whats with the knife zealot thing

[lega]

why is it good? is it really?

[Wakipai Pero #PLAYGG]

Run fast, can't die, most can't kill as well though

[Dovahbear]

It's very effective for the survival of your character, you will be nearly invincible at the low low price of carpal tunnel syndrome.

[jano el pajero]

you need the blessing whit bleed on non weak spot hit

perk for meele crit on bleeding targets
perk for 75% toughness damage reduction on crit

[✠ Red, Ghost of the Creek]

BLEED BUILDS

[Rаndo]

No

[LoveTruffle]

If you don't know how to avoid getting hit, it's great. If you know how to avoid getting hit, it's not worth the drop in damage output. The only thing it's exceptional at dealing with is Daemonhosts, which are avoidable anyway.

[DLCI]

It can have a lot of potential modifiers that all stack together to multiply small hits into big damage. Light attacks naturally only do ~40-50 damage even when damage attribute is at max, but they naturally have triple damage weakspot hits (150) and double damage critical hits (~120).

This is before you apply any of the attribute multipliers too, which are up to 1.15x damage vs. the first target and 2.3x damage on critical hits or weakspot hits. The damage keeps scaling higher and higher, and if you have a perfect knife it can do a very high amount of damage .

It might even be close to the highest melee dps at peak output, since it will be doing massive weakspot critical hits and can top out at ~65% crit chance with the right perks/blessings once you get the bloodletting stacks rolling from the zealot feat.


Therein lies the flaw, though.

If you have less than ~70-75% in one of the core attributes (damage + finesse, and to a lesser extent first target/penetration) and/or do not have some combination of a bleed blessing (flesh tear or lacerate) + one of the better dps boosting blessings (backstab, mercy-kill, shred), the damage potential falls off very sharply.



As you start getting farther away from a "perfect roll" it becomes the typical meme joke weapon of all the red-mask tryhards who THINK they are playing the top meta build while they spend 2-3 minutes trying to dance around a slowly bleeding horde of poxwalkers.

Instead of a deadly assassin striking down scores with every stroke of your blade, you become more like an crazy homeless person with a rusty swiss-arm- knife who is desperately trying to kill anything you can before you run out of dodges.

So in summary -

perfect 370+ rating knife roll + best blessings = highest dps potential in the game

decent 330-350 rating knife roll + at least t1 bleed blessing = good but not great

300-320 knife roll = somebody taped a "CARRY ME" sign to your back

[Kawk69]

the zealot knife is like immortality. you lose out on some damage output and crowd control for literally becoming a zoomy tank. on damnation is the only time you would 'need' it but there are still other viable options.

[Paintbrush]

I don't know about these "can't die" sentiments as I've seen them die aplenty. Also, zero crowd control. I'd take a zealot who knows how to use their melee for crowd control over single shot stabs and rushing around everywhere.

[LoveTruffle]

Originally posted by Paintbrush:

I don't know about these "can't die" sentiments as I've seen them die aplenty. Also, zero crowd control. I'd take a zealot who knows how to use their melee for crowd control over single shot stabs and rushing around everywhere.

The lack of stagger is the main reason I avoid them. They have almost zero control and I don't think knives get a bonus impact blessing that would make up for it.

[Shocknfunk]

Originally posted by LoveTruffle:

Originally posted by Paintbrush:

I don't know about these "can't die" sentiments as I've seen them die aplenty. Also, zero crowd control. I'd take a zealot who knows how to use their melee for crowd control over single shot stabs and rushing around everywhere.

The lack of stagger is the main reason I avoid them. They have almost zero control and I don't think knives get a bonus impact blessing that would make up for it.

Knife is specifically for bleeds, no impact what so ever.

[Rаndo]

Originally posted by Paintbrush:

I don't know about these "can't die" sentiments as I've seen them die aplenty. Also, zero crowd control. I'd take a zealot who knows how to use their melee for crowd control over single shot stabs and rushing around everywhere.

Really my main gripe with these knife cultists, sure you can't die, but if you're any half decent you could just not die and also have an actual decent damage output/crowd control with an actual good weapon.

I die a little inside every time I see knife zealots run around light attacking hordes.

[EmDriver]

The knife is fine but is in no way the best weapon for zealots. The weapons in this game are quite a bit more balanced then they were in VT2 and every weapon currently available for Zealot is good for damnation. It all depends on the right blessings, the player's play style, and can all out perform each other in specific situations.
The Knife is great for moving fast and is amazing for killing flax, unarmored, and infested enemies. Good for killing unyielding. It has great burst damage. It has poor push, block, cleave, stagger, crowd control, and damage to carapace armor. It takes a hit compared to other melee weapons when dealing with hordes because of it's cons.
Heres the part that, from what I have seen, many players haven't realized yet. It gimps your ult. The knife makes you fast so the charge, while still good, is better when you are using a weapon that makes you slow. The Zealot's ult gives you a free crit, so its not that good on a fast attack speed weapon that crits all the time anyways. Much more effective on a slow weapon with low crit.

[Hawkshot86]

It's high crit, so it works well with the bleed.

It's also extremely selfish and most zealots forget they're the tank. Plus the bleed build works just as well with any weapon that has crit increases on it.

[EmDriver]

Originally posted by Hawkshot86:

It's high crit, so it works well with the bleed.

It's also extremely selfish and most zealots forget they're the tank. Plus the bleed build works just as well with any weapon that has crit increases on it.

Nobody needs to tank, even on damnation. Frontline DPS and frontline tank are both wonderful options here. If the frontline is unable to deal with enemies in front of them though, and too many aggro to the back line, your forcing your team to take a DPS hit overall though and is not good. Besides, based on health and stagger potential, wouldn't Ogry be technically better to tank? It is true, melee based characters are just harder to play then ranged based characters. How hard a run fealt is heavily weighted on how well the frontline played. If the range stays behind the melee things generally go smoothly.