Focused Feedback: Travel Power Updates (FLIGHT POOL) - Build 3

[Arcanum]

 This is a Focused Feedback Thread

• Please note that Focused Feedback threads are heavily moderated to ensure they remain on topic.
  • Any off-topic posts in these threads will be removed without warning.
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• The most up-to-date version of the changes will be listed in the first post.
• The changes in each build will be posted as replies.
  • Most changes from the previous beta build are listed in green.
    • Green text will become white text in the next set of patch notes.
  • Any changes or fixes that are only relevant to the beta builds (ie: fixes / tweaks to new features) are listed in blue.
    • Blue text will be deleted in the next set of patch notes as it is only relevant to highlight changes between beta builds, not a changes from live.
  • Known issues are listed in purple.

 

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Patch Notes for March 28th, 2021 - Issue 27: Second Chances, Page 2 (Build 3)

 

Pool: Flight 

•  Hover
  • Added new customization themes that allows you to remove the Hover stance
  • Note that the Hover stance has a higher priority than the default fly stance, meaning it will always be active even if other flight powers are after unless it's been disabled in power customisation
•  Fly
  • Now increases your fly speed cap by 50% while toggled on (from 58.6mph to 87.9mph)
    • This increased cap is the equivalent of fully slotting the old version of Afterburner
      • You now get this for free, without picking two more powers, and without old Afterburner's Only Affect Self component
    • This means Fly speed buffs and enhancements actually matter, as you won't hit the new cap without them
    • This increased cap doesn't apply in PvP
  • Base flight speed has been increased slightly (some speed has been moved from Evasive Maneuvers)
  •  Fly > Afterburner
    • Now built into Fly as a free secondary (server tray) power that doesn't require a power pick
      • If you already had Fly, you will now also have Afterburner for free
    • Now a timed toggle with a 30 second duration and a 60 second cooldown
    • Increases flight speed cap by a further 25% (to 102.27mph), and speeds you up to the cap
      • This allows Fly to match Super Jump's new speed cap for short bursts of time (it wouldn't be appropriate to have Fly match that speed permanently)
      • Note that the old speed cap that fully-slotted Afterburner previously allowed you to reach is now built into Fly for free, you don't need to use this new version of Afterburner to reach that speed
    • No longer applies Only Affect Self or any other effects - Evasive Maneuvers has inherited most of Afterburner's old defensive effects
    • Null the Gull will allow you to hide Afterburner's pop-up tray
• Group Fly
  • This power now applies to all pets regardless of their distance from the caster
  • No longer inaccurately claims it applies -Acc
•  Evasive Maneuvers
  • Replaces the old version of Afterburner as Flight's tier 5 power
    • If you previously had Afterburner, you now have Evasive Maneuvers
    • Note that if you previously had Fly, you will now have the new version of Afterburner for free
  • Toggle with moderate endurance cost, aimed at providing you with excellent airborne combat mobility
    • Evasive Maneuvers is not intended as a travel power, it is a defensive combat mobility power
  • Whilst flying, this power provides:
    • Protection against -fly and immobilize, and some resistance to knockback
    • A small amount of flight speed
      • This flight speed is not affected by travel suppression, allowing you to remain mobile in combat
    • Good air control (the same level that Afterburner previously provided)
  • Also provides the same level of defense as old Afterburner while out of combat, but this is removed while in combat
    • This bonus is suppressed for 10s when entering combat (the same as Stealth's out-of-combat defence)
    • The defense bonuses will suppress if the user attacks, heals or buffs an ally, commands a pet, or interacts with a mission objective
  • Flight speed bonus has been reduced (a small amount of this speed has been added to Fly)

 

Peacebringer

•  Energy Flight
  • Mirrored all i27, Page 2 changes for Fly
  •  Energy Flight > Quantum Acceleration
    • Now built into Energy Flight as a free secondary (server tray) power that doesn't require a power pick
    • Mirrored all i27, Page 2 changes for Afterburner
    • Note that Quantum Acceleration shares a cooldown with Afterburner
•  Combat Flight
  • Combat Flight's defensive buff is mutually exclusive with Hover's defensive buff
•  Quantum Flight
  • Endurance cost reduced from 2.6/s to 0.65/s
  • This puts the endurance cost in line with Phase Shift
•  Quantum Maneuvers
  • Replaces Quantum Acceleration as a picked power
    • If you previously had Quantum Acceleration, you now have Quantum Maneuvers
    • Note that you will also still have Quantum Acceleration as it's now built into Energy Flight
  • Mechanically identical to Evasive Maneuvers, but prettier
  • Note that Quantum Maneuvers cannot be active at the same time as Evasive Maneuvers

[Bopper]

I'll have to update my travel speed charts after these Fly speed updates. It looks like the speed of EvMa was reduced from 1.0 scale to 0.546 scale, while Fly Speed increased from 1.11 scale to 1.1116 scale. Now you should be able to hot Fly speed cap with 3 SOs in Fly and no other contributors, but I'll confirm that when I open excel.

[VV]

1 hour ago, GM Arcanum said:

•  Hover
•  Fly
  •  Fly > Afterburner
•  Evasive Maneuvers

So, question, does running Hover+Fly+EM together provide any benefits over Fly+EM or Hover+EM? Either in combat or our of combat?

 

What happens if you run Hover+EM together?

[Infinitum]

All of these numbers are on the same character - same slotting - literally a copy over to Beta Servers.

 

on live this is how the numbers look

 

 

Prior to build 3 this is how the flight numbers looked.

 

On build 3 this is how the numbers look

 

 

Now Fly+evasive is slower than fly+AB

 

Seems like this is taken a step backwards in terms of speed - im wondering if this may be an error or is it intentional?

 

[Glacier Peak]

HC team is getting it done! Excellent work picking up the things that testers have found and addressing them in less than a week, for the past few weeks! Very happy to see and appreciative as well. I'll keep testing, just wanted to say thanks!

[Infinitum]

Evasive maneuvers still disables when zoning and also sometimes fluctuates between on and off when simply flying out of combat until toggled on and off again. - just noticed that.

 

I think fly speed out of combat should be adjusted back up by at least 5mph and maybe even combat speed slightly - this change seems like a bit of an overcorrection.  Still not bad changes - but when fly+ab on live is now faster than fly+evm on beta thats hard to sell that change.

[macskull]

Someone needs to take a look at what "slightly" means in the case of Evasive Maneuvers, its bonus to fly speed was cut almost in half in this patch while Fly only gained about a 5% boost.

[GM Impervium]

3 hours ago, VV said:

So, question, does running Hover+Fly+EM together provide any benefits over Fly+EM or Hover+EM? Either in combat or our of combat?

 

What happens if you run Hover+EM together?

You hover a little faster 😃
 

[Wavicle]

4 hours ago, GM Arcanum said:

Flight speed bonus has been reduced slightly (some speed has been added to Fly)

 

Was this mirrored to Peacebringers?

[Arcanum]

11 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

 

Was this mirrored to Peacebringers?

 

Yes!

[Apparition]

45 minutes ago, macskull said:

Someone needs to take a look at what "slightly" means in the case of Evasive Maneuvers, its bonus to fly speed was cut almost in half in this patch while Fly only gained about a 5% boost.

 

 

Yeah.  Now that I've tested it, it's a solid nerf to fliers.  All but one of my characters had their Fly+AB/Fly+EV flight speed reduced by seven to eight MPH.  Ironically, my one character that maintained the flight speed cap with Fly+EV is my Electric Armor Tanker.

[Hew]

There was so much complaint about evasive man that I don't think anything they could do would be a "win".

 

[Jimmy]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

Someone needs to take a look at what "slightly" means in the case of Evasive Maneuvers, its bonus to fly speed was cut almost in half in this patch while Fly only gained about a 5% boost.

That's my bad for being lazy with copy/paste. I'll fix the notes.

 

9 minutes ago, Apparition said:

Yeah.  Now that I've tested it, it's a solid nerf to fliers.  All but one of my characters had their Fly+AB/Fly+EV flight speed reduced by seven to eight MPH.  Ironically, my one character that maintained the flight speed cap with Fly+EV is my Electric Armor Tanker.

This will only be an issue for existing builds. The same number of slots reconfigured (ie: in Fly, not EvMa) will be as fast, if not faster.

 

The problem is that on live, slotting Fly is mostly pointless, so many players don't actually have slots there. I can appreciate it's a bit of a pain for existing builds, but going forwards you'll need to put your slots and enhancements in Fly (not Afterburner / EvMa) if you want your travel speed to be high. If you want combat speed, you can slot EvMa.

[Infinitum]

20 minutes ago, Hew said:

There was so much complaint about evasive man that I don't think anything they could do would be a "win".

 

going backwards with it definitely wasnt the answer though IMO

[Infinitum]

26 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

 

Yeah.  Now that I've tested it, it's a solid nerf to fliers.  All but one of my characters had their Fly+AB/Fly+EV flight speed reduced by seven to eight MPH.  Ironically, my one character that maintained the flight speed cap with Fly+EV is my Electric Armor Tanker.

this is my assessment as well - its a cut of about 8-9 mph on every flier i have - the worst part is that Fly+evm is now slower than fly+AB and that just doesnt sit well with me.  I liked the fact that it felt like a buff just by logging in the character.

 

I get the methodology that you can slot to make it faster - but arbitrarily cutting it in half in EVM and making it 8mph slower doesnt seem right to me.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Infinitum

[zenblack]

This is slower no doubt and I see no reason for it to be so. If you are going to juggle the numbers please leave the overall speed the same. If Leaping is too close for comfort then please boost Leaping and not reduce Flying.

[Jimmy]

31 minutes ago, zenblack said:

This is slower no doubt and I see no reason for it to be so. If you are going to juggle the numbers please leave the overall speed the same. If Leaping is too close for comfort then please boost Leaping and not reduce Flying.

Nothing to do with Leaping. Fly's maximum speed is unchanged. Fly's minimum speed is in fact slightly faster. The issue being identified in this thread is due to legacy slotting setup (specifically Afterburner being the power you had to slot before, not Fly). This is categorically not a nerf to Fly.

 

A large goal with these changes was to ensure that travel flight was fast without needing 3 powers. EvMa isn't meant to be something you need to pick in order to travel fast, and the prior build encouraged exactly that setup, hence these changes.

 

However if you think EvMa is now too slow for its primary purpose (combat mobility), that is feedback we'd like to hear.

 

And on that note, a quick comparison:

• Grounded combat (Sprint with 1x 50 IO, Swift with 1x 50 IO): 38.81 mph
• Aerial combat (EvMa with 1x 50 IO, Swift with 1x 50 IO, Hover with nothing): 42.35mph

So with minimal slotting, you're actually a tad faster than normal ground combat speeds.

 

A final note: EvMa does appear to be suffering from some bugs which cause the effects to drop off frequently, so it likely feels a lot worse than it's meant to be.

[Sovera]

Welp, my congratulations to everyone who kept on whining despite repeated repeated repeated tests and math demonstrations that we had it good. Now we can all be annoyed.

 

Equality.

[Hew]

2 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Welp, my congratulations to everyone who kept on whining despite repeated repeated repeated tests and math demonstrations that we had it good. Now we can all be annoyed.

 

Equality.

Yeah. This is pretty stupid, and it really is no fault of the devs. The player base (a sizeable number of which I am betting have simply been armchair quarterbacking and not testing) are solely at fault for this pretty pointless nerf-ish action.

[Starforge]

The vast majority of people seemed fine with the changes as of Build 1 so I guess the vocal minority won in the end.

[Troo]

7 hours ago, GM Arcanum said:

Evasive Maneuvers is not intended as a travel power, it is a defensive combat mobility power

 

[Infinitum]

55 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

Nothing to do with Leaping. Fly's maximum speed is unchanged. Fly's minimum speed is in fact slightly faster. The issue being identified in this thread is due to legacy slotting setup (specifically Afterburner being the power you had to slot before, not Fly). This is categorically not a nerf to Fly.

 

A large goal with these changes was to ensure that travel flight was fast without needing 3 powers. EvMa isn't meant to be something you need to pick in order to travel fast, and the prior build encouraged exactly that setup, hence these changes.

 

However if you think EvMa is now too slow for its primary purpose (combat mobility), that is feedback we'd like to hear.

 

And on that note, a quick comparison:

• Grounded combat (Sprint with 1x 50 IO, Swift with 1x 50 IO): 38.81 mph
• Aerial combat (EvMa with 1x 50 IO, Swift with 1x 50 IO, Hover with nothing): 42.35mph

So with minimal slotting, you're actually a tad faster than normal ground combat speeds.

 

A final note: EvMa does appear to be suffering from some bugs which cause the effects to drop off frequently, so it likely feels a lot worse than it's meant to be.

I think if you really want this to feel like a buff, you need to boost the speed in fly by 5mph then everyone wins.

 

Currently it was reduced by 8-9mph for those using the speed in EvM as the equivalent of fly+ab on live.  Now that equivalent pick is slower.

 

I understand the combat speed change, but what fly gained was miniscule compared to what EvM lost and was a bit heavy handed any way you slice it IMO.

[Bopper]

2 hours ago, Infinitum said:

the worst part is that Fly+evm is now slower than fly+AB and that just doesnt sit well with me

In fairness, this is a bit of an edge case statement. Fly+EvMa is slower than Live's Fly+AB if you are slotting no enhancements in your powers (68.85 mph vs. 70.69 mph). If you slot 1 SO into EvMa and 1 SO into AB, you would be faster on Page 2 than you were on Live (72.76 mph vs. 70.69 mph). If you also add 1 SO to Fly, you are still faster than you were on Live (83.65 mph vs. 77.72 mph)

[Infinitum]

3 minutes ago, Bopper said:

In fairness, this is a bit of an edge case statement. Fly+EvMa is slower than Live's Fly+AB if you are slotting no enhancements in your powers (68.85 mph vs. 70.69 mph). If you slot 1 SO into EvMa and 1 SO into AB, you would be faster on Page 2 than you were on Live (72.76 mph vs. 70.69 mph). If you also add 1 SO to Fly, you are still faster than you were on Live (83.65 mph vs. 77.72 mph)

Its not an edge case if its true, when one of the original selling points of it were - just log in no changes needed and you are faster - that is verifiable no longer the case because its 8 mph slower than it was and slower than live with the same slotting.

[twozerofoxtrot]

30 minutes ago, Bopper said:

In fairness, this is a bit of an edge case statement. Fly+EvMa is slower than Live's Fly+AB if you are slotting no enhancements in your powers

 

We don't know how many people who pick up fight pool, and use it primarily as KB protection, Slow Resist, or Global Recharge IO mules. 

 

It may not be as edge case as you think.