Templar ability "Biting Jabs" is an ability that has everything and is too strong with knockback

monkeymystic · May 2014

The ability "biting jabs", a morph of the puncturing strikes ability is insane at the moment. I see templars steamrolling through veteran content by spamming this ability on packs of veteran mobs. They can also spam it on single elites, and stunlocking the elite completely during the spam, since the biting jabs knockback hits every new hit (I've seen veteran templars soloing and stunlocking/knocking back veteran elite trolls during the whole fight until the elite vet trolls are dead)

The damage itself of this ability is extreme (even stronger with the passives)
With passives it has 10% increased crit and 25% chance on hit to deal lots of extra damage.
It is AoE cone
It has up to 70% crit depending on health (80% with passives, this is crazy)
It has a knockback/stun on the closest target (this is also very strong, and spammable)

I know this ability has been brought up before during beta many times as being too strong because it has absolutely everything, but its been in the shadow lately because of other OP skills like bat swarm, pulsar, escape bolt and mist form.

Aaren · May 2014

It is strong, but unlike pulsar you can't block while casting it. It is strong and definitely earns its spot on a melee Templar's bar. The knock back makes up for the lack of blocking ability. It is not a stun, and only knocks back one at a time. With mildly careful circle strafing it can be used to AoE veteran packs. It is not alone in that however, and is very mana intensive (a templar weak point).

Edit: Also the knock back only applies during the last hit, not all four ticks. You would be better served by asking what your class/weapon type could do to improve your play than calling for nerfs to abilities you either don't understand or are purposely trying to misrepresent.

Utherix · May 2014

There's a bunch of abilities like this.