After a long journey trying to recover my account on the forums and playing Versus for ~100 hours since it’s release. I’ve come to the reduntant conclusion that Grail Knight career is, certainly, underperforming and is mostly seem as a troll/grief pick. Resulting in an overall bad experience for the gk player as well as his team.
Context:
I’ve participated in the alphas and betas of Versus, and it’s been clear to me that Grail Knight would hardly become a strong pick in this mode as long as the ranged meta reigned. Regardless, I felt Grail Knight had a place as a career capable of buffing his teammates and breaking certain chokepoints/ambushes by dealing a huge amount of damage and resisting warpfire damage and, most importantly, knockback effect.
The problem:
When Versus went live, I was surprised to see Grail Knight being pushed around by Warpfire and to see his Health Regen quest removed from the mode. Needless to say, the current reputation and state of Grail Knight in Versus is heavily impacted by said changes to the career.
I know hoping Versus to be 100% balanced and all careers viable is a hardly feasible. However, there’s a difference between being viable and being seen as a troll/grief pick, with GK being seen in the latter. I must admit I do feel somewhat ashamed whenever I want to pick Grail Knight (the career I enjoy the most) in Versus.
How to improve (suggestion):
Overall, my suggestion would be to revert the changes to Bastion of Bretonnia, making it block warpfire and granting the Grail Knight resistance to the warpfire’s knockbacks as long as his shield is raised. While also reverting his quests (Lady’s Duty passive) to grant the possibility of the regen quest back and, maybe, tweaking the percentages a little bit to make them more useful to the whole team.
Of all possibilities, the one I’d like to see the most (alongside the changes listed above) is to change his level 30 talent, Virtue of the Impetuous Knight, to something that buffs the whole team for a short duration. Currently, the talent gives the Grail Knight a 35% increase in movement speed after killing an enemy with Blessed Blade.
By picking this talent, the Grail Knight trades off his ability to deal with mixed horde (not much of a problem in Versus) and also his ability to fulfill the role of a monster killer.
Replace Virtue of the Impetuous Knight with Virtue of Empathy:
My suggestion, to replace this talent, would be to make it grant a teamwide buff of 5-10% movement speed increase, resistance to knockback effects and 5-15% damage reduction for 10/15 seconds. Lastly, rename the talent to Virtue of Empathy (of the Knightly Virtues, it’s the one that fits the most with Markus as a character).
This way, Grail Knight will be able to fulfill the role of forcing his way through ambushes/chokepoints whilst also helping his team fulfill this task by temporaly granting them resistance to movement impairing effects and knockbacks, whilst also sacrificing some of his most commonly associated roles of elite and monster killer.
Needless to say, the changes to this talent are up for debate.
With regards to the current state of the career, I don’t believe the lack of a ranged option is what makes Grail Knight a troll/grief pick since Warrior Priest is one of the strongest picks in Versus despite lacking a ranged option. It excels by bringing strong support and utility to the whole team by being able to heal and revive a teammate from afar. Currently, Grail Knight is impaired by the fact that it fulfills a role that’s hardly relevant in Versus which makes him a troll/grief pick by other players. By granting him the possibility of fulfilling different roles better, such as a strong frontline and support, it’d boost the overall performance of Grail Knight in Versus and move him from a troll/grief pick to a not so strong, but still useful, option in Versus.