM because she can place drones without slowing down at all.
But overall, while neither of them have much skill expression, Skull Merchant is A LOT stronger than Knight ever has been, which makes SM more frustrating to face because her power level is very disproportionate to the effort required to play her. I think both killers are very unhealthy for the game and both need several changes but Skull Merchant should be a bigger priority imo
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Knight has counterplay during chases
SM doesnt
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Line of sight blocking, crouching, and not greeding loops are all good ways of countering Skull Merchant in chase.
I mostly want to respond because… what is Knight's counterplay in chase? Just run away from the guard…? Abuse a couple weird AI bugs?
I don't even hate Knight, I just think it's kind of silly to highlight his kind of generic counterplay while claiming the killer with more options to choose from doesn't have any at all.
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The giant banner is one, considering it gives you Haste and Endurance iirc.
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Sure, but that's still just "run away from the guards" when you get down to it. The only difference in your decision making is what direction to run in, which is still kind of generic as counterplay goes, you run away from every killer.
Then again, it is still something, so I'll give it to him.
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Correct.
Like I said earlier, valid criticisms, all of them.
It's just that the Killer barely even functions. He might be held together by the hair coming out of his helmet.
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Now that I'll agree with. Fun factor aside, that killer needs some love.
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I never ever see him in my matches.
What exaclty isnt working on him rn and since when?0 -
Well, his M1 works.
Other than that, take your pick. every update seems to break Guard AI more.
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Knight is extremely fun, imho. But it depends on the player.
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I mean it's mentioned already but Knight is just a worse SM in every way. I would rather play a knight game over a SM game any day. But if I'm honest I'd rather not play vs either but at least a super slow moving knight that can be heard from a mile away is much more welcome the the haste boosted undectable instant drone dropping broken status giving SM and I didn't even mention free tracking and basekit game wide slow down from needing to crouch for drones
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Im just tired of the AI+SPEED BOOST mechanic in general. Meatball was fun for a bit, but now it's every new killer has teleport/ai abilities that take over the map. Kinda boring and not fun to face over and over with a random Wesker (ugh) in between. To point out SM being too easy, I've played her once, decimated the opposing team with 5 gens left, and felt like the worst person in the world after. I played as M1 killer.
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Ok, boring counterplay
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Best thing about facing the Knight is pretending to drop the pallet and bait him to send a guard, and then just hold w
SM doesnt even have fun counterplay like this at all
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Sure, I can't disprove a subjective opinion. I'm just surprised you'd consider Knight to have fun counterplay considering the only thing you really do is hold W against the guards, or maybe go for a banner-grab.
Is it more about leveraging the AI bugs or something?
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you don't even need to leverage them, they'll manage it all on their own :(
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I have much more fun with Knight, even though the killer is already at the bottom of the "fun" meter
Its fun to bait a pallet drop and force the Knight to send a guard for the break purpose
Its fun to pretend to go to a direction and then change to the other whilst the guard is being sent
Its fun to take the guard chase from your teammate being chased by the Knight
Its fun to rotate the loops and grab the banner
Knights chase music is good, the banner horn sound is fun
What about Skull Merchant?
Boring, boring, boring, boring, I rather die
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Fair enough, I suppose. At the end of the day it's subjective, but to me, the beam-dodging and line of sight blocking elements of Merchant are way more fun than the one-note interaction of the guards.
To each their own, I guess!
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Knight is WAY more fun to play against than Skull Merchant, and it's not even close. I feel like I can actually do something against Knight and it's not constant no-effort free hits.
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knight has a game breaking bug right now outside of that he actually have more counter than skull merchant by miles and is actually fun to play vs him when it's not a level with a lot of dead zones he has a lot of counterplays ill give you example if you touch a window without vaulting when a guard is on you you force the ai to go and check the window before continuing to chase you it buys a lot of time same thing with dropped pallets you can also prodrop a pallet when a guard is chasing you loop around touch the pallet witch force the guard to check the pallet 2 times there so many ways to make the knight guard really bad the only thing that makes him annoying is level with a lots of dead zones witch then you can't really do anything but he has more interaction than skull merchant by miles
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Ok, well, Knight’s getting changed next update so I guess you got your wish.
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Now people will definitely hate SM more than Knight.
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