A Guide for The Knight (Updated for 6.5.0)

This guide while most likely not put together that amazingly and probably won't be able to cover every in-depth mechanic and itty-bitty molecule of information that someone like Otzdarva would give you, I want to try my best to lay down the ground work for how you should put more strategy into what's currently considered the weakest killer, and what you should be thinking when chasing a survivor.

The Knight is NOT a Legion, he's a Clown

Starting off this guide with an ironically funny quote, I want to lay down the main issue I see when people say the Knight is a dogsh*t killer; people play him like he's a rushdown killer, and not a STRATEGY killer.

Your Guards are a tool, not a weapon. They may happen to injure or even down a survivor, but they're not intended to be a consistent and meanwhile source of damage, they are simply to help YOU get the damage. (The Devs themselves stated this fact)

Of course you're going to think the killer is trash if you're just spamming your power and thinking "yea my carnifex will get the hit" and be disappointed when you didn't pressure or force the survivor into a bad situation.

Now, since you do have a surprise factor with your Guards thanks to the most recent patch (6.5.0) and they start their hunt much faster after a long patrol, they're much more effective at their job!
But I still don't think even if they're better at attacking Survivors, that you should treat them like mini-killers.

The Main Strategy (tm)

Most people will tell you that all you need to do as Knight is insta-place your guard at a loop and that's the entire Killer. And sometimes that's true, but really only if the loop you're on is in the corner of the map. You have the benefit of being able to set a Guard on top of someone without them realizing you're placing one on their toes, as long as you make a path longer than 10 meters.


In this beautifully created drawing, you can see the Shack in what i personally believe to be your best place to be.

This is the situation you want to be in any time you're looping a survivor, and you'd assume "just insta-place at the window, right?"

No.

Like I said, your Guards are a tool, and you are wasting them if you just place them down like Artist crows. Yea sure maybe the Guard would detect the survivor but what good does that do for you? You got them to run from shack, yippee, now you get to follow them across half the map for 5 minutes.


In this example, the survivor has two choices now, run into the Guard's path and get hunted or run to the pallet or window into you, either way they're most likely getting hit. And if you have addons to increase the view-circle's size or just have jailer, this is only better.

Depending on their position and what Guard you have, of course it's not guaranteed you'll hit them, but being able to consistently set up these situations will put that survivor in a bad spot.

I also heard a great tip by a Knight I played against recently: Corral when their injured, otherwise Harass if they're healthy.
Personally I don't fully agree with this, as part of what helps you get those injures to begin with is being able to force a Survivor into a bad situation, but I think it's a good idea to have that in the back of your head of chasing one person while your Guard is on another person. That means there's two people being useless for the duration of the Hunt.

After 6.5.0:
Now that Knight is a little better at surprising people with Guards and catching up afterwards, he's actually a little better around places like Shack or some open areas if you decide to make big patrols (especially with Call to Arms)

The "Main Strategy" is still applicable, but now you have the extra quality of life like dropping a Guard on top of a gen from far away and nearly guaranteeing a hunt, and in some cases Guard hits actually are more common doing this, that's cool!

Remember also that if you're gonna put a Guard into a loop on someone you're chasing, try to extend the patrol past the loop you're setting the Guard where you think the Survivor will go. This ensures, especially with Jailer, that if they're outside the loop they might get seen easier + since the vision ring takes time to extend at the start of a patrol, that will allow the ring to be fully expanded by the time it goes inside the loop.

By the way, here's a good tip for Jungle Gyms, Stealthy Survivors or Pallet Campers, whatever you're dealing with; If a Survivor makes a loud noise notification while inside a Guard's "vision ring", they'll actually hear the Survivor and start Hunting!

If a Survivor stuns you with a pallet or misses a skillcheck while a Guard is near, he'll be notified.

Holding W

While it's basically unavoidable, there are ways you can prevent the dreaded W key. (unless you're on current Eyrie's, but hey it's getting reworked so yippee)

Don't just follow the survivor along with your Guard, there's no point in basically becoming a Guard yourself. Try to see where the Survivor would have to go and go there instead, you want to shut down any opportunity the Survivor has to escape, and since Guards slow down when phasing through pallets and windows, you want to punish the Survivor for using them.


By the way, since I don't know where to mention it, it's ok to use your power to break pallets and walls during chase. If you have Carnifex up, instead of using him to corral, you could insta-order him to break a pallet that the Survivor you're chasing wasted.

Don't rely on this, but keep it in mind.
Bonus Tip: Jailer and Assassin breaking a pallet can actually prevent a survivor from vaulting it, so potentially you could trap a survivor in a god pallet room because your slow *ss Guard is kicking a pallet. (The nurse's office in midwich comes to mind, for example)

If you're dealing with a Survivor you understand will basically always Hold W, you can try placing your Guard past where they currently are and keep extending it to like the next loop or something. Otherwise if you just can't get the Hunt, you can try giving up and harassing people on gens, and maybe you'll be able to surprise them later that way. Remember: Since 6.5.0, your Patrol orb is basically invisible past 10 meters, meaning you can insta-drop Guards on top of people with no warning.

Build Ideas

I haven't tried every build imaginable and I might actually come back to update this portion of the Guide, but I found a couple useful builds and even perks you could integrate into other builds:

Pain Res + Floods of Rage

You might be one of those people that feel gross using meta or slowdown perks, but trust me since your Guards don't activate Gen-Kick perks and you don't have a lot of mobility, your best bet is to run Pain Res.

Floods of Rage is great on Knight if you want to surprise dump a Guard right on top of some blendette (or if you're already in a chase and know where to cut someone off at)

Agitation is just because I like it, theoretically you could run I'm All Ears or whatever you want there, I just prefer it to get to Scourges more consistently.

And finally STBFL will basically want to be your main perk. STBFL can help you keep up in your chases and not create a "oh they're halfway across the map" scenario every time you injure. Keep this almost always.

Bloodhound??

Weirdly enough, and I'm not even sure if this is an oversight or not, but you can see Bloodhound pool auras while in your power for some reason. So you can perfectly track an injured survivor while drawing out a Patrol Path. Weird right? So if you want to abuse that go right ahead.

Pain Res and Surv of course just being so you can keep track of what gens are almost done and being worked on, and STBFL because it's really good on Knight.

Crowd Control, because funny

Since one of the Survivor's options to evade a Guard or even You is to vault windows, removing their ability to do so while also leaving you free to cut them off with a Patrol is what makes Crowd Control a somewhat surprisingly helpful perk.

Undying just to keep it alive, STBFL as usual, and Discordance could definitely be helpful if you want to interrupt gens with your Guard's Order.

Sloppy + Jolt

Jolt/Surge is probably a perk most Knights use because he's an M1 killer, and personally I don't run it because your entire power is forcing a survivor to run far away all the time. But if you like it, I won't stop you.

Sloppy + Bloodhound because again, you can see Bloodhound auras while in your power, so forcing a survivor to take longer to heal and bleed even more can help you keep them occupied running more than healing. oh and STBFL again.

That's it for my ideas on builds, I'm not gonna bloat this part of the guide with 2000 ideas for builds because that's not interesting, my recommendations are Information and Control perks, anything that removes their ability to get away from you or your Guard, or gives you the upperhand in knowing where to put those Guards.

Addon Suggestions

First things first, you might be tempted to run addons that reward mangled/hemorrhage or whatever when your Guard succeeds a hit. Honestly just avoid these ones, it's a waste of an addon slot because most cases your Guard will never hit your target usually.

The Iri Add-ons

Iridescent Company Banner is a surprisingly good Addon if you want to run an Endgame build or Crowd Control/Bamboozle build. CoconutRTS made a video last month showing off his "permanent bloodwarden" build with Knight. Not sure how long this will stay around but go and have fun.

Knight's Contract is also pretty alright, if you run this with Lightweight Greaves you might actually be able to catch out survivors and absolutely brutalize them, but that's in a perfect world. This is basically the Addon you'd run if you see a Blendette in the lobby and want to really punish her when you find her in a bush.

Your Main Add-Ons

Call to Arms is basically going to be your most used addon, like how Demo players are attached to Rat Liver or Black Heart. The speed bonus you get while creating your Patrol is amazing and will help you set up those previous strategies I tried my best to explain, and sure the Patrol Length is there too.


Dried Horsemeat is definitely going to be a much better addon after the upcoming buff happening to the Knight, because I bet you've seen your Jailer literally sniffing that Mikaela's rear before going "eh can't catch her" an inch before the injure. Alternatively this gives you more time to get in position to cut off a survivor.


Map of the Realm might be weird to put here, but the amount of times i've seen a guard's vision circle just barely reach a survivor's feet warrants me suggesting it as at least a thought when choosing add-ons. I mean hey, Jailer gets it too.

Now you might sit there and go "what about Gritty Lump or Tattered Tabard?" and to that I say... nah.

On the offchance your Guard doesn't detect any survivors, Tabard just makes your Guard take longer to end their Patrol and come back to you. Which means you'll either waste time chasing someone yourself or have to stop and smack your Guard to make them stop Patrolling.

Gritty Lump i've used fairly often but now that I put thought into it, a lot of my strategy falters when I realize "wait the Guard will leave where I want them to be even faster than if I didn't have this addon..." But hey it's still not a bad add-on, it just doesn't work with how I play Knight.

By the way since we're covering all the brown add-ons anyway, Pillaged Mead is alright if you run it with Battle Axe Head or have some kinda "destroy all pallets" build.

The Rest

Like I said before, any add-ons that require your Guards to injure a survivor I wouldn't run.

Town Watch's Torch is pretty alright, considering most times they don't hit, and you might actually get really good value if you do a normal chase with one survivor while your Guard stays on another, but I wouldn't rely on that really.

Similarly but probably more effective than Torch, Ironworker's Tongs can help you surprise the Survivor you're cutting off if you have to go around a large loop or building tile, but remember that they can see your sword sticking out above Autohaven tiles and similar.

All the add-ons that double a certain Guard are pretty simple, but I'd say you should only use those if your build or second add-on revolves around whatever Guard you choose. Pallet breaking for Carnie, Anti-Heal for Assassin, All-Seeing for Jailer, whatever you can come up with.

Blacksmith's Hammer is good, most people don't really go for the Standard anymore since it got buffed to take longer to appear, so most cases if you hit them or the Guard loses them, that Dead Hard or Lithe is gonna be hard to get back mid-chase.

Flint and Steel is... I mean maybe if you run dissolution? or just never break pallets? yea idk this doesn't seem worth it.

Healing Poultice is good. Especially with Infectious and Face the Darkness. MAKE THEM SCREAM HAHAHHAHAHAAA

and Grim Iron Mask is alright but honestly Blindness isn't a great status effect since most people play with friends, I guess if you have Knock Out and Third Seal as a whole "never see eachother" thing but really you have better options.

Is Knight For You?

This part is more asking an important question for what kind of playstyle are you looking for?

The Knight is almost like a loose Twins + Trap killer, but with a lot more activity than either.
You'll spend maybe most of your time setting up Patrol Paths, and then the remaining time following up on your (hopefully) successful Hunts by cutting off Survivors and harassing their ability to stay at safe loops.

Now compared to Twins, he feels a lot less punishing since you're not getting kicked in the face or missing what you thought was an easy pounce, instead his form of punishment is missed opportunities and wasted time. But compared to a Trap killer like Hag/Trapper he doesn't require setup time, and is a lot more hands-on in chases by setting up creative patrols and playing Goalie with the Survivor's safety routes.

If you feel like you'd be frustrated by not getting value out of your power, or you just don't like having to set things up to get downs, I don't think this one is for you. He's very much a Strategy killer, so you have to put a lot more thought than just your looping/mindgame skills.

Conclusion

I hope this Guide was any bit helpful to you, and despite my love for Knight I understand he is not a top-tier killer, but I also believe that he's not as weak as people say he is and that with the right strategies and mindset you can get more kills than you would've otherwise.

I should also mention I don't believe my strategies to be foolproof, there are some maps that just don't work for it and sometimes Survivors might slip out and you'll waste time chasing without a power, but knowing that you can drag your Guard across half the map to completely section off a corner is so helpful.

Also Knight is f*cking HOT and nobody can tell me otherwise, love you and if you have any more suggestions for this Guide, let me know.
or just comment silly sh*t i don't care

[76561199132152956]

for a knight main state of view i would recommend a info build like nurses,but as a knight who likes to snipe i like to use deerstalker to find ppl who got downed far away

[Haunt3d]

top tier guide, extremely based (knight is unfathomably hot)

[GangCripKushLolGroveStreet]

Surveillance is actually really good. i run it with pain res and jolt so i always drop the guards at gens

[Analbreacher]

very good guide, thanks