Agreed, they're in a good spot as they are, requiring 3-5 seconds of equip time followed by positioning. Wanting to raise the skill floor by making OHK headshot only is understandable, but the hitreg just isn't there to allow it to be a reliable mechanic.
Unless they buff the power knives hit method (ie its single line that is so short) to a fan-like method, power knives will become functionally worthless, even as a meme weapon.
Thank you! It also raises a few questions where in the same Dev post they wish to nerf Nano-armor cloak, to make killing Infils more consistent yet this change would make Powerknifes pointless and inconsistent. Knifing as whole is already unreliable. In the Dev notes it stated that it should give players "Time to react or go for headshots" to which I have the following to say: - You have to equip it (which takes time), which also means you have literally no ranged capabilities. - You have to activate it, which is loud. And having it on is loud. - You then have to manage to flank enemies via a flanking route, without getting seen, heard or detected on the minimap. - And once you're finally able to get within striking distance, you better hope nobody turns around and shotgun OHKs you. (Or your friendlies hitting who are also shooting at the enemy) - The hit registration often doesn't work, especially true for Headshots which no-one will pull off on a consistent basis. - The overhead arcing slash is way smaller, slower, and harder to hit than the sidesweep arc of a quickmelee. - If they catch you running after them, they can literally keep running and there's nothing you can do because: - The animation of a melee hit slows you down to a crawl (you can't run whilst hitting an enemy), and more often than not enemies who are running will be out of range by the time you get to the "hit" part of the animation, combine that with already questionable hit detection and latency. You'll never hit them. There's so many factors that could go wrong when powerknifing, yet the only thing we hear is how OP or annoying it is to be one-shot by a knife. You're literally bringing a knife to a gunfight. You're telling me that you can't shoot a player who's running at you with a knife? Or have someone or yourself have the awareness to watch your back when you know there's a knifer around? Players have plenty of opportunity to counter a power-knifer, just the large majority of players refuse to acknowledge or equip precautions to counter them and just want to focus on farming without care in the world. TLDR; If you let a powerknifer OHK you, then you let that happen.
There is a button to instantly go for wielding a knife. Lets you seitch quickly. I have a macro that switches and activates the knife, takes a mere moment.
I've died to people who killed me at night not moving because the knife sound was loud. This was at The Ascent too with lots of stuff going on around unless they were cheating. They messaged me saying they heard my knife. The power knife thing only works great if you've jumped some massive enemy stack outside the entrance and just go nuts while everyone is looking at the door but the mass killing doesn't last very long. You can just bombard with an aircraft and get More kills. You can run people over and other things for better results.
Pretty much, there's plenty of more way to go on a proper 'killstreak'. Rather than knifing, as knifing almost always ends up in death. There's so many more things you can do for better results, but it seems to be overlooked. Making a power knife obsolete, and nullifying the playstyle is really uncalled for.
The power knife range should be longer and be 3x louder. The fire rate can be decreased slightly this way people can tell someone is near them w/ it. I have a hard time trying to get melee kills as if you are a bit too far or turned a bit you cannot kill. People hardly stand still unless they are truly AFK. I've died like at least 10 times before 1 power knife kill most of the time. Same as with using shotguns at times. Getting killed by the same person 5 times or more sucks for the record. If I do it right, I don't die constantly which means if I don't use the wrong methods trying to "make it work" I get better KD and less frustrations. All shotguns should be buffed a bit (all are garbage without using the tighter spread attachment and a powerful 1-shot kill shotgun compared to Other methods like a VE-S Canis with unstable ammo and a laser-sight hip-shooting), power knives need to be better not worse. The combat environment is very dynamic. It's a race to kill before they kill you but when you are going 1v1 with certain methods it's really really really bad most of the time. VE-S Canis can reap me incredible results (as an infiltrator) compared to using a Shotgun or Power Melee as the only methods of choice. If I do it right I can get a 7:1 KD. When I try to make shotguns and Power Melee work (before the upcoming nerf) my KD is 1:8.
Honestly, powerknifes or knifes in general needing a rework of sorts was something that's been plagueing PS2 for a while now. If they nerfed powerknifes like this and fixed some of the core issues (hit detection, slowing down to a crawl when 'firing' + a buff to their overall speed) it wouldn't be as bad, but this? This is unacceptable.
Power knives are ultra garbage now. All power knives should do 1050 damage when activated to make them worth using.
