[Autumn]

Black Knight seems to be in a very very strong position at the current moment, it has its weaknesses still that it cannot overcome, but its still excelling at too many things at the moment.

First off lets go over Black Knight's identity:

1) This class' foremost and central feature is its defensive qualities, particularly those against physical damage specifically, it does an excellent job at this with Indomitable and Negation, as well as having useful stat padding passives like Iron Wall and Fortitude from Soldier.

2) This class has tools that lock down opponents and lull them into making incorrect moves, the tools that assist with this are crowd controls such as Board Shaker's clumsy, and directional parries such as Stalemate.

3) Situationally high damage opportunities in extremely close range with cooldown reliant skills, excels at using martial weaponry effectively without the need of relying on taking more actions than their opponent typically.

4) Its weaknesses would typically include chasing people down due to heavy armor's movement restrictions, issues contesting anyone fighting them from a high to extreme range, and having movement abilities beyond 5 range. The class also tends to struggle with finding ways around other movement restrictions such as Clumsy, Immobilize and Frozen, having only 1 method of blinking a set distance.

These are what I identify as staples with Black Knight, and for the most part it holds up to all of these tools very well, however I think Black Knight is excelling a few things it should not be excelling at in the current moment, those being:

1) Black Knight's current damage output is insanely high, checkmate has a very low cooldown and FP cost, making its spamability incredibly consistent with effectively no cost. Crescent Rook and Bright Bishop currently deal as much, if not more damage than spells due to the way they scale and allow them to flip on magic damage mode against other tanks. Board Shaker's damage is arguably high but is justified by it's extremely long cooldown.

2) Heavy Armor choices currently are stellar in comparison to many other torsos, what not with Bellplate, Terrasque Shell and Dragon King Armor all being solid choices in today's current scene.

3) The armor change recently that allowed it to take place after all other DRs massively benefitted this class, the class is impossible to physically damage effectively anymore, even with defense reductions such as burn and rampage, Indomitable is doing way too much reduction in conjunction with the high armor these classes typically sport.

What should be done to address these issues that I've brought up? Here are my suggestions so far:

1) Black Knight's damage numbers can use a simple tuning down, if Crescent Rook and Bright Bishop need to stay as magic damage, then they can't have as high numbers as they currently have, lowering the elemental scalings down will cut down on gaining too much damage from lightning/earth augments imo, if you lower them to 60% elemental scalings with 120% SWA ratios at max rank, these skills will still perform very well.

2) Heavy armor and shield choices currently need to be addressed on their own, those being mostly Bellplate and Fang Faced Shield, as both offer far too much value now that they apply to most effects in the game, and cannot be simply avoided anymore at a cost of dps.

3) This change needs to be addressed in a separate thread about armor, which I will eventually write up most likely, so this can be ignored for now.

Obviously anyone else is free to share their thoughts and contest my suggestions, I encourage it and want to know what other people think right now.

[FaeLenx]

I feel like black knight is mostly fine where it's at at the moment, but then I usually play classes that have them as a favorable matchup specifically because they're so common. They're probably the most played class in the game at the moment.

[sadbot]

I think that black knight has landed itself in a very good spot after the GR2 changes, but I think that it's for a multitude of reasons that aren't entirely to do with its own power. I'd say that it's certainly one of the better classes now and agree that it's probably one of the most played right now, but I don't think I'd agree with changing it much if at all.

I could see checkmate having a three round cooldown instead of two to be honest. It would make it a little less spammable for what is essentially black knight's signature/finishing move and reign in black knights damage a little, though I don't think it's unreasonably high. Crescent rook and bright bishop are both in a weird place. They definitely have very strong scaling, but their elements don't mesh well with black knight for gauging the damage numbers and actually taking advantage of it. wind is the opposite of what black knight wants to do, and faith isn't something that can be reasonably dumped into as much as other stats without severe sacrifice elsewhere, leaving the elemental scaling not adding much for its high % scaling. A skill focused build with a badge can be a different story though. The only suggestion I could make is perhaps keep their high scaling but make enchants not change their scaling element?

Not much to say about heavy armor and shields and armor reduction itself. They're a prime example of what I mean when I say that black knight is in a strong place due to factors that aren't its power as a class. I think they're strong sure, but I don't think they're so strong that they need nerfing.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I think that part of black knight just being in a good spot generally is due to their main weakness of mobility being one of the easiest things to cover with your other class.

TL;DR black knight has landed in a strong position since GR2 for a combination of reasons, but I don't think it's so strong that it needs to be reigned in much. It's massive popularity since GR2 speaks for itself of course, but I think no more than some minor changes like an extra turn of cooldown on checkmate or a fixed element scaling on crescent rook and bright bishop are needed to bring it more in line with comparable classes.

[Autumn]

I should at least clarify that what I am referring to are the elemental impacted versions of Crescent Rook and Bright Bishop, which now have dynamic scaling according to the element they invoke. Which is a very good feature to have don't get me wrong, and the numbers I provided in the OP are merely an extreme example.

[sadbot]

I agree that their damage is probably too high when you actually elemental impact them to a decent element, I just don't really know how to go about addressing that in a way that doesn't screw over those just using them as utility for their bonus effects with no badge at the cost of damage. My example of making the elemental scaling be fixed to their default element isn't exactly a stellar solution. I almost think it would be better if they were a more black knight suitable element by default and had lower scaling, which would also help to reign black knight in a little by making their damage type options a bit more narrow. I'm not sure how likely a change like that is though, considering their current elements are kinda tied to them thematically.

[Autumn]

I agree that their damage is probably too high when you actually elemental impact them to a decent element, I just don't really know how to go about addressing that in a way that doesn't screw over those just using them as utility for their bonus effects with no badge at the cost of damage. My example of making the elemental scaling be fixed to their default element isn't exactly a stellar solution. I almost think it would be better if they were a more black knight suitable element by default and had lower scaling, which would also help to reign black knight in a little by making their damage type options a bit more narrow. I'm not sure how likely a change like that is though, considering their current elements are kinda tied to them thematically.

The option I provided in the OP doesn't reduce damage by a lot, it bumps up SWA ratio in exchange for the elemental scaling, cutting down on the scaling of more or less defensive elemental options such as Earth, Ice or Fire, but rewarding those who still have good SWA ratios, this skill is a monster when combined with strong shield options.

That is the reasoning behind my line of thought, anyways.

[Kazzy]

BK, post rework, is fine. Other things are struggling because they haven't had the same treatment.

Leave BK, bring other classes to parity. These complaints happened with Verg too. Fix them all once they're on equal ground instead of comparing release classes to a class that was overhauled within the past year/two.

[Autumn]

BK, post rework, is fine. Other things are struggling because they haven't had the same treatment.

Leave BK, bring other classes to parity. These complaints happened with Verg too. Fix them all once they're on equal ground instead of comparing release classes to a class that was overhauled within the past year/two.

I could argue that Verglas has a few too many strong points too that needed addressing, and have in the past. And Verglas is my favorite class to play currently even, and so is Black Knight.

I love playing these classes, they're super fun and feel good again, however there are some imbalances that need addressing, that is completely natural to the experience of reworks and new classes, however are you gonna sit there and tell me to my face that the likes of razor rune, rapid kick, wretched oil, falcon strike, setting sun, winged serpent and void refraction were fine on release either? Probably not.

Is Black Knight fine? Debatable, I think a lot of the weight of the issues this class has atm rely on the armor change as of recent, which doesn't only apply to Black Knight, but they are certainly benefitting from. But I do know that if that were changed specifically, that changes nothing about the issues I've already brought up about Crescent Rook and Bright Bishop being the way they are at the current moment, their scalings are simply far too high for such diverse skills, and are unrelated to the armor issues of previous brought up.

However currently, the way to kill a black knight should not absolutely require armor shred, as defense shred isn't even doing the trick anymore due to the way DRs are interacting with armor. This gives them too free of a matchup into physical damage, when before it was just an advantage, a pretty sizeable one still.

I'm not trying to advocate to get the class nerfed into oblivion, I am bringing up that this class is strong in comparison to the others, and falls out of line with its core identities in a few areas, where at least with Verglas its strong point is the sheer amount of damage it can dish out, but isn't exactly reducing all your damage to sub-50 by itself.

[adamkad1]

BK, post rework, is fine. Other things are struggling because they haven't had the same treatment.

Leave BK, bring other classes to parity. These complaints happened with Verg too. Fix them all once they're on equal ground instead of comparing release classes to a class that was overhauled within the past year/two.

I agree, can we make Arbalest less suck? Its only trick is letting allies delete BK's

[sadbot]

Kazzy makes a good point, and the comparison to newly reworked verglas definitely seems on point. It's a class that's landed in a good spot after recent changes, largely due to the landscape of the game alongside it being a strong class. I'm still of the mind to dial it back slightly with small changes, the likes of an extra turn of cooldown on checkmate and a slight scaling nerf to crescent rook and bright bishop. Verglas saw similar small nerfs here and there after its rework.

I do agree with Kazzy that the problem is more other classes needing buffs/reworks than black knight needing nerfs though. I think a large part of black knight's popularity post GR2 is simply having solid ways to play into the hit/evade game with hit buffs, flatfoot and a situationally autohit basic attack in checkmate. Other classes, both base and promoted, are absolutely starved for this sort of thing now that it's so mandatory for everyone. I certainly think that martial artists at large have dropped out of favor, and I'd wager it's mostly due to them having nothing but a passive +10 hit between the base class and all of its promotions. I don't count boxer's scharfe simply because it requires you to already be hitting boxer skills to raise your schwarz sturm level, making it a useless pre GR2 relic when you actually need it.

PS I am also onboard for an arbalest rework. It's gotta be one of the least played classes for as long as I can remember. Such a cool concept. Such a terrible class.