Knight - October 14, 2018

Name: Knight

DOB: March 19, 1892 (story takes place in 1919)

Element: Water

Weapon: Scythe (along with some spear-type weapons)

Playstyle: Offensive/Disabling

Maximum Stats (through Soul Triad only, no weapons)

Learnable Active Abilities:

Body

Pushback (initally unlocked) - Inflicts Stagger at close range. Knight's Pushback can be improved so that the enemy suffers damage from Pushback.

Knockdown (initially unlocked) - Inflicts Knockdown at close range.

Power Drive - Leap forward into the air and deal Attack x 1.8 damage on landing. Can have its damage boosted, its speed improved, an area of effect impact added and double damage added with the Body Field Effect. [EDIT: As of 2019/05/21, deals damage to an area on default and inflicts Stagger to that area, as well]

Metastrike - Deal a random amount of damage between Attack x 0.5 and Attack x 2.5 damage. Can have its cooldown lowered, have the Mind Field Effect reduce cooldown even further (despite being a Body ability) and provide temporary damage and speed boosts to basic melee attacks after usage.

Nightslash - An attack that deals Attack x 0.5 damage with its initial slash, and if it hits, deals Attack x 4 damage and Stun to a large area. Can have its damage bosted and can reduce cooldown by 8 seconds on successful hit. [EDIT: As of 2019/05/21, ability is added]

Removed Body Abilities

Hookshot - An attack that deals Attack x 0.5 damage and inflicts Stagger as the enemy is repositioned behind the user. Can have its cooldown reduced and have Knockdown trigger at the end of Hookshot's Stagger. [EDIT: As of 2019/05/21, ability is removed]

Mind

Defiance (initially unlocked) - For 8 seconds, doubles damage of all attacks at the cost of heavily reduced Defense (-100%). Can have its power and duration raised further and have the Defense debuff disappear during the Mind Field Effect.

Sustained Faith (initially unlocked) - For 8 seconds, increases Combat Movement by 100% at the cost of heavily reduced Defense (-100%). Can have it reduce ALL of Knight's cooldowns by 5 seconds on trigger and have the Defense debuff disappear during the Mind Field Effect.

Energy Flow - Inflicts Poison and adds 3 seconds to active cooldowns for all enemies in combat. Can have its cooldown reduced, as well as Poison damage raised and more time added to active enemy cooldowns.

Moonlight - Inflicts Blind to a small area at close range. Can have its cooldown reduced, duration of Blind raised and area of effect heavily boosted.

Death-Defying - An attack that deals Attack x 1.5 damage and inflicts Instant Death at the 10% threshold. Can have its damage boosted, its cooldown reduced and can boost the Instant Death threshold to 25% while the Mind Field Effect is active.

Water Siphon

Dark Shot (initially unlocked) - Fire a projectile that deals Attack x 1.5 damage. Can have its attack boosted.

Monster Bubble (initially unlocked) - Fires a projectile that disables an enemy's movement for 3 seconds. Can have the movement disable time extended, have trapped enemies suffer damage over time and have enemies adjacent to the trapped victim become trapped, as well.

Unexplained - All enemies are inflicted with a curse that lasts for 1 second. If the enemy acts during this second, they suffer Attack x 3 damage. Can have its damage boosted and have it additionally inflict Knockback as an interrupt if the enemy acts.

Deep Freeze - Unleash a large area of persistent ice spikes (in play for 5 seconds) that deals Attack x 1 damage. Can have its damage and duration boosted, more sets of ice spikes with one calling of Deep Freeze and have even more ice spike sets appear with one call during the Water Siphon Field Effect.

Fumarole - Call forth a giant blast of water from the ground that deals Attack x 2 damage to a large area that stays in play for 5 seconds. Can have its damage boosted, deal double damage to enemies trapped in Monster Bubble, can have it deal triple damage and triple Field Effect influence during the Fire Siphon Field Effect and can have it detonate Deep Freeze ice so that all affected Deep Freeze ice sets explode into 8 spikes that fly out and deal Attack x 1 damage.

Weapons

Scythe (default weapon) - Boosts Attack stat by 5% per weapon level (allowing Knight's max Attack stat to reach 60). Like all default weapons, good for practically any style of play.

Devastator - Boosts the damage of Water Siphon abilities by 10% per level. In this case, this applies to Dark Shot, Monster Bubble with Drown, Unexplained, Deep Freeze, Fumarole and all Deep Freeze Ice spikes expoded by Fumarole. Given the vast array of abilities the Devastator affects, this is invaluable for any Water Siphon build, especially a Monster Bubble/Deep Freeze/Fumarole build (which makes Knight more devastating at wide-area attacks).

Naginata - When Dark Shot collides with a target, wall or boundary, it unleashes a pulse that deals up to Attack x 5 damage at max weapon level. Given Knight's high Attack stat (especially with Defiance), the fact that the Dark Pulse also utilizes Dark Shot Damage to boost its damage and Dark Shot's generally low cooldown, this can make Knight a very valuable ranged projectile attacker.

Force Spear - While Defiance or Sustained Faith is active, Knight boosts the defense of allies within a large area around himself, adding up to Defense + 50% at max weapon level. This is only really useful with Mind builds, as if Knight is going to run Defiance or Sustained Faith outside of the Mind Field Effect, it would be better spent on a weapon that deals more damage to make up for the risk of increased damage received. Either way, by alternating between Defiance and Sustained Faith, Knight can provide long-lasting Defense buffs to his allies while still contributing a solid offense.

Stone Sickle - Makes Knight Earth elemental as well as Water elemental, and basic melee attacks add to the Earth Siphon Field Effect. Not so much useful for Knight, but for assisting Tara, Pound and/or Brooks with their Earth Siphon builds (while protecting Knight from the Earth Siphon Field Effect's movement speed reduction).

Sightless - All Body abilities (including the non-damaging Pushback and Knockdown) inflict Blind. Given the low cooldowns for Pushback, Metastrike (during the Mind Field Effect) and Hookshot, this can be useful for constantly inflicting Blind with Body builds and Body/Mind combo builds.

Ragnarok - All Body abilities have their cooldowns reduced up to a maximum of 5 seconds at max weapon level. This is not just invaluable for Knight to deal more damage with Body builds, but can be useful for trying to force the Body Field Effect into play at greater speed.

Exorcist Sickle - Gives Knight the Cimmerian Call ability, which deals more damage with basic melee attacks when attacking from behind, up to a maximum of 3x damage at max weapon level. The concept of "attacking from behind" is the same as the Skylight Freerange games' Combat Knife, where being positioned at the back 180 degrees count as "attacking from behind". Handy for just about any build (since Knight's basic attacks have a high DPS and attack range/area to begin with), and incredibly useful if on a team that has Cook with Provoke to keep the enemies off of Knight and their backs to him, and if Knight has Metastrike with Lasting Meta in his build to further boost the damage and speed of his basic attacks.

Pros

Knight has the most versatile offense in The Demon Rush: Legends Corrupt. Some of it comes with great risk, such as the massive Defense drops from using Defiance and Sustained Faith, but these abilities can more than make up for this flaw with higher damage and movement speed, as well as heavy cooldown reduction. Aside from these buffs, Knight can make strong use of close range attacks, projectiles, wide-area attacks and has access to nearly all status ailments, with abilities that inflict Stagger, Knockdown, Knockback, Poison, Blind, Cooldown Add/"Silence" and Instant Death (Stun being the only status ailment missing from his repertoire). Due to his versatility, Knight also probably benefits more than most from mixed builds (as opposed to pure specialization in Body, Mind or Water Siphon), and his large range of offensive options all mesh quite well with each other.

Knight's Body abilities make good use of his high Attack stat, providing him with additional low-cooldown Knockdown (in the form of Hookshot with Tripping) and a large damage and speed buff to basic attacks from Metastrike with Lasting Meta. Knight's Power Drive can be enhanced to deal damage to a large area on landing, the most notable benefit from this being that, unlike most other characters, he does not have to be near his opponent to attack with this high-damage Body ability (and is more likely to deal this high damage to boot). Given that having the Body Field Effect active doubles all damage by not just the player, but enemies, too, and that Knight's Defiance (for further damage boosts) and Sustained Faith (for cooling down his Body abilities faster) all severely lower his Defense, Body-heavy builds are high-risk/high-reward for Knight.

Body-heavy builds by Knight can be made safer with the Sightless weapon, as enemies will be blinded when he lands any wide-area Power Drive attacks. Since Blinded enemies don't use abilities and attack in melee range only at random angles, landing this some space away can be a safer way to work with Body builds. Focusing on Dark Shot and throwing in the Naginata weapon for Dark Pulse can also mesh well with Body builds and the Body Field Effect, since Knight can also deal high damage at a distance (while throwing out some low-cooldown Body abilities, like Hookshot, at a distance just for the sake of keeping the Body Field Effect in play). If living dangerously sounds more fun and appealing, give Knight the Ragnarok weapon to reduce Body ability cooldowns and unleash frequent high-powered attacks (though Cherry for cover/healing/reviving, Alberto for healing/reviving, Cook for Provoke, Pound/Jimmy for frequent barriers are recommended to help keep the berserker funtime going longer).

Knight's Mind abilities focus primarily on offensive buffs and status ailments. The most notable part of the Mind Field Effect being active is that Knight can learn abilities to remove the massive Defense debuffs from Defiance and Sustained Faith, allowing him to boost his damage and reduce his cooldowns without fear of increased damage. Though not as strong of a damage dealer with a Mind-heavy build, he can throw out a wide range of status ailments, including Poison, Blind, Cooldown Add and Instant Death. Knight can also play a bit of a protector role on top of dealing damage in Mind-heavy builds, using Unexplained from the Water Siphon ability set (with Unexplained Break, as a sort of whole battlefield Knockback counterattack) and the Force Spear weapon (up to Defense + 50% for nearby allies so long as Defiance or Sustained Faith is active, which they can be without fear in Mind-heavy builds) to do so. Metastrike's passives are great for Knight's basic attacks under the Mind Field Effect, as well.

Water Siphon-heavy builds for Knight focus more on combinations of Monster Bubble, Deep Freeze and Fumarole (as Dark Shot may be better off in Body-heavy builds and Unexplained in Mind-heavy builds). Under the Water Siphon Field Effect, Knight can call up to 13 large area sets of ice spikes with a single usage of Deep Freeze, and can subsequently detonate them into projectiles with Fumarole with Eruption. While the ice spike areas, flying ice spikes and Fumarole are not overly powerful on their own (the Devastator weapon helps boost their low damage), Knight can cover a very impressive area in very little time, and damage can be boosted through Defiance. Fumarole with Pressure Cook also combines quite well with Monster Bubble for damage boosts (especially Monster Bubble with Bubblebath, which applies Monster Bubble to enemies nearby the trapped enemy).

Fumarole's versatility goes beyond just operating alongside a large area of ice spikes. With the Volcano passive ability, Fumarole actually deals triple damage during the Fire Siphon Field Effect, and used with Defiance and Monster Bubble/Pressure Cook, Fumarole becomes a very deadly in an elemental Siphon Field Effect that Knight does not belong to. In fact, alongside the Stone Sickle weapon's Earth Elemental traits it provides him with, Knight can operate effectively under a very wide range of Field Effects, with advantages or protection in all but the Wind Siphon Field Effect.

Cons

Outside of the glaring Defense weaknesses provided by Defiance and Sustained Faith (when not focused on for Mind builds), Knight is not a character that should specialize nor should he tunnel his offensive capabilities towards any one discipline. Basically, Tara and Cook can deal higher damage on average (basic attacks and Body abilities, combined with offensive buffs) with far less risk, Pound can deal far higher wide-area damage, and so far as status ailments go, Tara can do Cooldown Add and Instant Death better than Knight, Claire with Poison and Knockdown, Jimmy with Stagger and Brooks with Blind and Knockback.

Essentially, if Knight is really only being used for one aspect of offense, it would be best to switch out Knight for the character that does that aspect better and avoid Knight's high-risk playstyle. Knight is a jack-of-all-trades for offensive abilities and capabilities, and is best utilized for such.

Trivia

-Knight's playstyle has stayed very similar to the original The Demon Rush, keeping him as a high-offense, low-defense character with versatile offense in the form of physical attacks, magic projectiles, wide-area attacks, powerful status ailment infliction and his Defiance ability (which even then doubled damage given and received).

-Outside of the Gachduine reference weapon, Knight's new weapons are the spears - the Naginata and the Force Spear (the Force Spear being simply the same spear that Force Fighters use).

-Ignoring Pushback and Knockdown (which every character gets), Knight's new abilities not originating from the original The Demon Rush are Hookshot and Sustained Faith, while Moon was renamed to Moonlight. During development of the original The Demon Rush, most of the characters were to have abilities named after tarot cards, but the only ones that remained were Knight's Moon and Cook's Strength (though Strength is self-explanatory enough to not feel like a tarot reference).