It should come to nobody here’s surprise that the Knives are the best melee option in Darktide, and it really isn’t close. From overtuned damage to dodge distance, it is clear that the knife is fully deserving of a balance pass
And here is how I would do it
1 - Damage
While looking at the Knife damage, it seems unimpressive, until you realize that it is wrong.
With Riposte + Precognition the damage you can output per swing is closer to 9000 than it is 1000. My suggestion would be as follows: Reduce maximum damage from the damage stat from 132 to 125, reduce heavy finesse max from 2.89x to 2.25x. This alongside changes to the mobility would fix the weapon, so lets cover that.
2 - Mobility
The Knife should not be able to out run all enemies other than bosses, mutants and dogs.
To fix this, I would take the max mobility speed from the Tactical Axe 2, increase it by 15% and give that to the Knife instead of it’s insane movement speed.
Moving along from sprint speed to dodge distance, the dodge distance at 40% should be the maximum you can get without additional enhancement. This would fix the rather insane survivability of the knife compared to really any other weapon in the game.
To recap, the knife is S tier in damage S+ tier in mobility and suitability, these changes would bring the weapon down from the best in the game to A tier.
I actually think it should go the other way around. Keep the mobility and damage but absolutely tank its ability to deal with hordes. So it should have a bricked 0 cleave and no way to increase it also reduce the bleed a bit.
On the other hand, the newer knife should be other way around, low damage overall but with cleave and lots of bleed.
Also mobility is the main reason the knife is super fun to use, i think it should absolutely keep it. No matter what changes fatshark eventually does to it.
IMO, the first knife should be an assassination weapon, where you zip around the battlefield deleting priority targets with precision strikes to the head or back and ignore the chaff/hordes.
Whole the newer knife should be a butcher knife who’s main deal is have low hit damage but lots of bleed stacks.
This way knife will be a special weapon that deals with specific things instead of a jack of all trades.
So to sum up :
Mark 3 - Completely remove its cleave, keep the damage and mobility.
Mark 6 - Lower its damage and armor piercing but increase bleed (and change the “assassin” attack pattern from its light attack and change it to “vanguard”) Let the blood flow.
Mobility is NOT the reason knife is so powerful. The reason its so powerful is because it can deal with anything and everything in the game with extreme efficiency, this is where the nerf should focus on.
Mobility is the reason the knife is fun to use and stands out from the other weapons.
I feel like it’s kinda both. Removing the speed boost from out of stamina would be minimum IMO. No weapon should allow you the ability to run away from everything even while out of stamina, not even knife.
The knife is very good, but not necessarily in need of a big nerf. I wouldn’t mind if mobility was tuned up across the board ; Tac axes especially seem slow for being essentially worse knives.
What the knife does offer, that no other melee weapon can, is huge synergy between Lacerate/Flesh Tearer and the Zealot’s talent Scourge. It’s a free +30% crit chance with crazy uptime. With this setup the knife is the Zealot’s best weapon by a mile… Which makes the meta very boring.
Then you need to nerf a lot of weapons
The max move bonus from tactical axe, is 0.45. +15% means 0.06 bonus, so 0.51 movement bonus.
Now let’s list all weapons that would impacted: Bolt pistol, assault shotgun, autopistol, recon lasgun, cleaver, duelling sword and combat blade.
Also, I would not be sure that it would be enough signifiant to feel that this is a real bonus.
My only gripe with the Combat Knife is that it deals way too much damage to Unyielding enemies. Its damage profile against Unyielding should be lower or equal to Carapace.
Then it should to anything else… and I believe it is why they have more HP. Tbh, the problem is not what you point, but Shroudfield + backstab bonus of dagger + backstab bonus in zealot talent tree + ruthless backstab…
It means:
+20% damage from backstabber talent
+25% backstab bonus from the dagger itself (patch 14)
+100% damage from shroudfield
+100% finesse damage from shroudfield (and with 100% chances to get a critic)
+100% rending from ruthless backstab
You can even add +50% finess and +50% backstab damages damages from perfectionnist (but I feel this not worth the point spent).
Sure with these bonus, when you hit something, it hurts…
As someone who regularly uses knife the weapons problem is not Rending nor Bleed.
You can easily run a knife without either of these, its main problem is the insane finesse modifier it has. Precog + Riposte is the best Blessing combo with the knife because you are constantly proccing these two and gigaboosting its crit & WS damage.
Mobility is also too high and even with a low mobility stat roll you never lose a dodge.
the other weapons need buffs actually just saying has a new player one thing I have noticed is the game is in a toxic meta atm. there is a website where players can post builds, and the variety is saveerly lacking in diversity. and after looking into build guides, I come across other videos of people talking about stuff like the classes are fixed please undo the nerfs to these weapons. so just stop go take a break if the game is not fun anymore.
how long will it take after people move on to the new toxic meta and start talking about how the new weapons need nerfs because they are OP when they were not when the knife was just reliable.
I see nothing wrong with “crutches” and “True Skill” options in the game.
yeah, no bolt weapons also they are basically unplayable atm and power sword needs power cycler built in again etc. etc. there is allot of unerfing that needs to be done to get out of the toxic meta.
if people are this bored, has a new player that thinks this game isnt to easy they should go take a break from the game for a bit or try other things and let other players have their fun. fun police =toxic meta.
Sure autopistol is as good as is IaG mk V
Tactical axe is as good as is a combat axe…
This guy is right on one thing. Several weapons are so weak that even nerfs on too strong weapons won’t make them viable.
Several weapons need a nerf, but sure several need a buff. And a buff is not just a damage increase.
At the same time, there’s also a need to nerf builds that are too strong (FS has the metrics for that). There are also talents that could also be changed to make them better (especially when these talents are not picked by players, here again FS has the metrics).
About knives. The only terrible build is the zealot with stealth. Maybe someone around has also in mind an other build where knife is too strong.
About the weapon itself, in my opinion the damages are in the right spot. That’s normal a tiny weapon can go through a carapace.
I am not sure of what has to be done with them:
reducing movement would require to nerf a lot of weapons
swift certainly, however, could be nerfed to +5% movement.
reducing the number of dodges on this weapon would require to nerf close to all weapons. As example, Dagger has a 4-6 dodges, duelling sword and tactical axes 4-5, combat axe 3-5 etc… So nerfing by one the number of dodges, would require, cause this weapon has to dodge better than others, to nerf also all other weapons
dodge distance… Dagger has a maximum dodge distance of 1.4, duelling sword and tactical axes 1.11, combat axe 1.05. So they may be able to nerf here a little. Will it changes dramatically this weapon, not sure. And if they nerf it to be noticeable, then we return to the point where all weapons are nerfed by the same time.
At the end, we should look at what is too strong. My opinion is that there is one build certainly too strong, a stealth zealot. But, maybe several here have seen other builds too strong… but if it is only stealth build, then maybe we should look at this build.
Also, several think there is a problem with specifically dagger zealot that rushes. For this, my opinion is that they should introduce an anti rush system like that. The system I described would not be copied and pasted in the game, for sure, this is just an idea thrown away. But rushers have to be addressed.
However, I really doubt that this behavior will be addressed by nerfing specifically the knife or even weapons.
