Is Mag 12 KB Protection Overkill?

The only character I've played thus far that lacked KB protection is my SS/Fire Brute, and being in melee range means being in the thick of things that cause knockback. Therefore, it's always been wise to stack 3 KB IO's for a total of mag 12. Is this not the case with Blasters?

I've decided to give blasting a try, so I've started leveling a DP/EM. I've been perusing the Blaster threads to find out what the consensus is on ranged def vs. S/L def, and all of the builds I'm seeing only have 1 KB protection IO. Would my blaster be safe with just 1? No, I don't plan to solo AVs or anything too crazy :P

Thanks in advance!

If you plan on staying at range mag 4 protection is usually enough. If you plan on doing quite a bit of blapping you'll want to go all the way to 12. Even then there are a few things that will still KB you such as Mary on the KHTF and Scirocco.

One thing I will mention. There is no use at all going with 2 -KB IOs there are virtually no mob PVE powers that have KB in the mag 5-8 range. The only time that happens is when 2 KB powers hit at about the same server tick, an extremely rare occurrence.

Thanks for the responses.

For the vast majority of PvE encounters, 4 points of KB protection will be plenty - especially on a blaster. Going up to 12 points of protection will guard against some fringe cases of hardcore knockback - simultaneous hits by numerous Council grenades (you ate the alpha in a KB-heavy group), Fake Nemesis, and certain AVs, mostly - but at least 95% of the time, 4 points will be fine.

Unless you're a tanker whose defense set has a KB hole, or you plan on PvPing heavily, I wouldn't bother with more than a single -KB IO on any character.

I think the only place I ever noted bothersome amounts of knockback on a melee type, an elec/elec scrapper with (at the time) only 4 pts -kb was in Croatoa vs Cabal (or Mary in KHTF). They have enough Stormie types to get annoying that way with Gale in particular. Outside of that the only other time I got a bit bugged by get tossed around on a character with -kb protection was on my Emp/Sonic/Elec Rianna who had 12 points at the time on Test going up against Director 11 and his minelaying horde. Trip Mines everywhere with more than 12 pts kb sent her flying every which way often nearly chained all over the room. Fortunately they toned that down a bit but I think the kb is the same ... just the number of mines and the difficulty of staying out of them got tweaked.

My blaster gets into melee a lot, and I found that a second -kb keeps me from getting kb'd on trials when the dead ACU's and BCU's blow up. It used to be that 8 pts would protect you vs. a Rikti pylon, this is no longer the case.

4 pts is fine for the majority of situations, excepting Nemesis Wands, Carnie Phantasm and decoy combo, Rikti Pylons... And getting into melee while there is still a lot of incoming AoE with kb (Malta, and I think Nemesis).

12 should be enough to handle 99.9% of the content, that other .1% being the times you fight AVs/Heroes that have stupid KB ability, like Statesman.

I use zero kb IO's.

Acrobatics ftw!

The Leaping pool is so good, I can't bring myself to ever skip it on squishies.