CoH Combat Variety

[Sky]

(am I the only one left without super speed?)

Nope. I'm a flyer without it. I'm also in the minority (from my ingame experience) that I slotted fly with end reducers so I can use it in combat (not while attacking, but for maneuvering with a hover toggle for attacking, natch) rather than flight speed. Also slotted my hover with defense instead of flight speed.

[jpark]

Another ability I have been experimenting with:

TP Foe

Good for pulling - which means even it fails you get the villian's attention.  You can use it against higher level villians - but you need to slot it a bit for accuracy.

TP foe can work in several ways.  

1.  You telelport the bad guy to you but alert his buddies.
2.  You teleport him to you without alerting his buddies.

#1 is still useful, since you can use the extra rounds before the rest reach you to kill him.  It helps reduce the zerg factor if we are talking about killing one bad guy from a pack of 4 (but if we're talking 10 - not much point).

I have been able to use it on boss mobs (liutenents) higher level than me to separate them from the pack to kill them.

It can also be used for fleeing bad guys - sometimes when you TP them back the are motionless for a bit - so you can pound on them.

And at lower levels there is the favorite - TP friend to the top of a building - and then drop him.  For low levels that is  a lot of damage.

Lastly, standing on one roof top - and using TP foe on a bad guy on another roof top - gives you a lot of combat time.  His friends have to go down to street level and then climb the next building before reaching you.

[jpark]

(am I the only one left without super speed?)

Nope. I'm a flyer without it. I'm also in the minority (from my ingame experience) that I slotted fly with end reducers so I can use it in combat (not while attacking, but for maneuvering with a hover toggle for attacking, natch) rather than flight speed. Also slotted my hover with defense instead of flight speed.

Agreed.  I think slotting stealth for Defense and adding that to Hover (slotted for Defense) is a good strategy for blasters and support class.

Latest experiment:  Hover can be used with the tank/scrapper invulnerability ability Unyielding Stance.

My bud tested this (Grind).  The order is important - think hover has to be activated before Unyielding stance activation.  This of course gives you the defensive bonus of hover to combine with the damage mitigation of unyielding stance.

[SurfD]

Just to clarify what I was talking about as far as the whole Stealth/SuperSpeed/CloakingDevice/Invis issue.

Stacking Stealth/CloakingDevice and Super Speed DOES, for all intents and purposes make you pretty much totally invizible.

It ONLY does this, however, against things that do NOT have the capability to see right through it.  While you may be perfectly fine in the early game (pre 30), there are a large number of things between 30-50 that CAN and WILL spot you through damn near all forms of concielment.

Off the top of my head: Rikti Drones, 5th Column Valkyries, Knives of Artemis, Rularuu Watchers (big floating Eye things) and pretty much all Sniper class minions (Crey/Nemesis) can and will see right through Stealth/CD/SS at various ranges.

The only thing I am not sure on, is how far away you have to be before they do spot you.  It has to do with the way the inviz code works. As someone mentioned, the various forms of concielment simply add a negative to an enemys sight radius.  Snipers have something like 150 yards of sight radius.  Drones 50.  Everything else usually 20 or 25.  Some things may have a hard coded minimum, IE, regardless of how much stealth you stack on yourself, they might still ALWAYS have a 5 yard sght radius.

The reason this is dangerous, is because if said Sniper or Drone happens to be in a group of 4 or 5 other things when it sees you, the rest of its group ALSO becomes aware of your presence.

Trust me when I say this. I have had PLENTY of experience watching rikti packs hand Stealth/SSers their asses in the Abandoned sewers, or watching some fool devices blaster try to CD/SS through a large spawn of Nemesis in a mission without checking for snipers first.

[SurfD]

As to the hover comment, I found a great use for it on mele characters:  Damage avoidance on Monster Class mobs!

Every monster (and many Archvillains) I have ever run into likes to do a foot stomp attack, doing pretty heafty damage to anything in mele range. The neat thing is, 90% of all those monsters (the only execption I have found being the Portal mission Adamastor) cant hit you with it if you are hovering a few feet off the ground!  The shockwave still interupts my snipe attack, but I take no damage at all.

[eldaec]

Also, hover >> caltrops.

Something you'll appreciate greatly when fighting the Knives.

imo, superspeed remains the best option for the majority of people at lvl 14 when you have very few power picks, but still want hasten.

But it becomes worth a serious look once you are able to respec, and can afford CJ or Hover (or even TP).

[Sky]

Good point about some of the aoe attacks, I never think about that stuff, since I'm in the air about 95% of the time I'm in CoH. I really like the flying aspects of the game, so well done. I really get the feel of being a flying comic book hero.

Now if only I had Iceman's ice bridge....(from xmen legends)...

[jpark]

Hover is great for avoiding AoE - my question has been whether it is true at the higher levels AoE's continue to be ground based attacks rather than just explosions which would affect you hovering or not.

Also - the hover avoidance of attacks has a gradation perhaps?  I literally had two healers, one with hover one without.  One was interrupted constantly by AoE the other hovered.  Sometimes he was not interrupted but often he spun 360 in the air upon an AoE attack.  Not sure if this graphical depiction of this "spin" constituted an interrupt or not (this was Dark Astoria).

Maybe this spin I see is similar to SurfDs observation there is interruption without damage.

[SurfD]

yep, whenever you do a "spin" while hovering, it means that whatever hit you would have knocked you down. Instead you do a little barrel roll, and keep going.  Which is AWESOME, because instead of 2-3 seconds downtime while you get back on your feet, you have .2 seconds downtime, and are immediately shooting again.

Also, like I said, the hover seems to only prevent you from taking damage from Ground based AoE attacks (footstomps and the like).  I am not sure if this is a bug with the Monster Class things and their footstomp, but you avoid the damage, and are simply interupted by the rushing air or something.  An actual Nuke, like Nightstars Nova will hit you if you are within its radius of effect, hovering or not.  (Interestingly enough, this also means that one of the most annoying CoT minions, Earth Casters, are TOTALLY fucked if you hover 6 feet of the ground, since they have NO non ground based ranged attacks :P  Once I figured that out, I could litterally take HUGE groups of the bastards simply by hovering high enough off the grount they could still mele me.  They had the chance, but never seemed to want to close to mele range :P )

In my experience so far, the ONLY critter that could actually hit me and do PHYSICAL damage, not simply an interuption, was Portal version of Adamastor (and I have been hovering within Power Burst range of Hatched Krakens, Jurassic, Crystal Titan, Red Kronos, and a bunch of AVs with foot stomps)