[Fern]

In pre-GR it was said that skills with on-demand knockdown were pretty iffy, and it was part of the reason why Turnover from Soldier got changed to not knockdown with its ordinary use. Pulling Shot also eventually ended up getting adjusted, but the next issue after them is Knockdown Seed, being a line AOE KD in most cases.

Knockdown Seed doesn't have any Cooldown attached to it, which is odd to me because Reflect seeds, being a much more situational effect get a fairly long one. Whereas Knockdown has little to no reason to not be included in your custom tome's kit, specially when status resist is so difficult to build for in the majority of the cases, considering most builds can't fit in large amounts of FAI or SAN unless they're for example, a mage building for Sound custom spell or Curate.

It may not seem like it, but removing momentum from someone tends to be a fairly big game changer in the end of things. Currently Knockdown Seed serves as an on-demand crowd control and a way to nigh-instantly erase an evade character from existence, since Evasion! red text does not occur if you're knocked down. That means you can usually follow up with a hard hitting attack right afterwards if they decided to walk up to you, putting you from green HP circle to near-red or red. And the thing is, they normally have to approach you to begin with.



This is an example of the shenanigans KD seed can pull off, and it's not the worst of it either. In that instance it's followed up with Wretched Oil as a mage tank going last so the poison proc can happen ASAP, so you get an additional +90 or so damage on that. But you would normally be better off following up with (EDIT: custom tome example doesn't apply anymore, apparently you can no longer dual custom spells) [strike]another custom tome's spell[/strike] or things like Blood Spike as a tome Ghost, or even a Rye/Ryemei critical (which, with the impending update will still hurt quite a bit). Those are a few examples out of many.

The only instance where Knockdown Seed is not incredibly useful is against a tank Martial Artist. An evade one still loses their damage reduction from Evasion, rendering their momentum recovery meaningless if they're almost dead or dead before that happens.


Nerfing it's status infliction by a margin won't particularly change the problem, so I'll refrain from suggesting that and instead ask if it's possible to make it get a 3 round CD, like Reflect seeds have. If it was 2 rounds, it wouldn't really change much if at all because Knockdown Immunity lasts that long, and it's not like the status effect helps you that much against it either if they can do it so frequently. Specially as an evade character.

[Senna]

I'm amazed at how long it took for this thread to be made. Here I thought people had become suckers for pain. Yes, you are correct Fern. Knockdown is still a very powerful status for what it does. It with bonus status infliction chance and no cooldown whatsoever is crazy to me. Since some people will simply spam it...A lot.

I can see why it's a meta seed considering hunting for it isn't as bad.

The second immunity is gone? Back on your back, you go. Not everyone can sneak in some status resistance after all.

Yes, I do agree it gets a three or four round cooldown. Why that much? Because it's not impossible for them to dual-wield two of the tomes that do the exact same thing and abuse the poor victim once the immunity is gone.

A powerful status like that should have a just as decent drawback.

[Autumn]

a 3 round cooldown is a good start, it prevents it from being spammed pretty well and starts making people consider optimal usage over constant usage. I am of the opinion that SOME knockdowns without caveats are ok as long as they have short range, and custom seed spells do have some limited range to them.

To explain what I mean by that, my combo with Custom Seed KD + IPG version of Face Stomp would never be able to work without a tome like this, I imagine execute lovers like it as well. And I consider both of those fun.

[Snake]

3 Round CD, agreeable.

[WaifuApple]

I can get behind this. Having knockdown on demand as a mage can be pretty devastating towards an opponent. Too much so to let that go completely unchecked. So a 3 turn cooldown would certainly be helpful in keeping this thing at least somewhat balanced.