Knight Tank ranking (personal opinion)

Hello,

after the change of the ISS "Traces of the Cross Sword" (thx for it again!) I tested the different knights from a tank perspective and checking the following aspects that, in my opinion, are worth to check as a tank.

• Aggro (how much aggro per second can be generated in single target, AOE and from range)
• Survivability (how good is the class to survive if a lot of dmg is expected or all healer died/afk)
• Crowd Control (how good is the class in crowd controlling)
• Group DMG protection (ability to protect the raid from incoming damage)
• Offensive Support (ability to increase the damage the raid is doing)

As a side note I ranked them only comparing the aspects how they change with the elite skills the classes have. It is clear that every knight main has for example a charge and the ISS Traces of the Cross Sword (if you obtained it). Some aspects are getting better with the elite skills while others are getting worse.

Here are my lists

Aggro

Survivability

Crowd Control

Group damage protection

Offensive support

Overall ranking

In my opinion there is not a huge gab between K/D and K/S. Different classes have different advantages and disadvantages, which may fit or not fit in your playstyle.

Hope this helps some new or unexperienced knights

If you want to pick an "easy-to-play" class, because some need more work to fit in the rankings above, I would suggest the following top 3:

1. K/M
2. K/R
3. K/W and K/D (both are quite even hard/easy to play)

Edit: 16.08.2025 updated the list

Greetings

updated K/W aggro after some more tests. it was between S and A before. now S tier.

Because it's only on single target and not usable in trash. only on bosses after you generated aggro and still used tactical smash.

And because in the current content 90-95% of the damage content is trash, it's only D tier, bcs K/D give permanent attackboost to all raid member

First of all, the list is from a year ago.

Quote from DayToEnd

If you place K/W in aggro s tier, K/M should be god tier. The combination of ISS and holy field creates insanely more aggro then K/W skills.

K/W single target aggro and AOE aggro with Whirlwind shield is higher than from K/M. ISS procs + holy field domain procs are literally generating only a low amount of aggro compared to a whirlwind shield. Nonetheless it's more than enough against heal aggro.

Quote from DayToEnd

For survivability I'd rank K/W in s tier since the cooldowns and runtime of shield of discipline and defensive stand allow for a permanent defensive boost which makes you way more consistently tanky compared to other combinations.

Defensive Stand doesn't reduce damage, if you are over the cap. It does not even reduce the damage of for example %-based skills. That's why K/D is better in survivability. Survivability also means, that you can survive long enough without a healer need to pay attention on you. K/D and K/R are extremely good in surviving without needing a heal permanently keep an eye on you.

Quote from DayToEnd

I'd also decrease K/M to C tier since he doesn't really get anything extra apart from the better holy shield and mana shield and definetly is more vulnerable then K/C who atleast gains some more endurance, defense and a cooldown.

totally disaggree. The mana shield is a flat damage mitigation, which is better than getting more physical defense. Don't underestimate the small selfheal of mana shield.

Quote from DayToEnd

In terms of group protection, I'd lift K/D up to A tier if not S tier because of his additional shields. Didn't play K/B yet though, so I can't say how he compares to him. Dunno why you rank K/C in E tier while K/M is B tier. Neither of those really have anything, while the consistent interrupts and pulls of K/C atleast prevent most casts from mobs.

The shields of K/D are not always up on every person in the raid. What often (for example grafu and orkham) matters is how fast you can get your threaten stack to max on the mobs. K/M can do that in 1 hit, which is why I put him high to B tier. K/M hasn't anything else yes, but instantly threaten on 4 stacks is very nice. While K/C can't do that so fast and you need 3-4 seconds. the interrupts of K/C also doesn't often work in endgame instances and the elite skill to pull all mobs does not even stun (description says 2 second stun, but it doesn't).

K/B for example has a "Solo" elite skill, which will put not only threaten on the mobs but also Oppression (bard skill) on the mobs permanently. with threaten x4 + Oppression literally no mob can kill/oneshot anyone. On bosses it's not always up, but has a high uptime.

Quote from DayToEnd

For the overall ranking I'd also set K/M in A tier, since the insane and most of all passive aggro generation gives alot of QOL and allows you to keep aggro even if you're stunned before even hitting a new pull even once. Makes it in my opinion the easiest knight combo to play.

As I said the list is outdated quite a bit. K/M would go a bit higher bcs of knight changes that happened this year, but I wouldn't put it on top anyway.

K/P for example has also way higher aggro now than expected if you look in the list. It's B or even A tier and the group protection ability of this class depends on your group setup, but without blood arrow classes in the group the protection is kinda extremely strong for protecting against oneshots of mobs.

Greetings

I updated the list in the first post according to the changes happened this year.

there isn't a category for "how easy to play" atm, maybe it's worth to do, but I'll add the top 3 in my opinion in the end at the first post