Group Fly - Perfect or Pointless?

[Jacktar]

Hi guys, just because it was quiet I rolled a new Mm and took Group Fly for first time on any alt.

It seems just so bad in every way that I kind of think I am doing it wrong!

Firstly two other power picks just to get it and then when in use I am flying so much faster than pets that I lose them after about 10 seconds.

So it is a fly backwards job to keep an eye on them combined with a stop start method to try and avoid having to forever go back and get them.

I have not enhanced any slots just to keep a level playing field as far as buffs go.

I have to assume that the original concept of Group Fly was majorly aimed at Mms and pets so am baffled why it is completely borked in something as simple as co-ordinated flight speed?

So as title, is Group Fly power Perfect or Pointless or as when using it mainly for the Mm, petless?

Thanks

 

Edit, maybe it should just be renamed “Ultimate Herding Cats” power

[Haijinx]

Group Fly is so awesome it should have been included in /regen

[kelika2]

Sucks.  the -tohit on it cancels out your inherent and unless you stick to fighting +0s you will miss often enough.

Other players hate it since few talk to Null these days AND you cannot talk to him in a TF to block group fly

And if for some reason you do need it, pets will fall out of range and drop

 

But if you are solo 100% of the time, who cares have fun

[KC4800]

It is definitely situational. A big plus in the layer cake room, the terraced Oranbega room, and some office rooms. Outdoor missions too. It is sometimes glitchy for me with a pet on occasion not knowing where it is positionally and zips all around the map. Have to release and resummon if I want him in the fight. With all the negatives I can see why ev1 skips it. But you gotta try it once, right?

[tidge]

In my experience it's very situational.

 

The pros:

• It offers a very precise amount of control when Flying. Hover has to be slotted for speed to match this.
• It is handy for bringing your pets (and teammates) to certain hard-to-reach areas when you want them.

The con is pretty much: Some teammates will see it as you griefing them. I don't know if it is because of

• a perception that you are 'forcing' a power on them they don't want
• the player relies on 'jumping' around to reposition during combat
• an unfamiliarity with 'Flight' as a power
• the player has changed keyboard settings of the 'up' key (or is using it in some non-default way)

...but you will hear about it from those players who want to complain. Don't mind them, they are just mad at themselves because they don't know (or remember) to visit Null the Gull.

[Coyote]

Group Fly is good for ranged MMs who don't have a keep-away power like Caltrops or Hurricane. It can keep mobs away from you and your ranged henchmen, and if you're in a mission, you're generally not going around at full speed. In fact, I'd give it a really good rating (situationally) except that sometimes one robot breaks its AI and movement restrictions  and zooms around the map at Warp Speed. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about ... if you haven't, I'll try to describe it: it's like Superspeed in air, except about 3x as fast, and it seems to go back and forth between two points repeatedly. You have to go back next to it or give it a GoTo command to reset it.

 

Also... it has a ToHit debuff? I know it used to, but I thought that was removed quite a while ago.

 

Lastly... rename your Robots as Valkyrie Drones, Valkyrie Protectors, and Assault Valkyrie, have them turn on their cute boot jets as they fly with you, and play Ride of the Valkyries as the Assault Valkyrie rains missiles down on poor Nemesis, and teach that Prussian Pretender about how tactics later than the 19th century include the concept of air superiority.

[Apparition]

It is pretty much necessary for Masterminds on Rikti mothership raids if you want to take down the drop ship.

[TheMoncrief]

If it worked to actually let your pets travel with you instead of causing you to hugely outrun them and they fall down and can't get back to you, it would be great. As it stands, it's better than worthless, but not actually good.

 

Just make Group Fly affect your pets regardless of range and I'd love it. Then it wouldn't matter if I could outrun them. Let it keep affecting other players as it does now - players aren't my own powers and it makes sense that it requires effort to keep everybody together. But my pets should be able to follow me when I have a power specifically to enable them to follow me.

[Grindingsucks]

I usually find more utility in powers that are disliked by others but, in this particular case, I have to agree that group fly is largely a waste of a power.  There might be vary rare, situational conditions where it's useful (though I haven't found one yet), but enough to make you burn a power slot on it?

 

Not me, thanks.

[TheMoncrief]

31 minutes ago, Grindingsucks said:

I usually find more utility in powers that are disliked by others but, in this particular case, I have to agree that group fly is largely a waste of a power.  There might be vary rare, situational conditions where it's useful (though I haven't found one yet), but enough to make you burn a power slot on it?

 

Not me, thanks.

Well these days (and for a long time before I think) people consider travel powers at all to be less than desirable. So a travel power that requires 2 other power selections in a pool and doesn't even work well for its apparent purpose, yeah, it's a bad time to be Group Fly. It looks cool on a Robotics Mastermind, and is situationally useful for making sure your pets are at the proper level and not lost or stuck in some extremely vertical battle fields, but is generally not worth the power pick. And for AT's that don't rely on their army of pets, I just cannot imagine choosing it at all for anything except a theme.

[Bopper]

4 hours ago, kelika2 said:

Sucks.  the -tohit on it cancels out your inherent and unless you stick to fighting +0s you will miss often enough.

Other players hate it since few talk to Null these days AND you cannot talk to him in a TF to block group fly

And if for some reason you do need it, pets will fall out of range and drop

 

But if you are solo 100% of the time, who cares have fun

Group Fly doesn't have a -ACC effect. That has been the case for a very long time, but I dont know why the description of the power was never updated to reflect that. Maybe Group Fly is just so unpopular it wasn't worth correcting the info.

[Meknomancer]

I've tried it on a few mm's, they are the only AT's i'd ever consider taking it on, every new toon hits null the gull right away and turns it off so if someones running ti it doesnt affect me. Its been useful for soloing av/gm on a bots/rad simply by keeping the pets out of melee/pbaoe range. Took it as a theme on a mercs/bubs and hated it it sucks wind like nothing else, needs some heavy end reds in there. There are no bad powers in the game just powers you have to find a way to make fun and playable. Except the medicine pool. That still sucks.

[Crysis]

5 hours ago, Apparition said:

It is pretty much necessary for Masterminds on Rikti mothership raids if you want to take down the drop ship.

Meh, I just keep a temp power attack and go petless for those kinds of things.  All you need is a single attack landing on the DropShip.

[StrikerFox]

14 hours ago, Jacktar said:

So it is a fly backwards job to keep an eye on them combined with a stop start method to try and avoid having to forever go back and get them.

When using Group Fly, I used to set myself to follow a pet and direct the pets where to fly to (Goto command). It prevented pets from falling behind and dropping. Still slow though.

Edited February 18, 2021 by StrikerFox

[tidge]

To add to the small number of limited circumstances where I have found Group Fly to be helpful: Until Immobilize or -Fly comes into play, the following Redside GM/AVs are best chased with Group Fly (by Masterminds):

• Caleb (Nerva GM)
• Colonel Duray (Silver Mantis SF)

Extremely circumstantial, but I have activated the rocket boots on the Robots to go after these two.

[TheMoncrief]

21 hours ago, StrikerFox said:

When using Group Fly, I used to set myself to follow a pet and direct the pets where to fly to (Goto command). It prevented pets from falling behind and dropping. Still slow though.

It also causes me some serious vertigo because of the crazy spinning around as I get nudged by my other pets. But it's still the only practical way to use Group Fly to travel with my pets.

 

Alternatively use normal Fly and let them catch up with their innate super jump power shortly after I get where I'm going. That usually works.

[ninja surprise]

On 2/17/2021 at 3:44 AM, Jacktar said:

I have to assume that the original concept of Group Fly was majorly aimed at Mms and pets so am baffled why it is completely borked in something as simple as co-ordinated flight speed?

Nah, Group Fly came out before CoV and it was already universally disliked by the time MMs came along and tried to get use out of it.

I think teams tried using it for Shadow Shard TFs to help non-flying teammates get around before jetpacks were invented.

[TheMoncrief]

3 hours ago, ninja surprise said:

Nah, Group Fly came out before CoV and it was already universally disliked by the time MMs came along and tried to get use out of it.

I think teams tried using it for Shadow Shard TFs to help non-flying teammates get around before jetpacks were invented.

It was highly useful for Hamidon raids in those early days. Lets the melee folks stay in the cluster when attacking the mitos. No idea if that's still how things are done, my last Hamidon raid was back in issue 3 or 4 I think. 

[Neiska]

I take group fly with my Robot/EA MM, and its absurdly good. When alone I always have it on, but I turn it off when with others, because they are rarely built for flying combat.

 

For an entire ranged setup, you can nearly go AFK if the mobs dont have any ranged attacks or -fly powers. And all the robots are also ranged, so they never really swoop in to melee. The assault bot flys in close for the flamethrower, but that's it. 

 

But yea, for Solo play, on a ranged build, its fantastic.

[StrikerFox]

On 2/18/2021 at 2:58 PM, TheMoncrief said:

It also causes me some serious vertigo because of the crazy spinning around as I get nudged by my other pets.

I just created an MM on Beta to see if the camera rotation could be made stationary. Just to stop the spinning/vertigo. I thought setting the camera to player/player to camera options might help, but it didn't really do much.

 

Pet fly speed seems a lot faster than what I remember. The pets were at cap (58 mph) with a single IO in Group Fly. There's a lot less camera swiveling when clicking the next goto location before the pets reach the previous. This keeps the pets in constant flight movement so there's less chance of rear ending them (Which seems to cause the most spinning).

[StrikerFox]

Latest Beta Patch has this:

 

 

Can read about it, and other future updates, here:

 

 

Edited March 14, 2021 by StrikerFox

[Maxzero]

 

32 minutes ago, StrikerFox said:

Latest Beta Patch has this:

 

 

Can read about it, and other future updates, here:

 

 

 

Hmmm.

 

If they fix some of the QoL issues (reupgrading when a pet dies, slow pet movement speed, more range on pet auras, etc) there is some potential there.

 

Its not just Robots that benefit. Sets with a clear 'tank' pet with the rest ranged benefit too (Demons and Thugs for example).

Edited March 13, 2021 by Maxzero

[TheMoncrief]

Just when I thought it was safe to respec out of Group Fly.

 

Not actually complaining, though. I'd rather it be a useful power pick instead of having to respec out of it.