Knights being able to slash/stab/shield with bomb out leaves archers with no options

Anyone saying that jabs can be easily countered is a fool. Obviously one knight isn't too much of a problem, but when multiple knights are jabbing you, you can't do anything. Nit only that but people with shit ping usually end up on top when they jab spam.

As for bombs. The radius needs to be decreased. I like them for bomb jumping, but too many knights use them to rack up kills and get even more money to buy bombs

 

Last time I saw you use a slash was literally last year

 

That's your fault for trying to 1v5 knights now is it?? use some cooperation.

 

If you were 1v3ing other knights that were brand new to the game and they just jab spammed, yeah I think that's a problem that they can win out of mindless/no skilled jabbing. Jabs are easy to counter when it's one person, but the jab stun keeps reseting when there's multiple people. I think a good player should be able to take on multiple people. Unless you think this game should just allow 1v1's the entire time. The reason I prefer slashing over jabbing is because I like that you know that you've messed up once you've lost a duel. When it comes to jabbing. You could be running away and get jabbed once which stuns you until everyone jabs/stun locks you. There is no counter play other than fleeing because if a single jab hits you, you can't escape. I think jabs should cancel slashes but not keep players stunned.

 

Not going to get involved with the jab spam issue, but the end of your post brings up a good point. There are a lot of knights who just throw bombs, as a #1 priority, it's really annoying.I'm not sure if they intended the knight to be played like this.

If I had to choose at this point it'd be either decrease bomb radius, this way they could still have fun chucking them as far as all get out, except get a kill would act more like a snipe than just a catch all kill for anyone in the general area, making it a tad more skillful.

 

Indeed, stuns really are a pain when it comes to jabbing. A lot of the reason people also complain about jab spamming is because a lot of the time, you rarely see jab spammers to the majority of slashers.
And trying to fight one can sometimes be difficult, and it's something that takes time for a lot people to solidify their muscle memory, but after you get use to it, just like slashes.
I believe its easier to deal with. It's because jabs were not intended by the developers to be spammed. And since any good player slashes, it just proves slashing is the new black.

See, if everyone was jab spamming, then our defence and play styles would be different, that's true, and although I agree with you when it comes to stunning. I believe KAG is a team co-operative game. You need to know how to change your style when those tasks come to hand.
I find it easy to be up against any knight whether that be slashing or jabbing. Because I've trained myself to learn how to deal with those situations. So would other people.

 

Yeah I'm learning about muscle memory in the brain and why it is so important to practice as best you can. Now I just let my reflexes kick in when I play and it's really hard to adjust when changes are made that are so drastic to combat.

 

Yeee, tell em, we light as feathers atm. Archers should be able to buy spike shoes

 

Works fine when I do it.

 

1. Unless you majorly screw up, it's almost guaranteed you can pussy from a bomb. Practice more.
2. This is slightly more difficult, but with pratice, you can do it most of the time in 1v1 situations. You need to keep your distance from the slash, and go close when they don't expect it. If they don't expect it, they can't slash you, sometimes even jab. If you are concentrating on the bomb, it's hard to quickly jab.
3. Going for the kill is rarely ideal unless you're experienced, they are 1 or less hearts or you have water. As @Zaedeor showed, you can really rek a knight with timing, skill and a little bit of luck. If you time their bomb (it's best to play knight to get used to the timing), you can stomp them at just the right time so they cannot release their bomb, and then rush away. Generally the stomp will do 1 heart, and the bomb will do 3. You will certainly take at least half a heart, but you can heal from their corpse :).
4. lol git rekt nerd

As I touched on before, playing knight is great for learning their cons, range, timings, etc. Try playing knight every so often and you'll see your archer improve a lot.

Please no, knight is fine as it is. A good archer can already run rings around them, now you want them to be one-shot, too? You, sir, are crazy.

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 26, 2015, Original Post Date: Feb 26, 2015 ---

Hearts are equally useful for archer and builder. As archer, I take one stack of arrows, any special arrows (usually 4 water, sometimes 2 water and a bomb) and fill the rest of my inventory and hands with hearts as I find them. If you play it safe, slashes and bombs won't hit you. Every archer hit is re-healed, and the same for jabs. Take away my heart per kill and I will be a very sad archer.

In fact, this would surely buff knights. All they need is a burger to heal to full, which costs the same no matter the class. Builder don't have inventory space to carry those so fuck them and archers will have to pay to heal just one heart now. What you suggest will result in camping archers, defensive builders and dominating knights :(.

 

This is about the 1000th time I've seen this exact comment, or ones nearly identical to it. So, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out what is wrong with this comment and those like it:

• It is not actually a point.
• It suggests that the status quo is superior to an alternative by simple virtue of the fact that it "is already like that".
• This assertion simply cannot be true and anything more than an opinion, because there are innumerable threads debating the point. Without support, this statement it nothing but the first strike in a schoolyard slap-fight.
• The claim has literally no content to it other than the fact that you are of the "I like the status quo" opinion.

I'm sorry to call you out, man. I have no qualms with you, and I'm glad you're engaging on the topic. However, "it is fine as it is" comes off as pretty dismissive of the opinions of those on the other side of the issue, who are every bit as passionate about their opinions as you are. I think you'll find that there is just absolutely immense disagreement regarding the status of knights' balance, and game balance in general, and widespread consensus that something has to be done, but no consensus as to what to do.

I don't believe you're making a fair comparison here. In your example, you compare a veteran archer to a mediocre knight. A good archer can run rings around a mediocre knight, and eventually possibly kill him, but I only need to point to the k:d rankings of archer mains vs. knight mains to show you that in an even match, the knight always wins. I'm not saying the archer should be able to beat a knight in an average fair fight, but currently, a good archer can, at best, infuriate a good knight, but almost certainly not kill him.

Also, in your post, as well as many others, you go to great lengths to point out the many tricks and gimmicks you can use to make archer more playable, but those statements miss the point. The point is that the archer needs to make sure he's totally decked out and in really good form and skill in order to even have a chance out there. The knight just needs to spawn, scream "DEEEEERP!", and run into battle, and he's got a perfectly good chance of being successful. That is indicitive of the knight being well out of balance.

The reason that I proposed such a sweeping change is because I believe that the game balance is quite out of whack, and teensy-weensy little incremental changes will never get us there, just like filling a pool with an eye-dropper will never be successful. Ideally, I think that step one of balancing the classes should involve clearly and specifically identifying the role(s) that you want each class to fill. Statements like "archers are for support" are simply just not clear and specific enough to be of any use, which is why that statement is also maddening.

Once those roles are figured out, the next step is to make sure that the classes don't have abilities that allow them to perform the roles that were specified as being for another class; that undermines the balance and reduces the justification for that other class' existence. A prime example of this is the keg. In much earlier builds, the builder was the only class that was capable of taking down or digging through enemy structures; it was pretty clear that the builder's roles were to build his/her team's bases, and (with his team covering him) destroy/steal/undermine enemy bases. When the keg was added, the knight became better at that role the builder had, and made that role of the builder largely redundant. The same case can be stated for the bomb arrow, as well as the regular knight bomb. When all the classes can kill buildings, that steps on the builder's toes and makes the class seem more useless than it was.

Think of the converse situation. Imagine that Geti were to put in some awesome battle-axe item that only the builder could buy and use that the builder can charge up and swing for 3 hearts of damage to an opponent. That would be a pretty flagrant example of the builder usurping the knight's role as the battle tank out front, would it not? This is exactly how the builder class feels about the keg, bomb, and bomb arrow.

I know I sound like a broken record, but balance is tricky business. There's a couple of right ways to do it, and a million wrong ways. Tweaking this and fiddling with that is what you do at the end, when the game is already balanced and you're putting on the finishing touches and last coat of polish. If the game is not terribly well balanced, which is the position held by me, and apparently numerous others, then one of the best approaches is to look at the game as a whole, and try to balance the whole thing.

Treating things like knight health or bomb arrow damage as sacred, just to avoid rocking the boat, is fallacious and will be a constant obstacle to balance. The whole thing must be treated as a single unit, and a wide variety of things must be tried-- crazy things, drastic things, and things that piss people off. You'll know once you've got it right, because threads like these will become far more scarce, and begin to contain fewer and fewer valid arguments against the status quo. Until then, you're not done, and nothing is "fine as it is".

 

I can run rings around noob knights, mediocre knights, pro knights. I mean, sure, a good knight will catch my mistake more easily than a noob or mediocre player, but if I don't make a mistake, or even very few, knights can't touch me. Even without much skill, you can still easily outplay a knight. Just use grapple and shotgun on them and they can't do shit.

You say that this is in direct combat, TDM style, which is completely true. It is. In CTF, scurrying away is losing your team ground - but the archer's job isn't to take ground. Each class has their own role in the battlefield. Knight fight enemies, secures ground, and destroys any obstacles in their way. Archers back up the knights up using a number of different methods (mindless shooting, water spam, destroy towers, distracting, pissing off the enemy). Builders come along afterwards and clean up, sometimes coming during the fight if necessary to block entrances/exits.

What you suggest is to lower health and lower damage of knights, but why? In CTF, the general idea is that knights are only supposed to fight knights, archers are just there to be cunts. And what do you do with a cunt? You blow them up, you kill them. But how can you kill someone who is faster than you, stronger than you and out ranges you. You don't. They just stay there, running rings around you, pissing you off, not a care in the world.

And I mean, I don't even know why you want builders to be stronger (comparatively), they can already take 2 jabs or a slash when they're supposed to be the most useful class and the most careful one.

 

I'm not godlike, I'm pretty meh tbh, but I can still deal with knights fine.

Builders are meant to build, not destroy. I fucking hate tunneling in this game and anything that takes from it (kegs, bomb arrows, etc) is good in my books. Maybe you disagree, maybe you don't, but I don't see any reason to enjoy spamming doors and slashing in hope that you hit something. And that's all builders are good for in aggressive destruction.

I agree, the knight should not have a water bomb. It's stupid and I really hope it is removed. Water arrow, however, is good for helping allies to kill enemies.

Shield surfing is fast, but I don't see how that's a problem. You have to stop before you can charge a slash and you need a pretty flat area to get good distance with it.

The game doesn't need constant tweaking. The game is enjoyable (balance isn't a necessary word as you can choose your class) as it is and changing little details for no reason isn't very good for those who play a lot and competitively because it fucks over the whole meta and your enjoyment of the game. See: shotgun, knight nerf, etc.

Instead, what should be focused on is increasing enjoyment of the game by removing OP bullshit such as water bombs and boulders.

 

Um a lot of complaining about what classes should be able to do here lol. Ive given up about arguing what classes should be able to do because knights are both ranged and a close combat class (like archers) so instead of stating why a class should be faster or less ranged someone should give a reason

If the builder's job is only to build and they're not suppose to destroy or attack(when the chance arises) then no one would ever play builder in a pub match because it would just be pointless busy work. Honestly the one thng I would like to see is damage taken depending on the class on universal ie a pickaxe to an archer being 1/2 hear but a pickaxe to an unshielded knight being 1 heart and something happening with jabs that way too

also any one else really want a mine buff too?

 

I know it is a common issue on forums where people will make assertions with no support for their point of view. I think some of the posts here have that is going on, but certainly not all. For example, I have stated that the reasons why I I support my point of view involve the clear establishment of roles for the different classes. Currently, the classes seem to be a mash-up of "fan-favorite" and forum suggestion abilities, but with no direction. I feel that methodology has led to some of the class abilities greatly overstepping their roles, while other classes are relegated to the back, with little justification for their existence.

That's why I make the suggestions I do. I believe that at some point, the developers of this game envisioned the three classes to have three distinct sets of roles on the battlefield, but feature creep and incessant pressure from the community muddied the original vision and got us to the point today where knights get all the kills, archers and knights blow up all the buildings (with some exception for very good battle builders), archers are mediocre to poor at getting kills, and builders have little role outside of the fort.

That is a very good point! If the builder were meant only to build, he wouldn't be able to break blocks so well. Also, it seems nonsensical to me that the development team would make a class with such a limited role. As defined by Blue_Tiger, this would be the way builders would work:

1. He builds the structures at the beginning of the game, then switches to another class.
2. The base gets damaged, so he switches back to builder to make repairs, then switches back to a combat class.
3. Repeat step 2.

This is simply far too limited. The builder would then ONLY be useful for tiny little periods of time, and useless at all other times. If this were true, it would make being a builder even more of a thankless, tedious chore than I already was lamenting in my earlier post.

Another facet of game balance involves class usefulness and participation. The classes all have to have enough useful skills and well-defined (not redundant with other classes) roles to be useful in many different situations, at nearly any point in the game. The fact is that after build time, almost everyone switches to knight. They do that because they want to participate, and knight is by far the most effective. Some people play as archer because it is a lot of fun, but certainly not because it is more effective. Only the most skilled archers can hold their own in a fight with knights, and even then, the slightest slip is fatal. For builder mains, only the most skilled will dare step out of the fort, because battle building is increasingly difficult due to the ever-growing scope of knight abilities. The rest just minecraft, because they like builder, but can't do anything useful.

You can blame the behavior on newbies, or people being bad, or whatever you want, but the fact is that since the game went into beta, these things have been true. I find it much more likely that there are game balance issues, rather than that everyone's just too bad and not "playing right". I have even specified a number of ways in which the classes are specifically imbalanced.

I don't hear a lot of refuting of these points, though. The majority of what I'm hearing is "I disagree" and "It's fine as it is" without any refutations of my points or points of your own. If this is to be a discussion, we're going to need a little more than me saying "I believe ABC, because XYZ." and others replying "NUH UH!".

 

You are misunderstanding my point. The builder isn't supposed to be stuck to one base. Everyone is builder in build phase (except lazy cunts like myself), they build a fort. Then, once build phase is over, people attack. Once ground is gained, builders are supposed to move forwards and build mini-forts, safe zones, tunnels and shops. Going to a combat class is completely useless if any ground is just taken back by the enemy team.

You are right. Solo knight > Solo archer. However, that's not what KAG is, KAG is a team based game no matter what angle you look at it. So long as the knight isn't total shit, and the archer knows how to aim, 1 archer + 1 knight dominates 2 knights. The same for 1 archer + 2 knights vs. 3 knights. The arrows aren't just there to be like "LOL", they actually do damage. And when an archer knows how to play, he gets his water and fire arrows out and really fucks over the enemy.

I have given numerous points to argue with you so I don't know what you're talking about.