So.... wait... is the active scanner actually totally boss?

It is very nice. Mostly useful to Logis in squads. You spend two seconds waving it around, and enemies show up on the minimap and 100 meters out as Chevrons. So EVERYONE can see them. For five full seconds. And that's just the entry into the skill. I don't run my Logi without one any more.

Anyone had a problem with the knife "hitting" the person, showing up the blue shield impact, but no damage being dealt ?

I got into a duel today. Was pretty sweet. My enemy drew first blood taking down my shields and half my armor. I dipped and dodge as we swung back and forth at each other. It came down to us running at each other swiping as we passed and then turning around to face each other again. Much different than the usual dance and swipe. We even took measured pauses here and there like we were sizing each other up and feinting which way we were going to move. Just as my shield started recharging he stormed me as I strafed jumped left past his swing and swiped him in the face. OHK.

later we had another smaller knife fight.. but on a steep hill. I didn't count this as a victory because some blueberry ran up to us to pepper him with his SMG. I killed him, but i wish that dude had stayed out of it. shrug. I meant to send him a fan mail.. he was really good. I'd like to take Maken on myself.

I've noticed tho, lag really exacerbates any problems with the knives, and I have been noticing a lot of it today.

Oh yea- and why can't we sprint and charge? makes no sense.

I use to support the idea of sprinting and charging. But as I said before in my previous diaries, I looked at the numbers and realized that adding such a feature will practically make the knives overpowered. Think about it. At max skill and with the Ishukone Knives, you can already deal about 600 HP damage with the instant attack alone and up to 1200 HP damage with a charge attack. You can practically OHK a heavy.

Thanks @ tosch

Just so the mercs get a feel for how we plan to run this:
The corp is called " RONIN EMPIRE DOMINION"
Channel is called " R.E.D MERC BETS" but will be changed tonight to " THE RONIN CHALLENGE"
I came up with the idea this morning so please excuse changes as I weed out flaws

Basically the insta bets with the cheapest openings are ambushes starting at a wager of 250000 per merc with 50 000 goin to the corp and 450 000 to the winner.( easy enough since most people make 200 000 a match so if you win you will walk away with about half million plus battle rewards.

Anything other than ambush go up by increments of 250 000
So skirmish domination an ambush oms start at 500 000 with a ten percent fee from each player to our corp.
500 000 each winner takes 900 000 pot plus battle wages
750 000 each winner takes 1,350 000 pot plus battle wages
1million bets and up winner takes 1,800 000 per million dollar s plus battle wages
So each player I made a channel for mercs to bet isk called R.E.D MERC BETS
EVERYONE JOIN THE CHANNEL AN YOU CAN APPLIE TO THE CORP WITH YOUR SECONDARY OR PRIMARY CHARACTER. We will squad up to see how many kills in a match with any weapon isk gets bet by donations to the corp then the winnings gets moved back to the winner .
I just made the corp last night so I only have room on bet nights for nine members so we will all co ordiate through the channel.
I ll be doing my test run of this tonight. At 1am eastern standard time
Scores can be measured by the most war points, kills or kills minus deaths up to the bets waged.
The "RONIN EMPIRE DOMINION" is the corp an "R.E.D MERC BETS " is the channel
We take 25% of the winnings as a service fee all challenges are accepted so let's squad up tonight on the channel.
I hope this takes off an please spread the word an channel name around.
Join the channel first so we can co ordinate at 1am est.
taxed 10% per million.

We suggest use your alts as your banks and then add that alt to your main corp and ask your CEO to transfer the isk to your main character so we never deal with large quantities of isk an you don't have to constantly quit an rejoin your corp to have your funds transferred between your alt an main character.
Once our reputation is secured an our numbers grow we plan to hopefully be a clan of ronin that can use these challenges an earnings from them as a way to make our clan numbers grow an use this concept on a foot hold in new Eden .

Challenges can be based on anything opposing mercs decide from sniper, nk, lav,pistol kills, just kills, kills minus deaths,, logi war point battles, sg battles squads of two on two anything you can challenge someone into.
I will also be having my administrators running simotainiously so mercs won't be waiting, we're still discussing days and times.
If you have any questions please message my main character OZAROW.
Thanks for your time

===Update 15 June 2013===

As of last week, I am officially an instructor at Dust University and I have to say that I am happy for this position. Teaching others about the profession is something I wanted to do for a long time especially since it will give me a chance to build up more interest in the weapon.

When I first started my profession back during the Codex build in closed beta, I was at a severe disadvantage because the knives were weak and were laughed at very often. Many even thought I was a complete fool to think that the nova knifing is a profession at all (a few still do). But at the time I didn't see that as a problem but instead I saw it as a challenge and by enduring that challenge I was able to overcome the stigma that came with the profession.

It is because of this determination to overcome the challenge that I was able to make an otherwise laughable weapon into something that is viable. Now that I am an instructor, I intend to pass on my knowledge and experience to those willing to accept the challenge. That said, if any of you are new to this game and intend to dive into this experience to see if you have what it takes to be a ninja, you can go ahead and join Dust University and attend my lectures and squad up after. Alternatively you can always go to Bojo's School of the Trades if you like and more than likely you'll probably find someone there who specializes in the same thing who can help you.

As a fun little tidbit, I was able to get into my first Planetary Conquest battle last night against The Southern Legion in an effort to defend our district. I really didn't know what to expect since this was my first time going into PC. Considering that PC battles always demanded players to field their best gear and weapons, I figured my team was going up against a tough opponent. Thankfully, since we are a dedicated training corp, our team was able to cohesively work together due to the careful guidance of the squad leaders.

As I entered the match, the first thing I did was to ensure that no one tried to sneak into the Orbital Artillery Outpost. To that end, I spent a great deal of time attentively camping the objectives while making sure that the enemy drop uplinks were neutralized. We were able to secure Alpha and Bravo for the time being before the enemy brought in their tank and murder taxis backed up by a bunch of proto-heavies which were a pain in the ass for me to kill. At that point, the fight got really intense as we struggled to regain control of the key objectives. Alpha fell to enemy hands and Bravo was being swarmed by the enemy. We suffered losses left and right but slowly we regained control as we held together and pushed through while I kept up with destroying uplinks and scouting the outpost for any infiltrators.

The enemy tank on the other hand was a major concern to us, but amazingly enough the tank didn't become that much of a threat once the enemy was pushed out of the facility and the tank was left to fend for itself. The match seemed as uncertain as playing Russian Roulette still because the objectives were constantly switching hands left and right. To make things even worse, The Southern Legion had orbital support from Eve side while our Eve fleet was still trying to assemble. But despite all that we won the match with a close margin and with only a small fraction of our clone count lost. In the end, we sent a letter to the enemy thanking them for a good fight.

Rewards that I gained:
1.4 million ISK
7,000+ SP
And a bucket load of salvage.
KDR: 8-10

Even with the loss of 10 proto mini scouts, I was still able to make a profit.

---Upodate 15 June 2013---

Today I had a conversation with a felllow merc merc who goes by the name OZAROW (before I got disconnected) about an idea he has for trying to stur up interest in a certain aspect (or lack thereof) of Dust known as gladiator style fights. The goal here is to get as many people interested in placing bets to see who can dish out the most kills with a certain weapon sanctioned for a particular match.

How this would work, as OZAROW described it, is that a competitor would join the corp that he establish (since I got DC'd I didn't get the name) and place bets as donations to the corp which in turn becomes the pot holding the earnings. The winner will earn the pot in addition to the regular rewards handed out by tthe matches. You are not required to use your main as you can have an alt join the corp and make a minimum donatioon to place bets. You don't have to make any big donations. Small donations like 250,000 ISK for ambush or about 500,000 ISK for skirmish is about ok for starters.

The channel being used to host the bets is R.E.D merc bets (exactly as it's written) and it is open to everyone. I understand a lot of you are little apprehensive about donating ISK for a bet to a corp we know nothing about, but we can start off small at least and see how it goes from there.

I figured this would be a good getaway from the constant grind and at least grab CCP's attention so that the REAL gladiator style feature can be implemented sooner rather than later so that players won't have to go through the whole Alt-joins-corp hassle. What do you think?

@CCP

I have posted a new thread in the Technical/Bugs section of the forums titled 'Ninja Knifing and Hit Detection. It needs to be fixed' and it is something I need you guys to read ASAP.

For those of you nova knifers out there who are having this issue, I need you to post over there for support so that we can get this resolved as quick as possible. It seems that not enough people are posting about it.

Where?

Dude make a blog on blogspot and write things there, CCP will support you for sure... It's how DUST 514 Base began too