Would you play with Captain Knockback?

I saw, once, a cartoon that had a picture of a harried mom in a kitchen covered with messy stuff, spatters on walls, and so on, and a small child. Caption: "I'm HELPING!"

I have toyed with the idea of building a superhero (or possibly a villain) who is "helping". Say, keeping Gale on auto. Slotting energy blast for knockback.

The question is... Would anyone ever willingly play with a character whose character concept was that the was "helping" in a woefully inefficient way? Would the humor value make up for the inconvenience?

And if so, what is the most inconvenient build you can think of? Emphasis on something that a sufficiently exuberant child might think was "helping".

I'd have a blast.

For what you want, go with a Storm/Energy defender.

See if you can get bonfire in the epics or something similar.

I'm gonna have to say it depends. I think most people will put up with some knockback if they think the person is not doing it on purpose. The difference here is... you will be. And it will be obvious. All I can say is your performance better be entertaining enough that people don't just take you for a griefer and kick you.

To your other question, the entity in the game I most often refer to as "Captain Knockback" is Imperious during the final mission of the ITF. Of course, that's just handclap, but anything that can produce radial knockback I would have to say is the most egregious form of KB there is. Wormhole is a possibility but it usually manages to knock everything in one direction and I don't find that nearly as annoying as someone capable of scattering a well-mannered spawn to the four winds thus ensuring no one else with an AoE will be productive. I suppose you probably can't beat someone with Energy and Storm (or Grav) available to them but for some reason a beefy melee type with handclap alone just says "bull in a china shop" to me.

Whatever you choose to do, I demand a log be kept of the choice teammate comments and a running total of the number of times you get kicked.

Absolutely, with no caveats. Go for it.

I'd pull out my Illusion/Storm and join in the fun. I generally think of Ill/Storm as the King of Chaos. But probably Storm/Energy Defender would have the most knockback. (I do have an Energy/Energy Blaster -- named "Harvey Wallbanger" after the cocktail. He almost exclusively solos.)

As long as the team has mainly ranged damage dealers, there shouldn't be too much trouble. Knockback is a problem for melee fighters and many AoE-focused characters, but if I can target the guy at range, then it doesn't matter if he is knocked back.

And somebody who knows how to use knockback effectively by flying overhead or using aspects of the environment, is generally a very good player.

Ya know I saw a "Captain Knockback" in Talos yesterday and all I could think was "Man, he must have a hard time getting a team!"

I actually like the concept and think it might be fun to play solo but I'd expect to be avoided like the plague. Im prolly gonna take some heat for this but when I have the star, I avoid Kelds, Stormies, and Energy blasters as much as possible. I'll admit I have seen some players use these sets to great effect and be a benefit to a team, however, I have seen far more just make a mess of mobs and get ppl killed or at the very least slow the whole team down a great bit.

Now if u put together a KB superteam where every member of the team was doing KB, that might be fun, chaotic but fun.

To answer your original question though, no, I would not team with Captain KB under normal circumstances. Sorry....

Totally.

Funny thing with knockback: it's really only a bad thing for melee types, and if there a surfaces for bodies to slide against, even that's debatable. Heck, you have enough knock back on a team its mititgation power becomes so obvious it can't be ignored. If you have a team where all the enemies do is try to get up, you're not in that much danger. The only trick is, is young team strong enough to deal with the mob merges that can happen? Considering the best knockback sets are storm and forcefield, then the answer is usually "yes."

I don't mind knockback but what you're talking about sounds like, for me, it would cross the line from 'fun' to 'annoying'. Energy Blast slotted for knockback is fine (as long as you've got some damage and accuracy in there as well). Gale on auto-fire though sounds like it would end up impacting the fun of the rest of the team. Gale is a useful positioning and mitigation tool but if you just fire it off randomly you end up sending mobs randomly all over the place.

Mitigation in this game can take many forms. Used correctly knockback is excellent mitigation (an enemy flying through the air is not attacking after all) but it is by it's very nature transitory mitigation. Using knockback semi-randomly results in a situation where you are not consistently mitigating particular mobs and at the same type making several other types of mitigation less effective. The other damage mitigators on the team (whether they are other characters with buff/debuff sets, melee characters using Taunt or simply damage dealers operating under the kill them first principle) have to work a lot harder to counteract what amounts to negative mitigation.

Some teams have powers that make this easier to handle (having a Force Fielder would make it moot for example) but that isn't guaranteed.

To summarize:
Scattering mobs around and reducing the effectiveness of AoE powers slowing the team down, fine by me as long as it's fun. Scattering mobs and reducing the survivability of the team, that I have problems with.

Okay, sounds like the answer is, some people would hate it, some would find it amusing. Conclusion: I'll make a macro for warning people, and run with it.

I'm open to alternative suggestions for good ways to be humorously disruptive. Storm Summoning seems to win for knockback, but given that, I'm not sure I need more knockback; if some of the control sets allow for amusingly disruptive behavior, that could work too. Ill/storm does sound fun. Now, to be fair, confusion doesn't really hurt under pretty much any circumstances, and I mostly just think it's hilarious. I made it through most of a sewers run once on an ill/ troller doing very little but charming embalmed vazh. It does, however, provide the feature of causing unexpected outcomes, so that might be better.

Ideally, I want the option of being genuinely really helpful to a team, but also of running in, creating mass havoc, and then issuing my battle cry: "Why are you angry? I'm HELPING!"

(ETA: Gravity control? Hadn't thought of it, what's it got that's awesome?)

I avoid toons with KB too. I don't fuss, and I don't kick from teams, but if I'm on a melee toon (as I usually am), and I've just found myself Lightening Rodded into a whole bunch of empty hallway 'cause the energy blaster got his shot off first, I'll usually give it a mission or two, then suddenly come down with a bad case of some appointment I'd forgotten all about.

Now, if someone were NAMED Captain Knockback, and I KNEW up-front what the deal was, I could have fun with it! I could rollplay that till the cows come home (and fuss that at least cows do not do KB!). Or, I'd ask to go alt to an ill/rad, or plant/storm. Now THAT would be FUN!

At the risk of sounding semi-practical, you could do exactly what you're suggesting, and still slot those obnoxious powers with, say... damage and accuracy? Or, instead of useless gale, why not hurricane and get some use out of it? If something is getting KB'd, does it matter all that much if it's KB'd an extra foot or two? Is it less obnoxious? I think not!

Brilliant idea, just brilliant!

My wife and I have a couple duo's that are kb oriented. They're a lot of fun to play and we find ourselves laughing through most missions.

We duo'd Posi's TF twice with our sonic/storm and sonic/rad Defenders, prior to hitting lvl 20.

Our other duo: an energy/rad Corruptor and merc/storm MM. Bots may have been better for overall kb, but the mercs get a little bit, too, so it's still fun. Especially when we can jam a boss into a corner and keep his head planted in the wall. It's hilarious to see them dangling.

Oh, definitely hurricane too. I have a plant/storm that is planning to use his second build to do nothing but slot hurricane for acc/kb.

Why?

Because I went into the sewers with him, pulled together about three spawns, turned on hurricane, and just sat there laughing.

I am pretty sure this was in character; he's a hicksie (a hillbilly pixie, basically), and he would, in character, "git tore up", go into the sewers, and do exactly that, then laugh until he puked. And consider this Good Fun.

But yeah, the intent here would be very much a roleplaying thing, warning people in advance before teaming. I would not want to inflict this on people who don't want it.

But imagine a stormie who leaves KB on and runs into melee screaming "Looks like you're outnumbered. I'm HELPING!"

ETA: I've got the origin story. Captain Helpful's career was started in tragedy; he was taken out crime fighting by his parents, on Take Your Child To Work Day, and by sheer bad luck, this was the day that they met their match, despite his best efforts to help them. Now, he has devoted his life to helping other people fight crime. He's helping!

(It becomes funny once you've grouped with him.)

Okay, grav/storm and ill/storm both look pretty credible. I might go with grav/ just because I don't have one, and wormhole looks like a power that could pretty much wreck ANY setup.

Waaaah.

I'm still at work. I can't start yet. Waaaaaah.

If you're going to do a concept character that helps in a painfully inefficient way, it has to be a Grav/Storm/Leviathan with the teleport pool and about 3 fingers of rye whiskey.

Your scrapper friend needs to get into the fight, so you team tp everybody in. Now the blaster is in trouble so you phase the enemies. Now the scrappers is bored because he doesn't have anything to fight, so Wormhole over another group of enemies. But that scares blaster, so turn on hurricane so he has some room to breathe. But now the enemies are scattered so summon your tornado as far away as you can to reign them end. Oh on tornado is going crazy, so counter it with a Water Spout.

Now consume the whiskey, and wait for dim shift to recharge.

I'm reminded of a cake recipe:

I once played on a team with an energy/energy blaster named "Knockback Man" with a self-depreciating bio and everything talking about how no one liked to team with him. He stayed in character and said that he was dominating the enemy even though the tank couldn't herd for anything due to KB man. It was a really fun time, and a bit frustrating because my fire blaster wasn't killing stuff by the tank , but Knockback Man was clearly having a blast.