New Power Set: IMPACT ("Human missile", explosive hands)

[ThunderCAP]

This is an idea to actually fill a spot that I see like a deep hole in City of Heroes now. There is no actual way to create a "Nova" (marvel) kind of character, or "Cannonball", or even Namor/Superman and any other flying+melee character from comics (there are so many examples possible, it's like 30% of superheroes are like that), let's say the "human missile" character.

What makes it impossible to recreate it is mostly this: all AOE attacks that could make it seems you're using super strength (like Foot Stomp, Tremor, Atom Smasher and many many others) are all GROUND ONLY, therefore is a big NO-NO to flying characters and it makes impossible to create a strong flier (and pve without a single aoe is really slow, you need at least one, more so if you're a melee tanker which is surrounded by mobs even when playing alone, to use its resistance).

The only sets that have something usable for that (excluding of course weapons of all sorts) are Psionic Melee (if you try to avoid the swords, which is already close to impossible due to the strongest attack being one, also it forces you to use "telepathy/mind control" when taunting) and Electric Melee (where you are forced to transform into a lightning to dash into enemies, and nobody would put it aside for Spring Attack, the cool-down and damage difference is far too great to ignore)
The others are martial artists or weapon masters or visually or mechanically nor fit for either Hover or a "generic punching hero" (or even bugged when using Hover, I reported some of those with screens/video months ago) ...

It's like City of Heroes at the moment forces you to be Hulk if you want to be strong, either with Rage mechanics or grounded-only AOEs that make the whole sets non-hover usable.
At the moment Homecoming got all kind of sets with energies and elements and strange powers ready to be used (and I bet you even have difficulties imagining new ones since we got it all already, even Venom is possible to imitate with several different power sets), and yet we still cannot create a simple "flying-strong" character but just grounded Hulks?
Well this is my suggestion for you, you still lack an Explosive set and a generic-melee flying-friendly set that's not a martial artist and that actually contains a decent AOE and a rare dashing ability would fit well (Spring Attack revised for the set) would be great in it (it would help to make the set "special", and Spring Attack is ready to be cloned, upgraded and included in a set and it functions already for both grounded and flyers chars).

 

SOLUTION: a version of Super Strength or an "Explosive Punches" or "Cosmic" that has one decent AOE similar to Thunderstrike or Tremor (the animation is perfect to simulate strength and it's used by the Troll boss Atta for that specific reason and the slow animation is only bad when it's single target like in Energy Melee, but Thunderstrike and Tremor which are AOE are amazing with that cause you always hit someone after the slow animation, even if the one you targetted is dead in the meantime) and a version of Spring Attack with cooldown in line with similar dashing/AOE attacks, the animation is already perfect as it is, also while flying (it seems like the hero is launching himself like a missile, crashing on enemies and knocking them down).
Shield, Savage and Electric already give you a dashing ability that explode AOE on impact, I think you can add another one which does the same but with Spring Attack's animation (and I suggest to NOT buff the actual Spring Attack available in pool powers since it would just make every player out there get another AOE, which doesn't solve anything or even gets things worse). No, we need imho a version of Spring Attack included in a specific Power Set built to include that (like electric, savage and shield do). I'd say such set should be very similar to Electric Melee in its function (single target melee attacks, Thunderstrike/Tremor AOE and final Spring Attack/Lightning Rod dashing AOE) with some differences of your choice, personally I don't care for details just that you create it to make it possible the creation of simple strong+flying superheroes.
The name "Impact" (or Impact+ something else added of your choice)  is perfect for a reason: it permits you to create a Power Set with "Explosive punching/hands" (Cannonball and aoe Cosmic alternatives to single-target specialized Energy melee) but with also a "no effects" version (to imitate a simple strong character), and the name would fit in both ways (Impacting punches can either come from a form of strength or energy or the missile-style dashing T9 power etc.), leaving the choice to the player if he wants the explosive energy on its hands or not, but the impact feeling on the opponents should remain the same.

 

You can easily get animations from other sets, Tremor would be perfect as it is if you just made it Hover-friendly (no-grounded only), Spring Attack for the AOE/dash, and for single-target attacks there are many animations usable from other sets that can give you an "impact" feeling or even simple punches (a single target version of cross punch for example wouldn't be bad, in fact I would avoid cones for the set since it would have two aoes already and the game's got Titan Weapons as "strength" cones specialist already).

This set would also be a viable "solution" for peoples who dislike the Rage mechanic (which is again, very Hulk-like and not in tone with Nova/Cannonball/Namor/BlackAdam/Superman clones) pretty much.

Imho it would get very popular very fast, cause it fills a gap that I'd say it's laughable since the comics are filled with such characters, the simpler comics character one can imagine is the flying-strong one and yet it's the most difficult to create or even impossible at the moment.

 

Another possible solution would be to render Tremor simply usable while flying, that would make peoples able to imitate Super Strength (like Atta does) and the set I described by also using Spring Attack with TONs of recharge sets and Fighting punches from pool powers, ignoring everything else from Stone Melee apart from Taunt (as you can see, it's very very difficult for a non-min-maxer and yet not very effective/under balanced due to pool powers being weaker, which is why I think an entire Power Set is needed to just fill the spot).
A solution you shouldn't consider instead is to change Super Strength to fit this idea, cause it's actually perfect to create "Hulk/Heracles" style characters, so you should leave it like that and just create something that can fill the flying-gap (with explosive hands + no effect you'd have the excuse to do a 2nd Super Strength without Rage, with Spring Attack + Tremor which opens up several melee characters possibilities).

If anyone found another solution I would be all ears and grateful, but I doubt it since it's like months I'm trying to create a simple character like that and I'm never satisfied with the result.

Edited July 4, 2020 by ThunderCAP