Why you shouldn’t demoknight in MVM

As an enthusiast of the demoknight well past the joysticking days who knows the strengths and weakness of our beloved and equally loathed pick subclass; I can say that the knight subclassing is based on the sole fact that the playstyle preys on on the variable that is human perception.

Humans are flawed- Many of us are sluggish compared to robots, we are easily distracted and often inebriated. We are big dumb stupid apes who require fuel, rest and shelter to contribute to an overall well being. We aren’t well oiled, finely tuned machines that can home in right away on some triple spin ballerina nonsense, so attempting elaborate swordplay on robots is needlessly extravagant.

It is like you have 36 cupcakes to frost, but you spent 15 minutes dressing up the first one. Your co-workers have to make up for your slack and in the end they all hate you because you weren’t doing your job. That is what a sword swinging knight is in MVM.

Solid numbers render the knight class useless. Then again, that’s what grenades are for; But stickies will forever reign on crowd control.

I’ve played enough MVM to notice that power classes (Stock Demo, Soldier, Heavy) are absolutely necessary in the more difficult stages. As a rule of thumb, direct damaging weapons are ideal in this campaign mode. Solid damage. The Brass Beast, The Beggars Bazooka/Buff Banner combo and yes, the Sticky Launcher.

The Robots, or simply Bots; do not have human flaws; they are calculated killers that will make their mark if you aren’t juking around to begin with. Even if you do pull off to make it into a moderately difficult MvM campaign, you will owe it to your Veteran teammates whom you are clearly sandbagging by depraving them of Instant crit traps on Uber Giant Medics, carpet bombings and last minute hatch saves just to look fancy with a sword. If you do decide to knight anyway on a whim for the challenge or just to prove me wrong, here are some tips so your other team won’t slaughter you then votekick you (in that order)

1: Play Knight only on intermediate. I do this all the time when I hunt for voucher players. Why intermediate? Because it’s the easiest and most forgiving of all the campaigns. There are no machine gun crit soldiers with insta-heal medics behind. If you try pulling out any shield in any of the Two Cites missions regardless if you can turn on a dime now, you can bet you’ll get voted off immediately.

2: Build some rapport with your team by going sticky demo first; then ASK if you can opt over to GRENADE/SHIELD demo. Make an emphasis on the grenades. They’re not completely useless, you can destroy a whole lot with a Loch n’ Load. Stay away from the Loose Cannon in mvm unless your primary is Stickies. The damage is terrible, and mobs will overwhelm you quick.

3: Don’t full knight because that’s absolutely stupid. Until the booties get reformed that makes a pure melee Berserker a new, promising subclass beneath the Hybrid Sword/Grenade builds, then never ever go full knight. The only good use for the Booties is for Sticky Demomen.

Just remember that MVM is all about the Quantity, and not Quality of kills. Nobody is making Mann Vs Machine frag videos. And of course, the other team won’t disparage and berate your obviously cheap weapon choice.