What is the point of knockback?

The other thing I'll add about AoEs with knockback is that the type of AoE really makes a difference. For Targeted AoEs (either cones or the regular version) you're pushing all effected enemies in the same direction meaning that the group of enemies remain clustered for future attacks. With PBAoEs you can easily end up scattering enemies all over the place if you aren't careful.

Used correctly, knockback is a very powerful tool, used poorly it can really hurt you.

For example one time my TA/A defender was on a team with a Peacebringer who insisted on wading into the middle of my oil slick and using Solar Flare which scattered the majority of the groups out of the Oil Slick resulting in less debuffs, mitigation and damage.

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Another solution to dealing with KB users that have issues using their KB properly:
-Take your own KB powers and put the foes in the right spot. Fling them in a corner so they'd have to intentionally try to F up and scatter by leaping in the corner themselves or if they toss a foe (or will toss a foe) in a difficult direction, knock the ****er the other way. You'll ultimately end up with a target that can't do crap so it's win win....

I was actually headed to the boards to start a related discussion about knockback and the central problem I see with it.

Is knockback a penalty or a bonus? The answer is completely ambiguous. As soon as we start saying "yeah, it's great as long as you work around it" you've introduced the idea that, in reality, knockback is an obstacle to be overcome rather than a bonus effect. Energy Blast, for example, has lower damage numbers than it might otherwise because of knockback, and yet an Energy Blaster on a team spends more time trying to *avoid* the effect than employ it.

So that leads me to some questions. If it's a bonus, why does knockback cause so many disruptions? If it's a penalty, why let us slot for it and why does the purple patch affect it so much? So many weird situations are created because the game is undecided.

Did you know, for example, that one way to control your knockback is to fight higher level enemies so that the effects are deliberately scaled back? The idea of the purple patch is that its supposed to make you less effective against a higher level foe, but with knockback it frequently does the opposite. Can you name another status effect or debuff that people intentionally try to cancel out? ("Afraid," maybe, except that in all powers except the two Controller PBAoE toggles it clearly appears to be a penalty and a way to tell the mobs AI to exit an area).

I think knockback looks really cool and don't want to see it go. But I also think it needs to be made much more obvious that it is a bonus. The act of translocating an enemy by itself is actually more disruptive than just knocking them down (see knockdown and knockup, neither of which enjoy knockback's nefarious reputation).

IMO, what needs to happen is that during and after a knockback the enemy have a penalty of some kind, such as -defense, -resistance, or whatever else. Perhaps have the effect linger for a time after they stand up. It would certainly help move knockback toward being an unambiguous bonus. I wouldn't even necessarily mind all the crazy AoE knockback explosions if there were some point to them; in fact I think the game needs more of that kind of thing.

If you're on a team with a guy who has a single target KB power, like Energy Blast, then here's how you handle it:

TARGET SOMEONE ELSE. You don't need to be the only one to kill Every. Single. Foe. You can let someone else kill them. And if they knock them back a few feet in doing so, who cares? Let em have fun too.

Done.

It's not that hard. Really.

If you ARE energy blast, don't use your cone attack on the guys your melee friends are targeting. Pick one guy and blast him into dust. Then pick another guy no one else is targeting and then repeat.

Done.

See, everyone is happy!

Quote:

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

Years ago this was less of an issue. Most blasters, who slotted well for damage, would say "Don't worry. If I knock him back... he AINT gettin' up." And that was a GREAT attitude to have. As a scrapper I could respect the heck out of that. I don't see that as much anymore. I won't get into ED killing the "Glass Cannon" here (too much has been debated on that before). But I still tell people I team with not to worry about that KB. "He won't be coming back.", I tell them. And then I am sure to follow through on that. I guess thats the catch.

The only thing i dislike about kb is mobs getting stuck in walls, roofs and floors thanks to buggy maps.

As the penultimate nrgy/nrgy/nrgy blaster on Champion (just ask anyone - as long as they're me - and they'll tell you it's true ), I have a couple of thoughts:

I loves meh AoE's... and they all do knockback. But with the way I'm slotted, with Aim + BU + energy torrent + explosive blast, all the minions die and the leuts are left with small slivers of health. So yeah, who cares how far they fly, as long as they don't get back up?

But many times when on a team, I *don't* use my AoE's. Instead, I'll run around the edges of the big dog-pile and pick off the stragglers while the others do the slug-fest in the middle. This isn't because of knockback, really, but because the others are killing so fast that by the time I move into position, most of the swarm is down already.

Sometimes a team simply doesn't gel. And this almost *never* has anything to do with knockback. It's because playstyles are different, everyone is expecting different things, one or more of the players are noobs, the buffs or debuffs or heals are not coming at the right time or place... or one of a number of intangible reasons.

But knockback is an integral part of what my character is and how he plays. Telling me to stop knocking mobs back is basically telling me to leave the team.

True story:
A few weeks ago I was on a demon farm team in PI. Half way up one side of the map one of the tanks sent a tell to the team leader demanding that he boot me because my powers did knockback. Now it's true that the team was not mowing down the mobs as fast as one might expect given the team's composition. The leader refused to boot me, so hater-tank quit the team in a huff. After that, we went through the mobs *MUCH* faster than before! This is because *he* was jumping into the spawns before the fire troller could lock them down, and causing them to run around too much.

So, you know, same old moral about good players and teamwork trumping AT and primary/secondary... bla bla bla...