[2020] Need help with knife fighting

Knives aren't about staggering enemies. If you want to stagger them, use clubs or sledgehammers. Knives aren't for standing and fighting, it's for playing keep away and for one shot assassination of the unaware.

Knives are about inflicting DoT's with your attacks and then staying out of arms reach while they bleed to death. With a high knife skill, a single power attack will slam 4 or so bleed stacks on a zombie and more often than not, that is enough to kill a zombie over the course of it's duration.