A lot of weapons need a very specific build and blessings to be the most effective at killing armored targets. For example, many people say the Thunder Hammer NEEDS thrust and headtaker to do the Imagine Dragons song correctly. The Thunder Hammer is an easy example, but something like the Eviscerator needs Rampage or Shred to do the best DPS possible. It’s a 1/4 chance to get one of those blessings, 1/8 chance to get the specific one you want. I can keep going but basically what I’m trying to say is to get the best weapon for a build, you can spend a ton of time and effort gathering all of the resources you can - only to come home to Hadron, who is going to be cucking you with 5 Terrifying Barrages in your living room.
Meanwhile the knife has 10 blessings total, about 6 of them are amazing and interchangable unlike other weapons, so you have a much better chance of getting blessings that will work with your build. 2 of the knife’s blessings do rending(uncanny strike is the best), 2 of them do bleeding, so you can destroy armored targets all day as well as every other enemy in the game. In my opinion the knife with these blessings is overall more useful than a Thunder Hammer or Eviscerator. Of course, the hammer is better at doing a lot of damage (specifically to monstrosities) in 1 hit, but the knife is better when there’s more than 1 enemy. Since you can hit a couple crits then dodge the crushers while leaving them bleeding, as opposed to someone with a thunder hammer killing a crusher in 2 hits while needing prep time and high skill to avoid being punished by their own charged attack.
The builds in particular I feel makes the knife way better than a Thunder Hammer and other weapons made for armored targets are the blessings flesh tearer and riposte, uncanny strike and riposte, uncanny strike and flesh tearer, or lacerate and uncanny strike. Riposte and flesh tearer are my favorite, they work great for crushers, but also make the knife great at horde-clear with all of the crits instakilling the poxwalkers, with the bleed killing all of the ones that didn’t die instantly. Even though I’ve just been going off about how the knife is so good at killing crushers, the knife absolutely destroys every other enemy in the game so easily and efficiently I don’t feel like it needs to be discussed.
This is the part I feel is the most overpowered and makes most other melee weapons feel significantly worse to me. With the knife’s mobility you can dodge all ranged attacks. Even in a room full of gunners you can get to safety easily or just run up to the ranged enemies and stop them from shooting. With the knife it’s possible to fight a Daemonhost while being shot at and win from the sheer amount of dodges and crazy mobility. It’s at the point where as veteran and zealot with a knife, I use my ranged weapon sparingly because it’s more efficient to just run up to the enemies and save my ammo for the harder situations like groups of gunners. Like when 5 bulwarks and 30 shotgunners show up I’m not pushed to the edge, I just feel bad for them because they basically have no chance of hitting me. Even not watching my dodges and having -3/5 dodges, the dodge distance is still farther than a power sword. With the knife you basically have 8 dodges before you really should refresh. Plus the way dodging in this game works, you can dodge 1 centimeter into a wall and a crusher will miss his overhead aimed at you.
I think the main issue is that the knife has no weaknesses except for crowd control, but they just kill the crowd so it’s like whatever. I feel if everyone on my team had a knife and a revolver, we could just breeze through auric maelstrom like it was malice. That probably isn’t good for the game considering a knife is outperforming melee weapons dedicated to eliminating armored targets while at the same time being better at everything else due to the insane speed and damage. It’s like the knife has S+ stats in everything except crowd control. Obviously, the plasma gun and bolter are way safer and better at getting through armor but I’m really only talking about melee weapons.
The only other weapons I would say are on the level of the knife are the dueling swords and the force swords (not the obscurus). The Mk XV Eviscerator comes in as an honorable mention - but is not as good as the other weapons as the mobility isn’t as good.
I even tried the tactical axes with shred, and the weakspot critical hit on a crusher with a tac-axe does the same amount of damage as a knife non-critical weakspot hit without uncanny strike. Yes, you can use a combat axe but two knife hits; a heavy and a light thrust, come out at the same speed as an axe heavy while doing the same amount of damage and also having a higher change to crit. So it’s like the axe is a direct downgrade from the knife.
The knife has access to some of the best blessings in the game, while only having 4 less-useful ones whereas most other weapons really only have a few good blessings. Hadron is more likely not to completely brick your knife like she would brick a Thunder Hammer. It kills all elites and specials in 1 or 2 hits besides the ogryns, can still utterly destroy them of course just not as effortlessly. Also you have a bunch of extremely far reaching and fast dodges, and mobility you can use to run around a room full of gunners as well as across the map to save yourself or your teammates. Plus you can kill monstrosities on damnation by yourself in like 30 seconds. So yeah idk, I don’t want to see the day the knife is nerfed but I don’t see any other option as Fatshark probably won’t buff all the other weapons to be as good. Probably the most busted part about the knife is the mobility, but I don’t want that to be changed of course.
