Grail Knight by comparison is a weak hero

First off I want to say conceptually I love the character but there are some pretty big issues regarding his set up. First off GK, is going to be next to irrelevant in the meta, which given his melee focus is easily understandable, anything in the 120-160 range is near impossible for melee careers to preform well, however his place in the more casual pub meta is still in question.

The lack of ranged in this game is a huge negative, and provides a disservice to your team, forcing them to deal with the majority of specials out of your reach (blights, most assassins, gunners, ect) so the tradeoff for not having that ability should be considerable, however GK is severely lacking on a number of fronts.

  • no attack speed buffs
  • slow movement
  • little damage reduction
  • no crit build (outside of his 4x crit talent, however he is forced to basically rely on weapon modifiers and base crit, given his lack of crit talents)
  • limited melee arsenal
  • RNG duties and their mediocre effects (sans the health regen, which isnā€™t usable on weaves or FoW, the only content that you would really need it in)

Ultimately his RNG duties are weak, his weapon options are very limiting, he lacks the potential killing speed of some other classes, while bringing little to none of the utility and while his active can be particularly strong, its still less single target than Shadeā€™s (and doesnā€™t grant stealth) and it leaves you vulnerable in its long animation cycle.

I think a lot of these issues are fairly irrelevant for Legend and below, however, it is still fairly important to point out (now that slayer has a ranged option) that GK, is the only exclusively melee career, and fails to be the best at melee, while also not bringing much to the table outside of damage.

TL;DR Other careers may be over-tuned if we feel like GK is currently balanced, since many outpace him, which becomes more apparently when progressing in difficulty.

12 Likes

Nah he is ok, he have one of best elite damage ingame, we do not need another clone of slayer. If he had crit build he would be pretty much op right now he have good sides and bad sides and thats good

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Definitely agree, I think he offers really nothing over merc currently, not that would make him worth bringing at least. The power level boosts are nice, but thatā€™s basically all he has going for him. Hell, Iā€™m pretty sure merc gets a better version of those anyway, with the more the merrier giving him 25% and Reikland reaper giving him another 15%, as opposed to just 30% from virtue of the ideal.

Making the duties more reliable somehow, or just rebalancing them so that theyā€™re all actually good instead of most being useless would be the first change Iā€™d like, itā€™s like the defining thing about the class and you just donā€™t notice most of them at all.

His lvl 25 talent row just needs to be reworked completely, thereā€™s not really a good choice there at all.

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I like the idea of a slow, very heavy hitter damage dealer like GK, but the end result of that is that theyā€™re best with weapons that have high base damage like the Exec. Itā€™s limiting. I donā€™t think heā€™s in a bad spot relatively to the gameā€™s balance and difficulty, but he is when compared to the other damage dealers.

These are my ideas/suggestions. I wouldnā€™t do all of them, but a few or a mix of some of these may be beneficial:

  • Heroism should be fixed to be both power and damage in addition to a small buff to at least 35% power, otherwise itā€™s not worth it even in niche builds when compared to Ideal.
  • Virtue of Knightly Temper would make for a decent passive.
  • GK could have Assassin instead of Bulwark (why do only Kerillian and Saltz get this stagger talent? Thematics?).
  • Virtue of Discipline is fairly weak, maybe 30% power would be better, but it still suffers in that itā€™s a completely reactive talent on a proactive damage dealer career. Enemies just donā€™t attack often enough or fast enough relative to how often we can stagger them. Itā€™s the same problem WHCā€™s Riposte talent has. Really cool talents, but something needs to change for blocking to be an important aspect of the game and not just a ā€˜oh I messed up thank god I have BCRā€™ thing. Theyā€™re not even good talents on DWONS where the stagger resistance of enemies is buffed. The better dps and stagger a team has, the worse these talents become.
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Merc gets more power and speed, arguably better use out of Kruberā€™s Best weapons Exe sword / Spear, and has massive team sustain through his low CD, active that also provides crowd control. In addition he has ranged ability, its no contest.

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I agree with this.

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he is much closer to being bad than being OP right now.

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Exactly, merc gets better sustain, a strong damage mitigation talent, better control, more melee damage and gets to have ranged gear, itā€™s absolutely nuts. Merc 100% needs nerfs because heā€™s clearly too good at the moment, but itā€™s crazy anyone could think GK is OP when merc just makes him completely irrelevant.

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Bastion of Bretonnia : Damage reduction : Heā€™s knight in armor, make him feel like one! The ability to be able to block warpfire throwers is funny on the first 5 runs then it becomes clear its one of the worst passives in the game at the moment,next to Thirst for Glory

Thirst for Glory: Either power and/or cleave bonus. Being melee only you need to hit hard and to cleave trough more enemies to compensate for the lack of mobility CC and ranged option.

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Blocking warpfire is an absolute gamechanger, and itā€™s the only way GK is even viable without any mobility skill or ranged weapon. And GK actually does pretty well vs. hordes as-is, even though his niche seems to be elite-killer.

8 Likes

Post gameplay.

Weā€™ve had no problem whatsoever making use of him. I donā€™t find him weak at all when I play him.

Compared to others:

  • 40 second Ult, before attacks and CDR (from quest or trinket)
  • Can be used to kill 2-3 Elites in one hit, every time itā€™s up (cleave/2 hit)
  • Can be used to CC and solo Bosses with a Conc (better than Shade if heā€™s running Boss killing, because of the CC)
  • The only Career in the game I run on-kill THP on, because landing Elite kills isnā€™t a problem

ā€œ40 second Ult, before attacks and CDR (from quest or trinket)ā€

Anyone willing to figure out how low the Cooldown on his 2-3 Elite killing Ult can go with attacks and CDR pls?

I swear, they add something that finally isnā€™t power crept af, and people instantly start trying to get it power crept.

This is a great point. Also you should never get overwhelmed as him. His ability to remove Elites means that you only have Infantry to deal with.

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As a counter argument: crit builds for other classes ride real hard on the edge of meh and OP. The x-sword has a high passive crit chance on heavies making the 1-shot CW crit build potent enough. Bring a team play minded WHC to up your highest crit chance up to 15% after every elite kill and your killing potential feels quite good (not to mention when WHC ults). Also, since ult is a crit, being able to execute bosses when they have a healthy chunk of HP left feels good.

Templar may be a weirdly unsynergetic talent, but I think maybe we shouldnā€™t buff his crit chance, at least not too much. 15% is a 1 in 7 hits are crits. 20% is a 1 in 5 chance. When all you do is lmb, 1 in 7 really isnā€™t that low. If you increased both power talents beside Templar by 5% it would still be a decent pick, I think.

I just want his defense row looked at again. Joust is perfect, as is. Stoicism I just donā€™t feel it at work.

If Impetus also included attack speed it would be the go-to pick for me since that ups his killing power by a lot.

1 Like

Agree.

Kind of disagree.

No. Just plain no. Iā€™m playing legend, and he is easily outclassed by any decent ranged weapon (Crossbows, BoP, Longbows, ā€¦) or a Kerillian or Sienna ult. Elites drop before you can get to them ; and even though, yes, when you get to them you can ult and one-shot anything, when you donā€™t have ult the elite damage is sub-par.
Take the Bretsword for instance : it takes 2 or 3 charged headshots to kill a Stormvermin, 3-5 to kill a Chaos Warrior, 2 for a Leech or a Blightstormer - considering the inconsistent bretsword hitboxes. Crit build is too unreliable to be taken into account.
Any dual dagger user can OS a Stormvermin or 2 shot a CW ; as can a bow from 30m away.

Now GK is fun to play, and I donā€™t think heā€™s underperforming. His horde clear is amazing.
Not having a ranged weapon is annoying only on Burblespue and Rasknitt ; and since itā€™s supposed to be everyoneā€™s priority to kill specials anyway, having 3 or even 2 players to deal with them instead of 4 is not that big of a deal ; it is when ranged careers players focus on elites rather than specials but that is unrelated to the GK.
Hookrats, assassins and leeches are easy to dodge and kill if you see them coming, which you often do. Shield can negate completely flamerats and ratlings ; the only specials that you cannot deal with alone are (distant) blightstormers and ratlings.

He isnā€™t weak, but he is definitely not OP.

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This is why Legend isnā€™t very good. Sorry.

The Stormvermin 1-shot body shot with Crossbows is enough for me to ignore that difficulty completely.

Itā€™s the entire reason there was such a crusade about the ā€˜ranged metaā€™ when it was a bigger problem than it is now. It just removes all of the mechanics of the game, and puts them into a shorter than a second timeframe, where someone puts their crosshair over the Blue glowing outline and clicks. In that amount of time Melee Elite killers just became pointless.

Because of that, Legend difficulty completely mitigates what FK is, an extremely high damage melee, which forfeits mobility for killing power.

Also think about the risk during the Ultimate that keeps getting pointed out. That doesnā€™t exist for range. Especially on Legend, where thereā€™s less roamers. Legend is like shooting fish in a barrel. Play a ranged career or donā€™t have fun.

If you continuously position yourself at the front, and push before others on Cata, thatā€™s where his strength is, and thatā€™s when he becomes the most fun.

If the WHC plays the CDR build, this build becomes completely insane. You can manage 60% CDR (before hitting) on the WHC, so thatā€™s 25% from him every time + the stagger damage.

1 Like

I donā€™t think anyone thinks heā€™s weak, but heā€™s just worse at everything except maybe CW killing than merc. Boss damage too I suppose, though heā€™s not insanely good there either (heā€™s absolutely not better than shade).

Thereā€™s really no situation I can think of that Iā€™d prefer a GK over a merc. Worse sustain, worse damage mitigation, worse damage overall, no ranged, no real way to control super high density, potentially slightly better elite damage.

His passive quests are just mediocre as hell with one exception, so heā€™s not really worth bringing for support either. Merc clearly needs nerfs more than GK needs buffs, but GK does need some buffs in areas too, and a good amount wouldnā€™t really power creep him much. Making some of his talents less useless isnā€™t power creep.

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How can you call duties which roughly translates to a relatively weak talent point ā€œmediocreā€? GK provides up to 12 talent points of value, by merely existing. Thatā€™s not bad by any stretch of the imagination.

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Because they donā€™t? They translate to a talent that no-one would ever run because it has incredibly underwhelming effects. If I give everyone on my team 5% attack speed, that doesnā€™t turn into a great ability just because RV has foe feller.

Youā€™re never going to notice most of the effects because theyā€™re so incredibly minor. A talent point isnā€™t really a useful measurement.

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You just have to realise his role and play around it.

If you take some form of Horde CC/killer or Special killer, with him, and maybe a Boss killer if heā€™s Cleave ( which still works extremely well if you land headshots), then thereā€™s no weakness to playing him at all. His Ultimate removes the level of skill needed for dealing with Elites that Shade/Slayer/WHC need, so he can be relied on more for doing that job. Unless you know the Shade/Slayer/WHC, in which case just play that.

In my experience playing with him, he can do everything they can, but has to be more aggresive in his positioning than them. I never have to worry about Elite density with him in the group as he can kill 2-3 of them in a second and has a short cooldown on that Ultimate.

Heā€™s safer using an easier Ult to kill more enemies with it on a shorter cooldown.

In select situations he is. With a Conc and the correct Ult Talent, for example. He also doesnā€™t rely on using specific Weapons and Item builds for damaging the Bosses as his Ult does all of the work.

I disagree with this. He doesnā€™t just get one quest, he gets 2-3 or STR pots. If youā€™re judging this on each quest individually it may look bad, but getting extra Power, AS, CDR, regen, or DMGR is no joke. Which ones do you think are weakest and why?

Itā€™s extremely useful then, as it gives Ranged Careers more offensive/defensive capabilities. AS is the best stat in the game in most cases, so 5% is good no matter what.

Why would you never take 5% AS? I only run Foe-Feller ever on RV, and Iā€™ve wanted 5% AS on both IB/RV to be a buff to them since forever.

One of the main criticisms of the Career youā€™re talking about is that he gains no AS, so how can you in the same thread claim that itā€™s a useless stat (5% AS)?

You then get 1 or two more buffs, or STR pots.

A Talent is a useful measurement though, as thereā€™s literally Talents which offer what his quests do.
You even gave the example of Foe-Feller yourself.

It should also be noted that the Power is pure Power too, and not specific to one enemy type or faction.

Iā€™ve been dropping breakpoints, etc, to take other stats, and letting the RNG guide me. Itā€™s been working pretty well, as every other match you become god tier.

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I donā€™t know, I think this is user dependent. All three - Cooldown Regeneration, Damage Reduction and Health Regeneration - are incredibly useful when Iā€™m playing as Unchained (and will be for IB and FK as well among others) . I have less interest in Attack Speed or Power but I guess other classes like to see them too.

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itā€™s not ā€œCDRā€ as in cooldown reduction, itā€™s ā€œCDRā€ as in cooldown regeneration which stacks way worse.
For instance WHC with 50% CDR-+10% CDR is 60%. WHC 50% CDR + 10% cooldown regeneration is 54.5% CDR.

2 Likes