OH MY GOSH these have been buffed so much making nova knives a playable weapon along with the aim assist for melee so i run a Minmatar light frame with knives or shotgun (all of it prototype) but it has been a good update on my side accept for the shotgun nerf... what was wrong with them?!

for once in my life on dust, people can now genuinely fear nova knives getting 1 hit KO on a heavy while it is charged. Flanking and running into a group while the rest of my squad pushes from the front :) i could get used to this. Of course... it is still buggy and i can't stand the bleed out screen. :/ but yah now things change sometimes not for the better

They outclass Shotguns now, which is upsetting, seeing as I made the decision to pick Shotties over Knives.

Being able to charge your knife while sprinting is a MUST though...please fix this asap CCP!

Absolutely not. It would be way OP. Knives are fine right now, they shouldn't be touched.

Absolutely not. It would be way OP. Knives are fine right now, they shouldn't be touched.

===Update May 10, 2013===

Ok guys. The results are finally in after a some long tests to bring you this important information.

Each test required an an unwitting test subject of various classes of suits in controlled conditions which is why each test took so long as they were hard to come by and I often ran into mercs who spotted me first but I had to allow them to kill me because I didn't want my end-of-match stats to be skewed by my attempts to save myself. So here are the results.

Nova Knives deal twice the base damage via double strike with only the instant attack (no charge). Example: ZN-28 Nova Knives have a base damage of 150HP per knife in each pair which brings the total to 300HP without the charge.

The following tests were conducted with the following suit:

[Test Suit Please Ignore]

Scout G/1-Series
1x ZN-28 Nova Knives <--- Testing tool (only for conducting the test, never for self defense)
1x Exile Assault Rifle BPO <--- For observing target's armor and shield stats from a distance (never used)
2x Militia Profile Dampener BPO
2x Militia Shield Extender BPO
1x Active Scanner <--- For isolating test subjects.

NOTE: As you can see, no damage mods were used, no Minmatar Scout Dropsuit bonus applied and I have not yet trained for Nova Knifing Proficiency.

Test #1

Map: Skim Junction Skirmish
Controlled Condition: Camping a blaster turret that I hacked and left alone as bait.
Unwitting Subject A: Amarr Assault with nearly 300HP on his shields.
Results: 300 Damage dealt (instant attack) which practically ate up all of the subject's shield and scratched its armor leaving the poor subject with only 97 points of armor left. I let the subject kill me as a reward for participating in this experiment.

Note: There were actually two subjects in this match but forgot the stats of the first one and had to redo it.

Test #2

Map: Manus Peak
Controlled Condition: Northwestern hills where snipers perch.
Unwitting Subject B: Gallente Scout with a combined shield/armor total of 370 HP.
Results: 370 Damage dealt (charged attack) which basically killed him.

Test #3

Map: Line Harvest
Controlled Condition: Northeastern hills
Unwitting Subject C: Militia Amarr Heavy. Unable to see stats clearly because me and him were playing cat and mouse.
Results: Dealt and unknown amount of damage with only a single charged attack but left him with only 2 points of armor left (stats finally appeared at the last moment). After looking up the market on the base stats, the militia heavy suit has base shield of 405 HP and base armor of 304 HP which brings the base total to 709 HP. Assuming the subject wasn't wearing any defense modules, I have dealt approximately 707 HP with a single charged attack. As as reward for participating, I let the heavy kill me with a forge gun.

Interesting Note

On two of the tests conducted (#2 and #3), I noticed that the end-of-match stats for total damage dealt was 748 HP per match. This was an odd consistency because I don't recall doing any more than 370 HP in test #2. If my theory is correct, then the total damage per charged attack is 748 HP. Please keep in mind that in all tests conducted, I never used any damage modifiers, only a Gallente Scout suit was used, I have not trained Minmatar Scout Dropsuit yet, and have not trained anything into Nova Knife Proficiency. This data is based strictly on the base stats of the ZN-28 Nova Knives.

Now I'm starting to have second thoughts on the sprint part. Keep as is and the avoid the "NERF KNIVES" threads, or add sprint/charge support and get endless "QQ NERF KNIVES" threads?