I know there has been a lot of knight threads saying how they are subpar but heres another.

Knight combat has too much factors affecting it which is nice in a way but I've come to a point where i think theres too many things to consider to come up with viable tactics.

Things to consider:

Rebound which is not exactly easy to time and estimate if used properly. It slows down a warriors offensive, which isnt really all that much if people are not artified. I dont think rebound should be changed as all warriors should learn how to deal with it. Raze as a single armbalance skill, i would say it is fair. I only mention it as it is something to consider when thinking of ways to work with a warriors offensive. The time of the rebound affects the chain of hits a warrior can do putting an effective time limit to a combo before the theres a need to raze.

Stancing is another factor that cuts back warriors offensive. It can go as far as protecting 3 limbs and it is easy to use and rotate. This forces warriors to move his/her hits or suffer consecutive missing. Taking into account that we cannot see where the stance is moved to we pretty much have to guess where it is or where it is not. Given that there are only 6 targetable limbs covering 3 means the knight has a 50% chance of hitting a stanced up limb. Which means 50% chance they have a high probability of missing.

Hit rate of warriors is not 100%. As a warrior with trans knighthood and virt combat i miss quite often. Even at trans combat warriors still miss quite often. It is bad enough needing to trans 2 skills to get some reliability out of our swings but what makes it really difficult is that us naturaly missing adds up with the probability that stancing gives. It is also confusing when we have to think was that miss a natural miss or was that because they were stancing up.

Then theres parry. Parry is very easy to use as it doesnt need balance or equilibrium to switch. Its also hard to read where the parry is because of this ease since a defender can pretty much change parry everytime the warrior swings. The chance effects of parry is also something to consider since it can range from stunning, disarming to giving off afflictions to an attacker.

Then theres resillience which cuts down damage of a warrior and increases the chance of shrugging. Shrugging was always a problem of knights as venom combos are hard to work with if you dont know what you're giving them. Afflictions are useless by themselves and if we cant come up with a pattern for these venoms then they will do close to nothing against someone who has a basic queue.

There is also the chance of venoms coming off the blade when they swing. This becomes a multiplier to the chances of the defender not becoming afflicted. It's easy to check though as you can weaponprobe both weapons to check for venoms but it is incredibly spammy if you chose to do so.

For swings theres also the chance of where the blow will actually land which we can only hope and pray goes to the right spot. When you swing a weapon you cannot control where it lands. You can only do that with three type of attacks the normal striking, lunge/crushing and pulp (2 for BM 3 for BC). Now if we could get all our afflictions from striking it would be fine but certain afflicts needs for us to swing which means if we actually managed to get an opening we need to roll the dice and hope our swing lands which leads to the next factor.

There is a also the lack of control with the bladmaster and bonecrusher afflictions. Considering we need to get limbs to certain stages the opening we make for ourselves can be very small. Even though we fulfill the requirments though (limb state, type of attack hitting) theres only a chance we get the affliction we actually want.

This may seem like a lot already but thats not even half of it as combat itself involves multiple variables (though most of those would be common to all classes). The problem here is when fighting people it usually comes down to who makes the first mistake, well or the biggest mistake. The window of opportunity so to speak isnt very big, but given a warrior was able to cause someone to make an error, given all the things to consider how often can they take advantage of the scenario. Also it imposes limitations on realistic tactics since the probability makes it very hard to make our moves complement each other.

I honestly think the randomness is too much. Dont get me wrong i love a challenge but sometimes it just feels like ill be either praying for salvation or praying the other person just falls over and die.

For suggestions i would say give knights some more reliability with their attacks or at least make it so that they arent so blind with their offensive. It doesnt have to be overpowering or new skills. Just simple things like let us know when we're hitting a stance by maybe changing the messages. Give us an effective way of checking for where to hit if there are so many ways of blocking it (with the current form the target would have probably changed stance and parry by the time we regain eq to attack and since changing doesnt really take balance or eq our means of checking becomes useless). Maybe show when people change stance and parry. Maybe show when someone shrugs off venoms. I honestly think we can do without the chance of venoms coming off weapons, isnt shrugging enough?

With the specialty afflictions what i hope for is that they dont overlap and getting state afflictions increase the more afflicted a certain limb is. ie a head can have a sliced forehead, scalped, sliced ears, slit or be beheaded. Say its 40% chance of slicing ears 30% for slicing 20% for scalping 10% for slitting 0% for beheading (seems like it!!!) if the head is on critical. How about if the ears are sliced off that takes it out of the chance afflictions and so the probability for the remaining afflictions increases. So in theory if you have 2 sliced ears sliced forehead scalped and a slitthroat next swing to your head is 100% behead.

okay ill go breath now...

You can double raze in Lusternia. Any class can whore shield against anyone else and do so with extremely effectiveness except Knights because you can double raze 2x faster (to destroy 4 shields) in the time that any other class can nullify/void ONCE.

Given the damage of warrior, they should miss some. Let's all remember that it is becoming common place for Knights that can deal 2,000+ damage per combo to the average person. Whereas there are people are exceptionally tanky, they are exceptionally powerful Knights (Ixion, for example, has a 3k haymaker on 99% of the population).

I have expert Combat. I tested parry with Murphy and found that while parrying my head 100%, he still hit through 33% of the time. It was only while I was parrying and stanced in the same location did it become 100% effective.

All Knights except Serenguard (who are stuck with Ancestral Curse and Dark Moon) have additional afflicting abilities. Imagine those heretic/infidel (which is like 6-9 afflictions) + inquistion paladins with huge afflicting ability... and Ur'guard have contagnation (which is decent in one-on-one) and poison gas (if Viscanti). You afflict better than most classes, truthfully and -far- better than Moondancers (even Moondancers with hexes because even for Mugwump, it takes 2 seconds to draw and 2 seconds to a toss a -single- hex).

Never said knights shouldnt miss and I actually said rebound was fine. Its the accumulation of factors thats overbearing and the suggestions were just subtle message type changes besides the venoms coming off weapons and the affliction suggestion.

Also consider that wounds range from 100% to 0% where 60% and below counts as critical. If it was spaced out evenly, sure.

i beg to differ on afflicting better than a hex moondancer... A hex moondancer can at least afflict with an end in mind. No randomness, the afflictions have something to do with each other which can lead to a lock or at the very least a soft lock. Knight afflictions at most can lead to a soft lock which is if you're lucky.

edit : pardon the edit narsrim i was editing while you were replying

Except those hexes don't come with a potential 2,000+ damage every 4 seconds or so (with stun if a bonecrusher).

aye but its not like healing and curing dont have their own balance. You can actually do both simoulatenously... and without reliability of the attacks it becomes hard to make the afflictions compliment the damage if that was what the knight was going for. As it stands they're two seperate things which, against an experience curer/healer, gets rectified and nulled very fast.

And the fact that, as they are, hexes are still crap.

Personally, I'd rather do 2k damage and have the chance of doing some afflictions, then hit with 6 afflictions gaurenteed, which most people have a way to cure.

2,000+ damage with a 3-4 second stun does not get nullified fast when it can be combined with other abilities like contagnation, poison gas, and venoms. Plus, -very- few people can heal 2,000 damage a round (and very very few when we toss in the stun factor).

Allhex also costs a ton of power. It costs nothing to wail at someone over and over for 2k+ damage with a 3-4 second stun if a bonecrusher.

though the very few isnt because only a select few have the capability of doing so, its because very few know how to handle such things. The former would have been a justification the latter changes as time goes by and people learn.

also its not very hard. I've been able to tank murphy with just sparkles. Given im an ur'guard i dont expect people to be able to do the same but hey add regen, passive abilities and sipping health everybody can do it.

I'm sorry but it isn't a "lack of ability" that stops most people from sipping 2,000+ damage a combo. Given that races like Merian, Faeling, and Mugwump have such -terrible- con, 1 combo damn near instant kills most of them. In fact, a haymaker Ixion style will (even if they are level 60-ish).

Ur'guard have the most resistance to physical damage of any class if you exclude racial factors (which an Ur'guard could easily take advantage of as well). There is no way to compare this to Magi/Hartstone/etc.

Look at the warrior afflictions on icing on the cake. You get the ability to cause massive damage to soft targets, and what's more, you get a chance of afflicting them.

also 2k damage you guys are comparing artified players to non artified players... that does not really stand for much

i mean you can give someone all those regen, health arties etc to counter ixions offensive arties and it would pretty much be a different story.

I don't think you should have to buy arties to be successfull here. That was the problem with Achaea. /hijack

heh go away vesar I agree with you on that one though...