Ok so first of all im playing mainly on Cataclysm, so of course there’s bound to be different opinions when it comes to matters such as damage received.
But the point still stands, on cataclysm the grail knight feels like he’s made of tissue paper. A few stabs from a slave rat and down he goes. I get it, he’s supposed to be more of a glass cannon type, but other glass cannons like shade or even bounty hunter at least have some damage reduction or even invisibility, making them a lot less tedious to play on higher difficulties, where a single stab can take 40 hp.
I know that making him more tanky would make the FK completely irrelevant, but what i im suggesting is maybe a simple 10% damage reduction, which could replace “thirst for glory” or even replace “virtue of stoicism” since especially this last one can be either really useful or really useless. Meaning that yes, you could regenerate half of a stormvermin overhead, or you could regenerate that 1 hp of damage that you took from a ratling 2 seconds later. So they could even change virtue of stoicism so that it heals the 50 % of the highest damage you took in the last 5 seconds.
In conclusion , the grail knight is already greatly disadvantaged, he lacks movement, dodge, survivability and most of all, he lacks range. So giving him a way to be better at what he does, that being melee, would not make him OP , just nicer to play.
At first, I thought the same. But then I realized I could bring a shield weapon to compensate for all GK’s missing defensive talents.
I mean, Empire Sword & Shield makes you literally immune to damage from gunners, flamers and monster overheads. You feel like you might get overwhelmed? Just swap your DPS weapon out for the shield and stagger/cc just as long as you need. His power increase lets you reach a lot of stagger breaktpoints, especially when you bring Opportunist. Then, you have a base 10% ms increase which is insane if you think about it; could be increased to 15% even. S&S’s movetech gives you even more effective movement speed. All it takes is some dedication to get used to a unique playstyle which highly revolves around smart weapon switching.
GK is not a tank because of inherent tankiness. But he’s not squishy, either. Actually, he’s far from it. That’s just my experience after completing the 100 missions on Cata and still enjoying him ever since.
The GK is a melee focused hero with no damage resistance, so even if you do use a shield, sooner or later you’ll get hit, and once you do, you’ll loose half of your health, and since as the GK you are always in melee the likelyhood of you getting killed by two stabs from a skaven slave increase dramatically. And i don’t know about you, but that isn’t exaclty what i have in mind when i think of grail knight.
The grail knight just doesn’t feel safe to use, especially if you play him the way that he was meant to be played , aggressively.
It’s true that it can be mitigated by using certain weapons, yet it still doesn’t fix the issue. Im not asking for him to become a godly killing machine, but just give him a talent like the ones that the slayer has, which allows him to play aggressively without feeling like you are always 2 seconds away from death. I mean i’d be totally fine with even lowering the GK total healthpool from 180 to 150 if that meant that he could get some actual damage reduction.
Using the Shield is the only option for safty atm. If they wanted that to be the case, FS might aswell have nailed any shield weapon onto the second slot. The reason the shield offers that kind of survivability is mainly Joust. Without that Talent pushing yourself free in a safe way is not guaranteed.
Altering Stoicism to something that is actually worth picking on a difficulty that tosses AoEs at you like the End Times are nigh, would still promote picking the shield, while offering a different playstyle that doesnt revolve around dying, or losing most of your HP to every bad situation out there when you dont bring a plank.
Reading Stoicism for the first time I thought it would count up the damage you took and hand back half of it as THP after five seconds of not taking damage. If you die before the countdown handed you the THP, you die. I still didnt take it for the first couple of maps, since Stamina Recovery is kind of a win win in offensive and defensive matters. I thought Stoicism was bugged the first time I used it. It seems like FS tried to hand us something with that Talent. It just doesnt work, nor is it worth taking it.
As i already said, shield makes every class feel safer, but the lack of resistance doesn’t lend itself to the general playstyle of the GK. You’ll still get hit and you’ll still loose half of your health in one lucky shot. And if you take joust (which is almost a must) then you’ll have the risky job of gaining back half of your health, be that with bashing of killing, either of which is really risky on the grail knight also because there’s a significant animation delay on all his ult, virtue of audacity in particular, meaning that while you are trying to kill an enemy to get a burst of health, you can still get stabbed in the belly and loose back all the health that you’ve gained if not just straight up die. It happends quite frequently, so no he doesn’t feel that safe, at least in my opinion
I’ve never understood why you would like to pick Joust over Stoicism. Joust just increases one stat that you already have, stamina recovery. 30% or 60% didn’t make any difference to me or my survivability at all. Instead, I’d pick the one talent that offers me something I can’t get by item properties. You can hit trade with elite overheads if you manage things right. Put on Boon and the talent is worth it even though it’s procing on any damage ticks you take.
It does because his THP generation and killing power mean he doesn’t need a huge amount of DMGR.
Using the Ult to clear Elites with ease with a potential 2-3 per Ult, depending on which one you take, means he’s one of the only Careers that On-Kill THP is even viable on.
If you really want to cheese you can hold Block until your Ult is up and then Ult density/Elites and farm THP that way.
Slamming with the Shield is also an easy way to farm, as it is with any Shield user that can use Stagger THP.
You’re really undervaluing his ability to gain THP quickly.
If you don’t want to run Shields, just have a 1H Mace ready with Stam+Block Cost and use it to escape with Push-Attacks, or to safely farm Hordes with CC.
Stoicism is insanely good. Especially for Cata, where enemies chunk you so heavily. When I’m running that I rarely ever feel under pressure, even trading in Hordes isn’t as scary.
I completely disagree. Joust can even be considered overkill, especially if you’re running Stamina Regen on Trinket too. It’s just unnecessary.
Stoicism is way more versatile for over all health sustain, but highly underrated on these forums, for some reason.
You essentially take 50% less damage from unlucky hits.
If you see it this way, you’re doing something wrong. You should always be running one Stamina or BCR Weapon, which you can use for safety or to farm. It doesn’t have to be a Shield either.
Use it as if you’re doing a Heavy Attack and it shouldn’t be an issue.
Shield slamming (the Heavy slam), into Ult works fine for me, when under pressure. Other than that, a Push > Dodge > Ult works great too.
If you’re struggling landing the Ult and maintaining THP, don’t play the slowest version of the Ult. Cleave is way more forgiving, and can give you 2-3 Elite kills in one use, relatively easily.
Timing is key.
The strange thing is people use Exe Sword with no issue, despite it having a delayed Heavy, which leaves you open, but somehow thing the Ult is diffifult.
I mean if you can spam Exe Sword 100x a match and not get hit, you should be able to make his Ultimate work.
Joust allows you to survive situations that otherwise you wouldn’t , let’s say that you are surrounded, or you have a patrol in front of you, without joust you can only push so many times before you run out of stamina and get killed, with joust your chances increase. In general, when sh*t hits the fan, it’s a more reliable lifesaver then stoicism is.
The problem with stoicism and the reason why many people including me don’t particulary like it, is that it’s slow and it can be really unreliable . Let’s say you do get overheaded , if everything goes well you heal 5 seconds later, or you can get hit for 2 damage right after the overhead and heal exaclty for 1 hp. Stoicism is nice on paper, but it’s not reliable.
Man please don’t start with the passive aggressive stuff like " you are doing something wrong" or “you should play like this” it’s cringy . Im good at the game and i know what im doing, and while i like the grail knight, he is still fairly vulnerable when compared to other melee classes, and since he doesn’t have any damage reduction unlike his dwarven counterpart, a single clan rat can down him in 4 hits, couple that with the fact that he doesn’t have good mobility or dodge, and that makes him a statistically more “powerful” fighter, but a worse melee combatant then his other careers like the Merc. He feels like a melee glass cannon, a very brittle cannon.
I’ve seen few people use the exe as main weapon on the grail knigt, usually it’s brought as a secondary or they don’t bring it at all, exaclty because it’s fairly slow. But even if you do bring it, which i sometimes do, with the exe you can still cancel the heavy, meaning up until you release the attack, you can still change your mind and dodge back, also, it has quite a bit of reach, and it’s delay can be offset with just one critical strike and switft slaying. Meaning it’s really not that punishing a weapon like you make it out to be, if at all.
We’re talking stamina recovery here, not BCR. That would be something else. I have cc’ed Chaos pats all day with 30%, it’s a matter of stamina management. 30% or 60% doesn’t make any difference here. If you really think so, then do the math for how many more seconds you’d live longer in a fukced up situation in which you’d die either way.
Well, see, this is where it comes down to individual skill nonetheless. Because I for myself don’t feel vulnerable playing GK at all. Probably because I found a way for me to play this career well enough.
This is why I emphasized: “if you manage things right”. It’s a great talent when you can manage your damage intake. That’s another thing about individual skill, though.
Both are good. I just disagree that Joust is a must, and think Stoicism is undervalued.
That’s 50% less damage after 5 seconds. I don’t find it unreliable, as I can just play defensively while waiting for it. You’ll get bursted down the same way you’re describing if you’re using Joust too. The problem isn’t the Talents, it’s that you’re getting into that situation to begin with.
180HP gives you more than enough space to make sure you have decent amounts of THP before engaging too heavily.
It’s true though. Just because we’re explaining why the Talents and Ult are good and you disagree with it doesn’t make it ‘cringy’, it means you can learn the same thing. It’s a PVE game. Everyone progresses in one direction.
You come and say you have an issue with something, and give your subjective opinions on it. We notice that your opinion means you’re not doing something right, which is making you think that way, and relay our own experiences, which we have high success with, and don’t experience the same downsides you are. It’s not cringe, it’s differing experiences.
Nah, his killing power with THP and his low skill threshold make him fine in terms of tankiness. Joust or Stoicism work just fine in between getting kills with the Ult for THP.
You may not like it, but he can run Shields and Stagger entire Hordes with Elites inside. Just because you’d rather not run a Shield Weapon doesn’t mean that option isn’t available to him.
Ah, the single clan rat balancing scenario.
I disagree. I find him to be good at sustaining high HP throughout the map by scoring easy Elite kills with his Ultimate.
He not only removes the threat of Elite density, with his Ult and with Shields, but also gains massive amounts of Temp from them while doing it.
Stoicism especially allows you to trade, reducing enemy attacks to 50% of their damage dealt. That’s a 50% DMGR on those attacks.
Almost every GK I see is running a Shield and Exe, because it synergizes so well with his Passive and Smiter, letting him deal with almost every Elite, but also gives him good Cleave on Hordes.
You’re now trying to convince me that arguably the best Weapon on that Career isn’t used by people.
You can Cancel the Ult, or just set it up properly.
It’s already one of the lowest skill to highest payoff Ults in the game. You can kill 2 Elites with Audacity, and 3 Elites with Confidence, every 40 Seconds (without attacks reducing it, without running CDR+Joust, without gaining his Quest buff for CD regeneration).
If you read my post then you would see that i was referring to pushing not blocking, and pushing is governed by stamina regen not BCR. And pushing is also what gives the most space when surrounded.
Doubling your stamina regen makes a lot of difference, couple that with some 30% BCR on the shield, that makes you a small moving fortress. And gives you plenty of resources to get out of even the worst situations. I for once survived many times thanks to the joust talent alone.
I never said that the grail knight was bad, or that i suck with him, in reality i can survive with him quite easily , i made the post because it was something that i noticed after playing him for several hundred matches. He can be quite frail at times, but he can also be beastly.
He’s nowhere near aweful or even bad, all i said is that some dmg reduction would improve him quite a bit. And im not alone in this, people make posts and replies about several aspects of the grail knight that they find wanting, including his survivability.
And if you think that he’s absolutly fine then ok, i don’t mind that. It still doesn’t make my feedback invalid.
Again implying that im bad or that i don’t “manage things right” .
If someone says that they find something a bit wanting, like in this case his dmg resistance, that doesn’t mean that they suck, it might just mean, like in my case that i played him a lot (Main him in fact) and i found a reaccuring issue in his kit.
Whenever someone makes a post about wanting some change, you shouldn’t consider them bad just because you feel the opposite way, and thus consider their entire feedback invalid. Trust me, after 1750 hours i think i know how to manage things, i just think that while he’s a good career, he could use some changes, not even my changes, even simply reworking virtue of stoicism would fix most of my problems with him.
Yeah, as i said in the very beggining stoicism can be really useful.
I’ve played this game for thousands of hours, no matter your strategy, you’ll always end up in “that situation” sooner or later. And yeah, 50 less damage over 5 seconds is great, but it’s after 5 seconds and as i said, it could heal 40 or it could heal 3, so building your tactics around an uncertain talent, isn’t a solid foundation to begin with.
With joust however, you always know what you are getting, and you always know what you can do with it, which in my opinion is a lot more then just regenerating some HP.
Sharing you experience is not cringy no, sharing it with the belif that the other person doesn’t know what he’s talking about and then trying to “school” him like a new player is however pretty cringy. I have i a lot of success with the grail knight , i play him a lot, i do regular solo cata runs and i can crank them out even with the grail knight with not too much effort. I never said he was trash, you probably think that my feedback is based on the fact that im not good with him, when in fact it’s quite the opposit. My feedback is coming from someone that plays GK a lot and that has invested a lot of time into him, and during that time i found some recurring issues with him that i don’t find as noticable on other careers.
Does that mean that im right and you are not?
Hell no, it just means you haven’t noticed it and i have, none of us is wrong and so non of us should start telling the other “how to play” especially not with the underlying message being that of “You said you want him changed, i don’t, then it must mean you are bad, and that your feedback useless”. As you said, it’s a pve game there’s isn’t an absolute optimal way of playing like there would be on a competitve shooter for example.
I never said i dont want to run shielded waepons on him, in fact i love shielded weapons on the GK and if not for them, i would’t like him nowhere near as much. But more in general, i never said anything bad about his arsenal. His wapons are fine, his talents however can be improved, ence the my feedback.
It’s not an ipotetical scenario, it’s the truth, you can try for youself. Run around a clan rat for bit and see what happends.
Ok cool, then we agree on something, i also think that his THP and his ults are nice, even if especially these last ones need a few tweaks in my opnion.
No, it doesn’t allow you to trade, and no it’s not a 50% DMG reduction. That’s not what damage reduction is. That’s health regeneration. Health regeneration won’t reduce the immidiate damage of an overhead from 100 to 80.
I was never trying of convincing you of anything, as it’s pretty clear that you made your mind up, i was just sharing my own prospective, like you just did.
Personally i prefer mace and sword, less heavy attack damage true, but way more versatile and fast. But again, these are my preferences, there’s no right or wrong way of playing. You play your way i play mine, both are good in their own way, im not gonna tell you how to play.
It does. Zealot/IB are the only other Careers I’m willing to trade on other than GK with Stoicism. Oh, and Merc with his DMGR Ult up.
He literally gets 50% of the HP back, so it doesn’t matter. You also gain Ult, and probably land an Elite kill, as you wouldn’t try to trade with infantry.
No it doesn’t, but it’s essentially the same thing, unless every time you get hit you randomly stand still and get hit to death by a clan rat. If you’re getting into situations where you take those hits below 50% you’ve messed up. Of course you can’t always help it, but GK has some of the best Elite density clearance in the game, so it’s way easier to avoid.
Then why does he need DMG? The amount of HP he pools is ridiculous and makes up for any need for DMGR.
I don’t think a Career that gains that much HP, has that much killing power and can use Shield Weapons needs DMGR.
He would make FK completely pointless.
You can already get 10% DMGR + Regen from his quests too.
Zealots and IB are pretty much immortal if you set them up right, and both can get high or in the case of IB insanly high DR. So trading on them is trivial, try tanking several hit on the grail knight however and you’ll quickly realize that he’s not meant for that. He can and will get melted if you get hit mulitple times, especially if you don’t have barkskin, which suprise is DR.
You state it as if it’s a guarantee when in realty it’s more like a gamble. Also a single elite kill like a stormvermin, or even 2 stormvermin still won’t give you enough health to make the already risky trade worth it. You can’t trade well on the grail kinght like you can on IB or by god the Zealot.
Again you base your points on hypotheticals. And no, stoicism still doesn’t count as DR as i already said.
I think you misunderstood me, i don’t think he needs any more dmg, in fact i think he can border on OP at times.
No, why? Because that healthpool drains too quickly and you still can’t recover it fast enough to replace actual DR.
That’s why i think they should lower his max health to 150 and give him the same types of talents that shade or the slayer gets. Talents that give you survivability and that encourage the main style of fighting of the GK , meaning a front line killing machine. Cowering behind a shield for 5 seconds and having to wait for your ult to get your health back doesn’t fit well with his playstyle, that is ultimately why i think he needs some reliable form of DR. It’s to have it so that the talents compliment his playstyle, not limit it or even drastically force him to change it.
So, to sum it up: GK’s kit is mostly fine and it boils down to how well a player can manage it; depending on this, range is from sucky to beastly. Business as usual, this thread’s not needed then?
At this point, you’re essentially asking for a buff by giving him immediate DR which would dumb down one of the most straight forward careers the game already offers. Slayer can’t bring Shields, that’s why he gets some talents offering inherent DR. It’ll be overkill on GK.
Aight, so now I’ll assume that you’re not capable of using this talent to its full potential. You’re aware of the damage you take, right?
So, if you take an overhead, you know that you just lost a chunk of HP. But you also know that you’ll get at least 50% of it back in a fixed amount of time (+30% even with Boon). As Kitten said, you play defensively for this time (ie. you cc which is never useless) and after that you’re well set to engage in fighting again. When I take a damage tick from ground fire, for instance, I don’t care about the talent. It’s mostly the big chunks that you want to mitigate by actively playing around the mechanic of Stoicism.
What you call ‘uncertainty’ is in fact your incapability to manage your damage intake for 5 seconds. I called you out on this and I will leave it at this.
Still, you didn’t bring any math to the table why 60% stamina recovery would be double as effective as 30%. You won’t get twice as many pushes, that’s for sure. Right now, it’s your opinion and I don’t share it.
It’s not a gamble. You just need to play the game. The only downside to it on Cata is getting hit by Specials, which is good, because he would be insane if it countered their damage quickly.
It does though. If it heals back for 50% of the damage taken, you’ve reduced the damage taken by 50%.
The only reason you think it’s anything different is because of the timer, but you’re still taking 50% less damage from those hits.
I meant DMGR. Why does he need DMGR?
Also you pointing out that he’s OP in melee proves my point. He’s strong enough to farm THP back constantly, and remove threats. His Health Pool and the fact that he can use Shields mean that he has lots of HP to play with and then an ‘oh sh*t’ button (his Shield), when low.
Why would you want this? His mechanics are good, unique, and they work.
He has this.
The idea of GK is that he has a big Health Pool, huge amounts of killing power which turns into lots of THP. His THP generation is some of the best in the game, especially with multi-kill Ultimates.
If you get the 10% DMGR quest or Regen, it’s just insane.
This is just an example of a tactic I use if I’m really desperate. This happens to me once every four matches. Once you get high HP with him and can play more aggresively you can snowball to full HP really quickly.
Why would there be any cowardice whatsoever in playing defensively btw?
Stop blocking and dodging, coward.
You literally keep describing how his Talents and killing power compliment his playstyle, and you’re not seeing it.
His passive with Smiter makes him an extremely good duelist. Which means his focus is Elites, which give the most THP in general for On-Kill THP.
He’s supposed to play super offensive and keep his HP rolling in from landing Ult every 40 seconds with On-Kill.
If you’re playing Stagger THP and spamming Shield for THP, that’s fine and works, but On-Kill with him is better.
He’s rewarded constant high HP for playing offensively.
Yep. He’s a knight in (appearently cosmetic purpose only at the moment) armor, make im feel like one. The health “refund” talent only checks the last damage instance so if you got smacked but also took just 1 bullet from a ratling you’ll get back like 1 hp. Also the 5 sec delay is a lot of time when you try to “clutch”.
Why does almost every single career in the game get to have damage reduction? Mercenary, HS, FK, RV, IB, Slayer, BH, BW, Unchained, even Zealot. Just do something else, stop giving every single career the same old boring generic damage reduction. Why do heavy ranged careers like BW even get near constant 30% damage reduction? Why is BW such a strong frontliner even?
Exactly, BW shouldn’t have 30 % damage reduction, not with that amount of mobility. Same could be said about Shade. At least reduce BW to 20 % as well.
If someone chooses damage output careers, he should be prepared to be mutilated … hard.