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Oxlazr
02-08-2017, 02:28 AM
I just figured I'd jot down some thoughts I've had while leveling the knife skill - I don't intend to level it any further at this stage, and I'll explain why in a moment. For reference, I leveled it largely solo with animal handling - I stopped at level 20ish awhile ago, and revisited it recently and leveled it up to 43.

It'd be good if others could chip in what they think as well, especially if you've played it at max level, as I don't ever recall seeing much information on knife fighting in general.

By in large, knife seems to be more effective if you don't have aggro. Even at low levels, this is difficult to achieve (i.e. level 25 knife + level 50+ Animal handling pet) - if you were leveling in a group, I'm sure this would be more efficient.

It seems to try utilise a lot of mechanics as well - rage reduction, damage over time, evasion, healing, ranged utility attacks, snares, bonus damage to vulnerable targets - and the modifiers seem to work by either directly increasing damage, or by creating synergy between "cut" and non cut abilities. "A jack of all trades and a master of none" comes to mind with dagger. In order to utilise it as a solo-build, you're essentially going to have to use animal-handling or, perhaps now, psychology. Even the modifiers that buff other skills either A) buff their damage insignificantly, or B) only offer a chance for those abilities to deal bonus damage.

I realise that last paragraph was a mess of words, but what it amounts to is quite simple - spam your abilities when you can. There's no strategy to it. All those various mechanics, even in combination with each other, don't achieve a whole lot. It ends up playing like sword - but sword seems to consistently deal more damage & reduce rage more effectively.

It just feels too inconsistent, too conditional, to be considered a good skillset right now. It's really difficult to justify building a character around skills that are "sometimes" going to be useful - i.e. the ones that require mobs to not be attacking you. If you were leveling with a friend, I think knife fighting would be infinitely more enjoyable, but I cannot confirm this myself.

As for the specifics -

Fending Blade - doesn't really reduce rage enough to be useful. Healing for "3" heal on some modifiers is often irrelevant.

Opening Thrust - 10% bonus damage to your next knife attack - you may as well spam this between every attack due to the cooldown lock knife fighting suffers from.

Blur Cut - By itself, x% evasion never seems particularly useful. It seems being able to heal/restore armour would be more useful then "potentially" having an ability do something. I'd personally think this skill would be more useful if the evasion amount and duration were significantly higher - though I haven't seen many modifiers for this skill.

Venomstrike - This skill is pretty good. Nothing to mention here.

Gut - Couldn't ever be utilised fully, so I never used it.

Surge Cut - This is a good skill, don't get me wrong - but I think it raises an issue with how the game works in general, so I really want to draw attention to this skill. It seems every combat skill has self-healing - and that really reduces the significance of healing & support builds going forward, when everyone is expected to be able to self-heal anyway. This is just my opinion, and I'm not sure what the philosophy here is, but some builds should be able to maintain their health as a resource to be preserved - not one to replenish frequently. It just seems odd to me that so many offensive skills have healing built into them.

Poisoner's Cut - I'm not entirely sure how this works, but it seemed to boost overall damage significantly. The modifiers I did see for it always increased its damage by a slight amount - which, considering it was more of a chain-skill to buff other abilities, really didn't do all that much for it.

Slice - Another situational skill - It seems really good "if" a monster is vulnerable.

I didn't get to play around with a lot of the other skills - the increasing gold cost of abilities makes leveling skills like this just to test - or on the off-chance they'll become more viable later on, increasingly restrictive. It really makes it difficult to actually fully test the game when the economy keeps getting tighter.

I did try to test what I could, though - I.e. the delayed rage reduction, the poison procs and such - and everything (beyond what I reported) seems to be working as intended.

Overall, though, regarding abilities - the modifiers on gear (at least levels 10-40) aren't strong enough to have knife fighting as a competitive option.
I'd really like to see another resource used to unlock skills & combat levels, though - I'd like to more fully test aspects of the game, but I can't justify farming a bunch of gold to do so given I'm not particularly fond of the skill as is.

As for the throwing knives - I didn't bother. I was hoping to utilise them at max level - but I feel it's important to mention just what's required to create these - namely, toolcrafting and blacksmithing - specifically, the hammers from toolcrafting - which won't easily be accessible to new players (i.e. fairies, if they're still starting with knives) - I think it might be good to see knives occasionally drop on monsters if you have the knife skill active.

All in all, I feel knife is really only good if you're playing with a dedicated group of friends. Everything about it is inconsistent, and you have very little control over how it plays given you're likely just using abilities when they're off cooldown anyway. It's focus is split, and it doesn't cover what you'd normally expect from dagger-type weapons.

If you could use daggers in the off-hand, that might give the skillset a lot more flexibility - though, I feel the skill would be tremendously powerful if combined with druid skills.


I'd like to finish up by saying this is just a "first impression" of the knife skill - as I can't really justify carrying on with it for the reasons above - I might be miles off with this information, and maybe it does get better - but as it stands I think it could use a significant buff to its abilities, at least in the lower level ranges.

Apologies is this comes off as a bit of a rant - it's not meant to be, and I realise I won't be right on every point I've listed here. But I do want to end on a positive note - and that's that crossbows are fantastic; I really like the crossbow skills.

Umber
02-08-2017, 08:23 AM
Great post!

I was looking into being a full time Knife fighter and was having similar issues. Now, my character is literally 4 days old, so it comes from the perspective of a brand new player. The skills that seem to be most abundant on Anagoge (which I just learned is the name for the Starter Island!) are usually Sword/Unarmed. The first weapon I found was a sword, so it was only natural to be Sword right away, but what I was finding is that every player I ID'd, and I mean EVERY player lol, was a combination of Sword/UA there.

That aside, I bought a basic dagger and began training Knife Blade. Noticed the skills had extra perks if done from behind the target. Animal handling didn't seem to give me much help with Get It Off Me. Just go Sic Em, but haven't tried it with Knife Blade yet. I was finding that without a decent dagger, I was a less optimal version of sword. Knife Blade may get stronger as it gets higher, but it does not feel unique nor different enough early on to make it a better option to switch to. Like you said, currently it feels like an attack style to use while fighting with friends mostly.

As I am new and a long time gamer, I am trying to not slow my leveling process through to top tier mobs/loot with at least one skill. It is possible I was feeling the effects of starting a new skill over, but it seems characters should have a stronger choice of weapon styles from the start rather than Sword/UA/Archer and whatever else they happen to find. Still in Alpha, so plenty of tweaks to be made, I'm sure.

cr00cy
02-08-2017, 08:55 AM
Umber - reason why every player you incpected used sword/uanrmed combination, was becasue they are 2 combat sjkkills you start game with.

About knife - i think i leveled it to 50 (or close to it anyway) and my impressions were... not great. Not that it felt as abd skill, it just was ... uninpressive.

"backstab" mechanci is nice and imo fun addition, its just i think there should be more options for knife to actualy be able to use it on they own

Tagamogi
02-08-2017, 11:37 AM
Knife and battle chemistry are my first combat skills unlocked past 50, and I've only gotten them to 60 so far, with my gear still at 40-50. So, I'm probably not the high-level opinion you are looking for.

I play knife as a skill that I can use to heal myself while simultaneously doing some damage. Without combat logs, it's pretty difficult to tell what's going on, but I suspect that battle chemistry bombs are the majority of my damage.

So, what gets me excited about knife is mostly its survival aspects. The evasion chance on the blur ability is fun - I enjoy seeing an occasional evade pop up - but what I really like about blur is being able to stack the delayed heal from the gear mod. Similarly, I like slice because it's possible to have several simultaneous gear mods that all have a chance to restore armor. The stun from the venomstrike mod is pretty fun as well, although its chance to proc is too low to be really reliable (which I don't really mind).

Fending blade feels like fairly meh ability to me - I just haven't found anything to get me really excited about it, and I suspect with me setting everything I meet on fire, its rage reduction is going to be ineffective anyway.

I wish there was a way to use the best damage abilities of knife as a solo player. Right now, it seems the only reliable way to backstab as a solo player is to use psychology's mez, and using psychology as a second skill would probably lower my overall damage output. I'd like to actually try a knife damage build sometime rather than a solo evasion tank build with many tricks up my sleeve...

I also don't use throwing daggers. When I started out, I skipped them because of a lack of cash and inventory space. I looked at the throwing abilities again more recently and I'd like to give them a try, but by now my knife skill has far outstripped my blacksmithing level and I don't really want to use a lower level throwing ability that would use the only knives I can make. I recall reading somewhere that there are going to be ice knives that would be available to the starter fairies, so I don't think it's going to be a problem for the fairies.

I don't really mind the "chance to" procs of knife. The procs actually seem more reliable to me and more useful than those in other skills, although my comparison base is limited. Some procs like the cut/nocut I tend to get less excited about - I haven't really tried to optimize damage with them. I think I like the gambling aspect of the skill - it feels to me like I have a chance to do some really cool stuff, and that chance happens reasonably often.

Overall, knife feels like a really "fun" skill to me, which is of course an extremely subjective term. ( For reference, I thought leveling hammer to 20 in Gorgon was the longest decade of my life, and I know that's a popular skill. I also tend to dislike playing rogues in other games - I find the focus on positioning and sneaking to be annoying.)

Bakau
02-09-2017, 03:27 AM
NIce posts I am a major hammer/metntal and fire/druid for aoe but interesed in ebtter single target damaing builds

Yaksnot
03-07-2017, 02:32 PM
I will try to tackle this text one sentence at a time..I play max level knife battlechem, yes 74 knife and I do just fine.





By in large, knife seems to be more effective if you don't have aggro. Even at low levels, this is difficult to achieve (i.e. level 25 knife + level 50+ Animal handling pet) - if you were leveling in a group, I'm sure this would be more efficient. That is correct for the most part as surprise throw, backstab and gut all do more dmg if the mob is not concentrating on you

It seems to try utilise a lot of mechanics as well - rage reduction, damage over time, evasion, healing, ranged utility attacks, snares, bonus damage to vulnerable targets - and the modifiers seem to work by either directly increasing damage, or by creating synergy between "cut" and non cut abilities. "A jack of all trades and a master of none" comes to mind with dagger. In order to utilise it as a solo-build, you're essentially going to have to use animal-handling or, perhaps now, psychology. Even the modifiers that buff other skills either A) buff their damage insignificantly, or B) only offer a chance for those abilities to deal bonus damage. all I got from this is that you did not set up your skill bar correctly or were trying to do too many things and couldn't "combo" your knife skills effectively

I realise that last paragraph was a mess of words, but what it amounts to is quite simple - spam your abilities when you can. There's no strategy to it. All those various mechanics, even in combination with each other, don't achieve a whole lot. It ends up playing like sword - but sword seems to consistently deal more damage & reduce rage more effectively. sword can be a very good skill, agree

It just feels too inconsistent, too conditional, to be considered a good skillset right now. It's really difficult to justify building a character around skills that are "sometimes" going to be useful - i.e. the ones that require mobs to not be attacking you. If you were leveling with a friend, I think knife fighting would be infinitely more enjoyable, but I cannot confirm this myself. solo play knife is viable

As for the specifics - I am only going to comment below on skills I use

Fending Blade - doesn't really reduce rage enough to be useful. Healing for "3" heal on some modifiers is often irrelevant.

Opening Thrust - 10% bonus damage to your next knife attack - you may as well spam this between every attack due to the cooldown lock knife fighting suffers from.that 10% actually goes up, and yes I use it ALL THE TIME!! it heals me, makes other skills hit harder, and gives an across the board dmg boost. why wouldn't I?

Blur Cut - By itself, x% evasion never seems particularly useful. It seems being able to heal/restore armour would be more useful then "potentially" having an ability do something. I'd personally think this skill would be more useful if the evasion amount and duration were significantly higher - though I haven't seen many modifiers for this skill.you can get two mods to boost evasion by over 40% I am not seeing how that is not useful. it also sets up slice...

Venomstrike - This skill is pretty good. Nothing to mention here. venomstrike hits like a truck can also be set up by another skill to hit harder

Gut - Couldn't ever be utilised fully, so I never used it.

Surge Cut - This is a good skill, don't get me wrong - but I think it raises an issue with how the game works in general, so I really want to draw attention to this skill. It seems every combat skill has self-healing - and that really reduces the significance of healing & support builds going forward, when everyone is expected to be able to self-heal anyway. This is just my opinion, and I'm not sure what the philosophy here is, but some builds should be able to maintain their health as a resource to be preserved - not one to replenish frequently. It just seems odd to me that so many offensive skills have healing built into them.

Poisoner's Cut - I'm not entirely sure how this works, but it seemed to boost overall damage significantly. The modifiers I did see for it always increased its damage by a slight amount - which, considering it was more of a chain-skill to buff other abilities, really didn't do all that much for it.this does great dmg especially from mods and sets up venomstrike

Slice - Another situational skill - It seems really good "if" a monster is vulnerable. bread and butter skill, read above for the set up skill





As for the throwing knives - I didn't bother. I was hoping to utilise them at max level - but I feel it's important to mention just what's required to create these - namely, toolcrafting and blacksmithing - specifically, the hammers from toolcrafting - which won't easily be accessible to new players (i.e. fairies, if they're still starting with knives) - I think it might be good to see knives occasionally drop on monsters if you have the knife skill active. fan of blades can do great AOE, but nothing compared to fire/archer

All in all, I feel knife is really only good if you're playing with a dedicated group of friends. Everything about it is inconsistent, and you have very little control over how it plays given you're likely just using abilities when they're off cooldown anyway. It's focus is split, and it doesn't cover what you'd normally expect from dagger-type weapons. this whole thing is just wrong, you can play 2 dif load outs if you want one for group one for solo but I just use my solo load out for groups

If you could use daggers in the off-hand, that might give the skillset a lot more flexibility - though, I feel the skill would be tremendously powerful if combined with druid skills. I use it with battlechem, the golem takes agro and it opens up my backstab if I want to use it, but I usually don't need to for anything less than boss figths / Mants/ GK my other abilities hit hard enough and when the poison dmg starts rolling it gets pretty good deeps


I'd like to finish up by saying this is just a "first impression" of the knife skill - as I can't really justify carrying on with it for the reasons above - I might be miles off with this information, and maybe it does get better - but as it stands I think it could use a significant buff to its abilities, at least in the lower level ranges.

Apologies is this comes off as a bit of a rant - it's not meant to be, and I realise I won't be right on every point I've listed here. But I do want to end on a positive note - and that's that crossbows are fantastic; I really like the crossbow skills.

I have honestly tried to be gentle, and yes Knife could use a bit of a boost as its not close to being top deeps. that being said its perfectly viable solo, though I imagine it would be harder to do than other classes due to the ineffective nature of solo and gut/ backstab. all that being said Knife along with any skill should be set up properly on your action bars. its plain as day the OP did not read the skill descriptions of the actual skills and just went about pushing buttons. if you set them up in a logical order they will help each other out.

Mods, cant stress mods enough. Knife along with every other combat skill needs you to pay attention to the mods your usuing, if you want to effectively use knife then pay attention to the armor your picking up and use armor that reflects the abilities you are using. Match the armor to the abilities you are using and not the other way around

I will happily answer any questions about knife fighting to the best of my ability ^^ sorry if I seem harsh just a lot of bad information in the post

Yak

Tsugumori
03-07-2017, 02:43 PM
Having the ability to hold a knife in the offhand I feel would open up a lot of doors, I really hope knife skills involving the use of two knives is considered. Also wooden knives or shivs for druid knife fighters!