[Yark]

The weight and the power of a character correlating to their strength is arbitrary and up to the player themself so long as its within reason, that said I don't think that this change should take place, Knockdown is a powerful status effect in its own right that is used for CCing the important people to CC in a fight, otherwise heavy damage wins 100% of the time in any fight if they can simply ignore a knockdown proc, also we've been attempting to balance knockdown already by limiting what needs to be done to achieve it, dense thunder used to straight up inflict knockdown, so did pulling shot until recently.

This is why I had suggested it for a shield related talent rather than something like this, as with a shield your character is limited in the ways it can do damage, magic or otherwise thanks to an item called bloody palms which is basically essential to mages trying to do damage these days.

Resisting knockdown should be delegated to more defensive style than offensive style, its part of the reason Martial Artist is the best supplement class to a damage dealer, it can ignore the best CC for locking them down, and cleanse the other CCs meant to lock them down too (Blind, Immobilize, Slow)

Let's try to separate role-play from actual character parameters. Imagine if I played a Black Knight/Arbalest or something, capped STR/DEF/VIT, and claimed to be super agile and able to move at the speed of sound. It's absolutely asinine and completely out of line with what I'm actually playing.

Having said that, I can agree with your point on shields although I think it is a separate issue. Bloody Palms is an extremely competitive item in both PvE and PvP, and I think the problem here, if you want to call it that, comes down to how splashable it is. Everyone wants to deal more damage, and everyone deals either physical or magical damage - both of which are supported by Bloody Palms. It's a no-brainer.

And finally, you made the admission that Monk is one of the best supporting classes for a damage dealer because they do not take a momentum penalty from knockdown. Can't you see how this itself stifles creativity, and why the ability for Body Weight to negate knockdown only encourages more build diversity? It also encourages non-STR builds to add weight to their equipment, if and when they can afford to do so. Currently, stacking Battle Weight is good for.... Arbalest, and Black Knights using Board Shaker? That's about all, isn't it?