Knight

[Allibernus]

What you guys thinking about the knight now? I'm finding very difficult to play with him in hard mode. He could take less damage by default, I guess. And maybe they could consider merging 1 point in defense tree with another one, so you can maximize it with 4 points instead of 5.

[Dwarfogus]

Originally posted by Allibernus:

What you guys thinking about the knight now?

Well, if we're speaking of his Defense skill tree, knight's block is almost overpowered in the first stage: you can block-stun the blue goblin, golden floating eye and the silver slime too! Bosses are very different in this regard (as far as I'm concerned, you can only block goblin king's axe dash), but I almost every time find upgraded mobs doing more damage to me than the actual bosses of the caves. On part of the sturdiness of the knight, yes, he's not that sturdy without the active usage of block, especially in comparison with lvl 2 berserk wildling, with 50% less damage on hit. I find it a bit unfair, but that's how it is.
Furthermore, knight is very, very vulnerable to elemental damage and projectiles, and can't really take a direct hit in water (with some exceptions), thus entering any of the bonus levels can end your run if you main the defense skill.

Let's move to his holy perks! Holy light +fast hitting weapon (dagger, cla, etc.) is still pretty viable in Hard mode, dps is extremely high, given the amount of knight's default strength, combining this with ice ball is very deadly indeed.
Last two perks of Holy were never viable (even if the elemental protection on the Holy Shield seems very useful, keeping the charge of the Holy Light on for it to work is weird) , I wish they were buffed in some interesting way. Instead of simply giving you a chance to soak one extra hit, Second Chance could give you 3 seconds of invulnerability, it would be much more useful and suitable for last perk in this tree.

And last but not least, his Sword perk tree. If you main this tree, your run depends on how good of a sword you'll get. A lot of the times I didn't even get any! In that situation, knight is viable up until catacombs, where he will struggle for his life even against the usual mobs (because of their high health pool and damage compared to previous stage). However, if luck is on your side, knight with the Quick draw and Dragonslayer/Bonesword is a wrecking ball! Good range, good speed, a great variety of attacks, everything speaks death to your foes, and, combined with the Holy lvl 2 perk you get about 25-30% damage increase. Still very suitable for beating the Hardmode.
(His new attack on the fourth perk is very fun to use but there's not much to it. If you are in a multiplayer with a mage, enchant the sword for insane elemental damage on the spin).

I apologize if you find my answer too clarifying, you most likely know most of the things about the knight at this moment, nevertheless, I wanted to put my two cents in here :›

[Starch]

In my personal opinion holy can be skipped, I'd recommend pumping sword or defense first and then switching to the one you ignored. Defense is quite good against a variety of enemies and bosses, reflex stancing the golem boss for 999 damage us a favorite of mine. Sword speaks for itself, it's very good damage even without finding a good sword.

[Allibernus]

"Second Chance could give you 3 seconds of invulnerability, it would be much more useful and suitable for last perk in this tree". Good idea.

[Allibernus]

Or, the last holy point could give him an aura that grants damage reduction for him and all nearby players. Or something like that.

[Allibernus]

Originally posted by Starch:

In my personal opinion holy can be skipped, I'd recommend pumping sword or defense first and then switching to the one you ignored. Defense is quite good against a variety of enemies and bosses, reflex stancing the golem boss for 999 damage us a favorite of mine. Sword speaks for itself, it's very good damage even without finding a good sword.

I'll give this another try. I never liked the sword tree. But, I used to make a solid build with holy + defense + vit and still was able to dish some good damage with the axe and claw (plus puches gloves). However, since the nerfs, my build sucks. So, I'm gonna try what you are suggesting and see what happens.