Knife vs all in A20

[just.dont]

After trying quite a bit of starts, I was appaled with the discrepancy between different T0 weapons. I remember it being much better a few versions ago, now - not so much.

 

1) There's simply not enough reach difference. Knives are supposed to be short and dangerous to use - well, currently it doesn't matter as the distance difference between a knife swing and a spear (which I believe has the longest reach) swing is covered in about 0.1 seconds of movement (by you or your target or both).

2) There's not enough stagger difference. A wooden club can stagger zombies on a regular attack - well, so what, a bone knife will do that too! The duration difference is quite irrelevant here as the main use of the stagger here is to interrupt their attack, not to keep them in place or something.

3) For having no downsides as covered by #1 and #2, knives also absolutely win by stamina usage and the rate of attacks.

4) And for the final punch - they also deal huge amounts of damage when you factor in bleeding, so their damage-per-stamina rate tops out every other weapon given no perks difference.

 

Bone knife squarely wins in just about everything compared to wood club (which would see any usage only during those first few minutes where you don't yet have 5 bones), and easily competes with stone sledge for damage, but is also massively more convenient to use (as you can't do 1.5 power attacks with sledge, you either make 1 or 2) as there's no issues with overkill damage, having no room for aiming mistakes, and having to have >50 stamina for a single swing.

 

Not to mention that I'm not really picturing a knife as the primary to-go weapon in a zombie apocalypse.

[Viktoriusiii]

I do agree. Weapons need some balancing.

Knives shouldn't stagger. At all. (Machete can on heavy)
Spear should have higher reach (that was their main purpose)
Stun Batons are just op. Maybe nerf the probability of the shocker.

But honestly... if you aren't playing on really high difficulties... every weapon is fine. Play with whatever is the most fun to you.