Pet Knockback and the Upcoming Demon Summoner pets.

To save myself some time I'm putting both topics in a single thread.

FIRST TOPIC: I've seen a few threads pop up concerned with knockback caused by powersets like Energy Blast. As plenty of people pointed out, that knockback can be mitigated by the player. However, I haven't seen anything concerning pet knockback, which is a lot harder for a player to control, especially when using pets like Phantasm. The only way i know to control pet knockback is to not summon the pet. Could a future issue remove the knockback components from pet powers? I don't much care if you replace it with some other effect or not, I just want the knockback gone.

There are also some MM pet powers that cause scatter. Essentially, scatter does the same thing that knockback does, causing mobs to disperse away from the brute/tank making it harder for them to control aggro and maybe even causing the running mobs to aggro other mobs. I know in the case of say caltrops from the Jounin or the Incendiary Missiles from the Assault Bot simply removing the fear effect would maybe make the powers too powerful. So i guess maybe exchanging them with other powers that don't cause scatter would be a solution?


SECOND TOPIC: While it's perhaps to early to speculate on what type of demons a Demon Summoner will be able to summon (what they look like, what kind of powers they will use) I would like to ask of the devs one favor. Please Please please PLEASE don't use the same demons the Circle of Thorns have. I don't want to summon those same demons, I want something fresh and new. I don't want something that's just a different color behemoth master. I would except succubi as a summoning option, but behond that please don't recycle.


THIRD TOPIC: Ok, so I came up with something else. Recently, the free Praetorian Clockwork code was announced as a gift for Hero-Con attendees. When I saw this, my first thought was that we are getting a very cool looking villian group. My second thought was, why do the npcs once again get the good costume pieces? That is what we should have gotten with the Cyborg Pack! The chest, lets, boots, gloves, or at the very least the chest and legs! Foreshadow, the trainer in Hollows, also has a few good costume pieces I wouldn't mind being able to use for my assault blaster. Maybe you want to make sure that your npc's are unique, and that's fine, but I'd still like some of those costume pieces made avaliable to players. I would also point out that if you don't want us to be able to make npc clones, then you might want to change Sister Psyche's costume, as that sexy number is very very easy to replicate. (also she's by far the sexiest npc in the game..just saying.)

I don't want to take away your fire bomb, and I happen to like my assault bots incendiary missiles of death, but they don't do so well in groups is all. If we could have it without the scatter effect, that would be nice, but I don't see how. They could gives us MM's more control over when our pets use their powers, but that would be very difficult i'm betting. Like let us tell them when exactly to use which power..

Also, I would say that act of standing in one place no matter what goes on around them does a very good job of distinguishing them from other players

I'm fully expecting twin Succubi. With whips.

Just sayin'.

The question is, does MM balance consider the kb an advantage or a disadvantage?

If it is one of the disadvantages that lets them be stronger, it's ok.

If it counts as an advantage it sucks because you can't control the KB effectively. Having 1 power in a specific epic pool to counteracts the dubious advantage of your set does not count.

Another thing, blasts that have a chance for KB are not controlled KB either. If it has a 50% or more chance of KB it can be considered an advantage, but otherwise it should be KD.

Regarding the demon pets, I'm sure we'll get unique demons of some kind. Look at all the existing MM pets. They are all unique to MMs and none of them match NPC or enemy models.