DISCLAIMER: This is NOT your standard Knight guide! The bruiser Knight build is a specialized “end-game” build meant either for whales or advanced players who are looking to heavily min-max their class to be more than just a tank. If you are F2P or just looking to be a meatshield tank, this guide is not for you!
Intro
The “tank” role is given to someone whose primary purpose is to be a “meat shield” and be able to take lots of damage and still survive. The “DPS” role is given to someone whose primary purpose is to pump out high amounts of damage so that they can kill the target enemies. But why not both? That’s where we get “bruisers”, aka someone who can both survive tons of hits while also dealing out tons of damage. This guide covers how you can build your Knight as a “bruiser”.
The reason a Knight can be built as a bruiser is because of asymmetry in its kit and the existence of floor values in the damage formula. Tanks take advantage of Block mechanisms to survive damage received from DPS, at the expense of damage output. DPS take advantage of Crit mechanisms to deal damage to tanks and other DPS at the expense of survivability. Bruisers take advantage of both, taking advantage of Block mechanisms to reduce damage from DPS while also simultaneously taking advantage of Crit mechanisms to deal heavy damage to glass cannon DPS. Bruisers aren’t expected to be as tanky as pure tanks and aren’t expected to deal as much damage as a glass cannon DPS, but in longer extended fights, being able to take advantage of both allows you to win.
There’s a saying that goes something like this: You spend 10% of your effort to achieve 90% of the result, then the remaining 90% of the effort goes into squeezing out the last 10% of the result. In the bruiser life, you do neither. Spend 50% of effort to achieve 90% of tankiness, then the remaining 50% of effort to achieve 90% DPS. The result: a tanky mofo that can dish out solid damage. That is the bruiser manifesto.
Block Mechanism
A tank Knight primarily focuses on Block Rate and Block Efficiency. When an opponent attacks, you have a chance to block based on your Block Rate – their Accuracy. If they have more Accuracy than you, no block. If you have more block than them, you have a CHANCE to block. So if they have 70% accuracy, you want 170% block rate to ensure you have a final 100% block rate. Why? Because block does 2 things: 1) it prevents a crit, and 2) it reduces the non-crit damage. Preventing crits is huge because most DPS focus on high crit and crit damage (see below). That alone is what makes Block Rate the “primary” tank stat. Reducing non-crit damage is the second half of the equation. You take your Block Efficiency, subtract their Accuracy, and the resulting percentage is used to determine how much additional damage reduction happens. This is why Block Efficiency is considered the “secondary” tank stat. A pure tank would focus on trying to pump up their Block Rate high enough to ensure 100% block rate against their opponents (via pets, relics, gear, and techniques/charms) then try to further pump up their Block Efficiency (via gear and techniques/charms).
A bruiser Knight does the same thing, but ONLY focuses on Block Rate. Why? Because as it turns out, there is a “minimum net Block Efficiency” floor that is applied when you block an attack. Suppose you had 250% Block Efficiency and they have 70% Accuracy. 250% – 70% = 180% net Block Efficiency. But what if they had 170% Accuracy? 250% – 170% = 80% net Block Efficiency. Does this mean their Blocked damage is actually higher than their Normal hits? Nope because of that “minimum block efficiency” value I mentioned earlier, which so happens to be 150%. This means that even if I only have 100% Block Efficiency (base value) and they have 999% Accuracy, my net Block Efficiency is still 150%. Bruiser Knights get to take advantage of this 150% floor WITHOUT needing to invest anything into Block Efficiency, allowing them to free up their investment opportunity into the DPS side of things.
Crit Mechanism
A traditional DPS (Duelist, Sorc) primarily focuses on Crit and Crit Damage. Some PvP focused players will focus on Accuracy as well, but most won’t because Accuracy only really helps against 1 of 4 classes (aka Knights). Like with most other games, the easiest way to increase your damage is to land a Crit, and the amount of increase is based on your Crit Damage multiplier. The higher your Crit Rate, the more chance you have to take advantage of that Crit Damage multiplier. Bother Crit Rate and Crit Damage are offset by the opponents’ Crit Res, so often you will want to pump both pretty high, with your goal of having a net Crit Rate of 100% and a Crit Damage % of as high as you can get. Since you have limited resources to invest in, you will likely drop investing into your defensive stats (HP, DEF, Block, Block Rate, Crit Res) because a dead opponent deals no damage. Glass Cannon philosophy.
A bruiser Knight also invests in Crit, but NOT Crit Damage. Why? Because, like Block Efficiency, there is also a “minimum net Crit Damage” floor. Surprise! The value is 130%, which isn’t great, but isn’t bad either. More importantly, this lets you free up the investment opportunity cost to ensure your above Block Rate investments are still done.
Sources of Block/Crit
By default, Knights have a base Block Rate of +20% because of their class. Nice. But that’s nowhere near enough and other classes also get their own bonus (like Duelist get +20% Crit Rate, Sorc get +20% Accuracy, Sage get +20% Healing). Then there’s pets and relics and companions. You can min max these by focusing on your tank pets and rizzing up your tank companions and putting your Block relics up top, but its not a significant source of Block or Crit. What you need to instead rely on is 3 things: 1) Aegiswing pet as your active pet, 2) gear affixes, and 3) techniques/charms.
Many people say Aegiswing is the #1 tank pet because of the shield, taunt, and heal. This is true, but it also happens to be one of the best Bruiser pets. Aegiswing’s buff gives about 30% crit and 30% accuracy, which is huge as both are attributes you want as a bruiser. Later on there will also be a horse pet which gives block rate, but we don’t have that yet and I am not sure what else it gives. Keep an eye out for that.
For gear affixes, this is a mixed bag. Suddenly there’s multiple affixes you can benefit from. Block rate, block rate + block eff, block rate + crit res, accuracy, crit, crit damage, crit + crit dmg, crit + accuracy. There is also the generic PvP dmg/res, which is also extremely nice since you get to take advantage of both lines directly. Personally I am focusing on crit + accuracy since those are the two I lack most. The key here is trying to make up for what you’re missing, with a final goal of a balance of high net Block Rate, high net Crit Rate, and high enough Accuracy go ignore the (usually low) Block Rate of other DPS.
For techniques and charms, Knights actually get most of this in T1. The Block Awareness charm gives a huge Block Rate passive buff and the Luminous Shield technique gives a huge Block Rate + Block Awareness active buff. On the flip side, the Insightful Eye charm gives a huge Crit Rate passive buff and the Boiling Bloodlust technique gives a huge Crit Rate + Crit Damage active buff. Because we don’t care so much about Block Efficiency and Crit Damage (thanks to taking advantage of the floor values), I almost always don’t take either of the techniques. Because we have Aegiswing’s Crit buff, I also don’t take Insightful Eye. Note that Duelists also have access to these 2 charms and 2 techniques, so a Duelist can also be a bruiser build, which I do see frequently. But I like Knight class 😛
Bruiser Knight Techniques/Charms
Aside from being able to build both Block Rate and Crit Rate, Knights have access to a number of other Techniques and Charms that allow them to be Bruiser build. These skills either offer high damage output, high damage mitigation, or both. I list them out here based on class progression, which you choose to use will always change based on the season. Practically speaking though, Bruiser Knight only becomes viable in T4 but you can try it out in T3 anyways.
T2: Knight
- Rebound: A passive charm that actually is an offensive effect. They hit you, you deal damage back to them. Its like a free damage skill rolled into a Charm. I almost always take it because multi-hit skills is very common and as a slow bruiser, why not deal damage out during their turn as well?
- Valor Surge: An active self + party buff. Offensively gives you a really good damage multiplier buff, defensively cleanses you of an ailment/debuff. Note that this also increases your Counterattack (Rebound/Reflective Armor) damage, so its generally a very good pick.
- Defensive Assault: Atk buff while shielded. A very big one too. Strongly boosts all your offensive Techniques. Requires of course you to have Shielding effects active, which will often be the case in T4 if you run Swirling Blade or Soul Protection
T3: Paladin
- Star Shattering Slash: The premium Knight nuke skill that you will use all the way up to T6 (and sometimes in T5). Has one of the highest multipliers in the game, at 932% when Immortal tier. Even DPS classes only get 300%-400% multipliers. This high multiplier is to make up for the expected low tank offensive stats… except as a bruiser you will have high offensive stats, making this skill hit like a truck. You can literally one-shot some glass cannon DPS with this. Plus the zoom-in animation is great.
- Reflective Armor: When shielded, reflect a portion of damage taken back to the attacker. Some people swear on this but I personally prefer Rebound. Why? Because 1) Rebound reflects a fixed amount of damage whereas this depends on the damage you take (which should be small due to Block), and 2) this only is effective while you are shielded (which isn’t all the time).
T4: Guardian
- Swirling Slash: A single-target nuke skill that both deals good damage AND gives you a decent shield. In PvP the shield is heavily nerfed so it doesn’t do much, but it does count towards activating Defensive Assault’s atk bonus. Swirling Slash + Defensive Assault into Star Shattering Slash is a very deadly combo in T4.
- Soul Protection: Sacrifices 50% of your HP in exchange for a 50% shield, PLUS a bonus shield. You use this for 2 reasons: 1) having a shield up for activating Defensive Assault, and 2) the bonus amount, which at later levels can scale very high and end up almost doubling your total eHP. Keep in mind though that shields are vulnerable to Doom damage, so be careful when running it.
- Light Sword Array: Just like Rebound, you hit me, I hit you back. In a 1v1 situation, this skill is very strong because the multiplier is pretty high and you are almost guaranteed to get hit 4 times before your next turn. But because you don’t have full control over it (and it may get wasted on pets/summons), I am not a big fan of the skill. But when it does land right, it is good damage.
- Hamper Strike: An AoE taunt which also deals surprisingly good damage. I still use it in T5 because of its synergy with Iron Will and good damage.
- Iron Will: Take significantly less damage (up to half at Immortal) from a taunted enemy. In T4, you can actually maintain 100% uptime (run both Hamper Strike + Heart of Challenge + Panda pet) but I highly recommend against it as a Bruiser as that’s way too restrictive and you lose the Aegiswing pet. This skill will become more useful in T5 when you have a 0CD taunt, aka Last Stand.
T5: Templar
- Last Stand: At first glance this looks like a PvE boss taunting skill, but actually its very strong in 1v1 PvP. Its a 0CD skill with very decent multiplier and also a gap closer. The taunt gets combo’d with Iron Will, making you significantly more tanky. Do not use in 4v4 though as you will probably just end up taunting the enemy tank who you aren’t trying to deal damage to anyways.
- Sacred Shine: A 0CD AoE skill that has a really good multiplier and base flat damage value. Good damage and the AoE aspect helps kill those pesky pets/summons.
- Iron Slash: A very straightforward single-target nuke skill that just deals two heavy hits and thats it. Replaces Swirling Slash if you don’t take Defensive Assault anymore. Or just run both.
- Sacred Rhythm: A charm that gives you a ramping damage increase buff, up to 42%. Pretty good, especially when you have longer fights as a Bruiser.
- Holy Recuperation: The description looks attractive as it says 50% more damage during your turn if you used no Techniques the turn before. Except for two things: 1) this doesn’t boost Rebound damage, and 2) your T5 skills Last Stand and Sacred Shrine are 0CD, so likely you won’t actually be able to properly benefit from it. You can experiment but I recommend against using it.
Showcase Videos
Here’s some showcase replays of my Bruiser Knight against my guildie, Sydnie. Sydnie is currently the strongest player on Nexus 1’s Server 1 (First Dawn) and is a DPS Duelist. Even though Sydnie always has a CP advantage, I am able to hold pretty well against her with my Bruiser Knight build.
And here’s a showcase video of the Auto Protection affix, which becomes available in T3. Combine it with Ripple Impact and Frigid Aura for a very strong offensive setup that’s even better than Rebound. Read the video description for full details.
Keripo's Bruiser Knight Guide
byu/Keripo inSwordxStaff_Official
Originally posted on Reddit
Also discussed on Discord: Sword x Staff Discord thread and Sword x Staff Discord thread
