f13.net

Ok, so against my better judgment, I picked up hasten at 14 instead of taking fly.  So I basically don't have one of the advanced travel powers and just kind of run everywhere.  It's not that bad since I generally use the running around for extra xp on the way to missions, contacts, etc.

Once I hit 16, I'll be taking either fly or superspeed, I guess.  I *could* grab another travel power pool like teleport, then wait till even later to take the bigger power, but have added utility in the meantime.  

This is for a blaster.  While I do use hover to handle large groups of mobs, etc. I don't know if fly is worth the slot since it's still wicked slow.

Superspeed seems nifty, but I recall there were changes to it.  Does anyone have it and what's the general opinion on its effectiveness as opposed to flight?

Obviously, you have to navigate around or jump over stuff, and I'd imagine that in Faultline it could be a serious liability.  I don't think an advanced travel power is necessarily essential right this moment, so would it make sense to wait until 18 to get it (assuming I only develop a third pool between now and then)?

Or should I just suck it up and take flying, then slot it up later with some good DO or SO flight speed enhancers?

I'm of the opinion you absolutely have to take one of the super travel powers as early as possible. The ease of travel even with slow fly just changes the game so much. I took super jump and I haven't looked back.

I can not imagine the game without flight.  As a paper thin blaster, the ability to exit stage Z is a great thing.

Ditto. Slot fly with a flight speed enhancer and  the best endurance reducer you can find, and it is fantastic.

I am looking forward to leveling my scrapper to 14 just so I can try superjump- it looks like SO much fun!

Superjump is a blast. Just have to watch where you land. It's by far my favorite travel power. I cordially detest fly. You're better off with a combination of TP and superspeed--even as a blaster--than taking that dog.

However, you can get along pretty well without a travel power until 22. My invul scrapper was in this predicament. Simply not enough slots for everything she needed pre-20 and stamina is a MUST with a broadsword build. As it is, I was skipping attacks and vital defenses just to keep END up.

Sooooo...just be careful when travelling and bring friends to cesspits of depravity like Perez Park or Boomtown. And stay away from Talos. Hate that place.

My first character didn't get a travel power (Fly) until the 30s, although I did run around with Swift so I had double run speed.  It wasn't terrible, but it was dammned annoying with zones like Independence Port and Terra Volta.  So much so that I would NOT do it again.

Still, you don't have to get it right away, especially if you're going to pick up Swift (to pick on Health and Stamina later).  So I could see holding off on a travel power until level 22 or so, but no later.

Bruce

I've had a blaster with fly and currently eV is 25 with TP.   As soon as respec opens up I'm dumping the whole TP line and going with Fly.  TP has just way too many annoyances to make it very fun.  Sure it's fast but sitting and waiting to recover end three times while you try and cross Independance port is just PAINFUL.  And don''t get me started on the lag and redraw effects.

Fly starts out a little slow but is still quite a bit faster than default sprint.  One DO end reducer and you end regen becomes equal to your end use so you can fly indefinately.  With a few +speed you can Zip along quite respectably.

Jump is very fun my Scrapper just got it and it's a blast.  For the most fun don't just hold down the space bar and bounce along, try to plot your course leaping from structure to structure -  its a blast!

n00b.  

Sometimes I'll actually limit myself to jumping only on telephone wires or the monorail.  Now that's where zen and the art of superjumping join up in a blissful karmic ball of fun.  Especially when you get to around lvl 30 and one jump can clear over 150 yds, you can really get pretty goddamned surgical with where you jump.  No question, superjump is the absolute most fun travel power of the game, with superspeed being right behind it.  

Flight and TP pretty much suck balls in the fun department comparatively.

I bought hover with my broadsword/invuln scrapper at 6, because I was tired of running all the way around to get past tall things in Kings Row, and climbing fire escapes to look for CoT is teh suXX0r.  At 14, I was split on getting hasten for superspeed later, or getting Fly.  I bought fly, and am not really sad.

No, I can't keep up with superspeed.  However, I can take more direct routes than superspeed because geography is not an issue, and I don't get agro because I'm not near mobs on the ground.  With 1 flight speed and a DO endurance reducer, I can fly forever(and unlike straight TP, I can switch to hover and rest in mid-air if I DO get low on end.) and at a fairly decent clip.

Most importantly, with a bit of skill you can look pretty cool when you take off and land, due to Fly's inertia effects.  There's just no room for style with Superspeed.  Superspeed does seem to be nice indoors, for travelling thru mostly-empty missions looking for that guy that's hiding, where Fly's inertia issues become annoying when trying to get thru narrow doorways.

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Alkiera

I'm probably a moron. You guys tend to think this stuff through a lot more thoroughly than I do. My travel power is Stealth.

Super-whatever and flying just don't make sense to me for a Natural who's supposedly a kick-ass katana wielder by dint of hard work and nothing more. Stealth makes some sense in that context. And as long as I don't walk right over the mobs, I can pretty much choose the most direct line from point A to point B without having to worry about distractions like being gang raped in the park or tripping over the odd purple-con while I'm going about my business. And given my tendency to act like a tank with scrapper hitpoints, the defense boost doesn't hurt a bit.

Woot - finally a blaster that makes sense to me:

You chose stealth.

Ya you can get other travel powers, but as a healer I see blasters go down all the time because:

They have no "get out of jail free card" = Phase Shift

Phase shift is part of the invisibility pool (stealth) and I think critical for a blaster.  Invis can help with travel, but phase shift can extricate you from situations when you see certain death coming your way and there is no time or space to run away.

So long as you don't plan to spend time in faultline, and do mostly missions instead, and have some kind of stealth or uber defence power (personal force field 4 teh win) you can mange for a few extra levels without a travel power. But by lvl 50 you're going to have 6 power pool powers plus one for every primary/secondary that you skip (and there is at least one pointless power in almost every set), so even after 3 for stamina, and perm 2 or 3 from leadership, stealth, hasten etc; finding space for a travel power isn't going a problem.

I fall into the camp of 'must take a travel power at 14'. I've done it with every one of mine so far and every time it's been a huge relief to make 14.

So far I've only tried jump, flight and tp. Jump is my favourite by far, purely for fun. TP is a great 'get out of jail free' power, but I feel that it requires hover to be at it's most useful. Flight is a nice, relaxing, easy to use travel power.

Jump also became more usable once I bound a key to toggle 'up' so that I don't have to hold down the spacebar all the time. Eases the thumbstrain :) That, plus using mouselook, makes for an easier jumping experience and also allows you to chat while travelling.

Flight isn't as balls to the wall fun as superjump seems to be, but it does have its high points. The POV from high above the city is pretty damned cool, for instance. It is also easy to cruise for targets on the street from above.

Insane! Scrappers and tanks need, nay require, Leaping. Since Hover is even slower than taking the fire escape... enough said. With Combat Jumping, you can bounce up quickly via the windows that aren't covered by a fire escape. And it gives a nice defense boost as well, without sacrificing movement speed the way Hover does.

Hover is useful for people using ranged attacks, since they can keep a distance between themselves and melee-primary mobs. Scrappers do not have that reason to take it.

I just do things differently, I think.  I have hurdle and Combat Jumping on my blaster, for example.  I have just gotten stuck with him on my way to superjump at 14.

As for my scrapper, I don't feel the extra defense is all that important.  Parry seems to have a nigh-miraculous effect on mobs up to my level(including LT's and bosses, with no def enhancements in it yet, even), and as I'm Invuln, getting hit isn't so terrible.  I really don't need the extra drain on my poor endurance bar, either, at least until I can get Stamina.

I'm rather notorius for not following templates.  Mostly because I find most 'template' builds incredibly boring... Part of the fun of RPG's for me is picking powers, working out how things will interact, etc; if that is already done for me, it's not as much fun.  I'm also a 'character' builder, I don't build collections of stats, but characters who get powers based on what makes sense to them, not what template-builders say are the must-have powers.

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Alkiera

All the travel powers are good in their own way.

Flight is an awsome power set for weaker classes. It is by far the best power for hunting in safety as you can hover low enough and fast enough to cover alot of ground in with perfect ctontrol.


Teleport
Tricky to use and really effected by lag but good get out of death power and it is fastest point to point travel power. Do not take this if you lag alot or you will get very disoriented.

Jump My personal favorite just because I find it fun as hell to leap around the city.

Super speed roar hehe very very fast.

Kaid

I have started on Leaping and Fitness with my blaster, and have Combat Jumping and Swift on him so far at 10.  Wish I had more time to play, might actually have Super Jump by now :)

My first time I made a stone tanker and took hoover, but then decided to remake him with jump kick and super jump.  All was going well untill I took rooted and found out I can't move, jump, or fly, but I could teleport.  So now I'm making 2 tanks, one ice tanker with leaping and one stone tanker with teleport.

I find flight indispensible with my blaster. Fly in to snipe range, hover, snipe. Fly down to normal range, blast, fly back to snipe range (out of mob's range), snipe. Repeat until mob dead. That's my basic solo technique, care of flying.

I've slotted Fly with 2 or 3 DO endurance reducers, no noticeable draw on endurance with it enabled. I don't care about being fast, I like being efficient.

There, fixed it for ya :)

It must just be me, but I can't stand the third dimension of hover/fly. Yah, it's fun to explore building roofs, but not that much more difficult with SJ.

What I don't like is the blaster/hover thing. I've done it with an AR/dev blaster (now deleted). I found it slow and irritating. I much prefer my energy/energy blaster with superspeed and TP. Skirmishing on the ground with her knockback and assorted melee skills is just more fun than hanging about like a string of garlic and spamming snipe. This has become cliche to such a large degree that I'm surprised Cryptic hasn't addressed it, seeing their dislike for cookie cutter "must have" skill sets and the whole melee/ranged mob damage debate.

It must be the latent scrapper in me that likes to run stuff around on the ground, jumping over obstacles and ducking around corners to lurk in ambush for foolishly pursuing mobs.

It's slow and irritating if you only use snipe from out of range :P I was talking about the use of fly to enable much more interactive and exciting soloing using the same basic principle.

I think it's the perspective that really bothers me. I just don't like it and much prefer playing my one remaining blaster on the ground.

Also, the cheese factor is off the scale when dealing with ranged damage. We all know (or should) about the existance of some mobs that have no real ranged attack and how you can't pry blasters off of them with a pry bar. I can't see this state of affairs lasting.

hehe Thanks for that correction Sky about why Blasters die - I agree.

I don't think this state of affairs will last either Sable.

Combats are easy in this game generally.  I think some of us interpret that as role flexibility in creating group solutions.  For me, right now I think this an illusion.  The game will get a high end with battles that are truely difficult (maybe TF's achieve this - not done one yet).  And when that happens the trinity of grouping will return: pure tank, pure healer and damage dealers.

Large task forces have some of this. Our SG has been fiddling with the lower alts and Positron. Most of us missed it the first time around when it was bugged.

We tried it last weekend with a large group made up of mostly defenders and scrappers. It's a Vahz mission and the massed projectile vomiting of the abominations was simply more than regen and dark scrappers could handle, regardless of FFs or emp defenders. Obviously, a provoke bot...errr, a tanker, yes, a tanker, was needed. Normally, we'd rely on controllers for this sort of thing, but for whatever reason the one we had wasn't able to handle the massed waves of undead. Since the group was entirely lvl14 and SKs, it was decided to chuck it and start over this coming weekend with most of us at lvl16.

It seems to me that the more extreme the situation, the more you need the specialized classes. I have a feeling the Positron would have been very doable with a 4 person group: 2 scrappers and 2 defenders. We went in with 8, though, and had the whole world drop on us. The mission was running at lvl15.

Now I'm used to street fighting with two BS scrappers and taking down +2 lvl mobs isn't that hard with them. This is a controlled situation though. You get to call the group and have plenty of time to prepare. Also, BS has such hugely frontloaded damage that you're guaranteed one to two kills in the first couple of whacks. Same thing with small missions.

I like flexible play-styles. Getting locked into must-have, must-do play-styles doesn't interest me all that much. I just quit EQ a few months ago and had had more than enough of that sort of thing. I'm hoping CoH stays the course, and group makeup won't devolve into cookie-cutter/holy trinity gameplay.

I just tried the first TF yesterday, and it was a painful painful experience.  Was about an 8 person group I believe, with levels from 11-14 (I had just dinged 14).  We had two tanks, two controllers (I was one), a defender, and a few blasters/scrappers I think.

We get in the sewers, and see a mob of abominations and friends.  All red/purple con to me.  Great.  I got bored and started casting decieve on the red cons, occasionally landing it while waiting for the other teamates to stop shitting themselves.  A few aboms went down from decieve, soon raised by the reapers (they are the ones who raise tight?).  So, someone dinks one of the purple cons, and I debuff it and start decieving as much as possible.  It quickly turned into me chain casting my AoE heal while everything quickly got ugly.  The one moron AoE blaster quickly pulled aggro and died (not just from this one incident, but in a few other missions we did he seemed to have no concept of pulling or backing off when getting stampeded).

Being as this was right near the entrance, there wasn't much running room outside of zoning.  Four or so of us went down and the rest of us zoned to get away.  Then we came back in and rezzed the ones that were down, and tried again.  Strung them out a bit more and killed off quite a few, then quickly got clumped together again and raped.  I got hit in some crossfire and died quickly this time.  After that we scrapped it and went back to door missions. ;)

I hate vahz.

So yeah, I'd like to try that TF again with people who know what they are doing and are all 14/15 next time.  Would be fun to see the rest of the story arc in it play out.

hmmmm, i might be able to power level my BS regen scrapper from 12 to 14 by sunday.  I really want to do the first two TF's since i mssed out on them.

Yeah, just finished the first TF.  Was interesting, did it in about 3.5 hours.  The only problem is after a few missions with a full team (all 14-15), our healer had to leave, and our tank kept dropping until he finally stayed gone, and one other person just left.  So suddenly after the first mission being lots of nice orange to purple cons, everything was white to red con.

Barely noticed the boss on the last mission, think he was a red con (I was 15 from the third mission or so on).  The mission looked very nice though, very spaceshipy actually.  Got a lvl 18 attack speed (recharge timer) tech SO.

And then I was (http://www.underhanded.org/coh/highspot1.jpg) bored (http://www.underhanded.org/coh/highspot2.jpg).

Heheh, I could probably beat your high spot record.  I found a building (wont say where) where you practically can not jump while standing on the top of it.  You litterally get about a foot or less clearance, then your head hits the zone ceiling :P  And it has a raized ridge all along the edge, so about the only way to get on is by flying, because this reduces your vertical profile.

Nice :)  That shot just happened to be the top of the building where the end of the first TF was.  Had the handy field on the side for comparison (as the top of the zone is the top of the field).

Hmm, found this (http://www.underhanded.org/coh/highspot3.jpg), but not quite sure if it's your spot.  The red target for my TP is right where it turns red.  One pixel down and it's white.  So I'm not sure if that ledge it seems lined up with is something you can get at horizontally.

Ok, that is REALLY odd.  I went back, and tried to stand on top of the building, and i can no longer get directly on top of it.

I wonder if they lowered the world ceiling a bit or something.

I, can, however, still stand on top of one of the Eagle cornices along the corners of the building.

From here (http://members.rogers.com/trevor.lindsay/images/coh/WorldCeiling.jpg), where I am standing, hitting the space bar to jump causes absolutely nothing to happen.  If i move down near the end, jumping basicly cases me to twitch like i was standing on my toes or something.

Worth noting that superspeed includes stealth. And if you are taking hasten anyway it has no pre-req.

Also worth noting that they stack, and the combination means you can walk right thru the middle of packs of mobs, and they never see you.  You can stand in melee range of them, and start dancing, and never get attacked.

--
Alkiera

Also of note in this thread is the physics change to jumping in a recent patch.  Before if you had combat jumping and superpeed on you would slow WAY down to normal run speed during your jumps.  And your jumping height without combat leaping on was very short when on the move full speed.


NOW, it is far better.  Jumping at full speed still gives you full height.  Superspeed and combat leaping fully stack now so you get the full height of combat leaping along with the blazing fast horizontal movement speed of superspeed.  Plus the added benefit of the insane airial control you have while using the leaping powers, letting you curve easily in midair.  I fully suspect superjump and superspeed will also fully stack for the ultimate movement power.

There was a comment that you don't get aggro during flight, and that is probably true, but as a superspeeder, you don't get aggro while speeding either.  They don't even take a single shot or go through their combat ready animations.  I run through and jump over groups of FAR higher level than me all the time.

I like superspeed.  It does have it's issues though if you have to go up a lot.

I use esdf movement controls and have the a key bound to superspeed so I can turn it on or off in an instant.  That lets me escape a dangerous location as fast as I can press 'a' and forward.

For those wondering about binding powers, you don't even need it in the tray.  For my superspeed it is:

/bind a powexec_name "Super Speed"

I bound a key to heal inspiration for my scrapper as well.  No matter how your inspirations are ordered, if you have a respite anywhere in the inspiration tray it will be used.

/bind t inspexec_name "Respite"

Fly is still better for blasters, imo ;)

"You no touchee the Cosmic, groundlings!"

If you are a blaster hover and flight are probably the best things to get at first. Super speed is really nice though for devices folks to rip in drop a trip mine and zip back before the boom or alerting your targets.


Kaid