Knight

A fully armoured and armed knight.

Knights are Regnum Online's tanks. When choosing this subclass, warriors gain access to hard metal shields and the heaviest armors of the game. Only by equipping this, they can stand much more punishment that any other class. But they also have a long list of defensive buffs that makes them even tougher. Not only that, they also gain a defensive trait that none else has. Besides their evasion and resist chances, they also get a block chance. Blocking means parry attacks, blocking damage and effect too. Knights have the same problem all warriors share, they lack range attack. Not only that, but their damage output is a bit lower than the barbarian's. They can help win wars without the need of hitting hard. Knights have very good defensive auras, including resistance to spells and ranged strikes, wich is great for holding ground. They also can activate their defenses to a full and rush to the core of the enemy formation, confusing and making foes waste their mana trying to stop them. Not to mention their single target dizzy and knock down skills, going straight to the back and incapacitating the conjurers is devastating. Knights are for those who like to take their time and find the right moment to act.

Advantages & Disadvantages of a Knight

Advantages

• Very high armor
• Can block enemy attacks
• Very high health point total
• Provide defense for allies with good auras
• In a small fight they can survive for a long time

Disadvantages

• Lower damage than barbs
• Almost exclusively melee range
• Leveling relatively slow compared to other classes
• Block is completly random, you have luck during the whole fight or non at all

Disciplines

The Knight subclass has 2 subclass specific disciplines:

• Vanguard: allows the knight to soak damage or increase his health.
• Shields: allows the knight to use spells involving shields such as increasing block chance, protecting allies or hitting the enemy to dizzy them.

Skills

As with all classes, each discipline of the Knight contains 10 skills. The skills for each discipline in order of lowest to highest level required are:

Vanguard

• Challenge: reduces an enemy's hit chance.
• Taunt: makes that the hunter's pet lose armour and lose their control.
• Provoking Blow: reduces an enemy's concentration and dexterity.
• Stone Temple: passively increases the knight's constitution.
• Rigorous Preparation: reduces the target's chance to hit or deal a critical hit to the knight.[bugged]
• Awareness: opponents hitting the knight have an increased chance to miss.[bugged]
• Troll's Skin: temporarily increases the knight's health.
• Arcane Constitution: the knight has passively increased magical defense.
• Stars Shield: an aura protects allies from magical damage (caster don't affected).
• Army of One: significantly increases the knight's physical and magical resistance.

Shields

• Precise Block: increases the chance for a knight to block attacks.
• Shield Bash: deals blunt damage and dizzies an opponent.
• Deflect Projectiles: increases the knight's piercing resistance.
• Block: passively increases the knight's block chance.
• Protector: the knight cannot attack or cast spells, but has significantly increased block chance.
• Shield Wall: an aura partially protects nearby allies from blunt damage (caster don't affected).
• Ethereal Mantle: the knight increases one ally's magical defense.
• Run Over: the knight reduces his chance of getting knocked down.[bugged(?), not confirmed, seems working well]
• Deflecting Barrier: an aura gives allies near the knight a chance to block ranged attacks (caster don't affected).
• Heroic Presence: aura that drastically increases the knight and surrounding ally's armour points.

The roles of a Knight (by magnet)

In RvR

The primal roles

The Tank (aka charge leader)

I call Tank the Knight who leads the charge, in front of Barbarians. His goal is to divert the attention of the enemies, because they most often choose the closest target . Once he joines the enemy ranks, the Tank casts Areas or support Barbarians on targets, continually trying to get the attention until he can't hold anymore and heads back hopefully to be healed.

The few seconds the Tank diverts the attention should be enough for ranged allies to cast their own area spells. The current problem here is that most experience players simply ignore the tanking Knight because he presents a low threat.

The Defender

I call Defender is the "combat control"-oriented Knight. He is the closest thing to a Barb as he can be; he holds a lot of weapon damage skills, of points in Trip and Feint.

The Defender was really harmed by the reduction of strength contribution to damage bonus. As of now, his role is mostly supporting the group: protecting Mages, supporting Barbarians.

The Paladin

Finally, I call Paladin the kind of Knights who mainly tries to support his allies with buffs such as Deflecting Barrier. He is half-Warrior half-Conjurer. As it is, his capacity to do so is unfortunately very limited; very few area buffs are worth putting all the required points; most notably the good ones are Star Shields, Deflecting Barrier and Heroic Presence.

I think that aspect of the Knight, as a defensive class, should be developed more with more interest. Sitting in the middle of allies and casting all possible auras, with no points in combat control (Knock Downs, Dizzy, etc) because all are in auras, is extremely boring. This is because most auras aren't "sexy/useful" enough and have a high mana cost, which leaves the Knight empty (Conjurers and Warlocks could give the mana back; but they don't).

Actual Knights are hybrids

No sane Knight would go for only one of those, obviously. Actual Knights are a combination of two of those, because even at high-level they lack the points to have the three playing-styles at once (or they must make serious sacrifices which will limit them in their ability to play each role).

The Tank-Defender can offer much help to Barbarians once in the enemies ranks, because his combat-control skills will be a great help to Barbarians who skill for max damage.

The Tank-Paladin helps the other warriors charging with his area buffs; Deflecting Barrier helps Barbarians and Knights alike a lot when charging and limits the damage they receive. However, once in the enemy group he can mostly try to divert attention and support with damage, but not much.

The Defender-Paladin is the one who supports the ranged allies with areas, and stopping adventuring Warriors.

For each of these 3 combinations, some may be more oriented towards one of the primal types, for example a Tank-Defender may be more oriented "Defender". My goal here was just to set a few names I can refer to when making the suggestions to make a given role more interesting and fun.

Note about Hunts and PvP

I don't really talk about Hunts and PvP because a Knight is very limited there; obviously the three types work depending on what happens in the hunt. Most Knights who hunt are of the Tank-Defender kind. For PvP, areas not affecting the Knight are obviously useless (and even so, they take too much mana for PvP). However Regnum isn't about PvP but about big group fights.