Kip up, Tumble and Hips

[Mork]

I've recently tested something during duel and realized situation with Kip-Up in PvP is much worse than I originally thought it would be.

Hips is one of the most overpowered features in the game. It used to be countered in minimal measure with Knockdown. Current situation on the server in regards to armor types giving every light armor user free Kip-up takes away only tool STR based classes ever had to counter hips spam. It's about to get much worse with removal of AC boost from acrobatis cause all characters will suddenly get essentially +3 to AB from which mid-bab classes will benefit disproportionally more but I digress so lets focus on the topic.

I had a duel with hips/kip up user and realized I didn't even get any attack rolls on someone spamming tumble/hips. They just weren't there in log.
Knockdown seems to mess up the flurry so actual attacks happen after couple seconds. With Kip-Up you can tumble up before those couple seconds even happen so attempting to Knock Down someone in light armor essentially deprives you from opportunity to hit back when they reveal themselves from hips.

Combat goes like this:
1. Sneak attacker gets full flurry from hips attack.
2. Defender presses Knock Down button and attack if you're even a little too slow you get no attacks cause:
3. KD messes the flurry - character just stands there looking at knocked down opponent that's down only 2 seconds.
4. Sneak attacker presses tumble (can teleport with jump on the top of it too) and before KD user gets a chance to do anything he can already use hips for another flurry of attacks before response chance is ever on the table.

Now I understand PvP is not a main concern but throwing balance through the window isn't ideal when some situations demand PvP to happen. Very server staff expects it from certain situations.

My proposition would be for tumble to actually take a round, add to cool-down of Hips so sneakers cannot do all those actions in the same round breaking PnP Balance. If you tumble you really shouldn’t have ability to hips the very same fraction of the second that you Kip-up.
As it is now KD doesn't even make sense on light armor - you just loose all your attacks most of the time unless you're lucky with server turns of flurry and didn't loose even half a second on any button presses which is ridiculous.

This is just my proposition - make tumble take a round, prevent other actions that follow directly after the kip-up like hips or attacking and perhaps this free feature that already the best armor type in the game got will be less broken.

I'm not a developer so I am not sure how difficult my proposition would be to implement but there really feels like things need to be modified some way.

[Riddance]

As a player with stealth character as a main, I would add some thoughts from other side of barricade

1) HIPSers and Stealthy characters by design are supposed to be superior in 1v1 combat, which is in fact a rare occurrence unless we speak of boss fights. Majority of times we either have to deal with groups or try to lure enemies one by one
2) KD as a skill, afaik, is meant to help not just you but actually your melee allies to ease up their chances to successfully attack. And since KD lasts for entire round, that means victim of successful KD have low chance of survival if it gets collectively stomped 5 ft underground. And no, I didn't noticed having instant kip-up, so can't really comment on that one aside from the fact that it's probably not as common thing as you might think, Mork
3) Tumble as a skill is meant to break from combat and easily disengage (especially on those characters who are "glass cannons" and have really low AC by server standards). So nerfing it that way would basically kill one (if not only) reliable tool of survivability for stealth chars, especially those who actually don't get HiPS (which is by default an option for only high level rangers, rogues and Shadowdancers and Assassins PrCs. Afaik, other classes don't get that feat)
4) Tumble as a skill also not that effective as you think because of animation length and cooldown enemies can break the distance easily - especially if you clicked too close and didn't used the full length of the allowed tumble distance. Hipsing after it also takes around a second to register, which means you still can get hit after tumbling away (Happened to me a lot)

P.S: my perspective is from a player with not power builded character (100 dmg is a rare occurrence even on crits for me while others easily does that with just regular attacks), so maybe everything I wrote up is different to those chars that are just built different ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Mork]

I can tell you KD fixes hips issue in very marginal way in Vanilla. With Kip-up it essentially is a button to push thinking it will help while in reality it just makes things worse thanks to our custom changes.

Your example of 2 attackers focused on knocked down sneaker feels odd. Why would you expect to survive attack from two characters as a glass cannon if specialized tanks that have their builds so focused they basically do no damage will die in 1 round when focused by 2 dps. With upcoming change of everyone getting +3 to accuracy in pvp even less.

[YourMoveHolyMan]

High AC from multiple sources has been a problem with the wide availability of uncanny dodge, I am grateful for the change to acrobatics when/if its implemented.

[Winterborne]

KD has never been a smart choice against light armor/dex users.

It is your STR vs the higher of the target's STR or DEX. So, since the DEX person is going to already have high resistance to it, on top of Kip-Up which most will have, it's always been a really bad decision to bother with knockdown against a sneak or other agile target. KD is for locking down casters.

Beyond this, a sneak is lowering your STR by 2 when they hit you, making the odds of KD even worse.

[Mork]

Well yes - you named several reasons why DEX users already have tools to defend themself against KD and now - they all got Kip-Up for zero feat or class investment! It's absolutely ridiculous feature.

[YourMoveHolyMan]

It does take a major skill investment, but it's available to every class through the background feat system

[Aspect of Sorrow]

I'm not against Kip-Up proc'ing cool down on Tumble/Jump as a cost for the free action and letting standard movement/combat/mode change be sustained.

That said, I wouldn't want to swing hard back the opposite direction we came from where every action every round was shield bash and KD spams.

[predrag]

Hipsters were always in a really good position in pvp.
Only real weakness is aoe spells without reflex saves.
And the few character builds that can spot them reliably, usually have to invest all gear slots in spot, which offers little combat effectiveness otherwise.

Kip up and knockdown, not really that big of a deal. Since with high dex, they already counter kd.

I did notice tumbles and jumps being spammed several times in succession by some folks, and I don't know how they do it , as it takes a full action for my characters and some recovery time. Maybe this is what needs to be fixed.

[Ewe]

Sorry did Kip-Up change? I thought it was flat immunity to KD?

Also, Kip-Up is supposed to (at least it did) deactivate if encumbered. The old meta was to apply a str debuff to disable Kip-Up.

[Mork]

It used to be Thief Acrobat thing. Now everyone using best from all angles type of armor: Light. Gets it on top of using best type of armor so ... yeah. Balance ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not against Kip-Up proc'ing cool down on Tumble/Jump as a cost for the free action and letting standard movement/combat/mode change be sustained.

That said, I wouldn't want to swing hard back the opposite direction we came from where every action every round was shield bash and KD spams.

That's why I underlined it as proposition. I have no knowledge of how it looks from the dev side - if there's better solutions I'd welcome them as well including complete removal of the feature as an option. Even with non-dexers it's absurd how you get no attack rolls on knocked down opponent cause of how fast mages and warlocks can recover when KD messes up the flurry rounds (not always but all it takes is being a second too late with pressing buttons).