While I enjoyed Foot Knight more than Huntsman for Legend clear, he still has some problems I’d like to mention.
His aura
FK sacrifices his own tankiness for team’s tankiness. But the aura can’t cover even a small room. On that subject, I realised that every aura (including Huntsman and Handmaiden) has the same range, which could use some increase to make it more reliable (it’s already bad if you’re getting split up, no reason to punish even more). It’s mediocre, but it’s okay, at least once I can be sure that I always cover my team with the aura. It’s only a numbers fix which would help FK.
Ability
RIP Resourceful combatant
His ability has two things - stagger and movement. Unfortunately it’s worst at both. The only niche FK has is getting CWs on their backs. Merc, WHC and BW have more better stagger (instant, stun everything they hit, reliable, BW has almost same cooldown with double use); Zealot, Handmaiden, Slayer and BW have better movement (charge has the slowest movement). Movement is a coeffect, I’m fine with it being mediocre, but the ability’s purpose is to be THE stagger. The effect should more reliable, some increase to the effect radius would be good (make FK more untouchable during the charge itself, make sure I stun everything nearby instead of 2-3 CWs in the front).
Tier 2
Build Momentum is mediocre, and other two accomplish nothing.
Increasing Regroup\Gazul’s Duty damage reduction to something like 80% but reducing duration to 3 seconds would help accomplish talent’s goal (safe revive) and it’s a really simple fix (just change the numbers).
I’m not sure what to do with Counter Attack and the only idea I’ve got is add charge stagger on guard break with a cooldown that is seperate from the ability itself (and probably longer than the ability itself), since the implication of the talent is something to help when you get guardbroken.
Screenshot is the edge of auras (smallest step I can take where the aura stops reaching me)
While I agree that some of his talents could need some rethinking to match the overall rhythm of the game, this part I don’t understand quite. What do you mean by sacrifice? I always thought of it more that when compared to IB, he is more of an “offensive tank” instead of a “defensive tank” and I think he does fill this role very well. With Glory Hound, he can hit so many break points basically on command that his lack of mobility and crits is more than compensated.
But I do share your sentimend about the auras and I think that their range should be limitless, meaning that the buff simply applies all the time. I mean, the 15 to 20% damage reduction spread to your teammates already doesn’t amount to much on legend, might as well have it as a permanent buff.
The problem about the auras (on any Career that has one) is that it’s an incredibly thin band of range where it’s balanced. Too small (like many people think it now is) and it’s unreliable, because the playstyle in this game is generally very mobile and ranges between characters change quickly. Too large, and positioning starts being irrelevant (and at infinite range, the effects are generally too strong and contrary to the game’s general ability design). Just for the record, I think too that the aura range could be a bit bigger, but only by 10-15%.
The stagger and movement are both very good, I think, for Charge. The problems it has stem from the windup (which can get interrupted, wasting everything), the charge itself hugging the ground (which again leads to interrupted rushes when encountering some environmental irregularities), and (although I’m not certain about this, and it can be learned to play around it) lack of offensive capability during the Charge. In a word, it’s way clumsier to use than the other movement-based Career Skills. It’s powerful when it works, but I think there’s too many opportunities for it to get interrupted.
And Talents in general have way more things to fix than just one career’s one tier, so I won’t comment on that.
I mean that he’s the least tanky career. Even Mercenary with the right talents is better than him (between damage reduction talents and health from shouting).
And Glory Hound’s great, I love it, but the Resourceful fix hurts, and Merc has cleave+crit, Unchained has her melee bonus, Zealot has all of his stuff, even IB gets crazy damage reduction and can emulate Glory Hound with Barrage pistols.
Charge is also clumsier to use compared to WHC\Merc shout and BW teleport.
Why do you think infinite range auras are contrary to game’s design? Merc’ Strike Together has infinite range, does it not?
I agree that there are some talents that need rework\balancing (anything on the same level as Flagellant\Oblivious, double damage on specials disabling you, power when out of ammo, stun reduction, Hunter’s Respite), but FK’s probably the worst offender with 1 mediocre choice coupled with 2 bad ones, and revive talents don’t even need anything significant.
Ah, gotcha, that makes sense.
Even the description on Strike Together says “nearby allies”, but descriptions have been known to be wrong, and the area may be quite large (it certainly is large for Morale Boost’s THP, but even that’s not infinite). Besides, even it need activation. But in general, there are very few even kind of universal boosts in the game, the only ones really being some Properties (most of which are minor improvements on their own). Everything else is limited in some form: Area, target, trigger. The major exception seems to be Power vs. race on Charms, and that was originally a mistake (as can be witnessed from a few patch notes where combining the two races was first disabled, then re-enabled because of consistency and fairness to new users). There certainly isn’t any that appear to be purposefully completely universal (applies to allies too, effective against everything, and effective constantly). So if the aura ranges were to be turned infinite or effectively so, they would need to weakened considerably (probably to weaker than Property levels, as they apply to all characters) or changed to having a trigger condition.
So does IB and Handmaiden, they are all pretty subpar because you get defensive auras and talents but they aren’t very killy, they need reworks IMO cause tanks don’t really belong in V2, in a game with basically 0 aggro template whats the point?
looks at IB that can kill CW with a single fully charged headshot from warpick looks at handmaiden that can dashkill complete hordes and her 15% power bonus that lets her hit almost any break point she wants
looks at FK that can kill CW with two headshots with xsword
They can be kitted to be very dangerous killers and their tankyness allows you to disregard defense if you really have to. I definitely agree that these 3 “tanky” carreers need a bunch of their talents reworked and these reworked talents would be a good place to give them some more offensive options, but I don’t share the sentiment that they can’t kill. FK can more or less guarantee to get 25% more power if he wants to (and so does IB with proper equipment).
Handmaiden gets 15% permanent power, dodge (35% increase, an insane number) and dash+stealth ability (and all 3 are much better at reducing damage you take than damage reduction).
IB is better at reducing damage too. Game is not based around regularly trading hits, it’s supposed to happen once in a while, which works wonderfully with IB’s passive. IB with active is the most sturdy character in the game. He doesn’t get a power boost, but he still has a very solid defense kit that lets you get away with being agressive (if you take something defensive like shield on IB and complain about lack of killing power, that’s not IB fault).
What difficulty are you playing on killing CWs with 2 charged from exe sword on FK? Or do you just stack like 1000% + chaos? Also by “not killy” I mean not killy by comparison, playing with competent partners you kind of just follow along on any of the tanky careers sans zealot at least on HM you have access to elf weapons she she can hold up a little bit better.
What else do you stack on x sword? chaos and armour on charm, chaos on the sword let’s you all break points you’d ever need with x sword, with Glory hound that is.
Aye, this is true, but I’d say not to the an extreme degree. You have to pick your fights more as tanky carreer (except as Zealot 
), but I don’t think it’s overall as bad as it sometimes made out to be. Just played a round of Fortunes and being able to solo half a dozen CW without even worrying about getting even close do death is a huge asset as, say, IB. You can facetank a hit if it means you get the kill. Of course, FK needs to play a slightly different game, but his charge is up so often that you can CC the hardy bois almost as well and you have alot better mobility. One thing I do heavily agree with is that during his charge, Kruber should a.) be uninterruptable and b.) get the same DR as IB gets during his active ability.
it was 37.7% pre nerf to be able to 2 shot a CW.
but you can do that on anyone, like the tankiness doesn’t do anything for me, 20% dodge distance and 0 movement reduction weapons on shade for example, yeah a CW will nuke you, but they will also literally never hit you and you can just backdodge spam charged attacks into the CWs and kill them faster than it takes to swing an exe sword, and you don’t even have to dump all your stats into % chaos.
Yes, dodging is preferable, especially since the last change (which I won’t argue against since it made dodging just sooo much more reliable as client), I agree. But I wouldn’t still call it dumping since that implies there are alternatives. But most of the time, skaven aren’t an issue damage-wise and chasing chaos break-points is the way to go, anyhow. But I get what you are saying and I tend to agree that the tanky bois (and gurlz) could use some loving. HM probably not as much (btw: does Bloodletter lvl25 talent work now? ^^) as IB (quite okay imho) and FK (still okay but could use some tweaks).
I mean, they are all ok, but with the power creep of weapons and classes, the big hitters (Shade, zealot, whc, slayer, UC) all just kinda crap on everything super fast it makes it much less fun to play tankier careers that don’t just pump out numbers.
IMO the problem with these auras is that nobody, including the hero who has it, knows exactly where it ends. Overwatch had this problem with Lucio’s auras. They became much more powerful and much easier to use when blizzard added an AOE indicator that let everyone on the team see the area that’s covered.
I agree with what you said about the charge. It’s one of the better ones when it works, but it’s too prone to getting stuck on things and interrupted.
That shite makes the whole game less fun to play. Playing the broken heroes is boring because they instakill everything before there’s actually a fight and playing the non-broken ones is boring because the broken ones insta-killed everything before you get there. The fun runs are the ones that have none of these broken classes in them.
That could certainly be a part of it. I think adding a constant indicator could clutter the visuals a bit too much (or if designed as subtle, get lost in the surroundings) but showing it even only in the Keep would indeed help to get a sense of the aura’s size, and thus help getting used to the useful ranges. Of course, an option for the indicator is always a possibility.
In other games (like dota) you can hold a button (much like the ults currently) to see such information.
People may disagree with me, but I think the power gap is huge between some classes, stuff like FK, RV, IB, ect all feel so painfully weak and boring compared to the mid tier classes which seem lackluster compared to like shade, and zealot and the really busted stuff.