Lessen impact of Blast Off on flying enemies please

[Hedgefund]

Let me walk through something I just experienced.

 

To set the stage, I was doing Number 6's first mission, which takes place on the map named "Zone/Mission: IOM_PRAETORIA_RUINED_CITY".   This is an outdoor instance.  I was playing a Pyro controller running Incendiary Aura which has a chance to proc a "blast off" effect, which sends enemies into the air..  

 

To satisfy one of the objectives to free a hostage, I had to defeat a spawn that included a Greater Devoured.  The Greater Devoured summoned a pair of Swarm entities (as usual).  I defeated everyone (I thought) and waited a bit figuring a Swarm flew away and they always return so I just stayed put.  After a bit of waiting I searched around at ground level, nothing.  Then I remembered I've seen odd effects on flying entities with Blast Off before, so I flew up and there it was, at the very top of the map (over 800 feet up).  

 

I remembered to do that because previously on a Hamidon Seed encounter I inadvertently blasted a Seedling to the top of the First Ward zone.  

 

Now, I don't want to get bogged into details of what the right behavior is, I just don't think it should be an entity at the top of a map that does not come back down.  If I were to offer a suggestion on how to mitigate it would be a max blast off height of, I dunno, 100 feet.  

 

Edited yesterday at 07:13 PM by Hedgefund

[Psyonico]

Is it flying enemies that trigger this?

 

I've just assumed it's a bug,  so filed a bug report when I first noticed it happening.   If it really is working as intended then yes,  I agree,  it should be changed. 

[Hedgefund]

I wavered on whether to write this up as a bug or suggestion but I didn't want a bug to get shut down with "that's intended behavior, issue closed" so went with a suggestion.  I do think it's probably a bug.

 

To the question, I can't say for sure only flyers trigger it, but what I can say is when I've noticed it happen it was with flyers.  In addition to the 2 I mentioned above I've seen it with Cabalists (who fly) as well.  I don't recall seeing a non-flyer blast off to the roof.

[Psyonico]

I've seen foes that are affected by other knockback also be affected by this bug, so it very well might have something to do with the enemy not being on the ground.

[BasiliskXVIII]

It seems to happen when the mob has an inherent fly ability and is held while knocked back/knocked up. I think it's caused by an interaction between reduced movement friction from flight and the momentum given to the character by the forced movement when the mob's movement AI is disabled. In effect, the same thing that give you that slip-slidey movement in Fly sees the mob suddenly moving at high speed and goes "I know what to do here!" and goes "you went at this speed in this direction, so you keep going that way until the momentum burns off." It has no pathing to try and fight the movement, so since it ends up so far away and the hold still has to wear off, by the time it's free it's just chilling as far up as it can. I've noticed the same effect on Rikti Drones with my hold and Levitate on Mind Control.

 

Pyro is particularly noticeable for this because it has so much KU, but it's not specifically a pyro control issue. The only way I would imagine that they could kill it is by removing that movement friction reduction effect from enemies. But I haven't really noticed them drift in the same way as players, so that reduced friction may only be there because it's essentially calling a copy of the same flight power and the AI's pathing just kind of ignores the drift.