Focused Feedback: Travel Power Updates (Build 1)

[Bopper]

Just now, Aracknight said:

Truthfully i never noticed that 4 second drop with sprint and ninja run happening on live.  Ill check when i get home.

I honestly don't know if those powers suppress. I was talking about Super Speed, etc. Now I'm curious, I'll look it up

[Aracknight]

1 minute ago, Wavicle said:

Doesn’t apply to sprint or ninja run.

Mystery solved!  Thanks for clearing it all up for me.

[Bopper]

3 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

Doesn’t apply to sprint or ninja run.

Looks like it applies to NR, but not sprint. But it only suppresses if you attack, not while being attacked

[Wavicle]

15 minutes ago, Bopper said:

Looks like it applies to NR, but not sprint. But it only suppresses if you attack, not while being attacked

That sounds right.

[Wavicle]

I may not get to actually test this, but these questions occurred to me:

1. Does the removal of level gated travel limitations mean that lowbies won't fall out of Group Fly?

 

2. Does Evasive Maneuvers apply to the speed of your teammates in Group Fly, or only to you?

 

3. Can Group Fly and Fly be on simultaneously and will Afterburner work on Group Fly and will it effect teammates?

Edited March 20, 2021 by Wavicle

[Obitus]

I don't understand complaints about the Fly changes.  If you have Fly + AB now, perhaps with Afterburner as an LoTG mule, the patch will give you Fly + Evasive Maneuvers, which slots the same sets that Afterburner used to do.  And you'll get more travel speed in the bargain.  And you'll gain massive amounts of in-combat speed with Hover + Evasive, if you're inclined to use them.

 

If you didn't already have Afterburner, or if you want to drop it post-patch, the benefits are even more obvious: you're basically getting Afterburner's old travel functionality (sans LoTG mulehood) for the price of one power pick instead of at least three.  And you're getting a peak speed increase in the bargain.

 

Let me emphasize: if you already have Fly or Fly + Afterburner, you don't have to change your build, at all.  At worst, you should see a minor improvement if you stand pat.

 

The patch's update to travel powers is actually ingenious.  I can't remember the last time a patch in any game managed to offer so much qualitative goodness, without a single downside to players, without even a need to respec, while at the same time avoiding huge combat buffs.  (This isn't to say that there aren't any nerfs at all in the patch; I'm talking Travel Powers here.)  In fact, aggregate player strength may actually go down at the high end as an indirect result of the developers making theme-centric build choices much more attractive with the travel power changes.

 

I've been having a ball on the test server, combining Hover + EM (at ~50 mph) and Combat Teleport to zoom around on my tank bashing baddies like Superman.  By spreadsheet, my build would be better with Combat Jumping and Leadership, but the fun factor of this new setup blows them away.

 

YMMV, but I really couldn't be happier.  Although I haven't spent a great deal of time testing the other travel pools yet, those changes look unambiguously fantastic too.

Now, a couple of minor bugs I encountered:

• The Fly Speed from Evasive Maneuvers seems to shut itself off at random intervals, most often after zoning, but it also seems to happen occasionally mid-combat.  De-activating and re-activating fixes it.
• This is an older bug, but as long as we're on the subject of Fly: certain toggle powers prevent flypose emotes.  The one that concerns me is the Tanker version of Lightning Field; another poster reported the same problem WRT to Shadow Fall on a Defender.

 

 

Edited March 20, 2021 by Obitus

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Obitus said:

The Fly Speed from Evasive Maneuvers seems to shut itself off at random intervals, most often after zoning, but it also seems to happen occasionally mid-combat.  De-activating and re-activating fixes it.

I noticed this too and reported it in the beta bugs forum, but I wasn’t able to be this specific.

[arthurh35353]

14 hours ago, America's Angel said:

Flight + Afterburner on Live vs Flight + Evasive Manuevers on Beta
 

 

So overall I'm seeing an increase my baseline flight speed vs live.

 

Add in Afterburner at 33% uptime and my average flight speed on beta is 97.72ph. This is much higher than live. (Faster than the live superspeed cap!)

 

A huge buff. No need to respec at all if you are using Afterburner on live..

Except that logically, with Afterburner moved to a popup in Flight, you shouldn't need Manuevers any more. 

 

You keep asserting that Maneuvers is still 'afterburner' even with Afterburner moved into flight. That nothing is different, even though I can respec out of EM and keep the exact same slots and no longer reach the new caps, but still use the new afterburner in Flight to get (temporarily) a boost to above the normal cap.

 

But If I never had afterburner and it never existed on my character, I am no longer able to get to that cap like I used to in live. Somehow, with the exact same slotting, I'm less maximized. ((yes, yes, I'm sure you'll harp that your faster. Everyone's faster and they didn't get part of their faster moved to a totally changed power that they might not want.))

 

There is even specifically dev comments to this fact in the notes. "I'm looking at you, Fly, for not requiring more slots."

 

So why didn't they flip this around and make it easier for SS/SJ and TP to get their speed/range benefits with less slotting, not more? Non-combat travel powers are just there to cut down time on the way to door missions, which is why so many people have started to not bother with travel powers but just getting permanent temp powers.

 

Cut Teleport's End cost by 2/3rds and make it so that it only needs most of one slots to reach most of its range benefit to get to 150% or so range. It's still fiddly and requires a lot more binds to be usable. But now the teleport can show up at the mission location and not have to wait for their endurance to recover, where as everyone else arrives with a full END pool and can instantly start to use all their powers.

 

Bump Superspeed and Superjump a little bit more so they do the same.

 

But no, in this case the devs have decided that flight actually needs to be required to have more slots for it to get up to its new caps for non-PvP long distance combat.

 

Flight was still slower, but safer. But the part they really cared about (and specifically pointed out) is that you can get the power and basically not slot it, so you can have more slots for the rest of your build.

 

 

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, arthurh35353 said:

But no, in this case the devs have decided that flight actually needs to be required to have more slots for it to get up to its new caps for non-PvP long distance combat.

You keep asserting this and it is still not true. I copied my PB to test and I hit the caps without changing my slotting at all.

[arthurh35353]

Just now, Wavicle said:

You keep asserting this and it is still not true. I copied my PB to test and I hit the caps without changing my slotting at all.

I know I copied my sentinel over and without using/having EM, I am no longer able to hit the new regular cap I was at. I've even posted screen shots of it.

[Wavicle]

2 minutes ago, arthurh35353 said:

I know I copied my sentinel over and without using/having EM, I am no longer able to hit the new regular cap I was at. I've even posted screen shots of it.

And iirc those shots showed that you are faster than you were before.

True, you're no longer hitting the cap, but you are now faster and IF YOU WANT you can slot to get even faster still. If you don't want to change your slotting you've lost NOTHING. You are faster than you used to be and you have gained a potential for greater speed should you choose to explore it.

"Hitting the cap" is not some magical state nor status symbol. All that matters is absolute speed, which has gone up.

[Wavicle]

And to be absolutely clear, just because in your particular case your Sentinel is no longer at the cap (though is faster in absolute terms) simply means your particular slotting isn't the maximum allowable.

It does NOT mean:

 the devs have decided that flight actually needs to be required to have more slots for it to get up to its new caps

[zenblack]

14 minutes ago, arthurh35353 said:

I know I copied my sentinel over and without using/having EM, I am no longer able to hit the new regular cap I was at. I've even posted screen shots of it.

 

You were faster and because you didn't slot for speed at all you didn't reach the cap. This isn't magically supposed to make your enhancement choices better.

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

I may not get to actually test this, but these questions occurred to me:

1. Does the removal of level gated travel limitations mean that lowbies won't fall out of Group Fly?

 

2. Does Evasive Maneuvers apply to the speed of your teammates in Group Fly, or only to you?

 

3. Can Group Fly and Fly be on simultaneously and will Afterburner work on Group Fly and will it effect teammates?

1) yes. Also nice for MM pets that were level shifted.

2) evasive only affects you and will not get passed on to teammates.

3) yes they can, however your teammates will still be capped at 58.63 mph. If you use Afterburner while using group fly, you will receive a strength buff to fly which will enhance your group fly speed buff to teammates...but again it caps at 58.63 mph. Also, if you have fly and AB on, and you have group fly on, you will leave your allies in the dust

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Bopper said:

1) yes. Also nice for MM pets that were level shifted.

2) evasive only affects you and will not get passed on to teammates.

3) yes they can, however your teammates will still be capped at 58.63 mph. If you use Afterburner while using group fly, you will receive a strength buff to fly which will enhance your group fly speed buff to teammates...but again it caps at 58.63 mph. Also, if you have fly and AB on, and you have group fly on, you will leave your allies in the dust

Ok, I guess that is all as it should be...I think I’m curious about the intended use of GF and what use people make of it?

[Bopper]

27 minutes ago, arthurh35353 said:

I know I copied my sentinel over and without using/having EM, I am no longer able to hit the new regular cap I was at. I've even posted screen shots of it.

 

You did provide screenshots. Here they are.

 

On live you were going 76.75 mph (capped only at 76.75 mph because Afterburner was only slotted with a Fly/End IO).

On beta you were not at the fly speed cap but you were flying faster (77.69 > 76.75) while not having EvMa on. 

 

Without changing slots and using only one power, instead of two, you are going faster on Page 2 than on Live.

[SwitchFade]

@arthurh35353

 

😣 🤔🤯

 

 

[Sovera]

I give up.

[macskull]

2 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

@arthurh35353

 

😣 🤔🤯

 

 

It should be abundantly clear by now they are not making a good-faith argument. The only thing they care about is their speed relative to the maximum possible speed regardless of what that speed actually is which is a completely nonsensical way to approach this. You were correct earlier when you said other players are correctly seeing these changes as a buff.

[Jacke]

I don't have time to test and I suspect besides bug fixing, there's not going to be a lot of changes to what's planned for Page 2 before it goes live.  However, if there was one thing I'd try to change, it's differences in Defense between out-of-combat and in-combat.  WHY?!?  Part of stealth going away makes sense.  Having Defense bonuses halved when in-combat is painful (and petty considering how weak the full buff often is) but it's been common in City.  Having ALL of Defense bonuses go away in-combat is just mean.

 

 

23 hours ago, DeepSky said:

I will stay in Sorcery if they make RoP 30 seconds of negative resists, Mystic Flight speed halved and adding damage debuff, and the crappy absorption thing... well I mean what else can they even do to that? 

 

Wish the jump pack wasn't such an eyesore - in particular for non-tech types.

 

I'll likely stay with Sorcery on a lot of my toons as well.  Some only take Mystic Flight, flying and teleportation combined.

 

Others go Mystic Flight + Spirit Ward + Rune of Protection.  Spirit Ward isn't completely useless (duration is too low) as Spirit Ward can mule the Preventive Medicine special IO, which is a powerful survival tool that doesn't need the power to be used and the L20 IO is good exemped down to L17.

 

And even with the nerfed duration, Rune is still a strong protective power especially for non-melee toons.

 

Sometimes Controllers swap MF or SW for Arcane Bolt to get another attack.

 

With only one Origin Pool (out of only 4 Pools) allowed in a build, it's going to be Sorcery.  The other Origin Pools are just not as good.  I've looked at them and I'm yet to see enough to make me pass up Sorcery.

 

I find the hardest limit on virtually all my builds along with the 24 power choices and the 67 extra slots is the 4 Power Pool limit.  All 3 of those limits makes a lot of these arguments about better Travel Pools a bit moot, when taking them almost always limits survivability for non-melee ATs.  As others have mentioned, I've got many toons I don't even have any travel powers on besides the P2W ones (like melee toons that even pass up Sorcery).  And added slots don't go to buff travel powers (except on one or two toons), they're used to make attack and protection better, whether in the powers themselves or by IO set bonuses.

 

But I do try some strange builds to see how tough they can be, like my Dark/Rad/Dark Defender, who if I'm really on my game and using all the powers can just take Dark Astoria at +4x8.  So when Page 2 goes live, I'll think about trying them out.

 

 

Edited March 20, 2021 by Jacke

[Wavicle]

Another question about Group Fly:

Am I correct in thinking that Group Fly does Not by itself apply the 50% increased fly speed cap?

[America's Angel]

8 hours ago, Bopper said:

 

You did provide screenshots. Here they are.

 

On live you were going 76.75 mph (capped only at 76.75 mph because Afterburner was only slotted with a Fly/End IO).

On beta you were not at the fly speed cap but you were flying faster (77.69 > 76.75) while not having EvMa on. 

 

Without changing slots and using only one power, instead of two, you are going faster on Page 2 than on Live.

 

"It's not about going faster, it's about staying at the flight cap with my current slotting on live!" said the person not at the flight cap with their current slotting on live.

[Xing]

With the discussion about Infiltration being slotted with Universal Travel sets to improve both run and jump, I’m reminded of a question about Mystic Flight. If Mystic Flight is slotted with Universal Travel sets, will Translocation be improved?

 

If not, is that a bug, or by design?

 

If nobody knows, I would greatly appreciate it if someone could test it while all the other Travel Sets are being tested. (I’ve not been able to get on live, much less Beta, for a couple of months due to real life obligations.)

[Arcanum]

To help our development team filter the feedback, this thread has been locked.

Any discussions relevant to Focused Feedback: Travel Power Changes (Build 2) can be found here.

Edited March 20, 2021 by GM Arcanum