Rather than knockdown, how about boosting the damage taken by the kicker to that of a perfectly held strike (+25% damage)?
The issue with kicking is that the followup strike is pretty much a guaranteed held headshot. When punishing a poor kick, the attacker usually doesn't have time to hold.
As an aside, people tend to treat the +/- buttons as agree/disagree. It's not really worth reading too much into it.
I play 1h about 50% of the time, 90 reach weapon, low armor and str rating, I've not had a very hard time with any of the EU kickers, including the best ones. Take some fucking precautions, don't facehug at predictable times or for longer periods, even with a freaking rondel dagger you can rightswing someone without being in kicking reach, and when you think someone will try to kick you, jump and swing.
I can usually dodge the new kicks as a 1h, but with shorter 1h it pretty much forces me to sacrifice the ability to maximize my speed bonus on left swings (since the optimal path for a high speed bonus hit is predictable).
I can play 1h, but at the moment I frankly find it a lot easier to play a heavily armored, balanced build with my 'S' key glued down for half the round. So that's what I do. I'm sure I'm steadily getting worse at the game from this playstyle, but it racks in so many kills I just don't care.