[Poruku]

- Multiple passives for tankiness, including a lot of critical evade
- That 20% physical damage reduction when enemies are feared
- Multiple ways to gain plenty of hit chance
- Fear application resulting in multiple strong effects
- High damage offensive skills with versatile ranges, with a mix of physical and magic
- Two good gap closers
- An aoe skill
- The ability to apply clumsy and interference
- Very good tools for tanking
- Poison purge
- Checkmate being just amazing, and having the option to ignore evasion on parry or main class bash.

Overall, I think black knight is simply overloaded with everything you could possibly want. Tankiness, hit, damage, mobility, special effects. It's not overly flashy, but the most solid well-rounded class.

I'd like to perhaps call for a bit of a nerf to BK passives especially. The identity of the class as a whole is of course that it's all-around solid and tanky. I just see so many these days, it seems like it's the optimal and automatic choice for any build that wants to be tanky at all. It's paired with potentially every other class because of this. It doesn't help that every black knight essentially takes the same skills. You just grab all the good skills and all the passives (grandmaster is cool tho).

I don't want to say black knight is boring, but it's certainly a simple yet powerful and versatile class. I'm thinking perhaps making its defenses and buffs more situational, lowering their effectiveness, or just making the class focused on those passives with less powerful abilities. Alternatively, making strategic use of black wind more essential or making the player choose certain parts of BK they want instead of allowing the use of everything good (for instance making sudden death and the offensive skills 5 ranks).

I'd love any thoughts.

[Snake]

If anything I'd nerf a Black Knight's damage. They're the only proper tanks SL2 currently has, and touching anything unrelated to their DPS will result in pretty sad outcomes for the class.

[Balor]

I think that you'd be able to sufficiently nerf Black Knight by changing their magic damage skills to physical damage. As Bright Bishop, Crescent Rook, and Boardshaker outperform any physical damage alternatives.

That is all I think would be necessary if we wanted to nerf them. However I feel that BK is only as good as it is right now due to the shifting meta where critical evade has become more valuable in light of luck no longer being a mandatory stat for evasion and crit.

I think BK could be touched, but I feel in the long list of priorities they are one of the few classes that lives up to their class mythos in a healthy way.

[Jeff]

Or we can look to buff classes that are used less frequently and are less flexible. Ideally, you want every class to be appealing for its own reasons when you are weighing your options for a main and sub class. In reality, there are only a handful of options with the rest being either too niche or too specialized (e.g. Magic Gunner, Firebird, Rune Magician, etc.).

[Poruku]

That's quite true. I guess Black Knight is more of a gold standard than outright problematic. But I do feel like they could use a slight nerf perhaps in the skill rank requirement department at least.

I do agree though, that other classes should be brought to that level of effectiveness

[Autumn]

Black Knight used to feel very bad to play before, it wasn't even overly good at what it was specialized for, the tipping scale was the dynamic scaling for Crescent Rook mostly, given how easy it is to land, how it is a mobility skill not restricted by immobilizes and travels a good distance.

Crescent Rook doesn't need to be as good as it is, and Board Shaker needs to scale much less on Earth ATK as well, but I don't agree that Bright Bishop should be touched given its difficulty of being landed. Its not that the dynamic scaling made it too good, but really amplified just how high this sort of elemental scaling available to a non-spell really is. (Especially when it can also lightning crit.)

[Lolzytripd]

If anything a few of their magic ls should be made spells that qualify soldier weapons as casting tools

[PantherPrincess]

I wouldn't say it's their hit and crit evade skills (among other things you've listed) they performatively do that's the issue at all. The main offenders imo are Crescent Rook ignoring immobilize and dealing magic damage AND a chance at applying interference on top of that as well as Board Shaker and it's high earth scaling. However, I'm not too worried about Board Shaker as it has a long cooldown last I remember. I think the main one is Crescent Rook that's highly spammable and can help you in a lot of scenarios where movement is needed. You also have to remember that you cannot get every single thing listed as a non-destiny or non main class build. My only input is lower the earth damage scaling for Board Shaker by maybe 20% (but at the same time keep in mind if you're doing this the 4 round cooldown would need to be lowered as well) and Crescent Rook should not ignore immobilize + have at least a 2 round cooldown for that interference status it may apply.

[Kazzy]

Black Knight isn't overloaded. It's updated. Most classes haven't seen an overhaul in the same way BK and Verglas have.

Instead of taking things away, we should be overhauling the other classes to be at the same level.

[Snake]

Blessed Kaz.