Its kind of horrible. Valliant Charge is bugged for as long as the game is alive and his Talents either make him an averagely well frontliner, or a worse Merc.
There are hardly any distinguishing factors between Knight and Merc. Both have Attack Speed Talents, both have minor Damage boosts, which both are hardly triggerable on Monsters, or bosses. Both have the ability to gain DR. The only distinguishing factors are the THP generation and Mercs passive “Hitting the Sweeet Spot” which makes him wreck waves a lot faster than the Knight, who got 3 seconds of on demand invulnerability in return.
Lets start with those, since its pretty much the only nice thing about Knight right now.
Those 3 seconds are amazing. You can dive into waves to rescue a team member, activate it to negate damage from certain specials, use it to safely gain THP during waves, and generally just execute mad situations that would otherwise wreck you.
The rest of the Knights Talents are utter rubbish.
The frontline role got gutted when last year “Counter-Punch” got nerfed to 1 second. You just cant hold a cata wave better than any other career that has extra stamina regeneration. You will run out really quickly and just ask yourself why you are even playing that.
What we are left with in line 25 is the probably worst Talent line in the game. Movement Speed once its to late already, a push Talent that does hardly have any impact, or minor to zero DR. Nothing there is worth the Talent point.
Lets look at another Talent line. 20.
I actually was quite interested in “Champion of Taal” the very first time I read about it in the beta patchnotes. 10% power was enough to make some Breakpoints happen. I never used it once. BCR is the most valuable stat in the game and you get 20% gifted in that line. 10% power, which dont do anything in the current state of the game, are not even halfway worth it, which is an actual shame. This line could be, in my eyes, the breaking point between playing the shield basher, or the elite and monster damage dealer.
It would have to be meaningful damage you gain through “Taals Champion” to make it worth giving up 15% DR and 20% BCR. Something like 50% added Head damage would do the trick.
Line 30 is also worth some words.
“Bull of Ostland!” is just nonsense. The only thing it does is compete with Merc again, a battle the Knight cant win, because of cleave. If there was a way to activate that Talent without a wave, so it would enhance Monster or Boss dps, that would be a whole different story. Trample I will never use, because screw “does not stack with similar effects”. I still dont know what effects, and why would I even take the chance when Iam giving up 3 seconds of god mode.
Kruber right now is the least played Hero, according to the 10th April Announcement and the lack of variety between his careers most likely plays a big part in that role. Fixing the stagger overwrite Valiant Charge suffers from would be a very gentle first step into the right direction.
