Feedback on "Fending" and Knockback Distance % Passives

I read the discussion regarding knockback on the Beta General Forums but thought that it would be appropriate to talk about the passive skills themselves here.

Knockback

Current Passive Skill Tree

1) A 3-node cluster near the Marauder area that gives bonus chance to knockback in addition to knockback distance

2) A skill near the Marauder/Templar that adds knockback to staves when a critical hit is made

3) A skill near the Witch that adds knockback to wands when a critical hit is made

4) A skill near the Ranger that adds knockback to bows when a critical hit is made

Support Gems
There is a support gem that adds more chance to knockback.

Magic Mods
I am not sure if there are any knockback chance or increased knockback distance mods.

Skill Gems
-Heavy Strike will always knockback.
-Sweep has a chance to knockback
-Shield Charge says it has increased knockback distance that presuambly scales based on how far you charge, but I have never actually seen it knock an enemy back really.



The point of this thread is that I feel that the 3-node cluster that "buffs" knockback chance and distance near the marauder is just plain underpowered. In other words, a current "waste" of 3 points.

I tested the mechanics out by stacking all of the knockback passive skills and the support gem attached to various skills, and the results were just severely underwhelming. I guess I was hoping that the passive tree knockback skills would be worth enough that it would allow you to get creative and build an interesting character based around heavy strike or sweep and knockback, allowing you to combo it with something else (hadn't particularly thought that far yet), but the truth of the matter is, the enemies just slide back a few extra pixels.

YES, it is a noticeable increase, but I don't feel like it really DOES anything useful for the fact you spent 3 passive points on it. Unless the knockback is large enough that you could combo it with Puncture (to force the enemy to move, bleeding more), or large enough to put enemies in perfect range of shock nova (sweep --> shock nova combo), or large enough that it combos with some future skill... it definitely seems more of a defensive mechanic at the moment.

Analysis falls under two scenarios:

1) You are a melee character. The ONLY benefit to the increased knockback is MINIMAL incoming damage reduction from being surrounded by enemy melee characters. By knocking them back slightly farther they have to run for a split second longer to get back into melee range of you. Obviously, this affects YOUR ability to hit THEM as well. Overall, this just doesn't seem that effective for a melee character.

2) You are a ranged character. You use either a wand or a bow and decide to get all the way over on the passive tree to the area where the 3-node cluster is and take the knockback skills. Now when you get a crit with your bow or wand (assuming you have that respective skill, also), the enemies will get knocked back farther. In fact, depending on how fast your attack speed is, you might be able to just stand in one spot and CONSTANTLY keep them from advancing on you, assuming you can keep critting often enough. THIS actually seems like it has some validity to it... but it leads me to my question:

Why is the 3-node cluster of knockback boosting passives near the marauder area? It seems like it only has negatives and no benefits for a melee character, and the main positives it could provide are for a ranged character (wand or bow).

Proposed solution for discussion and feedback:

Perhaps the 3-node cluster should either be

A) tremendously buffed in terms of % so that it can provide more defensive ability for a melee character in addition to setting up potential combos, or
B) moved closer to the center of the passive tree, or
C) moved somewhere opposite of where it is now (in the INT-DEX area), since it provides clear defensive abilities for wand or bow characters


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One final comment is that I have also seen knockback being viewed negatively by many people. They will specifically choose a single target attack BESIDES heavy strike, just because the knockback annoys them so much. So what benefit does knockback actually have? Does knockback have a 100% chance to interrupt an enemy's spellcasting? That's all I can really come up with at the moment, and I don't even know if that is true.

This post will be used to list in a more organized fashion the potential combos that could be created if the knockback passives had more % effect.

1)
Scenario: A group of enemies beelining towards you, one far enough ahead of the pack that a ground slam would not hit all of them.
Combo: Use Heavy Strike to knockback the lead enemy so that he is now the same distance away as the rest of the pack. This allows you to use your Ground Slam to AoE the entire pack at once.

2)
Scenario: A lightning templar surrounded by a group of enemies.
Combo: Use Sweep to knockback most all of the enemies surrounding you into perfect Shock Nova radius. Proceed to electrocute the crap out of said enemies.

3)
Scenario: You are 2H Axe DPS in a party with a beefy character and a fragile caster. The beefy character is off dealing with a group of enemies when the caster gets ambushed from behind. The caster tries to get away but he stupidly doesn't have much stun recovery, so he is being locked down and going to die!
Combo: Well, let the idiot caster die, then! His own fault, right? Ha, kidding. Just Leap Slam next to the caster and immediately Sweep to knockback most of the enemies, allowing the caster time to escape or time to regen and reposition.

4)
Scenario: You are fighting a giant group of monsters when suddenly a rare "Allies cannot die" monster walks into the fray. He wades into the middle of the whole mess and isn't on the outskirts so you are having trouble focusing DPS on him alone.
Combo: Run about 1 screen back, get a running start and Shield Charge that baddie out of the park! Home run! Now you can safely focus DPS him down without being surrounded.

5)
Scenario: An attack that deals damage to enemies based on how many distance units they move, as opposed to dealing damage/time based on whether they are moving (like Puncture works, I think).
Combo: Apply the attack, poison, debuff, or whatever it is that deals them damage based on how much they move. Now just use any type of knockback skills. Since you have the increased knockback modifiers, you will be able to pull more DPS out of whatever imaginary skill this is.

There were just some ideas that came into my head of how increasing the % of the knockback passives could actually turn knockback into something that is fun and useful, and not a worthless gimmick mechanic.

Any opinions?

While I'm thinking of making a knockback archer, I havn't gotten around to trying it yet and so can't address a lot of your points. But I do want to comment on this:

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visibiliti wrote:

B) moved closer to the center of the passive tree, or
C) moved somewhere opposite of where it is now (in the INT-DEX area), since it provides clear defensive abilities for wand or bow characters

The fact that it is extremely useful to a bow ranger is not an argument for putting it near the ranger start. Instead, it may be an argument for keeping it AWAY from the ranger start. The passive tree is not meant to conveniently and easily allow you to min/max your character by efficiently sticking all your points into one area.

One must travel far abroad to really specialize in something, and decide whether that travel is worthwhile. If everything was nicely grouped together, there would be no decisions. Specialization when made convenient would be the best choice, every time.

Id have to agree with everyone above in saying that knockback would benefit a ranged character much more than it currently benefits a melee character. Knockback for my lvl 66 using sweep as the main dps is a nuisance which makes me spend more time killing enemies near me while Im being hammered from distance with arrows and spells. I think knockback should be changed across the board to stun or another useful mod for melee skills and passives.

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bilbobeastlybaggins wrote:

Id have to agree with everyone above in saying that knockback would benefit a ranged character much more than it currently benefits a melee character.

Knockback has it's uses for melee. Notably, 1v1 against rares. The combination of stun and knockback can keep an enemy at bay indefinitely until you kill them.

Sure it's more useful for a Bow character because the goal is to keep the enemies as far away as possible whereas with melee you want to get up close and personal. As Aimlessgun said, it's an argument to place knockback farther away from the Ranger start.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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visibiliti wrote:

1) You are a melee character. The ONLY benefit to the increased knockback is MINIMAL incoming damage reduction from being surrounded by enemy melee characters. By knocking them back slightly farther they have to run for a split second longer to get back into melee range of you. Obviously, this affects YOUR ability to hit THEM as well. Overall, this just doesn't seem that effective for a melee character.

Sweep used to always knockback. It was completely and utterly broken. You could take basically no damage because you push them out of melee range and they'd walk back in to try to hit you again at the point you could sweep again.

I guess I am not sure why this was "broken" when this is exactly what a ranged character does all day long? They sit back and deal damage to enemies without getting hit. And when the enemies advance they just run backwards and continue to deal damage without getting hit.

Plus, that melee character using the sweep in your example is still susceptible to ranged attacks, and most groups of mobs come littered with both ranged and melee enemies.

After reading the responses and arguments I do agree that it makes sense to keep it in the STR tree area, to force ranged users further distance travel on the tree to make use of it with their abilities. Plus I guess it makes sense because it is aligned with STR theoretically.

However, I still think it needs a big buff to the % distance. You just can't do anything too interesting with it right now.

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visibiliti wrote:

I guess I am not sure why this was "broken" when this is exactly what a ranged character does all day long? They sit back and deal damage to enemies without getting hit. And when the enemies advance they just run backwards and continue to deal damage without getting hit.

I guess the idea is - for a ranged character, the point is to keep your distance and avoid getting hit - but if/when you do get hit - you are in much greater danger and risk ending up dead much faster.

The tools to keep monsters at bay (stun, knock back, temporal chains, etc) helps offset this.

For a melee character - they are intended to get hit, and when they do get hit - it's not like their HP bar is dropping to near empty. If a few hits get through to a melee-built character it's not that big of a deal - and having a way to constantly push enemies away is more over powered for a melee than it is for a ranged.

I was trying to make a crit/knockback build in my first ranger but got a bit side tracked with other passives - if the next patch comes with a skill point reset and not a wipe - I may try re-speccing with this focus instead of every +phs dmg thing I can get my hands on.

So has anything changed for knockback since this post? I am a Cleave based melee templar with increased AoE (Amplify and later on the AoE support gem). I was thinking of adding knockback gem and fending to the build so I can somewhat safely Cleave and keep enemies at distance.

So has knockback seen any buff or change since april 2012?