And how good would those have to be?
Ofcourse it had to be âjust nerf Mercâ comments. Merc does his job, nothing more. He delivers some wave control, survivability for the team and elite clear. When paired with an Executioners, Hammer, or Spear he is easy to play, hard to screw up, and overall a good career, but he is never reaching Handmaiden, WHC, BW, or Slayer kind of levels in domination, even if you play him for hundreds of hours.
But its not about this.
Its about Knight having not a single Talent combination that makes him able to do something no other Career can. Its about him getting overshadowed in crowed control by his Merc self with a pointy stick or Hammer while dealing less wave damage, pitiful amounts of Team support and he does that with a career skill that can kill your whole team. (It did in the past. More than once. Ever charged two CWs in the hallway to the last spiral staircase at the end of Morr? Chances are good that both just stand up and chopp you tightly stacked teams heads off.)
The âFrontlineâ Talents dont work. The DR is laughable in a Barkskin world and overall boring. He has no red twine that shows any links to a weapon type. People say âshields!â and I have to ask: Where is it? Where is the link to shields? The extra stagger Talent does nothing. No passive enhances shield stagger, and the other Talents seem like tossed together shenanigans. Merc can wield the Shield better and more efficiently than the current Knight.
First and foremost I really want his Valliant Charge to be fixed. If Kruber had pointy ears, and nine out of ten times his damage boost wouldnât trigger when going invisible, the furor teuelgicus would have swamped the forum months ago.
Itâs primarily about overhauling FK, but Mercenary would continue to eclipse him in many ways unless you really heavily buff FK. Mercenary is an absolute crutch in a team, deliberately donât play him cause he makes things too easy. Extremely strong frontline career with huge damage reduction, huge power increase (about on par with Zealot), passive extra cleave, good crowd control and strong weapons to choose from while providing some of the best team support in the game. Yeah, seems fine to me, definitely not a crutch.
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Pushing Merc and Zealot into a pot. I dont even get an Idea on why and how someone would want to compare those two with each other. They are nothing alike. If you dont see that I cant help you.
You dont need much to make Knight distinct from Merc. Just dont make them compete for wave clear. Give Knight extra Head damage in exchange for his DR at Taals Champion. Buff stagger numbers so you can stagger a CW out of his charge attack with staggering force and a shield. Change the last lines Trample to be a flat debuff whatever happens for along as its alive, or make it a bigger one just for the Knight himself. Change Bull so it makes Valliant charge deal damage. Rework line 25 completely. Add stamina regeneration somewhere in that line so you can actually stay in frontline longer, use your shield properly and better than a Huntsman, remove silly movement speed procs for situations its hardly useful and dont ever use âwhen allies are near you get this minor buffsâ ever again. When you are at it remove cleave temp health since it has no home in that Talent tree anymore.
Done. Hardly any interlinking. Head damage and other boosts open various unplayed weapons. Last line will still be worse than god mode, but at least you can play with something that might be useful or fun and I dont ever have to look at line 25 again.
But Iam actually not interested in talking about what Talents should look like, and I wont give in to that again. FS has its own paid gentleman for that and Zealots tree shows that they know how to completely and properly redo Talent trees. I just want to bring enough light on Knights problems so something will be done someday in the near future.
Huh? I mean, theyâre kind of alike. They both have huge power increases and are strong frontline melee careers. But itâs true, Mercenary is just kind of better in general.
Ah, but thatâs not what Iâm talking about. Of course you can make him distinct, and that would be great, but why would anyone take him over Mercenary still?
Iâd hate that regardless of what career it is. Enemies are already pathetic enough, you want the bunker busters that chaos warriors are meant to be, be reduced to what is basically stormvermin?
I think that Merc is a perfectly balanced career. You must not compare him with FK: they have a different role (for this reason I donât like aggressive FKâs talents)⌠But, if you play FK as TANK and if you give him some love (read the thread I linked, I already wrote what I would do), FK has many advantages. Already now, if you play (and sorry if I repeat myself) him as tank, for example with a shield, does HIS job better than Merc.
If you want compare Merc with someone, the candidates would be Zealot and WHC (and maybe Unchained)⌠And I donât think they are weaker than Merc. So ye⌠I think they are balanced.
Now, I can understand we could have a different idea, but this starts to be a complicated and off topic speechâŚ
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Well I personally donât think that. So much so that I deliberately avoid using him cause it kind of sucks the fun out, just a bit.
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No, itâs not. If you take a shield with Opportunist & his Staggering Force talent, you hit the breakpoint to push Plaguemonks out of their combo, without needing to take any âPower vs.â trait or skill. Thatâs really significant in itself. You can also take a shield with Opportunist, take Staggering Force, and stack enough âPower vs.â to hit a breakpoint where you can stagger Chaos Warriors out of their overhead attack with a push. Even on Cata. Staggering Force definitely has uses on shields.
Foot Knight as a career overall might lack a little, but he definitely has some niche builds to be a bloody battering ram.
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And Shield + Mace & Sword.
At max stagger power afaik you can only stagger CWs out of their overhead with a bash on Cataclysm. Thatâs with Staggering Force, Opportunist, Enhanced Power, Taalâs Champion, 20% vs Chaos, 10% vs Armour.
Funnily the War Pick can also do this with itâs full charge heavy. It only requires 20% vs Chaos and Opportunist.
Yeah this, thank you. FK can hit meaty stagger breakpoints nobody else can. He just has to commit really hard to hit them, which sucks a lot of flexibility out of builds. I donât really know how you fix this though, since being able to stagger almost anything out of any animation is pretty cheese, but if your team has no idea how to capitalise youâre left feeling real useless as you can barely dispatch things at any pace yourself.
Iâd personally be happy just to see some QoL improvements especially regarding his Ult, then see how he feels from there. I kinda wish staggering force was a passive so you had more build flexibility, but the more I think about it the more I feel like that could end up being pretty broken.
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You might be correct, I think. I hardly ever spec for that specific breakpoint myself, only did it once to test it.
I think the entire point is that FK can hit those stagger breakpoints very easily. Just Opportunist & Staggering Force, and you can stagger everything that isnât a Chaos Warrior overhead or a Monster with a shield. Other careers need Opportunist and 27% Power vs. to do such things. And this goed for other weapons as well. FK can hit stagger breakpoints while still having flexibility, while other careers need to give up a lot of flexibility to do so. And FK has his Ult as well.
FK should never try to be a DPS career, heâll only disappoint. FK isnât always bad, but he is just only good in a very specific niche. That can also be a valid point of critisism, though.
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Why are we comparing an invis cheese career and dps careers to a support? Ofcourse slayer or bw or whc will do more damage and dominate, merc just has insane support talents which makes him almost always a must pick, the insane boost he gives to the team can not be underestimated. Careers can get enabled with just a merc in your team and could spam or be more aggressive etc etc, idk how people canât see that.
I agree with you that fk needs some talent tweaks. I donât agree that u think staggering force is useless as its not, as tdman said. The push after you ult is annoying and should of been fixed like a long time ago.
I also didnât say âjust nerf mercâ i am looking at both careers. Iâm also not suggesting huge nerfs to merc, just without his 40 dmg red he would still be a very very strong career, or make him not give temp hp for 40 dmg red instead.
Haha youâre right, kruber gets negelected. Sadly itâs not the only career 
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For this reason I wrote more times âread the linked threadâ, because I canât repeat the same things every time⌠I know you can stagger Monks out of their combo, but imho its too little as niche (even because Monks arenât so common as enemies and they remain staggered for a very, very short time).
Look, you made a claim (âstagger talent is useless on shieldâ), I just pointed out that wasnât true. You not considering stagggering Plaguemonks as being useful, doesnât mean anything to the factuality of such a claim. (No matter what you said in whatever other threads.)
And I also completely disagree with your assessment that pushing a Plaguemonk out of his combo is useless because it only staggers him shortly. It breaks his very dangerous attack and staggers him long enough to get a push-attack in, which benefits from Mainstay, and the push is free anyways because of Counter-Punch. Normally Plaguemonks are so dangerous because they force you to hold cover and take away your ability to properly react to other threaths around you as well. But with a shield push you can now just shove the bastards aside to do (and let your teammates do) what needs to be done. Being able to do this - pretty much no matter the enemy composition in front of you - completely takes the stinger out of one of the most dangerous enemies in the game (especially when it comes with friends). Even if this comes up only once per map it can still mean the difference between a win and a wipe. And you donât need to invest in any other Power talents or traits to also pull this off against every other attack in the game thatâs not a Chaos Warrior overhead or Monster as well. So itâs not like you took the talent for a niche situation that only comes up rarely and is wasted the rest of the time. Itâs still good against every other dangerous enemy as well.
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But I made another claim too: âread the linked threadâ.
Anyway we just have different opinions⌠Because ok, stagger monks is useful (even if sometimes I got hit between a push and the following bash*), but it canât be enough. I would like to see more synergies Staggering Force/shields.
*Sure, if you spam push they canât attack you⌠But you must have Counter Punch active⌠This isnât always possible.
On this note, with just staggering force + opportunist on SnS you stagger so hard you can easily solo bully an entire SV patrol right off a cliff if the opportunity presents 
Thatâs a huge amount of control over a very common enemy. So yeah, you get a lot more out of it than just staggering plague monks.
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Itâs gonna be a rare situation if nothing tries to hit you. Especially in TmanDWâs example with a pack of monks. They love flailing their arms around but donât do too much stamina damage.
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I like the idea to make Staggering Force as passive.
I agree⌠In these days I have played Cata Weekly Event (it has the modifiers: more elites, double hp/damage elites and âexplosive playersâ) with WHC.
Itâs simply impressive how many Stormvermins (with double hp) you can kill during those 6 seconds of ult⌠but, even without ult, the crit rate is very high. It seems you are fighting Recruit SVs since you can oneshot them.
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