Stealth knife never do highest damages, they don’t one shot everything (they have to backstab it), get a good cooldown between 2 stealth mode, are bad horde killer…
So what do you want to nerf?
In other words, I think we have now the players that want others to play like they have decided how everybody should play the game.
If there is nothing too strong, there is nothing to nerf.
And no, we don’t nerf something cause you don’t like the behavior of a player category. In other words, several here want a nerf to see less stealth zealot.
Maybe we could do it faster. What are you allowing us to play?
No I did not… at least, I mean I did not forget… I intentionnally did not speak of it.
It requires lot of skills. In a melee fight, this is hard to favor this against the need to maintain the group cohesion and not be surrounded by the hordes.
You cannot really chain stealth mode, even if you can make shorter the cooldown, a lot shorter. But you still need 5 melee backstabs (it seems last patch did not really fixed Pious Cut-Throat)
But, maybe i am the worst zealot and never met a good stealth zealot, but I have never felt that a stealth zealot was so strong that it would take my fun… in other words, I have never seen a dagger zealot killing everything and forbidding me to play (something I have met with boltguns before patch 12 or, as an other example, kickback with patch 13).
But again, maybe I missed something… but I don’t see a reason to nerf something that is not OP, far from this, espcially cause they are builds strongers than this…
But, again, maybe I missed something.
Tbh, console players affect more my enjoyement, and with any weapon they pick… and this is not cause they play on a console, it is cause they cannot compete with a mouse and keyboard and are a disaster in any game I play (and I won’t say what I would answer if I was not restraining myself when I see one typing “GG” when the screen says “You’ve failed the Emperor”… you did 380K damages, and he did 72k… great, guess why we all died.
Honestly when I play stealth Zealot I mostly only go stealth and then drop it instantly to proc backstab/guarantee critical so I don’t aggro dump onto my teammate. You can even double dip the boost if you time it right too so it’s even better.
I only stay in stealth when situation is call for like reviving teammate or doing objective.
This has really just evolved into the flamer discourse 2.0 except it’s pure “I want this nerfed because I don’t like it”. It doesn’t have a leg to stand on otherwise since no one can seemingly agree if knife builds are useless and dragging the team down or godly and unfun to play with because everything is dead.
Even then for the latter half of that it would be a stupid trend to start since I can very easily see the next discussion being “plasma gun needs a nerf because it’s unfun that it deals with crushers too well”
In the hands of a competent knife user it checks the following boxes:
clutch survival and rez
mass conversion of gunner packs into melee / range defusion
binding lots of enemies to yourself to give the other players breathing room
zip around be everywhere, where things need to be done
objective clearing due to speed and invis.
amazing damage potential due to bleed and uncanny strike
If your team knows this, and acts accordingly, instead of trying to keep up with you. That’s fine. Knife Zealot using Loner also makes sense due to him being alone zipping around doing stuff all the time.
You basically ignore that he exists and hope he does his job.
If this is kept in mind and both parties act accordingly, yes knife zealot can make for an extremely casual run on auric.
HOWEVER
Most knife Zealots are trash and can’t exactly leverage its full potential, it requires you to have extremely good awareness of the entire situation, which let’s be honest, the majority of the playerbase lacks. Most people don’t realize things happening in front of them, let alone what the guy two rooms to the side is dealing with.
It has mediocre killing time. Yes I know backstabs can destroy crushers easily. Granted you have the space to actually target the crusher. Which leads to it’s biggest weakness:
A knife user is f’d if he has bad positioning and there isn’t enough space to kite. Due to low burst damage it gets overwhelmed easily by mixed hordes that contain armor, where specifically heavy attacking a mauler or crusher head isn’t possible due to too much trash being in the way.
That with a lack of space to maneauver in generally leads to a dead knife user.
So in short: Yes it’s a powerful weapon, but only in the right hands. The balance is one the requirement of space and good positioning and two the lack of player skill required to execute.
It’s fine as is, when thre’s a ton of weapons that require buffs and fixes to be auric viable like chainaxe
This is just another build which shows why lack of Cooldown Reduction limit can get out of control. But then beyond self-surviability and some clutch potential it doesn’t offer that much. It attracts a certain type of a player, and it often ends with them over-extending.
A pre-nerf Shade vibes for sure, but then I would hate to see a fairly unique playstyle being removed. I personally cannot stand knife light attack spam, but some people clearly enjoy it.
I think this part is fair enough, i mostly just have a problem with the notion that “oh people have trouble using this build, we need to nerf it out of existence”.
I would say on a personal note im never actually that far ahead and it’s amazing to hear people are literally entire rooms ahead or behind but this is also just something i see in pub games in general such as people running to the alternate fork to get plassteel with no teammate with them or running back to grab ammo without letting people know.
I will say on a balance point ill kind of agree with that. I mostly notice it on my VOC Vet where if you stack even 1 or 2 cooldown reductions you can get a huge uptime.
Also my build for reference with the actual equipment since i kept forgetting to post it. I could take lone wolf and remove until death but that has helped clutch in some bad situations. The bit of impact i get from the middle tree also lets me control hordes much better.
As a note since people forget crits remove a lot of the resistance enemies have so even against carapace enemies it can be pretty good. A lot of hitting backstab head hits is aiming just right above the head as if you are going for a specific gap in the armor to land it on crushers. Bulwarks and Reapers are far easier.
Daggers have historically always been armor bypassing weapons though and It is just assumed that when you are backstabbing an up armored ogryn you are hitting vital organs, ligaments and muscles that could most definitely incapacitate an ogryn. Perhaps a solution would be to give carapace oGryns weak spots in the rear and neck sections and increase armor mass on the front? Making it hard for a dagger to really hurt an Ogryn from the front but make them damage dealers they are supposed to be when hitting weak spots.
Yeah I plan on rolling a better knife at some point but I just have not had the time. I would like T4 lacerate + anti carapace but I’ve just not had the time for it.
Probably my biggest gripe with it is that its far too easy to clutch with it. And as other people have mentioned if they were running a different weapon there probably wouldn’t be a need to clutch in the first place.
How come even in today’s time a knife is part of the soldier’s standard pack?
It’s because in close encounters, drawing a knife and shanking someone is more reliable than unpacking, unloading and aiming a gun.
Granted in large firefights in the open you won’t make use of any bayonet. But then we also have trench warfare and in that, close range weapons to find use, too.
Sure there’s drones and airstrikes. But still you have to deploy ground troops to take and hold territory. I don’t see why in a scifi setting that should be different.
As stated 90% of the reason I made this build was being sick of having the team absolutely bungle handling gunners and ranged AOE enemies.
At this point t most people are running stuff like the revolver, plasma gun or bolter anyways so I might as well focus on the things I’ve seen lacking in lobbies.
I can’t speak for other zealots but I have horde clear, anti special and I can moderately lock up larger enemies but what is the point of focusing that when 3/4 of the team are running anti crusher weapons anyways?
I think knives are more utility. Lots of things a knife can do that aren’t combative. You generally have troops surrender and become POWs before it gets to the point they’re stabbing each other.
Most modern warfare is aerial and artillery bombardment. Followed by clean up with ground troops.
I would say, in the future, when you have space ships and such, ground force action would be the least relevant. In almost every war/battle it’s always the side with better technology, and usually the side with the most air support that wins.
The Imperium of man is a fun sci-fi medieval idea (same with Dune). Pretty much all the Warhammer 40k races are fantasy versions sci-fi’d up. Imperium are crusaders. Necrons are Egyptian necromancers. Eldar are elves. Orks are… Orks. Etc.
Wars and fights ACTUALLY with 40,000 years to develop technology would likely be mostly done autonomously and remotely.
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