The Withered Knight is the heavy two-handed fighter of Mistfall Hunter and the newest of the six classes, introduced for the June 2026 Open Beta. On the Classes page it stands as the greatsword specialist, a slow, deliberate bruiser that marks enemies and then makes those marks pay off. It carries a two-handed Greatsword with extended reach, and that reach is central to how it controls space.
Lore
The Withered Knights were once the glorious Rose Knights of the southern kingdom of Gaenaria. After falling from grace they were exiled to the North, where the bitter cold, years of war, and a savage foreign land reshaped them. They have lost the polished look of court knights, yet they still wear their formal armor, keep their chivalric code, and carry an innate sense of order, working to find the missing Pontiff and reclaim their former glory. The Holy Sigil they bear, a vertical line piercing a circle, ties them to the legend of Saeria Sith, the incarnation of the Supreme Deity in Gaenarian faith. See The World and Lore for the wider setting.
Core mechanics
In combat the Withered Knight marks enemies with Withering Sigils to set up strategic advantages, then detonates those sigils through Reckoning, an Execution mechanic, at the right moment. Two tactical skills round out the kit. Parry demands precise timing and, in skilled hands, balances offense and defense effectively. Thorn Guide grapples and drags enemies, giving the Knight a control role for the team. The core Withering talent decides the overall style, whether you suppress and grind enemies down with sigils or save them to break a formation at the perfect moment.
Greatsword playstyles
The Greatsword splits into Consecutive Break and Delayed Detonation. The Consecutive Break Build keeps Wither stacks from vanishing when they are shattered; breaking them in a row inflicts multiple debuffs, and the Knight's threat climbs sharply as the break count rises. The Delayed Detonation Build instead makes Wither stacks explode after a delay. You can let them go off on their own or break them manually to trigger an explosion that spreads the Wither state to nearby targets. Either way, the mechanic gives the Withered Knight a heavy presence in team fights.
Playstyles at a glance
Weapon | Playstyle | Signature |
|---|---|---|
Greatsword | Consecutive Break | Wither stacks survive shattering; consecutive breaks pile on debuffs and scaling threat |
Greatsword | Delayed Detonation | Wither stacks explode after a delay, spreading the Wither state to nearby enemies |
Polearm and Shield | Reach and guard breaking | Six skills spanning damage and support, with a long-range rescue for downed teammates |
The Polearm and Shield
The greatsword was never meant to be the class's final form. The Withered Knight's second stance is the Polearm and Shield, and it arrives with the first season rather than on launch day itself. It brings six new skills to pick from and, unusually, the ability to pull a downed teammate back up from a distance, which no other stance offers. Its talents and skills branch toward either damage or support, so the same class can be built as a front-line threat or as the squad's safety net.
The developers describe the intended rhythm as a stance dance: drag an opponent in with Thorn Guide, burst them down, and when they burn a mobility skill to escape, swap to the polearm, pin them with a thrown strike, and finish with a shield bash that breaks their guard.
The pairing is a polearm and a kite shield, and the developers frame it as the counterweight to the more offensive greatsword branch. The polearm's reach is its main advantage, though its thrusts want precise timing and aim, and the turn rate on some skills was deliberately capped so that reach does not become oppressive. The kite shield works differently from the Mercenary's sword and shield: you charge power while actively blocking, then cash it in on a counterattack, and several skills carry block protection that resists interruption in the manner of Super Armor. Wither and the Execute system carry over unchanged from the greatsword.
Two core talent paths split the stance:
Talent path | Role | Core mechanic |
|---|---|---|
Quick Shield Bash | Aggressive vanguard | Raises the charging efficiency of the shield's heavy strikes. A shield-raise dodge builds charge quickly, letting you suppress with consecutive dashes and use the polearm's reach to break enemy lines. |
Enhanced Shield Bash | Team-oriented defence | Infuses the shield for an empowered heavy strike. Landing it on a charged shield triggers an AoE knockback that repels nearby enemies and pulls focus fire off allies. |
Skills and talents can be mixed across the Greatsword and Polearm and Shield branches, so a build is not locked to one stance's tree.
Greatsword adjustments
The greatsword was tuned after the June test, where the Withered Knight was the most-played class. Parry now unlocks at an earlier level and its counter window is longer. Thorn Guide had the collision problems that made its pull fail resolved, so it connects more reliably. The second-stage branch of Breakthrough Charge lost its heavy knockback, which had been shoving ranged opponents further away instead of keeping them in range. The core Legacy talent now restores more health when the Knight downs a rival hunter, and light and heavy strikes had their hitboxes widened slightly so the damage area matches what the animation shows. One trim came with the new stance: because the Polearm and Shield also benefits from it, the Endless Flow talent gives slightly less cooldown reduction than before.
For the two-weapon stance system and the combat fundamentals behind the greatsword, see Combat and Weapons.
Post-launch adjustments
The August 6, 2026 update slightly reduced the Energy cost of both Sprinting Slash and Withering Mark. The same patch fixed skills catching on obstacles and launching the character into the air, casts being cut short by the Inspect action, and Thorn Guide being able to drag Richie the Merchant in the hub. The running list is on Updates and Patch Notes.
The August 12 update followed with three Polearm and Shield fixes: a skill that failed to enter cooldown when interrupted mid-cast, abnormal Energy consumption when no talent was configured, and the character remaining in a charged state after cancelling the shield-raise stance. A server-side update on August 7 had already corrected a related case where cancelling a Polearm and Shield charge wrongly triggered the Focused affix's movement speed bonus. Taken together they read as the settling-in pass for a stance that shipped with the season rather than with the game.
The August 19 update was a broad buff. The first light strike with a Greatsword travels further and swings faster, and the movement distance rose on Opportunistic Thrust, on Pursuit, and on the forward dodge during Sprinting Slash. A fully charged heavy strike now carries Super Armor through its attack animation, and both Parry and Breakthrough Charge came down in cooldown. The sword wave from Withering Mark travels faster and now slows the enemies it hits while shortening their dodge distance, and the Joint Pierce talent gained the same dodge-shortening effect. Radiant Retribution costs slightly less Energy and returns slightly sooner.
The developers explained the Greatsword buffs as a correction for animation recovery and execution costs that had left the weapon at a disadvantage in close quarters. On the Polearm and Shield side they reported a split: the Quick Shield Bash build performs as intended, while the Enhanced Shield Bash build is underperforming and is expected to receive significant adjustments in Season 2.
The next three patches touched the Withered Knight lightly. The August 28 maintenance fixed missing footstep audio and an over-fast long-range dash out of the Parry skill that could send a hunter into the sky. The September 3 update corrected the Joint Pierce talent, which had been taking effect on targets that were hit but not pulled in, and the Auto Execution talent's detonation sound, which had not distinguished friend from foe. The September 15 update was the first numbers pass since the August 19 buffs and pulled the Greatsword back a step: Heavy Strike and its forward-dodge branch deal slightly less, delayed and consecutive Executions deal slightly less, and Execute no longer triggers the Smiting gem affix. The Polearm and Shield went the other way, with a slightly shorter cooldown on Sacred Bulwark and slightly more damage on Spear Barrage, plus a fix for missing footsteps on one of the character body types.