Emberly

I'm sorry if I've pushed your buttons. That wasn't my intention. I'm trying to respectfully and politely present my viewpoint. I believe I've presented, and will continue to present, enough support for my opinion that it shouldn't be dismissed as "total BS," even if you do disagree with it.

I don't agree with your assessment. Knockback absolutely protects enemies far more than teammates. Spawns that would be dead almost immediately get the scatter-and-rally, knocked out of debuff patches, what have you. I've never been in a situation in-game where AoE knockback was the best choice (or even a good choice) for mitigation. In this game, killing the spawn is the best mitigation possible, and AoE knockback largely slows that process. We can pretend that the spawn was a deadly threat that had to be knocked on its *** lest the team die, but in reality, it's just another spawn and almost certainly wasn't going to cause much harm. Where's the benefit in prolonging the life of a spawn? Knockback increases spawn lifespan and that causes more incoming damage, because sure, the spawn spends a few seconds getting up, but then is all over the place and not nearly as subject to AoE attacks.

I'd like to hear about a typical, mixed-AT teaming situation where knockback is a meaningful mitigator without slowing down everyone's fighting. By meaningful, I mean regularly makes a big difference in survivability, like ice shields or rad debuffs. Knocking a bunch of baddies across the room when they are no threat already isn't anything but an annoyance. Knocking a bunch of baddies that are a threat across the room doesn't do anything but limit AoE attack effectiveness, aggro control and crowd control, while also helping to redistribute aggro to the user of the knockback powers.

My opinion is based on my experiences playing the game, and coming to the realization that while typical AoE knockback is iconic and fun in and of itself, it absolutely, positively makes any given encounter last longer*. That's not up for debate; it's a demonstrable fact. Melee ATs suddenly must stop attacking to give chase. AoEs that would hit ten or more targets suddenly hit two or three. Crowd control powers hit fewer enemies. Enemies that would be happily glued to the tank via Gauntlet or a taunt aura are suddenly free to target whoever they would like, quite possibly the squishy that just knocked them across the room. The best case scenario is that this was a trivial spawn and everyone sighs and kills it in double the time. The worst case scenario is that this was a challenging spawn, and now the team is in a worse situation to handle it because the spawn is all over hell's half-acre. Put simply, no encounter is sped up via knockback*, and it's been my experience that the longer an encounter lasts, the more dangerous it is to the squishier members of the team.

I've found two places in-game where knockback is a big help, but it's got nowt to do with mitigation. Knocking mobs away from the terminals in the KIR iTrial is great. It's not a help for survivability at all, but it speeds up the tiresome process of unlocking those terminals. Similarly, the prisoner phase of the BAF iTrial has some great uses for knockback, in that it messes with enemy pathing, but it (obviously) has no mitigation value.

*The exception is that almost-imaginary player who lines up his knockback, or uses from hover, or belts things into a corner. I've never met him or her, but I hear they're out there. Come join my teams, Mr. or Mrs. Competent Knockbacker!

I just want to clarify this: people ask for hundreds of dollars of actual RL cash money to design and build internet superhero bases? And people pay these fees? And this doesn't violate any ToS stuff?

I am laughing outright at the idea that anyone could ask for thousands of dollars of actual money for a "high end" supergroup base. I must be misunderstanding this. I always assumed, and saw in chat, that people asked for and received ingame items and inf for their services. If it's true that base builders are actually making real money at this, I suddenly have a much clearer understanding of why there is even a demographic that identifies as base builders and also why they are so out of joint about the lack of base attention. It's still crazy, but it's at least understandable.

Yeah, this is pretty much awesome.

Claws for brutes is awesome as soon as you get Spin and it only gets better from there. It's great to level up with and great at high end.

Well, seeing as the revamped Galaxy City will be strictly the tutorial zone, and you won't be able to return to it, I don't know that it matters if there are Hellions in it. Not sure how they will handle it, as the Oro Galaxy won't be accessible to rogues who might be running the TF.

This is a great billboard and the idea behind it is sound. Any flying, bulletproof jackass can play the hero. It takes real guts to be a normal girl or guy with a gun standing firm against injustice.

I have often been a POC under bright illumination. I would like to confirm Zombie Man's observation.

People of colour are not, in fact, merely white people in a dim light, so lighting us up doesn't make us whiter.

Literally the first thing I thought.