[Grail Knight] Perk(s) and Talents revisited

[riseskimo]

Currently there are a few talents on the newest career, the Grail Knight, which I think haven’t seen much use (at least hardly anyone played with them) and may be in need of a touch up or rework.
This is all based off of Legend play, unfortunately I have no Cata experience yet.

I am aware that other classes and careers suffer from this as well, but for this thread I wanted to focus on the Grail Knight.

The Grail Knight has no ranged ability or special movement ability, such as a charge or a leap, in his kit. For this reason, he should be an almost unstoppable melee powerhouse, since this is the only role the Grail Knight can fulfil. If he cannot fulfil his role, then there is hardly a reason to bring him over the other Kruber careers or even other classes.

That is why I suggest a buff to one of his passive Perks.

In addition to the movement speed bonus there is now an attack speed bonus of 5%. This is to counteract the complete lack of critical chance bonuses or talents and thus the low Swift Slaying uptime. I didn’t want to suggest a crit chance bonus, even if his talent Virtue of Knightly Temper would synergize well with it, simply because there are already many careers with a crit chance bonus (Merc, Huntsman, Shade, WHC), and only one with an attack speed bonus (Slayer).

Talents

I think most of the talents for Grail Knight are great and have their uses. Basically there are only two to three rows where you can even find a talent that could use some touch ups, those being row 10, 25 and perhaps 30.

Without further ado, first off is Virtue of Heroism (maybe “Buffed” is the wrong word on the screenshots… but it’s too late now).

Question: Why do I think this talent deservers a revisit?
Answer: Against singular Elites your entire team can help you take them down, so there isn’t much value in reaching a certain damage breakpoint. For killing Elites during a horde you’re way better off with Virtue of the Ideal. The same concept applies when fighting Monsters.

Question: Why this change?
Answer: Kruber has the slowest weapons of the entire cast. I wanted to give Grail Knight an attack speed option. So now there is choice for consinstent power (Virtue of the Ideal), random insta-kills (Virtue of Knightly Temper) and consistent attack speed (new Virtue of Heroism).

Next up is Virtue of Stoicism

Question: Why do I think this talent deservers a revisit?
Answer: Well, the default talent is used, so the question is unfair here. But the current functionality of the talent is simply too punishing. The temp regen only counts the last damage taken and after 5 seconds you get half of it back as THP. So if you got hit by an overhead and a gas cloud tick / warp bullet directly thereafter, you would only gain half the damage taken by the gas could / warp bullet after five seconds, completely disregarding the overhead.

Question: Why this change?
Answer: Basically changing this talent into a version many of us thought it would work like (or at least similarly) in the first place.

Next it’s Virtue of Discipline

Version 1

Version 2

Question: Why do I think this talent deservers a revisit?
Answer: Timed blocking an attack happens too infrequently, and the benefit is not worth it.

Question: Why this change?
Answer: The idea came from simply playing with the Bretonnian Longsword. The Ox Guard (which is the position of the held heavy attack) allows you to use the force of the incoming blow and direct it into your own swing, using the enemy’s power against them. I don’t know if it’s a good idea to give this property to the weapon itself, so I came up with this talent instead. Version 2 synergizes well with Virtue of Knightly Temper, and Version 1 synergizes well with my next and final suggestion (for the time being).

Last but not definitely not least, Virtue of the Impetuous Knight

Question: Why do I think this talent deservers a revisit?
Answer: You give up a second attack or the horizontal slash by choosing this talent, and the movement speed is just no comparison and not worth the opportunity cost.

Question: Why this change?
Answer: I wanted to preserve the attack of the basic Blessed Blade ability, while trying to counter its glaring weakness: Vulnerability during the animation. Currently Blessed Blade is a pretty risky move during a dense, mixed horde or when you are surrounded and need to kill an Elite/Special. In these situations it happens (maybe too often) where you eat damage simply by being stuck in your animation up-/downtime of Blessed Blade, and having a way to negate that by trading in extra damage or a horizontal slash is in my eyes acceptable. In addition, this somewhat allows you to charge the ult and walk through a few rats to kill the Elite/Special.

Final notes

I’m aware that my suggestions may be flawed and perhaps not the most balanced, but I like giving feedback and maybe start a conversation. If nothing else, maybe someone will see this and it’ll create a spark of creativity for further ideas.
Thank you for reading this far

[alsozara]

@riseskimo

Last but not definitely not least, Virtue of the Impetuous Knight

I agree with a lot of these ideas, but this one I strongly dislike. Current Impetuous is my main choice in that row since it opens up the ability to kite in a way GK simply can’t normally. Your suggested buff would remove any interest in that talent for me. I’d much rather have MS to avoid getting hit in the first place over over something as cheesy as invincibility. It’s also (I assume) meant as a band-aid for how vulnerable GK’s Ult is to use generally, and I’d much prefer this was addressed with a simple reduction to the end lag of the Ult regardless of talents.

I’m also not too sure on attack speed changes, because I actually find it super refreshing to have a DPS class that doesn’t just get their DPS from stacking embarrassing amounts of attack speed. I agree he has a good number of talents that need work though, I’d include duties in that too, since cooldown regen is basically worthless and regen is way stronger than the others.

[riseskimo]

@alsozara

I agree with a lot of these ideas, but this one I strongly dislike. Current Impetuous is my main choice in that row since it opens up the ability to kite in a way GK simply can’t normally. Your suggested buff would remove any interest in that talent for me. I’d much rather have MS to avoid getting hit in the first place over over something as cheesy as invincibility.

I can understand where you’re coming from! I will try to play with it some more, I just haven’t found the movement speed to be that useful.

@alsozara

It’s also (I assume) meant as a band-aid for how vulnerable GK’s Ult is to use generally, and I’d much prefer this was addressed with a simple reduction to the end lag of the Ult regardless of talents.

Your assumption is correct. I’d also much rather have a fix to the ult itself, but then I don’t think I’d ever run anything else than Virtue of Confidence^^.

@alsozara

I’d include duties in that too, since cooldown regen is basically worthless and regen is way stronger than the others.

Hm… I think balancing Duties via talents is very difficult. Perhaps what could be done would be to always give the same two Duties (with random objectives), and then you’d choose which third option you’d like. Either the Regen quest, double effectiveness of the two default Duties, or the potion quest? Perhaps something like that. Then you’d lose out on two possible Benisons though, and while I agree cooldown reduction is not very good, I’d be hard pressed to choose between Attack Speed, Damage Reduction and Power Level.

[alsozara]

@riseskimo

I can understand where you’re coming from! I will try to play with it some more, I just haven’t found the movement speed to be that useful.

To be fair I’m one of extremely few who seems to actually like this talent as is. By my reckoning GK already kills fine, so why spec further into that when you could help him out with his clutch game (something I personally value very highly). I honestly get it’s not the most impactful talent for most.

@riseskimo

Hm… I think balancing Duties via talents is very difficult.

Yeah I should have been clearer. I think the duties themselves need balancing to be a little closer to equal value. My preference would be to rework the cooldown regen duty to cooldown reduction or something else entirely to make it more on par with the other duties. The regen one I’m pretty sure is still bugged to stop/slow (depending on whether or not you take the enhanced duties talent) THP decay which is way too strong. Hard to say if it’d still be too strong once this is fixed, but my gut instinct is that the enhanced version (literally double Nat bond healing rate for the entire party) would still be too strong compared to the other duties.

[Incandescent]

fully agree some of these lesser used (or rather janky in the case of Stoicism) talents deserve a revisit

Virtue of Heroism right now is just really sad, there’s zero reason to take it over virtue of the ideal currently, in fact you’re hamstringing yourself if you do.

Stoicism certainly is lacking in how it works and feels pretty rough if you take a hit but then get a tick of gas, warpfire or a ratling shot on top. Virtue of the joust has been my go to talent on that row I simply don’t get enough consistent value out of stoicism compared to joust.

@riseskimo

Timed blocking an attack happens too infrequently

very true, especially on client side where block latency is a thing, timed blocks aren’t really gonna happen much above 80 or so ping for the average player…hell I’m not sure if the average player utilizes timed blocks intentionally much at all. Personally I play on very high ping on average (300 or so) so I’m biased here for sure but I’ll never utilize the talent in its current form.

Big agree that Impetuous Knight also needs looking into for the reasons you’d stated.

I don’t know if the buffs you’ve outlined are necessarily the best way to go of course, it’d all need testing and such. But I 100% agree that those talents in particular need adjusting.

As for the passive I think it’s fine I don’t think GK actually needs an attack speed steroid; his swift slaying uptime is pretty decent now with the new crit distribution system.

[alsozara]

@Incandescent

Virtue of the joust has been my go to talent on that row I simply don’t get enough consistent value out of stoicism compared to joust.

Not that I’d ever advocate for a Joust nerf, but to be fair - Stoicism’s issues aside (and it definitely has issues) - Joust is really hard to compete with. I see people complain GK isn’t tanky enough, but it’s crazy how much pressure a +60% BCR +60% stam regen GK can handle with a shield. Just had to take an aside for that because it really bothers me when people (not you obvs) say he’s too squishy when this setup is sooooo safe.

[Incandescent]

he’s squishy in the traditional sense that he lacks DR but he’s still very defensively powerful if you take a shield and joust, yeah

I think the idea that he’s squishy comes mostly from the fact that people take stoicism and then learn that plato was wrong it’s not that great

[Kitten]

Some nice ideas.

For Virtue of Discipline (block = power):

I’ve yet to make use of any of these timed-blocking Talents, other than on my bots. The only time I tend to need to actually block, and not push/dodge spam, is when enemies get stacked, I get stuck, or someone bombs a Boss onto me, and I have to slide out.

Even then, the amount of Power is so minimal for a single hit or short duration, that it barely does anything whatsoever.

The block Talents require two silly things:

• you standing still in front of a Horde, while they all run around you, because you’re not pushing or slamming them
• enemies to be aggro’d to you and not someone else

I’d much rather see something way more useful. That RNG, bad habits gameplay has to compete with free THP on getting hit and 30% Stam or Push Angle.

[CopperBack1]

I had a lot of similar idea, but prefer more complete rework. Here’s my versions.

• Movement and Attack Speed by 10% ( but 5% more conservative)

• Stoicism: 50% of damage taken is converted to temporary health, all temp health decays at double rate.

• Discipline: Timed blocks guarantees next strike is Critical, double timed block window.

• Virtue of Impetuous Knight renamed Virtue of the Vangaurd: Jump forward with Increased movement speed by 25% when unsheathing Blessed Blade, block cancelling resets cooldown to 50%, speed boost degrades by 5% per second

PS how did you do visuals looks real nice for OP

[dannylew8299]

They should take how well Handmaiden’s talents were received into consideration. Blocking and pushing as the trigger instead with a different effect (since that’s easy to pull off compared to timing a block at 300 ping).

50% stagger strength for 5 seconds?

@alsozara

I’m also not too sure on attack speed changes, because I actually find it super refreshing to have a DPS class that doesn’t just get their DPS from stacking embarrassing amounts of attack speed

Kind of agree with this. Am curious if it’d be ok if it was strictly a talent choice replacement for Virtue of Heroism. Might not synergize well, but people who want it could get it at the cost of not having Virtue of the Ideal/Temper

[Rapax]

I don’t think Gk needs more passives, he’s got his quests for that - one of which is 5% attack speed.
If anything, the quests should be changed so that you’re able to pick the ones you actually want to get during the mission, removing the rng and allowing players to build more around these quests.

I would like to see the passive +10% movespeed removed and replaced with a flat 10% damage reduction, same value that the Fk secondary passive has.
Gk does not need the dr but I find it more fitting than the heavy frontliner speedrunning around like that. His low mobility should be a defining trait after all and a bit of dr would be a good alternative.

He could do with buffs to some talents.
Personally, I would change the movespeed ult talent to give +15% attack speed for 10 secs as to give him some attack speed on an active talent. Would make that talent row more of a choice.

Virtue of Discipline could be changed to give +25% crit chance (instead of 20% power) for the next attack, similar to the Huntsman headshot talent.
Guaranteed crits would be too strong imo.
Could make it so that pushing instead of parrying only gives +10% crit? Dunno.
That would give him more reason to use the crit talent at lvl 10 (also, fixing the lvl 10 crit talent not giving tmp on kill would go a long way).

Reworking stoicism to +50% healing received for 5 secs or so after taking a hit sounds great too.

Level10 - Virtue of Heroism should give power instead of only dmg as discussed here: Some buff & talent fix - underperforming/misleading
Might be worth reducing the duration of Virtue of the Ideal from 10 secs down to 5,6,7? secs to make the others more competitive?
Would not really matter during hordes but help increase the difference between the consistency of Heroism and the greater power of Ideal.
“Free” 30% power is hard to give up regardless of the other options imo. After all, that’s the entire passive of Slayer or Zealot rolled into a simple talent.

[Incandescent]

I like the passives as they are, and I don’t particularly mind the RNG of the quests although it certainly runs into a problem where some are vastly more desirable than others, especially with how the health regen interacts with THP decay currently…which is something that should probably be nerfed

[Rapax]

Yea true, I suppose being able to choose your quests would just be a way of avoiding the bad ones ^^
Tweaking them so they are all in line would certainly be a more elegant solution.
Fine-tuning your own build and letting teammates build around Gk quests such as 10% power would be neat nonetheless imo.

[dannylew8299]

Not to mention the slay monster quest on levels where monsters don’t show up. That never fails to irritate having that quest up the whole map.

EDIT: they should roll it in with the elite quest. Slay 50 elites or one monster (or whatever’s a fair value)

[riseskimo]

@CopperBack1

PS how did you do visuals looks real nice for OP

Thanks, I just used ingame screenshots and Photoshop!

@Kitten

The block Talents require two silly things:

• you standing still in front of a Horde, while they all run around you, because you’re not pushing or slamming them
• enemies to be aggro’d to you and not someone else

I’d much rather see something way more useful. That RNG, bad habits gameplay has to compete with free THP on getting hit and 30% Stam or Push Angle.

I think while blocking does not happen too often when compared to pushing and dodging, I don’t quite agree with your first bullet point.

I have trouble writing my thoughts down, but hopefully you get my meaning.
If I had to list the situations where I need to block, I’d say:

• Monsters
• Specials (monks / berserkers)
• Mixed hordes
• Patrols
• General movement (where getting somewhere is more imporant than attacking)
• Sneaky rats that spawn directly behind me

If I knew I could insta-slay enemies with Virtue of Knightly Temper and Virtue of Discipline (version2) after blocking, I would approach Monks/Zerkers, mixed hordes and patrols more proactively/aggressively? Hopefully that makes sense.

Though I kinda agree that +Power after a block for a single attack is may be too little.

@dannylew8299

Not to mention the slay monster quest on levels where monsters don’t show up. That never fails to irritate having that quest up the whole map.

EDIT: they should roll it in with the elite quest. Slay 50 elites or one monster (or whatever’s a fair value)

I really like this idea!

[CopperBack1]

Yah monster quest could be reworked to a Quest for Engaging Patrols, Boss or Lord so worst case you get buff during engagements.

[Kitten]

@riseskimo

If I had to list the situations where I need to block, I’d say:

• Monsters
• Specials (monks / berserkers)
• Mixed hordes
• Patrols
• General movement (where getting somewhere is more imporant than attacking)
• Sneaky rats that spawn directly behind me

If I knew I could insta-slay enemies with Virtue of Knightly Temper and Virtue of Discipline (version2) after blocking, I would approach Monks/Zerkers, mixed hordes and patrols more proactively/aggressively? Hopefully that makes sense.

It’s still too rare in my opinion. It’s a timed-block and not just a block = power, too.

Even trying to time the block ends up being too much effort in the change of gameplay than it’s ever worth.

It’s just one of those Talents where the usefulness is too limited, especially when compared to the rest of that row.

There must be some better way to make it useful, even adding a secondary effect that doesn’t rely on blocks. You can go entire matches without ever being in that ‘timed block’ state at the same time as being hit.

[riseskimo]

Maybe there is a misunderstanding. My talent suggestions would grant you the bonuses on every block, not necessarily timed blocks! Or perhaps I’m misunderstanding you.

[Kitten]

Oh, yes. Sorry. My brain kept going back to it’s current state.

Well then, I’d say blocking + Power buff on a timer would be my suggestion. Not just a single attack.

My reason being that being that to be hit while blocking (outside of legitimate blocks, which your list showed), means you’re essentially holding block while you get hit. The Power for that duration would be a good trade off for that dead time.

This would make the Talent more passively useful when compared to the other two on that row.

[Radina.Shevu]

@Incandescent

he’s squishy in the traditional sense that he lacks DR but he’s still very defensively powerful if you take a shield and joust, yeah

I think the idea that he’s squishy comes mostly from the fact that people take stoicism and then learn that plato was wrong it’s not that great

Shield and Joust is the one way to make sure you dont die to every bad situation in his current state. Changing Stoicism to something actually worth using would still promote the still safer shield playstyle, while not making it chained to the second slot.

I thought that damage would get counted up and after five seconds of not taking damage you would get half of that back as THP. If you die in before you find five seconds of peace, you die. The way it works right now is never worth picking and “strangely” worded at best.

I dont think the form of Stoicism OP suggests would make the Talent worth enough to be able to risk not bringing a shield. It would still be triggered by gas, rattling fire, storms, and even from dodging a bloody hookrat. You just end up not having enough stam reg to push your way out or away from AoEs, while getting poked by the same damage sources GK suffers from all the time.