Personally, I really don’t like it. I’m running assassin build so I need 20% back stab damage and the toughness regen + toughness dmg reduction below are perfect for the build. I don’t throw knives at all. At no point I would prioritize knives over gun.
What do you think?
I absolutely love knives, all I use on zealot now. Super high headshot damage, and a fantastic finisher for those pesky dogs that keep getting knocked away from you. The throwing animation is super quick, and hardly interrupts your melee cadence. Great for when there’s a trapper/flamer/gunner and you’re stuck in with a hoard, or have an empty magazine. Flip a knife in their face and carry on smiting.
Not really. With their drop-off they don’t feel like they have much more effective range than a brauto, the only ranged weapon I can think of they’d be handy to have with is flamer and maybe autopistol, the former of which doesn’t seems like it’d fit great with the stealth archetype.
I don’t have a problem finishing dogs since they fixed it. Feel pointless to have a range weapon over a range weapon. Rather have grenade for cc and help ppl in trouble.
Fair enough, I love em’! One point I’ll add is I veer hard to the left on the tree after taking knives, and go straight for charge and the + crit chance at the bottom. Haven’t ever tried them with shroud field or the backstab talents, so I can’t say how they’d perform there. I use them purely as a “melee extender”, something to give me reach when drawing my ranged would take too long, or I don’t want to stop blocking.
They seem pretty good. Really good damage if you can headshot, but still respectable damage without. And of course being able to use them without dealing with the cumbersome nature of pulling out a normal grenade is quite nice. Makes them a nice compliment to weapons like the flamer and bolter.
Only major issue I have with them is that the feedback is awful. The projectile is very small and dark so good luck seeing where, or if, you hit something. I kinda feel like holding the button should show you a guide like normal grenades get. Would help with learning the arc.
Compared to Assail Psyker knives, they are tedious and useless.
Pressing “G” in the middle of the combat to throw 1 knife is tedious, and 1 is almost never enough to do a kill even with a headshot (Damnation).
And while Psykers regen their knives simply with time, Zealot needs to do Elite/Specialist kills in melee only.
I haven’t gotten around to using them in a match yet, but I was a big fan of Bardin’s throwing axes and similar skill shot abilities from other games, so I’m looking forward to them. I don’t think they’ll be more useful than a stun grenade, but they should be a fun alternative
From testing in the Psykhanium, you kill gunner, shotgunners, dreg ragers and non-Mutant specialists with a single headshot IIRC.
I’m also a fan of Bardin’s throwing axe. The Zealot knife doesn’t come close in terms of impact compared to the axe. Additionally, the axe has a larger hitbox. Even the Elf’s longbow feels much better than the knife. If I were to compare it to Vermintide 2, it’s like firing a single projectile from the Wizard’s beam staff (light attack). I mean, even the staff has a better sound effect. Putting all of that aside, I don’t believe it’s a good addition to ranged wep. However, some players do enjoy it, and that’s perfectly fine. The only make-sense ranged wep to run the knife with is the flamethrower. Other than that, it doesn’t come close to the benefits you gain from grenades.
Try it and let me know what you think.
The knife is ‘fine’ in my eyes. It’s not what I’d want but, it’s what I’m forced to have. You can, at least, quick throw them, and they do a lot of damage on headshots, so they’re not irredeemable, but unfortunately I don’t have the spare talent points to go any other route and get all the things I want, so it feels like I’m forced to use them if I want to do a shade build. Ah well.
Exactly the same position I’m in. I love the shade build. And I’m fine without using the knife the whole game (Auric btw). It’s just that, it would be much better if I have nades lol
I don’t like the knives personally, they have some utility but the other options provide large AOE area control, the usefulness can’t compare.
If they would be useful against carapace then maybe i could consider them in some builds but as they are now feels the worst option.
I feel the problem with the knives can best be described by one thing. The devs made it too expensive to cross trees. If I had the choice for a knife, E.G. I wanted a flamethrower, chose knives, and could choose other things, it would be fine.
However, it costs too many talent points to go from one path to another, making it difficult to start at X and move to Y.
Interestingly, Psyker doesn’t have this problem, though going certain routes hard blocks certain other routes. Makes for a lot of build variety on psyker compared. I hope the devs look at it at some point.
In all fairness though, assail is GROSSLY OP and needs to get gutted from its current state.
You made a good point. Some people enjoy using the knives and I don’t want to change that. Perhaps the solution is to enhance the cross tree function in this section.
The only reason crit zealot builds are balanced is that most play without a blitz.
I don’t care for the knives, but I suck at headshots. I miss the stun grenades I had before and don’t have the points for now, but I wouldn’t get rid of the knives since they make a decent longer range precision elimination option for zealots with flamers or shotguns. Not as long range as a gun, of course, but useful for taking down a special or shooter now and then.
My philosophy for blitz attacks is that they’re a perishable resource (apart from the psyker’s of course), so they should allow the player to easily remove a specific type of obstacle by spending some of that resource, and to potentially fill in a gap in the player’s toolkit. Stun grenades allow a zealot to more easily and more safely deal with a group of enemies, flame grenades allow a zealot to basically instantly kill a major wave of a horde, but I feel like the knives aren’t any different from just having another gun. As mentioned, this can be useful if your actual gun is a flamethrower, but since I like to carry an MG XIII lasgun, I never use them, and only have them because I use a crit build with an eviscerator.
This might be changing their function a bit too much, but if I were designing throwing knives as a blitz ability to compete with the grenades, and be part of the swift and silent deathcultist skill tree, I’d make them faster to throw in succession so as to give them the potential for very high burst damage against unarmored targets, and give them a lock-on effect where they basically auto-aim at any enemy near the reticule if they’re within close range, say 8-12m or so, (possibly with the option to negate this effect if the player holds the button down for a moment or something (which come to think of it should also allow the knives to be thrown farther and do a bit more damage)) which could allow the knives to be a really fast way to take out a handful of nearby enemies without even needing to aim at them carefully, like an "instantly kill a guy " button with limited uses, since zealots could probably use as many ways to deal with being surrounded by shooters as they can get.
Alternatively just another random thought if the skill tree is based on deathcultists maybe the knives could also poison, or maybe the third blitz ability could be combat drugs instead.
After a few games with the knives…
Someone already mentioned it, but being able to hold before throwing would be amazing. I’m not too pushed over an aim indicator - they’re not especially practical to use beyond 20-25m and getting the angle right within that range should come with practice
My original thought for making it feel better was to improve the ammo return (either on elite kill or small ammo pickup by +1), but I think if it did 100% damage to arms/legs, it’d achieve a similar result.
1-2 shot kills for specials, 1-3 shot kills for gunners/shotgunners and 2-3/2-4 (Dreg/Scab) shot kills for ragers feels reasonably fair. I’m not sure if it’s intended, but I think removal of the perk benefit in exchange for a small bump to damage would put it in a decent place while remaining consistent regardless of your equipped weapon - for example, equipping a ranged weapon with T3 Ranged Damage (Elite) is the difference between a 1-shot and a 2-shot kill to the head against a Dreg Gunner.
*I’m not sure how it works with blessings; it counts as the first shot for Opening Salvo, but does not get the power bonus.
To me, the new napalm genades is so much more enjoyable.
Knives are solid but not as easily applied as the regular Zealot grenades which are actual clutch maniacs. I just like them for the sake of the purity of my gameplay melee loop. It is so much simpler to just wait for the flamer/trapper to fire and quickly place the crosshair just above their head and let a knife rip. They can also one shot dogs when you’re not able to make it to a teammate with melee, or you can kill dogs mid leap with a headshot if your spheres are large and brass.
Having them so freely is what makes them usable, but they could have a slightly better Flak modifier too (feels weird to oneshot Dreg rager but take 2 knives on Scab).