The savage knuckle knife is a roughshod specialization for close quarters combat, suited for both bludgeoning and brutal thrusting deathblows.
A melee weapon records none of the firing stats. What it records is the trade between the two swings - a heavy costs stamina and time for the damage it adds.
Once your stamina is spent the cooldown stretches to 1.6s - 3.6× the rested heavy swing.
Its attacks are not one damage type - light attack deals Melee Blunt, heavy attack deals Melee Stab - so which one you pick below changes what it is strongest and weakest against.
Against a hunter's 150 health. Melee carries no falloff, so these do not change with distance.
Light attack
Deals Melee Blunt damage. It hits Immolator hardest (1.44x) and Water Devil softest (0.45x).
Two hits
Four hits
Five or more
Computed from each creature's own hit-zone table against this attack's damage type.
Every trait this weapon references. A recommendation is the game's own; the numbers above are the ones we can prove.
A few perks carve out exceptions in their own description - Crack Shot excludes shotguns and sawed-off variants - so read the perk text, not just the listing.