From my reading of some of the lore some characteristics of Knights of the Blazing Sun are that they; train every day to master combat as much as humanly possible, they study warfare when they are not physically training, they look both interesting and kind of funny simultaneously, additionally, some reading and a video from Total War: Warhammer, indicated that they may be able to set their swords ablaze with fire, they also follow Myrmidia. Myrmidia, from what I have found, is “the embodiment of civilized tactics and strategies of warfare." with that said lets talk about some abilities.
- 1)Blazing Blade and Vicious slash: Damage type of the DoT could be changed to elemental. Blazing blade is literally called Blazing blade, and the in-game tool tip states that “the force of the sun fills your blade.” I think that this would be thematically accurate. Keeping the initial strike physical would differentiate it from the Chosen in that the knight is a “normal” human hitting things with a magic weapon and the chosen is an entirely chaos fueled individual who is enhanced by the powers of Tzeentch. This would probably be an increase in damage, which right now the knight has the worst damage among tanks in the game, so I don’t know if any numbers would need to change in regards to its damage.
2) Overpowering Swing: 7 point path of conquest tactic, currently increases the incoming critical hit rate of enemies that are hit with arcing swing by 10%. This tactic is similar to the chosen’s personal critical hit increasing tactic in obvious ways. The chosen also turns his channeled attack, relentless, into spirit damage. Which, if I am not mistaken, is pretty big boost to damage. Knights shouldn’t necessarily have a big increase to damage from their 7 point tactic since applying a wounds de-buff and a crit buff on opponents is pretty strong. The problem I see is that this is often the one of, or the only reason to be in path of conquest, in addition this requires a tactic slot which is a rather large cost. I propose that this tactic which is already supportive in nature have a defensive boost tacked on as well, my thought would be something along the lines of “enemies affected by arcing swing also have an 5% increased chance to be parried, blocked, dodged and disrupted,” a kind of reverse Pierce Defenses (this could be entirely to strong and I am not sure anything like this is in the game). This would be reflective of the idea that knights are well trained in combat, tactics, and strategy, and thus using said training to gain a
tactical advantage against opponents, as well as bring a bit more group utility in the conquest line without increasing the knights damage.
3) Efficient swings: 11 point path of conquest tactic, currently reduces the cost of path of conquest abilities by 35%. While talking about this tactic I would also like to say that the chosen has a similar tactic in its path of corruption tree that is equally uninteresting and, in my opinion, useless. This tactic just seems like garbage, especially for the capstone tactic of the tree, as does the chosen’s tactic. While this actually fits with the idea that Knights train for huge amounts of time which would increase their effectiveness and stamina, simply having a 35% reduction in costs is very lackluster. The proposed change to this tactic would be; 25% lower costs for conquest abilities (reflective of training and endurance) +10% parry rate (there are similar effects from other classes tactics, further reflecting the knights combat and warfare training) Myrmidia’s Fury now has 25% armour penetration (reflective of constant training and the ability to effectively place your attacks to maximize efficacy). A note on Myrmidia’s Fury, Gottschalt’s guide has this to say about the ability “-The animation looks pretty nice, but otherwise it’s a poor man’s channel combo, almost always outdone by precision strike spam in same duration. It’s only saving grace that it is marginally more AP efficient than Precision strike.” In other words, this skill currently is a waste of a slot. Precision strike is already a reference to the extensive training a knight goes through on a regular basis, the precision gained from this training allows them to better connect with areas that are not as well armoured. Sinking 11 points in conquest to get this would extend this idea of precision to their channeled attack, as well as being more effective while, with the exception of the armour pen, staying less directly damaging then the chosen.
4) Staggering impact: This skill seems rather weak for being the non-morale capstone, though, I don’t know how it could be changed.
I have no interest in pushing for things that are over tuned, if the values I suggest are too strong then say so, additionally tanks who spec in their two-hand tree do not need to be dps machines, but should have potential tools to be an effective part of whatever faction they are on and to allow more build diversity. This is an attempt to bring about ideas to create a more interesting class based on what, to me at least, seems to be its purpose and theme in the game. As always critique, call me an idiot, I don’t care if you do. As discourse is often times the path to new and greater ideas. I should also say I know nothing on the numbers side of balance, if numbers are too strong then say so. I think I should also add that I have been on RoR for some time now, before the population increase, and that the majority of the time I have been playing Blackguard. When I read the thread seeking to debate the way order is, I saw several times that order needs more tanks. Since this is the best role in the game, I decided to make a knight so that I could help with what appeared to be a population disparity between the factions.
I know there are other things the devs could spend time tuning, and I am appreciative of anyone reading this and any feedback given (except for trolls obv). I think that as players we should look at the game in a manner that would be helpful to devs. Simply making remarks in in-game chat channels like “devs need to do something about x” provides neither solutions nor suggestions that can be explored.
