What the Devs want for the Knight?
Hi! Hope everyone is doing fine.
I come to the forums to discuss the following matter:
Why this change now?
Wasn't a bug - as you guys FIXED it in an older patch - that was preventing the guards to just follow survivors through pallets? Wasn't this the INTENDED balance for the Knight? Why change it now?
Knight is in a very strange spot: He can't commit chases to pincer attack since the 3x depletion rate makes chasing with guards ineffective; BUT he also can't send guards to hunt on their own, since dropping a pallet means safety against a guard, unless you are throwing on the guard's head. And with pallet density changes, pallet is what survivors have the most.
Guards, before today patch, still had counterplay and were at least an effective tool, with stall and some lethality potential.
Why this now? Knight was much better to play as in the previous change of guards going through pallets and now he is just back to the silly spot where it was before. Why?
Why "Fix" something and then revert the "fix" in a balance change that keeps the Knight exactly as he was before? Why just not keep him as it or call the "fix" a balance change that you guys regretted?
Although i know Knight is not the most loved killer in this community i believe he needs some attention because he is currently torn between two ineffective playstiles: sending guards who don't harm just annoy, or try the best for pincer attacks with guards vanishing in 5s.
Comments
Hes there to sell outfits so people think he looks cool but dont play him. Thats kinds the sentiment ive gotten from others and personally as a p20 knight is why I stopped leveling him. His power literally fights itself on so many levels I cant figure out a design they want from him.
Even having 250h+ of pure playtime as Knight i can't get excited for any new skin for him due to how BHVR been handling this killer. He is a pure noob stomper: if you get people who don't know what Knight's power does, you have a chance to win. As soon as people learn his counterplay and how to play against his power, it does almost nothing. Basically he can just stall the game and hope for some big missplays from the survivors.
If they can't fix it, fine—but at the very least, they need to make the design usable in-game. Otherwise, it's just too terrible to be a "killer" feature for paid content.
What I find difficult to understand is the inconsistency in how different Killers are being balanced.
The Judgment was just released with an extremely powerful form of global pressure. She can remotely guide Divine Light across the map, through walls, scout distant areas, and potentially injure or down Survivors without even needing to physically be near them. From a central position on the map, she can threaten Survivors and objectives at very long distances, giving her a level of map-wide presence that very few Killers have.
Meanwhile, The Knight — a Killer who is generally considered around B-tier by much of the community and whose power already has clear Survivor counterplay — receives yet another change that makes his Guards easier to deal with around pallets. He does not have anything remotely comparable to The Judgment's ability to directly threaten Survivors across the map.
That is the part I find difficult to reconcile. How does it make sense from a balance perspective to introduce a Killer with this level of global lethality and pressure, while at the same time continuing to add more counterplay to an already mid-tier Killer whose power already has multiple ways for Survivors to play around it?
I would genuinely like to understand the balancing philosophy behind these two decisions, because side by side, they seem remarkably inconsistent.