Air Burst IO set bonus (2)- knockback enhancement

[star_fury_lives]

Hey all,

 

Air Burst is a targeted AoE IO set- the set bonus for 2 enhancements "improves the Knockback of all your powers by 2.0%" (from Paragon Wiki, https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Air_Burst)

 

Is there any actual benefit to knockback powers by doing this? (I am actually aiming for knockback!). I tried on Test and it doesn't seem to convert a knockdown to knockback (doesn't seem to touch the 0,67 magnitude at all). Just seems a bit pointless...

[merrypessimist]

Having literally never used this set ever, is it possible that the boost is to the distance knockback is generated?  Even if not, five stacks of that IO bonus would only be a 10% improvement, which would be .067 for a standard knockdown, bringing it to .737 which is STILL less than the 1.0 required to actually knock something somewhere.  A 2% boost to your standard .67 knockback would be .0134 which again turns that .67 knockback into a .6834 knock.

[SuperPlyx]

Even at low mag the knockback should still work as knockdown. 

Also Wiki says Increasing Knockback " increases both the magnitude of KB and the resultant distance thrown"

 

I was thinking with 2% so low maybe try another set, but after looking it appears Air Burst is the only set that improves knockback. Which surprised me tbh.

[siolfir]

3 hours ago, star_fury_lives said:

Is there any actual benefit to knockback powers by doing this? (I am actually aiming for knockback!). I tried on Test and it doesn't seem to convert a knockdown to knockback (doesn't seem to touch the 0,67 magnitude at all). Just seems a bit pointless...

I'm not sure how you checked the magnitude, but I'm guessing that you checked the in-game numbers by either hovering over the power or dragging one to the chat window to click on it - those values will show slotted values (including Incarnate Alpha, which counts as an enhancement in every power), but not include set bonuses, so you wouldn't see changes there even if they are being applied.

 

As @SuperPlyx said, enhancing knockback increases the magnitude of the KB (PhysX handles how far things go based on the magnitude, so increasing magnitude increases distance) - the wiki article doesn't have an exact value for turning knockdown into knockback (or vice versa), instead showing a range between 0.7437 and 0.8174 and guessing at 0.75, but suffice it to say that since it uses schedule D enhancements (where an even-con SO is 60% enhancement), having only a 2% increase is negligible (0.67 would go to 0.6834, which wouldn't turn it into KB). Even with 5 sets of Air Burst to get the +10% max from set bonuses, that's only enough to get you from 0.67 to 0.737, which is still just under the threshold to become KB from the "standard" KD.

[star_fury_lives]

8 hours ago, siolfir said:

I'm not sure how you checked the magnitude, but I'm guessing that you checked the in-game numbers by either hovering over the power or dragging one to the chat window to click on it - those values will show slotted values (including Incarnate Alpha, which counts as an enhancement in every power), but not include set bonuses, so you wouldn't see changes there even if they are being applied.

 

As @SuperPlyx said, enhancing knockback increases the magnitude of the KB (PhysX handles how far things go based on the magnitude, so increasing magnitude increases distance) - the wiki article doesn't have an exact value for turning knockdown into knockback (or vice versa), instead showing a range between 0.7437 and 0.8174 and guessing at 0.75, but suffice it to say that since it uses schedule D enhancements (where an even-con SO is 60% enhancement), having only a 2% increase is negligible (0.67 would go to 0.6834, which wouldn't turn it into KB). Even with 5 sets of Air Burst to get the +10% max from set bonuses, that's only enough to get you from 0.67 to 0.737, which is still just under the threshold to become KB from the "standard" KD.

I checked it on the enhancement window, so would explain why the mag wasn't increased.

 

I did try out a knockdown power whilst I had the 2% boost, and it did stay as knockdown. As you say, it just seems a really pointlessly tiny boost. I wondered if it was designed as a way for players who wanted knockback rather than knockdown to get access to it without sacrificing set bonuses for knockback enhancements

[Uun]

No reason to ever craft this set. This is an uncommon (yellow) set, yet two of the four pieces require rare (orange) salvage to craft. 

[Xenosone]

Does anything improve distance? I really wanna do all kb tfs and have a chance to kb spawns into someone elses instance.

[siolfir]

7 minutes ago, Xenosone said:

Does anything improve distance? I really wanna do all kb tfs and have a chance to kb spawns into someone elses instance.

+KB magnitude works out to distance. If you're really aiming for furthest KB slot for knockback and run at -1 for the extra 11% boost from the purple patch.

[Grouchybeast]

On 5/19/2021 at 7:29 PM, Xenosone said:

Does anything improve distance? I really wanna do all kb tfs and have a chance to kb spawns into someone elses instance.

 

Kinetic Crash.  Much underrated set.  Gives you adequate Acc/Dam/End/Rech, oodles of Knockback (seriously, KB is schedule D, it's awesome), some KB protection, plus 7.5% Rech when you six-slot it, and why wouldn't you? 

 

Also you get 4.5% Run Speed as the first set bonus.  You're definitely going to need that.