KnockDown Skills Currently Useless

[Gmeiser]

KnockDown skills are only serving to delay enemies or to interrupt, nothing more.

The enemy falls and raises on the same turn and still strikes as if nothing happened.

Another important detail, the fallen enemy has the same deflection as if standing? Does it make any sense?

Those who are fallen are not in a position to defend themselves, should have a penalty of 50% for attributes of avoidance as reflex and deflection.

In my opinion who is knocked down should lose the turn and suffer avoidance penalty while on the ground.

 

[Wormerine]

A 50% debuff to defence stats would be insane. A debuff would certainly make sense but I am more in favour of gameplay, rather than adherence to “but-in-real-life” (though the tighter the mechanics and theme are tied together, the better. If theming is a problem I would rather rename an ability, rather than gameplay).

 

As it is now, knockdown is a very useful 1st level ability. There are a debuff which makes enemies skip turn (stun and stronger) but they are usually higher level abilities that consume more resource/can be easier to dodge and have a chance to being interrupted. As it is now, knockdown is a reliable and cheap source of interupt and disabling an engagement. Someone keeping your squishy in check? Run up with fighter, knock his ass down, and move your squishy to safety.

 

Doesn’t knockdown consume the movement points when getting up? I thought that that’s how it works, though with little information regarding enemy movement I might have misunderstood.

 

As it is I think the ability is fine. If buffed, only a minor buff or raise the ability cost/move it up the skill tree (not actually recommended).

[AeonsLegend]

In POE1 knockdown lasted far longer though. I rarely use it now as it is very circumstatial and there are better options. "Cheap" is meaningless when you can stun someone instead and basically take them out of the fight completely. Also, knocked down enemies cannot be flanked by normal means thus some of the things relying on flanked will not work.

[Triple - A Foxy Lad]

i aint fully felt out tb, but in rtwp, knockdown/mule kick is an extremely effective way of interrupt spamming a low fortitude enemy caster into pointlessness. i got crazy mileage out of that ability, esp when partnered with the willbreaker and body blows. honestly, knockdown is one of the main reasons id take a fighter.

 

Helps that fighters are built to survive an early deep dive into the enemy backline, so not only do they have reliable lockdown, they can get into a position to deliver it, then *stay* there. Other classes may have harder, longer cc (oo er missus) but they risk a lot more to land it.

 

Even if the defered recovery element of knockdown remains crippled in tb, so long as it disables engagement, interrupts casting and provides an alternative to targeting deflection, it would be worth using i feel.

 

EDIT: also ye, a % debuff to defenses would be bonkers. Accuracy and defenses increase roughly in lockstep so a % decrease would escalate in power with each level up to the point where the whole game would revolve around it. Imagine being able to debuff a mobs deflection to under 50 before wailing on them with an on crit weapon with 100+ accuracy. A fighter/skald taking advantage of that would be nightmarish.

Edited February 4, 2019 by Triple - A Foxy Lad

[Wormerine]

In POE1 knockdown lasted far longer though. I rarely use it now as it is very circumstatial and there are better options. "Cheap" is meaningless when you can stun someone instead and basically take them out of the fight completely. Also, knocked down enemies cannot be flanked by normal means thus some of the things relying on flanked will not work.

What are immediate stuns? At least in my current party available interupts and stuns from chanter and cipher, both which take resources which are more likely than not to be available and are pretty expensive (aka. won't be able to cast something more useful for the next couple turns). My main source of ranged interupt is ranger or Thrust of Tattered Veils scrolls. Having an immediate, reliable melee interupt for one discipline is something I find quite desirable. 

 

Ok, prone should apply flanked.

[Gmeiser]

Thanks for the ideas, but I talked 50% without thinking, can be-10% or even a fixed value, disable the shield bonus or something.
The point is that in turn mode this ability has lost its value, at least to me.

Translator on

 

[ptarror]

Are you using the Delay Turn function? You kind of have to to make the most of interrupts in TB mode.

 

To the devs -- I feel like the turn-based UI is a little on the small side. I appreciate the attempt to integrate it into the usual UI, but I'm wondering if it might not feel better if it was, say, a couple of large buttons attached to the bottom of the turn order listing.

Edited February 5, 2019 by ptarror

[SChin]

Hey everyone!

 

Thank you all for the feedback on both sides of this conversation!  I put all of this into a report and sent it to the team to consider.  If you have anything to add about this, please continue to post about it here as I have linked this thread into the report to be used as a reference for the team during their review.

Thanks again for all the help everyone!

[Franknstein]

Some debuff to the defence(s) of a prone target and consuming movement to get up sounds right.

[Wormerine]

Some debuff to the defence(s) of a prone target and consuming movement to get up sounds right.

Noticed that the upgraded knockdown (mulekick) adds flanked status. Completely removing movement points or cutting them in half would be a useful feature though.

 

You know what's good? Fighter stance which knockdown enemies on engagement ending Thier turn.

[Franknstein]

 

Some debuff to the defence(s) of a prone target and consuming movement to get up sounds right.

Noticed that the upgraded knockdown (mulekick) adds flanked status. Completely removing movement points or cutting them in half would be a useful feature though.

 

You know what's good? Fighter stance which knockdown enemies on engagement ending Thier turn.

 

 

Should only work while armed with a polearm, I assume? =)

[vekks]

Doesn't knockdown break engagement? So it has some use there at least for safely disengaging. I was also under the assumption that getting up from knockdown uses half of the target's movement, but I perhaps might be confusing that with some other (D&D) games. Personally I'm fine with knockdown in TB as is, however I think that being knocked down needs to come penalties to defense against strikes made in melee, of course, offset by bonuses to defense against ranged attacks.

[Wormerine]

Doesn't knockdown break engagement? So it has some use there at least for safely disengaging. I was also under the assumption that getting up from knockdown uses half of the target's movement, but I perhaps might be confusing that with some other (D&D) games. Personally I'm fine with knockdown in TB as is, however I think that being knocked down needs to come penalties to defense against strikes made in melee, of course, offset by bonuses to defense against ranged attacks.

I am pretty sure that knockdown doesn't give any penalties to movement or anything of that sort. I think giving a flanked status to a knocked down enemy would be logical, but upgraded knockdown (mulekick) does that, so what would mulekick do?

 

While unintuitive I do use base knockdown quite a lot. Interupt is a very useful ability and with as a cheap ability it is super desirable. And yes, it does break engagement. I personally think it is fine gameplay wise, though the fact that one doesn't have any bonus to kicking a lying target is unintuitive. 

[Redkinn]

The worst part is that when your character gets knocked down, they spend a full turn to stand up, and thus it's extremely strong against you...but vs AI? Almost useless besides as interrupt.