Guild Wars 2

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the difficulty level, this isn’t an issue at all. Also knockbacks are fine in PvP I think, personally anyway.

It’s just, in PvE does every single mob need a knockback / stun / interrupt that it just opens with. It barely serves any purpose other than to plainly annoy, and that it does. The damage they do is pathetic, hell, if they even get a swing off by the time you’ve gotten back on your feet, and it’s even worse when you get 3-4 mobs at a time who do it, even then it’s still no threat but just plain ANNOYING.

I would rather the mobs had a special that hit 4-5x the damage they do in a knockback, that would be more scary and keep you on your toes at least (rather than on your back, doing nothing, twiddling your kitten paws)

I’m not saying there’s NO place for them, but really, does what feels like, every other mob need to have something that stops you from playing your character? Can’t there be a more interesting, more dangerous ability?

I guess I’m alone with this and probably get shouted down but I needed to get it off my chest since I just had a mob knock me off a cliff to my death (which, THIS was probably the only time I’d say leave it in, since it adds an element of danger)

Knockbacks are probably one of the stronger elements of PVE mobs and I like them because it makes people wanting to achieve optimal play think about how they approach OW PVE instead of just scrubing their way through it. I’m assuming your talking OW. Considering these effects can slow you down quite a bit in PVE and if you’re doing it enough, it’s worth rethinking and optimizing your build for OW PVE, something few people do.

For instance, If you’re a theif, doing OW farming, you want to use D/P and open with #3 every time. You will never suffer a single knockback if your fighting a single mob. If you fight multiples, you do #5.

Can you be more specific as to where you are having all this constant knockdown? Knockdowns are usually limited to higher leader types (Veterans, etc.) of the various races but some have more than a few types that can cause them (Dredge, Centaurs, etc.)

Part of the game is to LEARN the tells when an enemy is about to use a knockdown and actively avoid it (or interrupt it with your own CC)….there are very few CC attacks in this game that don’t telegraph that they are about to be unleashed.

The only time I hate PVE knockbacks is when the mobs chain them on you or knock you off the edge of something. Or when you get that one bandit saboteur you didn’t see who just keeps laying down the bombs.

Yip another classy mechanic that has never been implemented properly.
I don’t find it excessive in PvE even when some mobs can knockback at will it seems, can chain knockback, stun etc and then launch you off for giggles… it’s what we get in return that frustrates me.. like every knockback we hand out being immediately countered by mobs insta teleporting back to you and yeah they get to stay on the edge of a cliff rather than being pushed off.. balance at its finest.
Personally I have nothing against knockbacks, pulls, stuns or anything that makes it a little more interesting and dare I say challenging, I would just rather it be a little more balanced out.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Can you be more specific as to where you are having all this constant knockdown? Knockdowns are usually limited to higher leader types (Veterans, etc.) of the various races but some have more than a few types that can cause them (Dredge, Centaurs, etc.)

Part of the game is to LEARN the tells when an enemy is about to use a knockdown and actively avoid it (or interrupt it with your own CC)….there are very few CC attacks in this game that don’t telegraph that they are about to be unleashed.

Within Orr alone and off the top of my head, we have Risen Bulls, Wizards, Drakes, Abominations, Brutes and Spectral Guards with knockdowns. Bulls always do it as opening strike, Spectral Guards and Brutes sometimes. Wizards, Drakes and Aboms almost never 1st strike a knockdown. Risen spiders also have pulls that interrupt you, so those will also be as annoying as a knockback. Risen Raptors have a triple strike interrupt, so IMO, that’s the only one of the annoying mobs that should be dodged.

While these attacks can be avoided with a dodge because of tells, it’s better to use the tools to absorb or make them miss you instead. Guardians and Thieves are ideal for that.

One place knockdowns are really bad is when you get 3 or more Ettins … once you get in the chain, you typically are done for.

Obtena.7952:

Knockbacks are probably one of the stronger elements of PVE mobs and I like them because it makes people wanting to achieve optimal play think about how they approach OW PVE instead of just scrubing their way through it. I’m assuming your talking OW. Considering these effects can slow you down quite a bit in PVE and if you’re doing it enough, it’s worth rethinking and optimizing your build for OW PVE, something few people do.

For instance, If you’re a theif, doing OW farming, you want to use D/P and open with #3 every time. You will never suffer a single knockback if your fighting a single mob. If you fight multiples, you do #5.

I don’t know what OW is I don’t think, I took a long break and pretty much a solo player atm.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Can you be more specific as to where you are having all this constant knockdown? Knockdowns are usually limited to higher leader types (Veterans, etc.) of the various races but some have more than a few types that can cause them (Dredge, Centaurs, etc.)

Part of the game is to LEARN the tells when an enemy is about to use a knockdown and actively avoid it (or interrupt it with your own CC)….there are very few CC attacks in this game that don’t telegraph that they are about to be unleashed.

They seem to be all over, like the Risen brutes knocking you down and the raptors interrupting you, all in the same area, but it’s really not limited to these at all, far from it and I’m not talking about vets/champs, actually I think their fine to have such abilities. I’m more talking about trash mobs that barely do 1% of your HP and have no reason but to annoy.

It’s not about LEARNING the tells, because they all pretty much open with it.

It’s not hard, it’s not a threat, it’s just trash mobs that die in a few seconds so all it aims to achieve is to be annoying. Again, I’d be far happier if these actually did an ability that did say, 40-50% of your health (obviously not chaining them as that be silly) because stuff like that makes you panic and play tactfully. Getting knocked down with out losing any health just makes me sit there with one hand on my chin.

Again, it’s not gamebreaking, it’s not hard, it’s just plain old annoying.

Izziee.8392:

I don’t know what OW is I don’t think, I took a long break and pretty much a solo player atm.

OH, that’s just means openworld PVE. The place you farm mats, do hearts, do events, etc…

Izziee.8392:

It’s not about LEARNING the tells, because they all pretty much open with it.

If you know the tell, you wouldn’t get hit by it and for that reason, it wouldn’t matter if it was high damage attack instead. Back during beta, Ettins were actually like that with their club attack. If you didn’t avoid it, you were likely dead. Then everything in the early game got heavily nerfed.

The reason they usually open with special attacks is because of simple programming. They’ll use their skills first if the requirements are met, otherwise they’ll auto attack. There is some minor logic however, such as not using a knockdown if the target is already knocked down, which actually causes groups of them to knock you down in queue. They brought in a new AI guy for HoT, so the newer mobs might be different.

Izziee.8392:

Getting knocked down with out losing any health just makes me sit there with one hand on my chin.

You want to lose 1/2 your health and get knocked down? Try pulling more than a single target?

Knockbacks are pretty much the only fighting chance a PvE mob has against players outside of an outright 1HKO.

I mean i can just say i’ve seen more people die to fighting near ledges against mobs with knockbacks than anything else.

The real annoyance with knock backs/downs is that mobs which have it tend to spawn in packs, Ettins, Centaurs, etc Mob. Certain species make sense but really it would be nice if the mobs were more varied. Not so much that you get CC chains coming from them, an opening immobilise, then fear, then knock back would be really annoying, but something that breaks up the homogeneity a bit.

Izziee.8392:

Again, it’s not gamebreaking, it’s not hard, it’s just plain old annoying.

What profession you playing? Most professions have a way to completely avoid or misdirect the knockbacks/pulls/interrupts. I already mentioned Guardian (I think that’s obvious) and Thief with D/P build. Pet classes are well equipped to have at least the player avoid these effects.

GW2’s combat system features active defense and mobile combat. The threat level of persistent world mobs is in mob numbers. However, mobs do not always appear in groups. Mobs with CC or other attacks that one would wish to avoid are given those attacks so that one can avoid them. Active defense without attacks that are better avoided does not make a lot of sense if you think about it.

I dont really mind it too much since they only do the attack once or twice before they are killed. Although I DO hate terragriffs. You can be standing plenty far away from them and still get knocked over and over. And they do their charging attack too much imho.

run a stability skill or learn to see their telegraphed attacks and dodge those, but yeah it can get annoying at times. luckily for me shake it off gets rid of kd’s so i just run with that

Healix.5819:

Izziee.8392:

Getting knocked down with out losing any health just makes me sit there with one hand on my chin.

You want to lose 1/2 your health and get knocked down? Try pulling more than a single target?

You mean like 2+ teragriffs?

What really kittens me off about knockbacks in PvE is the fact that an enemy can knock you back off a drop (usually leading to either a.) your death or b.) a long run to get back up high again (Dry Top map for instance)), yet you’re unable to do the same. The enemy just stops at the drop.

Generally just moving will avoid it for you. Mob skills tend to lock them in place.

The part that irritates me about monster CC is the duration of the hard control and the cooldowns. Being on my back for 3-5 seconds because the monster doesn’t have a significantly different tell from its other attacks (or in the case of longbow-wielding enemies, no tell at all), and they gets these control attacks on much shorter cooldowns than players.
I ran into a mob in Diessa that, roughly every 5 seconds, puts up a 3-second block shield that knockbacks attackers. Forget Revenant, I want to be an Ascalonian Captain for my next profession. While Moas and their cone-triple-daze irk me mildly (enough to go farming poultry nodes and dodge-roll), I’ve run into mobs with instant-target-multi-daze attacks. That’s not even remotely appropriate.
And stability doesn’t cover these situations very well, if the profession being batted around even has it. Stability skills have terrible cooldowns, so you might get 25% uptime at best. It’s understandable in PvP/WvW encounters, but many PvE encounters are hellishly long. Stability might protect you from Claw’s fear-screaming once, but you eat the next ten because fear and knockback are about all it does.

It is annoying but I think there is just enough Knockback tbh

what is a problem is the lack of Stability access on certain classes
that is something that does need to be addressed

Bloodstealer.5978:

and yeah they get to stay on the edge of a cliff rather than being pushed off.. balance at its finest.

PvE is already easy. Being able to knock enemies off cliffs would be ridiculously overpowered, because they have no way of avoiding or countering it.

I don’t think that everything needs a knockback but telegraphed knockbacks do add a bit of play to the game. Prioritizing targets that can disable you, reacting to the disable, etc are fun (if not overdone).

Is it overdone? Not sure really.

Complaints about a certain extremely high damage mob type that spammed knockdowns was one of the reasons AC was redone nearly two years ago. The dev at the time removed the offending mob type; and added knockdowns to infinitely respawning mobs instead. Also, he added Kick to an additional ghost type, and added Stomp to more of the bosses. So, rather than having a single mob chain knockdowns, now you have large numbers chaining knockdown (P2 spike traps are where they’re most apparent).

While experienced groups have no trouble with them (and generally kill them before they can recharge), it’s extremely punishing to those who are still learning.

The point about access to stability (and to useful stunbreaks) is the most important part. Another part is that any punishing CC needs to be well telegraphed (1/4 second telegraphs aren’t enough).

Andred.1087:

PvE is already easy. Being able to knock enemies off cliffs would be ridiculously overpowered, because they have no way of avoiding or countering it.

That’s not really why it’s done that way. Knocking an AI enemy off a cliff into another area plays hell with leashing (which I could have sworn early one GW2 wasn’t going to use :\) and could make it impossible for the creature to reset.

Sarisa.4731:

The point about access to stability (and to useful stunbreaks) is the most important part. Another part is that any punishing CC needs to be well telegraphed (1/4 second telegraphs aren’t enough).

So much this. The windup needs to be obvious with sufficient reaction time.

I can accept a fast short-range knockback or instant 1-second stun, but anything more than that needs proper telegraphs and multiple cues.

I can’t remember the specific example offhand, but as I was bopping around on a map, I remember learning to anticipate the enemy by the buildup sound rather than the animation (that I couldn’t see because my character is large).

Izziee.8392:

….
It’s not about LEARNING the tells, because they all pretty much open with it.
…..

I think I’d classify that knowledge as a “tell”, but you call it what you want. I find avoiding the knockbacks and interrupts in general a challenge and if you fail to do so, shouldn’t the results have consequences (that just might annoy you)? Orr in general has always been more “challenging” and “annoying” due to it’s density of potentially hard hitting and CC capable enemies. Shouldn’t the highest level zones (that offer the greatest rewards) also be the most challenging and punishing?

I guess what I’m saying is I think the OPs title is exaggerated hype…EVERYTHING doesn’t have a CC component, so you DO need to LEARN what does and does not present the specific threat of a knockback and then possibly avoid said attacks…it’s part of an intelligent combat strategy, IMO.

……
That’s not really why it’s done that way. Knocking an AI enemy off a cliff into another area plays hell with leashing (which I could have sworn early one GW2 wasn’t going to use :\) and could make it impossible for the creature to reset.

That can causes a zone wide issue that could effect Event chains and other triggers, but you also have the specific player issue of not being able to break combat….that’s annoying enough now and allowing you to toss a mob to the bottom of a drop-off would make it much worse.

I think there SHOULD be some added penalty applied to an AI foe when a ledge stops a foe from falling (like a stun or extended knockdown time). It would be nice to be able to have some sort of advantage around ledges since the AI certainly gets one.

Rauderi.8706:

Andred.1087:

PvE is already easy. Being able to knock enemies off cliffs would be ridiculously overpowered, because they have no way of avoiding or countering it.

That’s not really why it’s done that way. Knocking an AI enemy off a cliff into another area plays hell with leashing (which I could have sworn early one GW2 wasn’t going to use :\) and could make it impossible for the creature to reset.

That makes sense, but I’m certain what I said factored into the decision.

Andred.1087:

Bloodstealer.5978:

and yeah they get to stay on the edge of a cliff rather than being pushed off.. balance at its finest.

PvE is already easy. Being able to knock enemies off cliffs would be ridiculously overpowered, because they have no way of avoiding or countering it.

That is not really the reason you can’t knock mobs off cliffs. It’s just to avoid griefing and not for balance reasons. Various mobs uses boons and there are plenty that even have permanent unremovable stability. They can also stun break!

Not being able to knock mobs off cliffs is because people griefed (and broke events) in early betas where you could.

Teratus.2859:

It is annoying but I think there is just enough Knockback tbh

what is a problem is the lack of Stability access on certain classes
that is something that does need to be addressed

Stability access is a moot point after the flogging it just got imo

Khisanth.2948:

Healix.5819:

Izziee.8392:

Getting knocked down with out losing any health just makes me sit there with one hand on my chin.

You want to lose 1/2 your health and get knocked down? Try pulling more than a single target?

You mean like 2+ teragriffs?

Personally, I’m not too fussed about aggroing 2+ griffs. Get them in a mob together, drop an AOE cripple before they charge then condition bomb them to death. It’s pretty awesome watching them each eat 15+ stacks of bleeding.

In SW, most of the mobs can be dealt with using the terrain.

Troll locust AOE is stopped by higher ground, so jumping up some rocks will avoid the ones that are spawned and dodging down off the rocks when they spawn new ones traps those on the rocks

Griff charges are stopped by rocks too, so just jump up or behind some rocks then bomb them

Thrashers sometimes get stuck on rocks and will spin on the spot making them easy prey.

Most of the other CC skills in the game aren’t too horrible. They don’t get spammed and are almost always used as an opener. The triple daze spam from raptors and moas can be annoying but it also roots them to the spot. Same thing with the Basilisk triple petrify. Once you know the tells, it’s easy to just engage and bait out the CC, dodge through or past it then tear them apart while they’re rooted

Izziee.8392:

It’s just, in PvE does every single mob need a knockback / stun / interrupt that it just opens with. It barely serves any purpose other than to plainly annoy, and that it does.

This isn’t exclusive to GW2. In many MMORPGs, when the designers want to make a mob more interesting than just “spam auto-attacks in melee”, they often resort to some kind of stun due to lack of the creativity they would need in order to implement anything better.

You can see that clearly in the Living World Season 2. Knock backs happen pretty much everywhere. There’s even a boss whose main trick is being able to knock you down from a ledge knowing you can’t do the same to him.

ArenaNet crafted a combat system that could have been extremelly interesting, they just didn’t make good enough PvE enemies to make use of it. That’s why, when they’re in doubt, knock backs it is. And it’s getting even worse lately.

Test.8734:

Izziee.8392:

It’s just, in PvE does every single mob need a knockback / stun / interrupt that it just opens with. It barely serves any purpose other than to plainly annoy, and that it does.

This isn’t exclusive to GW2. In many MMORPGs, when the designers want to make a mob more interesting than just “spam auto-attacks in melee”, they often resort to some kind of stun due to lack of the creativity they would need in order to implement anything better.

You can see that clearly in the Living World Season 2. Knock backs happen pretty much everywhere. There’s even a boss whose main trick is being able to knock you down from a ledge knowing you can’t do the same to him.

ArenaNet crafted a combat system that could have been extremelly interesting, they just didn’t make good enough PvE enemies to make use of it. That’s why, when they’re in doubt, knock backs it is. And it’s getting even worse lately.

It’s easy to throw stones, it’s a lot harder to suggest what those “extremely interesting” mob mechanics might be. Do you lack creativity?

IndigoSundown.5419:

Test.8734:

Izziee.8392:

It’s just, in PvE does every single mob need a knockback / stun / interrupt that it just opens with. It barely serves any purpose other than to plainly annoy, and that it does.

This isn’t exclusive to GW2. In many MMORPGs, when the designers want to make a mob more interesting than just “spam auto-attacks in melee”, they often resort to some kind of stun due to lack of the creativity they would need in order to implement anything better.

You can see that clearly in the Living World Season 2. Knock backs happen pretty much everywhere. There’s even a boss whose main trick is being able to knock you down from a ledge knowing you can’t do the same to him.

ArenaNet crafted a combat system that could have been extremelly interesting, they just didn’t make good enough PvE enemies to make use of it. That’s why, when they’re in doubt, knock backs it is. And it’s getting even worse lately.

It’s easy to throw stones, it’s a lot harder to suggest what those “extremely interesting” mob mechanics might be. Do you lack creativity?

ArenaNet obviously does.

Test.8734:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Test.8734:

Izziee.8392:

It’s just, in PvE does every single mob need a knockback / stun / interrupt that it just opens with. It barely serves any purpose other than to plainly annoy, and that it does.

This isn’t exclusive to GW2. In many MMORPGs, when the designers want to make a mob more interesting than just “spam auto-attacks in melee”, they often resort to some kind of stun due to lack of the creativity they would need in order to implement anything better.

You can see that clearly in the Living World Season 2. Knock backs happen pretty much everywhere. There’s even a boss whose main trick is being able to knock you down from a ledge knowing you can’t do the same to him.

ArenaNet crafted a combat system that could have been extremelly interesting, they just didn’t make good enough PvE enemies to make use of it. That’s why, when they’re in doubt, knock backs it is. And it’s getting even worse lately.

It’s easy to throw stones, it’s a lot harder to suggest what those “extremely interesting” mob mechanics might be. Do you lack creativity?

ArenaNet obviously does.

In other words, you don’t have a clue, thanks.