Immobs and Knock Back

[WindDemon21]

2 hours ago, Peacemoon said:

Grav immobilise has never stopped knockback. It has always been the holds that prevent knockback for Grav.

 

This could get changed, but there is nothing to fix. 

They need FIXED because the -kb was inappropriately placed in the holds when it should have been placed in the immobilize.

 

And the -kb was supposed to be standard for all immobilizes but they got missed on grav/elec when that change occurred.

 

There is no "thematic" or "balance" reason for them to not have it.

[Peacemoon]

I don’t want to sound annoyingly pedantic, but I genuinely have never seen the lack of KB protection on Grav’s immobilise referred to as a bug.  Annoying? Maybe. But its been that way for gravity since the beginning of the game and never changed, I know because one of my first characters was a Gravity Controller.
 

Granted Gravity got messed up a bit at the beginning and was never fixed for a long time (for example, Lift damage was nerfed heavily for fear they’d have too much damage, and never restored until they gave Grav a second look at like, issue 20!). Also the visual effects for the immobilise and hold got reversed, and appear to have got reversed again since I last played. But in all that time they never added KB protection to the immobilise, so calling it a bug that needs fixing feels a bit silly. 

 

Also, knockback protection on immobilise isn’t a universal thing, so don’t use the terminology of ‘bug that needs fixing’ when what you’re seeking is a change to make Grav work like the other sets. It’s not the same thing. I’m sure there are people who appreciate the Grav immobilise not blocking knockbacks. These days knockback protection still allows for knockdown, but that wasn’t always the case.

Edited April 21, 2020 by Peacemoon

[Drazah Krad]

As a grav/storm main I would love the -KB in the immob. That fact a bit of fire on the ground can stop my tornadoes knockback but the force of gravity can't is absurd. 

 

To me gravity is still a great set but I am wasting slots on kb->kd in quite a few powers that other primaries don't need to do.

[WindDemon21]

44 minutes ago, Drazah Krad said:

As a grav/storm main I would love the -KB in the immob. That fact a bit of fire on the ground can stop my tornadoes knockback but the force of gravity can't is absurd. 

 

To me gravity is still a great set but I am wasting slots on kb->kd in quite a few powers that other primaries don't need to do.

Exactly. If anything should do -kb it's a strong gravity force that is holding them in place, and a strong static field that is magnetizing them to the ground.

[Obitus]

22 hours ago, Generator said:

After playing this guy a bunch over the weekend, I'm not ready to say (Sudden Accel + Bonfire) > (Ice Slick) from a control standpoint, which is what I want from it.  Don't get me wrong, it's very good, and vast improvement over how Bonfire works when it's Knockback, but the proc rate seems to be juuust low enough that some guys can keep their footing long enough to beat the crap out of me, much more so than with Ice Slick.

I'll echo this.  There's a lot of hyperbole out there about Bonfire, understandable given how niche the power was for years and year, prior to KB-to-KD IOs, but it isn't as good as Ice Slick, and the comparison really isn't all that close if you compare the two powers in isolation.  Without an AoE Immobilize (or heavy amounts of supplementary slow), mobs will run right out of Bonfire, in my experience.  The KD rate is decent on average, but it also seems spotty in a way that I can't put my finger on; certain mobs will go through periods of being knocked down near constantly, while others barely get affected at all.

 

(If only the archived version of City of Data would still give us pet/summonable stats.  It'd be interesting to compare the KD rate on these powers.)

 

The real issue is that Ice Control has always kind of sucked, so to the extent that an IO'd Bonfire approximates Ice Slick, it's insult added to injury.  You can tell from the design that Ice was supposed to give you high control in return for extremely low damage potential, but so much of Ice's compensatory control potential is tied up in slows that are scarcely relevant in most content, unless you kill at a glacial (heh) speed, which of course Ice does because of the offensive price it pays in return for all of the slows.  It's a vicious cycle.

 

Earth was always basically Ice, but better; it gets an Ice Slick analogue (Earthquake), a massive slow and -fly patch, an AoE stun that can be made available on an every spawn basis, and an AoE hold that is easily one of the best in the game.  On top of that, the pet is vastly sturdier, and Earth's secondary-effect gimmick (-DEF) allows for some pretty nice slotting options (e.g. Achilles' Heel). 

 

Of course, Earth isn't exactly uber either, because even if you do get a fair deal when trading damage for extra control, the game tends to favor damage - but at least it's a legitimate choice in the case of Earth.  The other sets that are supposed to offer the same trade off, Ice and Mind, are in worse shape.