ninja surprise

It's fun! My boy Ground Combat brings the smash and does great against most of the troublesome enemies, including the bird-women in Dark Astoria, Malta, Carnies, etc. Seismic Smash even holds the Master Illusionists if I do it right. I don't even have resistances as high as possible, just defense capped and whatever resist I got on accident.

The objection actually seems to be "Right now I can toggle on all my travel powers and under the new system one of the toggles automatically turns off". Speed of flight doesn't even come into it, only that one of the toggles deactivates. Nevermind that with 1 pick, Fly, they go as fast as what now requires 3 picks. For those who currently use Afterburner as a high-defense PFF to sneak around maps, it's a nerf to completely lose that functionality. Not sure where I fall on min/max vs theme, but I nearly always pick Mystic Flight. For me, Flight has always been the most consistently useful travel power, both for traversing zones and instance maps. I'll fly through caves, office buildings, and the outdoor maps looking for glowies, hostages, or that last hidden mob in a defeat-all. I use Translocation to get across a zone faster, and inside maps when a spawn is blocking a door I'll TP past them into the room behind them. With the new changes, I know a few toons I'll change to Fly, and may even drop Combat Jumping for the first time ever if Evasive Maneuvers provides enough immob protection. I'm likely to switch a bunch to Super Speed and Speed Phase, because momentum leap means not having to find a ramp in Steel Canyon or Skyway, a Steam Jump can get me up the web in Grandville, and Speed Phase can get me through all the spawns I want to ignore on the way to the Thorn Tree on Miss Liberty's TF, etc. (Right now I Afterburner through the CoT.) I'll still likely never take Super Jump because it randomly gives me vertigo. I don't like falling. I like the changes to the movement pools. In comics the heroes that fly can fly really fast so I never understood the justification for it being slow, and unenhanceable for speed.

Or for people who want the defense IO mule they previously used Afterburner for.

Nope, it's a bonus buff. New Fly is as fast as old Fly + old Afterburner. New Afterburner is a brief turbo-boost on top of that. So with just one power pick you're going as fast as you used to with two picks, and the bonus speed boost has you going even faster still.

Yes, another benefit being that Shield does weird stuff with Beast Run. I had to change Stances because it was so weird.

Maybe rename it to "Turbo Boost" to avoid all the confusion people are having about being sad that new Afterburner doesn't work like old Afterburner? Turbo Boost: A temporary boost to your maximum flight speed. Toggle with a 30 second duration and a 60 second cooldown

Current Afterburner works like running a map with Personal Force Field on - super high defense while moving through hostiles. Not always for retreating, I use it to fly through a map to the objective. Since the defense doesn't suppress in combat, it doesn't matter if things are attacking me. I still like the new version better. Yep, excellent comparison.

Kinda agree with you here, except that not every creature flies at the same speed and humans can go really, really fast in the air due to technology.

I'll usually take Elude and put a single EndMod in it. I'll use it on the rare occasions that a Sapper gets a lucky hit or I otherwise completely forget to watch my Endurance and run out and toggle-drop. With one click I'm soft-capped again and gaining endurance and back to Scrappin'... easier than running around like a friggin squishie trying to click blues and get the toggles back on.

I've long wished for some sort of ultra-minimal shield. Or better, a "no" shield where my costume's armor is the shield. Either like the Winter Soldier using his metal arm as a shield, Cap's two minimal punchy-shields, or like a forcefield shield using an Aura FX. Lots of concepts where I want to use the Shield powerset but not have a shield.

Yep /altinvite name to get your alt into the SG, then /promote name to give them ranks. Don't need to promote if you give every rank full access to everything though.

(deleted oopsie)

Since there's no notes about it, I take it Translocation still can't be enhanced and never gets the slots that the game says are added while leveling up? I really like the changes to Flight and flight speeds. I usually take Mystic Flight so I can recover endurance in-between teleports and I'm grateful for this smidge of a distance increase. (clarification: I like to teleport, but it's nigh impossible to cross a zone without running out of End. So I'll fly a bit, teleport 'till half exhausted, then fly and recover endurance, eventually arriving.) BUT I have a bunch of characters that'll probably respec into Fly/Hover/Evasive, and I might even take Super Speed every once in a while now that it gets some vertical! Good stuff, thank you devs!

My biggest disappointment was an Ice/Titan that I grinded up to the high 40's. I've had good times with Ice Armor, with an Ice/Stone being one of my favorites on live. But this, despite being soft-capped, having endless endurance with EA, despite Titan's rumored fantastic damage, it was just a drag. My Spines/Ice Scrapper could defeat stuff quicker. So I stripped it and transferred it to my "archive" server where I keep an SG and base full of my cast-offs, just in case I want to play one of them to remind myself to not make another.

And for more variety, here's what I'm running. Now that I look at it I realize it's ridiculous having Inexhaustible 6-slotted instead of Parasitic Aura. I need a respec. Still works though! Attack chain is: Soul Drain, Gloom, Midnight Grasp, Shadow Maul, Siphon Life, DNA Siphon, and then repeat whatever's recharged. I haven't tested out the new Touch of Fear yet to see if it's worth taking. You can easily swap Hover/Fly/Afterburner for any other travel power.

Good stuff!

Just posted one in another thread.

That's the weird thing about Bio, it looks like crap in Mids but then does quite well in the game, as long as you click the clickies in time. Bio's biggest weakness is the lack of Slow resist, and then the lack of any defense debuff resist. But if you can keep healing then the lack of any defense whatsoever doesn't matter. This is a Stone Melee / Bio Brute I'm building up right now. Lots of recharge without Hasten, and as much slow resist as possible from the Winter sets. Winds up with decent defense and some resistances. Expensive though. Bio technique is: Activate Ablative Carapace just about whenever it's up. It'll give you about half your hitpoints as an Absorb shield and a big regen boost. Hit DNA Siphon whenever you're low on HP or End. It's like some insane psycho combined Dark Regen + Dark Consumption into the best self-heal ever. Use Parasitic Aura whenever it's up and you're in the middle of a big spawn. Another giant Absorb, regen, and recovery buff that'll keep you alive when you shouldn't be. Between DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura you won't need Efficient Adaptation, so you can flip between Offensive and Defensive depending on the enemies. Efficient can be saved for low-level task forces and such.

Sounds like fun, do it!

Back on Live my two mains were a Dark Melee/Super Reflexes Scrapper, and a Gravity/Kin Controller. I didn't wanted to keep the concept of my Scrapper but wanted to try New Things since we don't know how long this will last, and also wanted more AoE on my Scrapper. So I went with Titan/Ninjutsu, and that was a royal hoot most of the time. Altitis will do what Altitis does, so after rolling through a few dozen more power combos I've almost settled on a Bio/Dark Melee Tank. I didn't think I'd like Bio, but this combo is loads of fun, survivable if I pay attention, does enough damage/AoE, has cool soundFX, and can lead a PuG of random-level sidekicks to victory against +4 mobs. This is the first toon I've fully Incarnated out. It's fun! I did re-create the Grav/Kin, but for some reason I'm not enjoying it as much as the first time. Might be because I miss my old SG partners I'd most frequently team with on that toon.

I use all the default costume slots to give each toon a variety of heights. Slot 0 is minimum size -- travel size -- because it just feels like short bodies move quicker and it's easier to squeeze between pipes in the sewer and other map obstacles. Slot 1 is maximum height, so I can fight the EBs on the ITF eye-to-eye. Also for the battles where I really want to see where I am in the swarm. The other slots will be a mix of minimum height and Super Human slightly above average height for role-play or lounging around or costume contests.

I'd say add randomly occurring Events to KW. Each hour might spawn a Rikti invasion, or zombies, or city-wide SupaTroll raves, giant monsters from red or blueside, or whatever.

I'd prefer they buffed it by adding more AoE "splash" damage onto every attack that's a big swing without changing anything else about the attack (end/rech/base dam/etc) Take Battle Axe for instance. You're swinging a big axe, surrounded by enemies, and only manage to hit one critter every time? Add some splash damage to the 2 or 3 critters standing right next to the target. BAM, doing a little more damage and Battle Axe is cool again.

If they follow the same general toughness as Tanks, it'd be Bio then Ice, and then Elec beating Dark. Of course with enough IOs you can get them all up to about the same toughness. I guess it depends on which stats you want to have a head start with.

Aint that the truth