Knight change suggestions after 13 prestiges worth of games

some_guy1

i've been playing knight for quite a while already, managing to reach prestige 13 with him and i'd like to share some suggestions for his changes

quick overview of his guards and flag bonuses

carnifex

hunt movement speed = 4.1m/s

patrol movement speed = 3.4m/s

patrol vision radius = 8 meters

patrol duration = 12 seconds

hunt duration = 24 seconds

time for flag to become active = 10 seconds

assasin

hunt movement speed = 4.4m/s

patrol movement speed = 3.4m/s

patrol vision radius = 8 meters

patrol duration = 24 seconds

hunt duration = 12 seconds

time for flag to become active = 5 seconds

jailer

hunt movement speed = 4.1m/s

patrol movement speed = 4.1m/s

patrol vision radius = 14 meters

patrol duration = 24 seconds

hunt duration = 12 seconds

time for flag to become active = 10 seconds

flag

movement speed bonus = 50%

movement speed bonus duration = 3 seconds

endurance duration = 3 seconds

suggestions:

1. increase the guard patrol vision range

guards by default have an extremely tiny patrol vision range(except jailer), the default vision radius is barely enough to be able to trigger hunts when you spawn a guard on top of a survivor, with the default range the survivor can easliy outrun the radius most of the time which is why map of the realms is a must have addon on him

suggestion:

increase all guard patrol vision range by 4 meters

map of the realms - decreased to 1 meter

2. patrol visibility

guards are way too easy to dodge when they are patrolling, their visible patrol radius and sound effects are a dead giveaway of whether they are still patrolling or their patrol time has ended

suggestion:

the patrol radius is no longer visible to survivors and the sound effect can only be heard when inside the patrol radius

this change will make survivors be careful of their surroundings so they wont have to face a guard

3. patrol duration

the patrol duration is way too short by default to be used for anything "strategic" like defending generators, totems etc. with a guard

suggestion:

increase all patrol durations by 6 seconds

tattered tabard - decreased to 2 seconds

4. recall ability

with the increased patrol durations, it might be possible you might miss a guard summon on a survivor or use a guard in the wrong place and you will lose the ability to use a guard for a very long time

suggestion:

add a recall ability that allows the knight to immediately stop an ongoing guard patrol, becomes activateable when 6 seconds have elapsed after a guard had been summoned, the cooldown for the power is increased by 2 seconds when recalled that way

the ability to stop an ongoing guard patrol with a lunge attack is kept, but has no increased power cooldown and the lunge attack also no longer has a penalty for hitting a guard

5. hunt

hunt by default is way too weak by default, if a survivor gets hunted while the knight player wasn't near them, the guard wont make any impact besides to be a 12/24 second nuisance that can be made even shorter by the flag

their slow movement speed and short duration are the problem

suggestion:

insrease the hunt duration for jailer and assasin by 4 seconds

insrease the hunt duration for carnifex by 2 seconds

increase hunt movement speed for jailer and carnifex to 4.3m/s and increase assaisin's hunt movement speed to 4.5m/s

this will make guards much more threatening to survivors who are not being actively chased by the knight and make it more harder for survivors to escape guards

dried horsemeat - now increases the time for flag to become active by 2 seconds

6. guard hits ignore endurance

while this may be a bit too much, but the knight gets absolutely destroyed by dead hard(and other endurance effects that can be triggered by survivor's own demand), the guards are an easy way to trigger the endurance speed boost that basically renders them a free speed boost for the survivor (the same could be said about nemesis' zombies, but I believe they should also have the endurance bypass and the anti tunnel counter that is mentioned below)

this might encourage tunneling off hook though, especially with the guard hunt buffs, so I propose a 30 second invulnerability to guard detection and damage after getting unhooked that is cancelled if the survivor performs a conspicious action

7. order: generator break

ordering a guard to damage a generator feels useless most of the time, the only time when it has use, is when a generator is nearing completion and you can interrupt the repair with order (which prevents the survivors repairing the generator for the order duration)

ordering to damage a generator also doesn't deal the 2.5% penalty similar to how damaging a generator as the killer and it doesn't apply generator perks

suggestion

assasin and jailer's order on generators now applies an instant 5% progress regression and a 150% regression rate to the damaged generator

carnifex's order applies an instant 10% progress regression and a 150% regression rate to the damaged generator

8. flag bonuses removed

it makes no sense that a killer power should buff up a survivor(while this could be said about the clown's antidote buff too, it atleast makes some kind of sense since the clown can buff him self up too, still dumb though), the flag bonuses are a free sprint burst without exhaustion and even if you do manage to get close to the survivor before they get to the flag, you get endurance aswell, imagine if dredge has the same thing with his remnant

suggestion: remove the flag bonuses and keep the effect of the guard disappearing

9. addons

some certain addons need adjustments, the ones mentioned above are included

town watch's torch

activating this addon is pretty hard to activate, if you are a good knight, you will be getting hits a lot of with guards and doing so that the hit wont happen 3 times takes a bunch of time to pull off, additionaly, knight is very loud

suggestion:

now applies undetectable for the duration of a summoned guard's patrol, also applies a 15 second undetectable if the survivor escapes a hunt

ironworker's tongs

this addon could be made more unique if it applied the oblivious during the guard hunt and had it's duration increased

oblivious effect is now applied to the survivor for the duration of a guard's hunt, the oblivious effect persists for 30 seconds after the guard hunt ends

grim iron mask

same as ironworker's tongs change, the blindness is now applied during the hunt and the 60 second blindness applied after the hunt ends

suggestion:

applies blindness to the survivor during a guard hunt, blindness persists for 60 seconds after the guard hunt ends

chain mail fragment and broken hilt

it's weird the haemorrhage and mangled are not combined in the same addon, wraith's blind warrior - mud has both effects and is extremely easy to activate while getting a hit with a guard should be split up in two addons? broken hilt also can have a more unique effect

chain mail fragment

suggestion:

now applies both haemorrhage and mangled on a guard hit

broken hilt

suggestion:

now reveals any survivor's aura within 16 meters of an object that order was used on for 4 seconds

flint and steel

ever since the ptb nerf(which was deserved) it became a pretty useless addon, not getting rid of pallets just to have survivors revealed to you sometimes is just not worth it and reverting it will give you free constant wall hacks

suggestion:

while the carnifex is summmoned, knight gets a 30% speed boost to pallet breaking and damaging generators

blacksmith's hammer

the effect only gets activated if the guard escapes the guard hunt(this means it cant get activated if the survivor gets hit during the guard hunt by any means), most of the time the hunt will end up with you hitting the survivor, unless the survivor was far away and by the time you get there the effects will most likely have expired

suggestion:

both effects are now applied for the duration of a hunt, if the hunt ends with the survivor escaping without getting hit, the effects persist for 15 seconds

knight's contract

the addon is pretty powerful in my opinion, but it's pretty tough for me to keep track of which guard is the forth one, i'd suggest a change that would give it a ui effect similar to bfs addon for legion

suggestion:

the addon ui icon now displays which guard is first, second, third and fourth in rotation for the addon similar to how bfs addon for legion tracks it's tokens with the ui icon

and that's it, while i think some of these changes may be a bit too much(i especially think that way about the "guards bypass endurance" changes), the rest should be healthy changes that make him less reliant on addons, have less dumb unfair stuff like the flag bonuses, better addons etc. but again, that's my opinion

post your knight change suggestions and discuss and the ones i've suggested in this thread

some_guy1

@Defend said:

Currently at prestige 7 as The Knight and I'm personally fine with the potential the guards have IF you use them in anti-loop, what he currently is lacking is spreading out pressure efficiently. Of course you can send guards to hunt survivors but the combination of their lack luster speed, clunky detection/traveling and their reduced speed at pallets and windows make it impossible for a guard to hit a survivor independently.

HUNTS:

Guards are amazing in anti loop. Especially when survivors are injured, The Knight can basically confirm a down (unless they have deadhead/endurance) when they are in a corner of the map. The usual counter to the anti loop is to just hold w, and unless you are in a corner it's always been like that. Doesn't matter if its the Artist, Dredge or Knight, there's no changing how survivors deal with anti-loop. Where I want to change how hunts work is how good guards are outside of the Knight's influence (Independent guard hunts).

Guards lack four things to get any sort of pressure, or even a hit when alone:

• Speed
• Dealing with windows and pallets (currently Guards slowdown whenever they travel through a window and pallet
• Hunt time
• Banner duration (5 seconds for assassin/jailer, 10 for carnifex)

The combination of all four of these things make it a walk in the park for any survivor to deal with guards alone. Just looping around an object for five/ten seconds and then reaching the banner make it so players are incentivized to place their guards only at anti-loop. However, just buffing the numbers alone isn't the greatest idea. If the speed or banner duration is increased during anti-loop, then there really isn't any type of counter a survivor can do against the Knight. Instead, having buffs apply to your Guards for detecting survivors at long-distant patrols would allow for more creative plays on the Knight's part, while keeping the guards more consistent for independent patrols.

Suggestion: If a Guard detects a survivor when 24 m away from the Knight, the following buffs apply:

Carnifex:

• Hunt duration: 30 seconds (from 24)
• Banner materialization: 15 seconds (from 5)
• Hunt speed: 4.3 m/s (107.5%) (from 4.1 m/s)

Assassin:

• Hunt duration: 18 seconds (from 12)
• Banner materialization: 10 seconds (from 5)
• Hunt speed: 4.6 m/s (115%) (from 4.4 m/s)

Jailer:

• Hunt duration: 18 seconds (from 12)
• Banner materialization: 10 seconds (from 5)
• Hunt speed: 4.3 m/s (107.5) (from 4.1 m/s)

All:

• Pallet/Vault slowdown speed: 110 (from 220)
• Pallet/Vault slowdown duration: .5 (from 1)

Having a greater incentive for independent guard hunts allows for more pressure to be created without buffing anti-loop indirectly. The dry horse meat could be changed so that it only effects when a guard detects a survivor within 24m so that it isn't making independent guard hunts oppressive while still giving its original purpose.

DETECTION:

I think it's a simple number buff for the detection range, like you said the map of the realm is almost required to play the knight efficiently, so increasing the patrol range for all of the guards (or maybe just the carnifex or assassin) by 4 meters makes it really consistent for long/mid range patrol path plays

Suggestion: Increase detection range for all guards by 4 meters (change/nerf map of the realm)

Where I think detection is lacking is how guards travel to the survivors. Just having guards go from point A to point B creates too much distance for the guards to catch up, and ultimately do nothing for the knight besides moving them away from loops. There are too many situations where the guards become absolutely useless because of the distance created between the guard and survivor:

• Damage boosted before detection, too much distance is created and the guard does nothing
• Exhaustion perks such as sprint burst, lithe or balanced landing making long-distance plays obsolete
• Literally just holding w creates enough distance.

Suggestion: Have constant tracking on the survivor for a few seconds before going to a point

Instead of just having the guards go to point a to point b, the guards will track the survivor for 1.75-2 seconds, the reason for this is so that the guards are able to close the distance in every scenario. At the end of this tracking, the guard will then go to a point for .5 seconds. A little complicated to think about, but in the end what it should do is always make the guards 6-8 meters away from survivors. Not too close to make it a constant hit each time (recall that survivors can always make distance by using windows/pallets), but not too far for the guards to do nothing.

PATROLS:

Surprisingly, the guards do know how to make their own patrol pathing. If they do not know how to get back to their original pathing, they will create the shortest path to go back to the original patrol path. Before patch 6.4.2, you were able to create some pretty crazy independent patrol pathing by placing guards on-top of objects below a floor. What would happen is that guards think that their original path is on the floor above, and would attempt to create their own patrol path to get to that point:

https://imgur.com/a/lhceh2e

A few more examples (and I wish behavior kept it in, because man it was fun)

After patch 6.4.2 you are unable to do this, but it showed how much of a macro killer the knight could be. If guards already know how to create their own patrol path, I really don't think it would be that hard to make guards patrol generators independently (like how Freddy can teleport to gens, press CTRL to send a guard to go kick a generator and maybe start a hunt if it detects a survivor mid-way). It would make it a lot simpler to use his power like this instead of sending a patrol path all the way to the generator, then kicking it or starting a patrol. But then again, maybe they want to stick to the original "make your own patrol pathing"

Suggestion: The ability to send guards to kick generators (Press CTRL to send a guard), if it detects a survivor along the way it will instead start a hunt

Besides the add-ons, these are the things I really want the knight to have. Less of an incentive for anti-looping and more incentive for independent guards and long-range patrols. I think that having the survivor see where the detection range is fine or even the patrol pathing because once you get good at predicting survivors movements and placement (with map of the realm), you get pretty consistent hunts. Having any type of regression on the guards besides the 2.5% is a no-go mainly because he's pretty good at keeping a 3-gen. The banner buff even is fine since combined with your guard you should be moving away from the banner a lot of the time and if the above changes (independent guard hunts) it shouldn't be that much of an issue. And as much as I hate dead hard with The Knight, it's the same with all the other killer powers, so why should he be the exception.

the idea of the buffed up hunt if the survivor gets detected outside a certain range of the knight is good, but i believe it should only buff up the movement speed and flag activation time and have the hunt duration be increased at all times

the endurance change i suggested is quite dumb now that im thinking about it, i wrote this suggestion list quite a while ago and kept forgeting to post it

for the hunt start process change, i suppose you want to change it from the "fly to the spot where the survivor was detected in" to "fly after the survivor's position for 2 seconds then start chasing' after a 0,5 second delay"

if so, i like this change, but the delay is way too short in my opinion, with that change in mind, the guard will be really close to the survivor

the delay would be more fair if it was 0,5 seconds if the knight was 24 meters away and 1 second or 1,5 seconds if the knight was within 24 meters

the send guards for order is interesting, but if there are problems with the ai pathing, it'll be rendered useless or extremely risky, so i think it's best to not do that for now

good suggestions overall

bunnyfengenthusiast

Some of these ideas are terrible. Pocket COB+Pop at range that can be used with very little cooldown on gens that are very far away is an atrocious idea. Knight is already very powerful at holding 3 gens.