Null da Gull Knockback

[Maelwys]

2 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Just curious; in powers that do knockback, is there something stopping you from slotting the Sudden Acceleration KB->KD IO, which isn't unique, since the fact that they do do knockback is the feature that is being railed against?

There are indeed powers out there which inflict Knockback that cannot take Knockback Set IOs; but take Universal Damage Set IOs.
And an example; as mentioned earlier; is Rise of the Pheonix.
 

  

2 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Or is it only being able to get the benefit of one set of set bonuses from Overwhelming Force that's the real issue, and turning KB to KD is the straw horse used to argue for the enhancements in the set being stripped of their unique status?

The "real issue" is nothing to do with the set bonuses of Overwhelming Force. I could not care less about those set bonuses.

None of my characters (and I have a LOT of characters) are using two or more Overwhelming Force pieces anywhere in their entire build. This is mainly because the OF set comes pre-attuned and so the strength of their aspect enhancement cannot be boosted to +5; therefore slotting boosted 50+5 IOs from other sets or Lv53 HOs is virtually always mechanically better. This is compounded by the fact that its set bonuses are actually pretty weak and forgettable (with the possible exception of the 5-piece +2.5% Energy/Negative Defence - and even that gets soundly trounced by the likes of 3-piece Eradication).

Let's take some examples of where I'm actually using the OF Proc:
    

You can probably see a theme developing here.
More useful set bonuses (like Global Recharge, Recovery, S/L Resistance) can often be had; and stronger aspect enhancement can virtually always be had.
There is simply no need to slot more IOs from the Overwhelming Force set into those powers - doing so would hurt my build's performance.

The reason I would like the Overwhelming Force IO to become non-unique is that it contains some damage aspect enhancement; which provides at least a little mechanical benefit over and above the KB>KD conversion. So using up one of my very precious enhancement slots on an Overwhelming Force KB>KD IO doesn't have quite as much opportunity cost as doing so on a Sudden Acceleration KB>KD IO.
I would also happily use a new KB>KD IO that contained something extra such as additional % aspect enhancement or some minor "PPM Proc damage" instead. 

For anyone who cares about min/maxing (and there are a lot of us out there) having to use up one of your precious enhancement slots simply to "fix an annoying secondary effect of a power" is extremely painful. Even if you (somehow!) have spare slots left over at the end of your build... you only get a maximum of six slots per power. And in almost every case where I feel the need to convert KB>KD I could instead be using that 6th enhancement slot to gain additional mechanical performance via damage aspect/damage proc/set bonuses/whatever. This is why people claim that there is an "enhancement slot tax" for taming Knockback.

All that said, there is currently one single exception to the above across all of my builds:

 


In this particular case I'm actually not utilising the KB>KD conversion component of the OF unique at all... but instead simply adding a "chance for KD" to my pets' attacks whilst also (just about) ED-capping their damage. The OF proc in this one case is actually being a mechanically useful efficient use of enhancement slots.

In every single other case where I slot it across all of my toons on HC... the best thing I can say about the Overwhelming Force KB>KD IO is that it is not causing quite as much of a performance hit to the build as using a Sudden Acceleration KB>KD IO would.
 

Edited Thursday at 11:29 PM by Maelwys

[roleki]

How about an accolade power in the form of a toggle that applies a global KB>KD to the character?  That way you can have KB when you want it, and not have it when people don't want it, and, while progressing towards the accolade, it gives people some shit to do that actually has a point to it.