PleaseRecycle
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That's great man, especially since what you quoted me saying was in response to this:
Quote:So in other words, I was and remain completely correct.It does feel really cool and super-hero-y when you knock a guy over a railing or ragdoll makes a guy do something funny, and it's too bad that's currently banished to a few under-played power sets. -
Well, and any group that's almost all psionic damage is going to floor most non-regen characters pretty rapidly too. Dark, elec, SR and arguably willpower deal with psi damage better than regen, but that's about it. At least the regen can respond to, say, the clockwork king's alpha with a couple heals and then coast along on IH and integration. Rare is the invuln or fire armor who can survive that alpha in the first place.
UberGuy, I don't disagree with you and I'd be lying if I said I haven't eaten several truckloads of dirt already on my regen brute, but I think that's part of the charm. It'll be a lot easier once I've IOed out, but right now it amuses me to try to balance the aggro with the squishiness. Hell, at level 30 brutes barely have more HP than scrappers. If you can get through this range you're made of some stern stuff indeed. -
Quote:Yeah, and I was responding to someone calling me an idiot for suggesting that SS had any KB at all in it.Originally Posted by EvilGeko
Knockout blow is KnockUp.
Hurl and Hand Clap are considered the must skips of the set.
I have yet to hear anyone suggest a solution to this most grievous of problems that didn't involve making the game more boring and was actually feasible. -
Oh and to be somewhat preemptive, here's why the game engine clearly could not support extra smashing damage for ragdoll collisions. Besides the fact that you'd somehow have to distinguish between hard surfaces and shrubbery or risk blatant silliness, what happens when a NPC is knocked off of a slightly elevated area? They're going to hit the floor with far more velocity than would typically be seen if you just knock them horizontally into a wall, but which behavior are you trying to encourage? It isn't incredibly comic-booky for Spider-Man to throw his enemies off of buildings for that extra bit of momentum. Further, what happens when there's just flat ground, is that meant to produce bonus damage or not?
Most of all though, if the idea were to scale the bonus damage based on force, which does seem to be a common feature in these musings, the devs suddenly have to wildly rebalance a load of sets. Is power push meant to be a boss-wrecker? Presumably it would be in this scenario, delivering, as it can, 20+ mag KB. Or, if there were simply a flat proc for any KB power, how strong is strong enough? How strong is too strong? Is it going to make sense to see a large enemy basically just get lightly pushed over by some mag 1.01 knock effect and take an additional hit, whereas enemies that get flipped end over end by air superiority take no additional damage because they haven't ragdolled? -
Quote:Wait a second, you're alleging KB-based harassment on a grand scale and I'm weird for suggesting you play with jerks? You play with jerks. Now you know.Originally Posted by Draeth Darkstar
I could not even begin to list the number of people I have personally been harassed by for this very subject, let alone the number of people I have seen harass others over it. Also, this is, once again, an unnecessarily disingenuous response.
This is false, sorry.Quote:The only situation where it can actually be used to deal damage is against an AV or GM if you don't have a reliable way to prevent it from immediately launching your target(s) to the four winds (pardon the pun) on contact.
Yeah having some knockback in a set along with powers that don't knock back is ridiculous, it's like if there were sets that had taoe powers, pbaoe powers and cones. You can't use all of those powers together, they're at completely cross purposes! Why, it's like you'd have to move around to be able to use them all effectively. Wait a second...Quote:No, I require my power combinations to work together, not against each other. For a Blaster, that means I need my attacks to not prevent me from using each other effectively, since, you know, the entire purpose of being a Blaster is... to have access to potent attacks.
As I've repeated several times now, the harm it would do is in the homogenization of the game. It would remove unique flavor that only this game has for the purpose of what exactly, if not simply buffing some sets in a ham-handed way? You're asking for the devs to solve a problem that only exists in the minds of a vocal minority on the forum. No thank you.Quote:In what way would it hurt you for the game to allow an optional removal of knockback?
Oh, you'd prefer it if I were sanctimonious and self-righteous? I'd rather be open and honest in my abrasiveness actually. Clears the air.Quote:P.S. Kindly do me the favor of responding to me with the respect I have shown you if you bother to do so at all, again. I do not appreciate being talked down to and I have been nothing but polite to you and everyone else in this conversation. Additionally, I can only assume you're intentionally misinterpreting what I have posted to respond to it in turn as you did in the last section of your post. All you are doing by employing a tactic like that is discrediting your own argument.
As someone else pointed out, SS has three powers that apply high mag KB, but thanks for the insult!Quote:Are you just pretending to be obtuse?
Super Strength has almost nothing but 0.67 KB, which functions as Knockdown.
See, I'm perfectly willing to admit that removing KB would be a buff in many cases, but that doesn't make it a good idea. The devs could buff KB sets by simply making all of their powers do judgement damage too. Would that be a good idea? They'd be more effective! I'd like to know what changes you think would improve these sets without making them all drying-paint boring. The extra smashing damage for being tossed into walls thing is a good idea but it's very clearly beyond the capability of the game engine.Quote:The OP and those disagreeing are right. If there is a choice given to turn off KB, that's not a choice. It's a requirement for anyone who cares about being able to play at their best. That's the real tragedy of KB. If its proponents would simply accept that it's not this great thing they think it is, we might be able to get some real changes that both address the legitimate concerns of the anti-KB folks and make KB users more valued. -
Quote:They will attack you for it? Who are you playing with and why are they so awful?Originally Posted by Draeth Darkstar
I gave up on my original main, an En/En Blaster, because the pervasive knockbacks were so counterproductive for actually killing anything and because I enjoy teaming, where it doesn't matter how careful you are, you will still mess up someone's plans and they will attack you for it.
Earlier in the thread at least a couple "knockback apologists," including myself, noted that this specific case could probably stand to be changed.Quote:I gave up on my Peacebringer because it was, surprise, even worse than an Energy Blaster for knocking things around, because unlike the Blaster, a PB needs to be in melee to use all of their heavy hitters... and their PBAOE also has a huge knockback on it.
That's just false? Tornado is an autohit scale 4ish attack. If the only situation where that sounds handy to you is an AV or GM, you're not being very imaginative.Quote:I hate playing Storm Summoning on anything that isn't a Fire/ Earth/ or Ice/ Controller because there is no practical way to make Tornado useful on anything save AV/GM class enemies without those -KB immobilizes, and Hurricane can be heinously annoying without one.
So you require a minimum of three knockback-free aoes for a combination to be viable or what? That severely limits the archetypes you can play, to say nothing of the power sets.Quote:I gave up on my Dark/Mental Blaster after waiting years for Dark/ to come out, because unlike the classic Dark Blast, I can't just skip Torrent and be happy with my other two AoEs, because they merged two of them together, so now I either have to mess up my targeting for Tentacles and Psychic Scream or skip most of the area damage potential the set has to offer.
Maybe I don't think many players feel that way because I see many players playing these sets that you seem to consider completely beyond the pale with no complaint. You know, it's perverse but they even seem to be enjoying themselves. What's wrong with these people? God they're as rude as I am, aren't they. Persistently interfering with the consistency of your reality with their incessant fun-having. Something must be done!Quote:I really should not look at a power set and think, "Yeah, that'd be cool, but I'd just get tired of chasing things around or herding all the time to be effective." Many players feel this way. That is a flawed design, and if you can't see that, there is no point in continuing this discussion, because your bias is beyond reason. -
Steam jump and the GvE pack don't actually increase your jump speed. They happen to increase your speed by allowing you to avoid obstacles, but even though their real numbers claim to have all these effects on your jumping they only do two things: let you jump endlessly for their duration, and increase your flight speed. Why do they increase your flight speed? Hell if I know, but they do. Not jump speed however.
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Quote:When an energy blaster knocks enemies back in an otherwise "safe" situation, you're still benefiting from the knockback. It may not be as obvious as when she pulls your butts out of a fire with a well placed explosive blast, but mitigation is mitigation. You may think you don't need her mitigation, yet you are seeing only a single "trial" of your team's performance. For all you know, your hotshot SS/FA would be having quite a bit of difficulty soloing that eight player spawn of Rikti, yet the contribution of knockback is relatively invisible to you even if you aren't predisposed to dislike it. If you already know that you hate knockback, you aren't going to see a single positive thing about it regardless of the reality of the situation.Originally Posted by rsclark
Much less than it would be by someone with an area sleep - already a weak situational ability.
And, as has been said a million times, it's not that knockback cannot be situationally useful, it is instead that knockback is often tied to attacks that would not otherwise be considered situational.
A big knockback power might be taken as a power similar to the aforementioned sleep if it's something the character has room for. But if that big knockback is also tied to the only good area attack you have, then listing one or two situations it may be useful in is not good enough. Your high damage AoE needs to be part of your regular attack chain, and if you can't use it as such, it becomes a detriment to that character.
Actual CoH gameplay, for all of its snide reducibility to bash guys, guys falls down, is an incredibly complex system. To say that you can generalize one of the most complex effects within that system down to "eh, its bad. it's bad! bad. it." is to demonstrate the extent to which you do not understand the system.
In that light, my question is why any of the self-professed min-maxers in this thread care. Socorro cares because his PB has been spurned for normal play. Fair enough, I'd be annoyed too. Everyone else seems to care because of this vague notion that the existence of KB is interfering with the optimization of their general play experience. Here's a fun fact: unless you play exclusively with a cadre of fellow min-maxers and follow strict scientific routines to ensure perfect play, you're playing sub-optimally to begin with. You know that if you join a pug, your flawless reward per second ratio falls through the floor and doesn't stop until it reaches the center of the earth. It doesn't matter whether they're energy blasters or katana scrappers, they can't possibly be playing perfectly in such an uncontrollable environment.
What interests me is the fundamental conceit here that you all do play perfectly. You never make errors, you never dawdle, every second is spent wisely. Really? Are you sure? Look again. -
I always take combat jumping and sometimes take hasten but I never take a travel power. That change would severely screw up most of my builds. You would have to leave the current tier 1s in tier 1, leave the travel powers in tier 2, and have everything else be tier 3.
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The other problem with WP is that unless you have sleep resistance in real life you are liable to spend most of your time incapacitated. I'm thinking about going Titan Weapons/WP just because it looks like it might be the melee set that finally is in itself active enough to make up for how eye-shuttingly boring WP is. Regen absolutely does not have that problem.
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Tenzhi, there is indeed a knockback power that pseudopets things off to the four winds, jolting chain. Using it on low level spawns is highly amusing.
rsclark, there's a huge difference between "the most effective way of doing things" and "the only effective way of doing things." Is burning down clusters of enemies with aoes the most effective way of doing things? If you're considering rewards per time, usually yes. To go on and say any other strategy is useless is to be either dishonest or ignorant.
Why can't KB be useful on a team? Do you think you can prove that it isn't useful on a team? I don't think you can. Take any team that's suffering from a bad pull, an inopportune ambush, what have you, and add knockback. Their circumstances have improved. Attacks that would be forthcoming have been delayed for five seconds or more. Would you say that "good teams" never ever get in over their heads?
I would say that a good team is one that is pushing the limits of what it can handle. This is precisely the area where eclectic mitigation like knockback can shine. -
I honestly haven't seen anyone complain about a teammate's knockback in the game in three or four years. My first question is, are you playing on Freedom? Remedy: Play somewhere better. That aside, if PB knockback is especially bad, perhaps you (and others) should continue encouraging Synapse to reconsider it in solar flare. I can see how having a key element of your aoe be a high magnitude pbaoe kb could be a bit much. However, the kb in nova blasts, for example, is no worse than an energy blaster's kb, which is itself demonstrably useful in many situations. Given the sheer number of blast sets with intermittent taoe and cone kb, anyone who can't deal with that needs to learn to play, as they say.
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If you're arguing that every single thing in the game should be balanced around rounding things up and aoeing them, you're saying you want to take something that is currently quite diverse and render it completely homogeneous. Consider this. If the devs rebalanced every set so it was perfect for farming, there would be no challenge in doing so. Any imbecile could throw together any build and be just as good as the claws/fire brute that someone lovingly purpled into demigodhood. This would obviously make the game very boring. Why is that a good thing?
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Quote:The funny thing is, in the quote you have in your post it is clearly visible that that isn't what I said. I said that if you're trying to remove KB from the game, you have a lot of work to do to show that this is a good idea. I did not say that "the status quo is off limits." Nobody in this thread has shown that removing KB is a good idea, they've simply stated that it would make certain powers stronger so obviously it needs to happen. I dispute that.Originally Posted by Socorro
Just...Wow! The status quo is off limits eh?
Posts I've read in the past (paraphrased):
"Sideswitching ain't gonna happen. Besides, each side would lose their special flavor if it did."
"Inherent Fitness isn't needed. Those extra slots would make us too powerful."
"PBs are fine as is and don't need any upgrading - I actually like playing the Underdog."
Devs, don't ever bother making Hasten FX customizable. It, and everything else, is fine as is. -
I'd say KB is available in some of the most popular sets there are. Energy blast and super strength are the two sets that everyone picks the first time they play the game, and the latter happens to also be flavor of the century for tankers and brutes. Claws, pistols, archery, assault rifle, sonic, dark blast, martial arts, street justice, psi blast, kinetic melee, storm, elec melee, all of the epic ATs, illusion, mind... Need I go on? The devs have always judiciously spread KB around and have shown no signs of stopping.
Why should they? This is the only MMO I'm aware of that has ragdolls at all, to say nothing of the rest of the elaborate physics system. How, pray tell, is it in their interests to remove from their game something they worked hard to add and continually support, and which sets their game apart from anything you could call its competition? As you may have noticed, this question was rhetorical. -
The last time I selected a travel power was the last character I created before they released ninja run, but you're overselling the speed of ninja run, Scarlet. At level 50 with two slotted hurdle I get about 66 mph jumping speed while ninja running. Super jump single slotted with single slotted hurdle should, as I recall, cap your jumping speed at something like 85 mph. That's a considerable difference, and the thing is nothing is keeping you from using the GvE jump pack or steam jump with SJ.
I make a point to try to be the first one to every mission whenever possible and I usually pull that off just with ninja run, the jump packs and the various teleporty powers we have access to these days, but I accept that if I used SJ instead I'd be a lot faster yet. -
KM actually does very competitive single target damage even before power siphon. Factoring in power siphon, so speaking mainly of scrapper KM here since they get the most siphon for their buck, it's possibly the strongest single target set. I don't feel like doing the math to back that up but just consider its above-average DPAs and then add a buff that can be made about as strong as perma-soul drain on top of that. The fact that it gets consistent mitigation via its -damage on top of its more traditional minor mitigation proc effects is really just gravy. There isn't a set I would sooner choose for AV or GM soloing if I were in the market for a scrapper like that.
As far as drawbacks of the set, well, both of the ranged powers are pretty skippable. Torrent is actually kind of nice while leveling up but it doesn't really retain a place in a high end chain, and focused burst is a pale shadow of its claws namesake. Adding insult to injury, these two powers also have the silliest animations in a set full of silly animations. Some people don't like burst but I find it to be a very competent pbaoe, and pbaoe knockdown is always a good thing.
Overall KM is an excellent set that may not have been what some people had in mind when they expressed interest in the idea of kinetic melee in that poll years ago. It's a little bit like dual pistols in that the animations turn people off to the extent that they assume the set must simply be bad, but it isn't. I can't say, "Oh yes, you'll definitely love it," but it can't hurt to give it a try. -
Broooooooooooooot.
Seriously, brute!
Yes, the taunt aura can occasionally work against you in the low and mid levels, but at high level, guess what, you get to keep the taunt aura and scrappers don't. You get more hitpoints to work with so less investment equals more result. You do a little less damage, but whatever, just pair the /regen with a set like, oh, I don't know, street justice as you said, and get ready for some unctuous pugilism! Damn!
Really it's pretty hard to go wrong with brute regen, and why not enjoy a sassy new melee set along side? -
It isn't a matter of taking x and pretending that it's y. It's taking x and being able to justify it as natural through whatever means. I've got a natural ice/ tanker whose concept I quite enjoy, as well as a natural earth/storm controller. At no point did I say to myself, "well, these are normal people but they can manipulate the elements because they found a particularly potent key fob in the gutter one day." Natural is absolutely the widest possible origin, even surpassing magic in my opinion. If you can't think of a natural justification for x/x, sleep on it and try again.
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Wait, now min/maxers are incapable of being irrational? Anything they want they should get? News to me.
Neggy, claiming that those powers are so uncontrollable as to be literally useless is laughable. I can believe that you can't control them. I have energy blast characters and storm characters and I somehow manage to control them. Am I blessed by Dionysus himself? Could well be. -
How exactly is Sailboat the one who's wildly out of line when all he's arguing for is the status quo? Doesn't the burden of proof lie on those who want to completely change how the game has worked for seven and a half years? Knockback is in the game. Deal with it. You have been dealing with it for up to seven and a half years, why is it suddenly too much for you now?
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Just one initial point, you probably should skip initial strike. You only need three builders and it's the worst one. If you want the KC bonus, consider putting the slots into brawl or boxing and saving one of them. I'd also consider slotting resilience with just one steadfast res/def: better defense bonuses than reactive armor for just one slot. I leave to you what to do with the extra power and four slots.
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With my Rad/MM, I have two chains that I cycle through. t1-> t2 -> t3 for single target, naturally, and neutron bomb -> irradiate -> PSW for pbaoe mayhem. Now, obviously /dark doesn't get PSW, but soul drain is a pretty damn good stand-in, and if it works like other versions of soul drain then if you slot it with obliterations or something it should be a solid attack in its own right. I am imagining running soul drain -> neutron -> irradiate -> filler -> neutron -> irradiate and it sounds pretty dang good.
Neutron bomb and irradiate aren't exactly chainable until you've got loads of global recharge and full slotting, so I think the solution to the mid level woes is baked into the recharge on your aoes. Since you won't be able to sit in the middle of a spawn and burn things down, your natural impulse will instead be to hit the spawn and then retreat and take things down at range, which of course is a totally viable way for blasters to behave in the first place.
In my own blaster's case, I pretty much levelled up as I expect one typically does - soloing a little bit on x1 and later x2, doing some tips and such that way, but by and large teaming. Ran a lot of TFs, rustled up a few teams of lowbies to run my mid-high level stuff. You're 50 before you know it. The thing about being a half-complete aoe blaster is that it only takes a little bit of "support" to spread the aggro around and you have license to unload. Don't expect instant perfection, just do the best you can with what you have and the results should please you. -
It is common forum knowledge that fakes take three IOs, but that just hasn't been my experience. I never slot more than one KB IO because I can always think of something I'd rather do with a slot than provide redundancy there. It could be in part because by the time I'm fighting fakes all of my characters are going to be close to the softcap for either s/l or ranged defense, but it's not like I never get hit. Actually getting knocked back is incredibly rare though. I assume fakes have only a chance for KB, but how low can it be? The thing I notice causing KB is the alpha from a x8 spawn full of grenade-throwing council or tons of nemesis sergeants and warhulks, and even then it isn't common.
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By the way, just consolidating my posts here to remind you that you forgot to post this in the brute forum, the stalker forum and the tanker forum, Jayboh. I don't see how your important feedback will be nearly robust enough unless you scientifically sample these additional mines of data with that Jayboh rigor we've come to expect.