Dragon's Tail doing knockback? Maybe from Overwhelming Force in another power?

[fxds]

I respeced my mid-level SR/MA Tanker a few days ago, after not player her for about five years, following a build I found here on the forums. Everything was going great until just now when suddenly Dragon's Tail is doing knockback instead of knockdown. Even the in-game power description has changed to say "Foe Knockback" instead of "Foe Knockdown," which made me question my memory/sanity until I looked on the wiki and confirmed that the description there says "Knockdown." The only thing that changed between my last play session (where DT was doing KB) and now is that I added a couple of IOs to a completely different power (Thunder Kick, if it matters), and I'm pretty sure the Pounding Slugfest Dam/End didn't change anything. But the other one I added was Overwhelming Force Dam/Chance for KD/KB to KD. It clearly affects KD, but it says it does KB to KD, not the other way around, and in any event says it "converts any Knockback this power deals into Knockdown" (emphasis added). Thunder Kick doesn't do any knockback, and its only knockdown is from the proc on that IO, so I wasn't expecting any effect at all. I certainly don't see any logical reason why this would have the opposite effect, and on a completely separate power.

 

Has anyone else seen this? I did a search here on the forums but couldn't find anything. Maybe I'm just finally losing my sanity?

[Major_Decoy]

Knock-down is just knockback with a magnitude less than one. (typically it's .67) If you're fighting lower level enemies or enemies that are weak to knockback, it will do knockback instead of knockdown.

 

Edit: If you had slotted Overwhelming Force: Dam/Chance for Knockdown/KB to KD into Dragon's Tail, then it would have a chance to do knockback if both Dragon's Tail and Overwhelming Force proc (.67 + .67 > 1) but slotting it in Thunder Kick should have no impact on Dragon's Tail.

 

If you were fighting Clockwork, they're weak to knockback. Or if you leveled midmission and all of the enemies went from white to blue. Aside from that, I don't know what the issue would be.

Edited Monday at 11:53 PM by Major_Decoy

[Psyonico]

2 hours ago, Major_Decoy said:

If you had slotted Overwhelming Force: Dam/Chance for Knockdown/KB to KD into Dragon's Tail, then it would have a chance to do knockback if both Dragon's Tail and Overwhelming Force proc (.67 + .67 > 1)

That’s actually not accurate, since OF change knock back to knock down.  I’ve slotted this in many powers that do knock back and I’ve never seen any of them do knock back after slotting.

 

Kb->kd works by multiplying knock magnitudes by some percentage that forces the mag to be less than 1.

[Major_Decoy]

9 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

That’s actually not accurate, since OF change knock back to knock down.  I’ve slotted this in many powers that do knock back and I’ve never seen any of them do knock back after slotting.

 

Kb->kd works by multiplying knock magnitudes by some percentage that forces the mag to be less than 1.

Yeah, on City of Data 2.0 it's (-10 * Melee_Ones)% Knockup, Knockback Strength (self only) for 10.25s and Melee_Ones just looks to be 1

 

But it does also have 2.5PPM of Mag (0.67 * Melee_Ones) to Knockback (all affected targets)

 

And while I've only seen Avalanche: Rech/Chance for Knockdown cause knockback while paired with something that already does knockdown, I don't have the experience to entirely rule out the chance that it might happen with Overwhelming force.

[Psyonico]

5 minutes ago, Major_Decoy said:

And while I've only seen Avalanche: Rech/Chance for Knockdown cause knockback while paired with something that already does knockdown, I don't have the experience to entirely rule out the chance that it might happen with Overwhelming force.

Oh yeah, I’ve seen it with Avalanche and with the purple set that has the Knockdown proc, but not with Overwhelming Force.

 

my guess is OF is coded as proc inside parentheses and kb->kd outside, so any chance to proc automatically gets turned into knockdown again.

[Yomo Kimyata]

45 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

That’s actually not accurate, since OF change knock back to knock down.  I’ve slotted this in many powers that do knock back and I’ve never seen any of them do knock back after slotting.

 

That's actually not accurate!

 

From my understanding (and testing) you can indeed get effective knockBACK from the OF proc.  The way the proc works if I recall correctly is that it takes the inherent knockback/down value of the power and divides it by ten.  Effectively, this reduces any value of knockback inherent to a power to under 0.75, which functions as knockdown.

 

However, procs are additive with respect to knock*.  I know from testing experience that when the Avalanche proc and the OF proc both trigger in a melee AoE, the knockdown value is over 0.75 or thereabouts and it will cause knockback rather than knockdown.  I do not remember from my testing whether the order in which the procs are slotted affects this, but I don't think so.

 

Also, you can get both knockup and knockback on a power, since they are different effects.  This probably means you can get knockup and knockdown on a power, but I don't know how you would recognize that visually.

[fxds]

3 hours ago, Major_Decoy said:

Knock-down is just knockback with a magnitude less than one. (typically it's .67) If you're fighting lower level enemies or enemies that are weak to knockback, it will do knockback instead of knockdown.

 

That probably explains part of it. I do recall the detailed info saying it was mag .67 and I was doing a quick street sweeping mission to hit Crey in Brickstown where the Crey I was finding were mostly blue and green to me. I believe the next mission in the story arc I'm running is a proper door mission, so hopefully I'll get a chance to check there later tonight.

 

The question I still have then is whether the in-game description of Dragon's Tail always said "knockback" (versus the wiki using "knockdown") or whether that still indicates a change of some sort happened somehow, even if it's not related to the Overwhelming Force IO.

[Major_Decoy]

18 minutes ago, fxds said:

The question I still have then is whether the in-game description of Dragon's Tail always said "knockback" (versus the wiki using "knockdown") or whether that still indicates a change of some sort happened somehow, even if it's not related to the Overwhelming Force IO.

As I recall it was originally knockback, but sometime around issues 4 or 6 they went through and decided "You know, the melee classes don't seem to find knockback as fun as we think they should" and changed most melee knockback to knockdown.

 

Edit: I was wrong, looks like it was issue 2.

 

Edit 2: Knockback+Unyielding Stance was particularly annoying.

Edited Tuesday at 03:37 AM by Major_Decoy

[Snarky]

I have seen a lot of people here say “that is actually wrong”

 

this is not optimal.  
 

say “You are doing it wrong!”