Suggestion: Revert the Power Knife Nerf

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Greb, Sep 8, 2022.

  1. Greb

    Nothing much more to say than the title already explains, really. Power knives being nerfed to not oneshot anymore seems a bit unnecessary. The reason being; for power knives to be able to one shot, the user is required to have it actively equipped. This locks the user into having to go into close range in order to pull off the one shot which after the fact leaves them completely vulnerable and will most likely die. On top of this, being able to actually land a hit with the knife is quite difficult on moving targets, so there is a degree of skill here.

    A lot of thought, coordination and timing goes into pulling of a successful kill with the power knife (or did), so I don't think a nerf was warranted personally.

    The only class that was able to utilise power knives effectively was infiltrator, to the point where you could take certain perks such as "Deep Operative" that makes you more difficult to see or "Nightmare" which allows you to turn invisible after a melee kill, thus making a sort of melee sub-class for the Infiltrator. This nerf effectively removes an entire sub-class from the game as there are virtually no scenarios where you can use power knives consistently and efficiently.

    I just... Really would like to play with power knives again. :'(
    • Up x 5
  2. BlackFox

    To be fair, Infiltrators are already the most hated class ingame, no need to make them that powerful again
  3. Somentine

    1) Don't give it back to Infil.
    2) Remove the activation, but only allow 1050 dmg from the back (or head).
    3) Nerf the quick knife damage to 334, the regular stab to 664.
    4) Decrease equip time.
    5) Give vampire a cd (even ~4-5 secs is okay) or make it a heal over time similar to regen implant (non-stacking, just refreshes the buff).
    5b) On that note, do the same shield regen over time to assimilate.
  4. AuricStarSand

    I've used power knife for a year or so & used 2 hit knife for 6 months. I'm so glad to not have to hit that power knife button anymore tbh. I'm never going to return to power knife even if they revert it to 1 hit again. I don't like that button to turn it on.

    Then even if they rid the need for that button & its auto online knife, I still wouldn't use it, as my enemies don't find the knife honorable when I kill them with it. Similarly I don't use blackhand piztol for the same reason, its a dishonorable cheese way to kill people.

    2 hit knife isn't even 1 second slower, it's 0.4 seconds slower or 0.6 slower, which is nothing. Well maybe not nothing, tho I'm still able to score 4 to 6 knife kill streaks once awhile just fine. The 2nd stab gets the honor, also sometimes I stab them once, some enemies need 3 hits like HA w/ shield, & I kill them fine too.

    Also the power knife will have a enemy vet kill you once awhile, just from him hearing the noise, a 2 hit knife that doesn't happen.

    So my only gripe with power knife is, that it's just 1 less item that has a reason to use. I don't want to 1 hit with it, dishonor. I don't want to press activate button, too much setup. & since it doesn't 1 hit anyways, its basically a weaker 2 hit knife. So how do they fix the knife? At this rate, giving the knife a utility effect is how. Make the knife release a smoke grenade on getting 2 kills or make the knife blind nearby enemies after 1 kill. Something like this. It's not not a power 1 hit knife, tho a power button utility effect knife with multiple utlity effect uses.

    The only thing the knife was originally good for before the nerf, was helping amatuer knifers learn how to knife, till they realize 2 hit knife is just as good. Yet that's barely a valid reason as most new players wouldn't afford the lumineree knife anyways.

    Either way knifers, stalkers, Infils require better ASP skills, not grenades access, tho legit actual ninja spy asp skills. That have nothing to do with grenade access as infils rarely use grenades. Grenades are for HA mainly. Not Infils. So most Infil ASP skills would be something that helps them sneak around or have more utlity, or use 2 pistols as stalker, or something else ninja like, a vanishing smoke grenade ability, or dodge roll for knifers, or bonus effect for pistol knifers. Really would value better Infil ASP skills. Other than getting 1 smoke grenade the Infil ASP skills are boring as not planned yet.
  5. Demigan

    1: Introduce a longer decloak time for infiltrators. 2 seconds minimum.
    2: Reintroduce the instakill on powerknives.

    #1 solves 99% of the problems with Infiltrators. This then allows Infiltrators to be fair when they have:
    • equal health and shields to the other classes
    • Access to more weapon types, a shotgun could be fair for Infiltrators due to the length of time it takes to decloak
    • Up x 2
  6. Exileant

    :( I feel your pain, it never should have been messed with. Because it was, I no longer knife either, not because I can't but because it is stupid to. They even went as far as removing the Defectors Claw setting..... I mean it is not even a Hybrid anymore.... They made the game much worse now, because I used to get a lot of newbie Knifers trying to kill me with it and absolutely wreck them for it.... I never under stood why, especially since infiltrators could be seen on radar even while cloaked. I was puzzled as to why they removed that ability too, but it is back now; Infiltrators can no longer hide... AT ALL, so there is no reason the knife should not be powered back up.

    o_O On PlayStation, people play as infiltrators for kicks, because a Light assaults mobility renders useless thanks to being able to use up to 10 impulse grenades combined with Ambush Jets. (I told everyone that would become a norm but they did not listen.) Add this nightmare to jitterbugging and just like that, you have an immortal soldier that hits will not register on, all without cheating. And they CAN kill with one hit to the body at a distance if they use a heavy Shotgun. So yeah, I agree. :mad: The entire update was lame and over all useless because another side affect of them taking it, is people are figuring out new horrible tricks to kill people.
    :confused: Yesterday, I encountered 2 Mosquitos that had figured out how to squeeze into the entrance of a Bio Dome. Considering it has access to a Banshee, and a Scythe and Dervish are too wide to accomplish this, I would say that is yet another unfair advantage T.R. has over everyone else.... So you would think: Leave V.S.alone with their angry wasp of a Light Dagger, right? WRONG! Not this forum's M.O. o_O They dropped a PLENTY of people before I introduced them to my Devastator. :D IT was so.... VERY REWARDING!
  7. Greb


    Dude, literally this. There are so many OTHER things that need addressing and out of the blue the power knife gets a hit? Crazy, honestly.

    I also don't understand how the power knife was unfair in anyway. Even with the cloak. You need to be right up in their face to one shot them, and if they move unexpectedly or you are off by an inch you miss and are revealed. BRUH.
    • Up x 1
  8. Mechwolf

    There's probably just a heavy main with too much authority and they wanted it done, so it was done.
    • Up x 1
  9. Somentine

    1hk anywhere on the body with clientside hit deteciton, can be taken with cloak, infinite ammo, quick equip and activation, able to sprint -> shoot -> sprint (similar to SGs), implant choices that make assim + old adren heavies and cara medics' regen look bad, brainless mechanic.

    The weapon should have never been introduced to the game, period. In the very least, keeping it out of Infil hands and making it conditionally 1hk would have made been relatively ok (this would also mean they could increase the range or 'bullet' speed a little to). Current state is bad, but better than reverting the nerf.
  10. RabidIBM

    I would agree with OP on the condition that they all make the same amount of noise.
    • Up x 2
  11. Demigan

    Ah yeah because the pump action shotgun is available on a cloaked class that can overcome virtually all downsides of the weapon, which makes it a fair comparison to the power knife!
    • Up x 1
  12. Greb

    ... What?
  13. Somentine

    u being srs?
  14. Demigan

    It is called "sarcasm", where I point something out by pretending to agree with by rephrasing your statement in a way that shows how obviously untrue your statement is.

    In this case: you pretend that just because pump-actions have the ability to OHK that OHK knives are OK. But that ignores that the OHK knives were available on Infiltrators who could overcome almost all disadvantages of the knife. There's a reason OHK knives are considered an Infiltrator weapon despite it being available to all classes.

    Your statement also ingores other factors, like a OHK knife (used to) having a OHK wherever you hit, while a pump shottie is slave to the RNG, requiring pinpoint precision to make sure enough pellets hit for that OHK and the player knowing the ranges where its possible.

    OHK knives on Infiltrators is nothing alike to the OHK of a pump-action shotguns. So saying "OH NOES WHY CHANGE THE OHK KNIFE WHEN OTHER THINGS CAN OHK TOO" is just an unfair comparison.
  15. Your Secret Admirer

    Fuujin and Pilot Melee combo still offer consistent OHK, who cares if it doesn't look like a tiny lightsaber?
  16. Demigan

    Because it takes an incling of skill to pull off and requires you to attack one person at a time compared to just spamming the attack button while running through a crowd.
  17. Amador

    Powerknives didn't need a nerf. They "fixed" something that wasn't broken and no one asked for.

    What they should've done was simply made the knives louder when activated. For example, I can easily hear the distinct sound of a TR Ripper from a distance, but I can't even distinctly hear the sound of an NC Carver or the VS Lumine Edge for some reason.

    Also seeing as we're on the topic of knives...

    The TR Chainblade, the NC Mag-Cutter and the VS Force-Blade were the original names of all the "Power Knives" in Planetside 1. I don't understand why Sony reversed the names of the knives for Planetside 2. I don't think anyone other than myself has pointed out this inconsistency, and I don't understand why Daybreak hasn't fixed Sony's mistake yet.
  18. AntDX316


    I was struggling to get kills even with the damage at 1050 before. I get more kills using Blackhand or the NS-61 Emissary.

    My KD when trying to get kills when it was at 1050 is 1:10. It's like this too when I try to get the shotgun to work but that is more like 1:5.
  19. Sumowning

    Pretty much, it's one of the biggest mistakes they've done in a while. Especially with a generally well-received update such as the Arsenal update, this was an absolute blemish on it's success. There was never a need for this nerf to begin with, hell even calling it a nerf would be downplaying it. It straight up removed the playstyle for the most part, there's absolutely no reason why people could run Powerknives now.

    The Dev notes were frankly just insulting: "Dev Note: Power knives consistently kill with two shots to the body or one shot to the head. This change is meant to dampen the effectiveness of specific setups, and give players more time to react to the burst of damage when the user can't land a headshot."
    Much like you said, and like I've said in previous posts. It's already inconsistent with the OHK on body because there's no way you can reliably land a hit if a target is running. Let alone a heashot?! They just run from you, and even if you catch up, the swing time on it is so slow that when you do catch up, you'll end up swinging and missing because by the time your swing registers, even as a hit the game doesn't register it at all and then they turn around and shoot you. Or keep running away until someone else kills you.

    Before there was barely a reason to run Powerknives, except for challenging yourself. Especially when there's an entire faction with shotguns who can instakill you with a shotgun from range. With ASP there's even more shotguns in play. I can tell because I run my engineer like that, shotgun+flashlight ghostbuster loadout.

    The Devs should really take a look at this:

    - 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.
    • Up x 1
  20. Sumowning

    They'll always be the most hated class as long as there's people with more incentive to complain rather than putting in effort to counter them. Also "That powerful again"? you're telling me a Powerknife someone unbalances the class? When you'll gain at most 1.5KD on a good day if you know what you're doing.

    C'mon man.

    Absolutely, the funny part about it is that even people who are on the complete opposite side of the spectrum agreed that it was a unnecessary nerf, and there's a lot of thing that needed nerfing, powerknives were not among them.

    Literally this. They tend to be the vocal minority wanting to change PS2 into COD where we all run Heavies and are completely self-sufficient and can farm low-BRs without needing to watch your surroundings in case you get caught off-guard by a knifer.

    This however I think would be paramount to upping the damage to 1050 again. The chain-knife from TR was a good indicator of how it should be, powerful but you can easily hear it compared to the NC and especially the VS knife. Or add a delay to activating it, as most actual powerknifers already activate it in spawn. So that the ones trying to be sneaky, activate, decloak, kill, deactivate. Can't do that.

    Make the powerknife power up upon activation whilst the sound gets louder, this way you can either have it on all the time serving as a warning. Or you can risk activating it whilst stealth but it takes 2-3 seconds to fully power up allowing plenty of response time.

    Pretty much what I said in the comment above. They never needed a nerf or a 'fix', simply just make the other knives louder to serve as a clear warning.

    Don't forget the people that are most vocal about this, are also the people spending 90% of their time on a Heavy farming Low-BRs with their LMG at a 3.0KD or higher. Whilst OHK'ing Infiltrators with point-blank Deci's. Or Ambusher Jumpjet + Heavy shotgun going into someone's face and OHKing them. Or worse. HESH-FARMERS.

    It's silly to think that with so much of that in the game, some knifey-boi having to literally be in hug-distance is considered a threat of some kind.
    • Up x 1