Combat Jumping or Hover?

[Greenbone]

Been playing with builds, and at a crossroads. Do I take Combat Jumping for its Immobilized -8.3 or Hover for its hover-blasting out of range? I am building a range blaster, so Hover seems logical, but wondering if the Immob resistance is just too good to pass up. I only seem to be able to fit one, which sucks. Any advice? Thanks.

[biostem]

11 minutes ago, Greenbone said:

Been playing with builds, and at a crossroads. Do I take Combat Jumping for its Immobilized -8.3 or Hover for its hover-blasting out of range? I am building a range blaster, so Hover seems logical, but wondering if the Immob resistance is just too good to pass up. I only seem to be able to fit one, which sucks. Any advice? Thanks.

Are you going to take fly at all?  If so, and unless you were looking to delve further into the flight pool, I tend to prefer CJ for it's lower end cost and immob protection.

[Greenbone]

Well that's the question, right? Safety of hover/flight or just go SJ or Athletic Run with my bonuses for getting there (even if slow). Just wondering what the common wisdom/build is.

 

[Uun]

Since blasters got their sustain powers, I don't find it an issue to run Fly in combat and find Hover to be unnecessary. As a bonus, if you run Combat Jumping in combination with Fly, you gain movement control.

[Nemu]

It's not immob resistance, it's immob protection. Resistance shortens immob duration, protection lets you shrug it off completely. As a blaster you have some many mez holes, and eliminating one of the more common ones so you don't need to burn a breakfree every time that happens makes CJ a no brainer in my book.

 

Whether you blast an enemy from 15 ft away or 100ft away, as long as they can't melee you it's still range blasting. Mobility is very important on a blaster if you wish to be successful, combat jumping at base level offers superior unsurpassed movement compared to hover. Hover can get there but you are incentivized to take evasive maneuvers which means sinking 2 additional power picks in your build. For those situations where you really need to fly up you can always buy charges of the temp jetpack from the P2W vendor. I don't really see any reason to take the fly pool from a practical non-thematic/concept perspective when those jetpacks exist.

 

Fly provides the illusion of safety until you get grounded and immobilized or slowed in an anti-fly patch. A lot of blasters hover blast, and they tend to stay in one place. When shit hits the fan they die because they don't appreciate how much being mobile contributes to their survival.

 

You don't need fly to minimize contact with mobs, learn to joust. Learn all the tricks of the book - builds, movement, tools, mob AI, etc and you can be successful even on SOs.

 

 

Edited September 26, 2023 by Nemu

[Troo]

8 hours ago, Greenbone said:

Been playing with builds, and at a crossroads. Do I take Combat Jumping for its Immobilized -8.3 or Hover for its hover-blasting out of range? I am building a range blaster, so Hover seems logical, but wondering if the Immob resistance is just too good to pass up. I only seem to be able to fit one, which sucks. Any advice? Thanks.

 

drop something and take both 🙂

[Etched]

Combat Jumpin all the way, even for my non-melee toons. Only time I take fly is on my basebuilders. 

CJ has soo much better control then hover and as stated above has a immob protection.

 

Two slot it with a Kimet +Acc and a LotG proc.

 

I actually 3 slot it with the Kismet and two LotGs

 

@Etched

[carroto]

CJ is a given for me always so I pair it with Hover if I'm going to Hover-blast.  If I have a snipe that usually means also taking the Leadership pool for Tactics if I want my quick snipe to do close to full damage.  That just leaves one pool available, and I always have the ability to stealth missions, so probably Concealment pool.

 

So yeah Hover-Blaster builds tend to be real tight for me without much wiggle room or variety unfortunately.  I think it was a huge mistake to tie snipe damage to tohit in the way it is, but that's a rant for another thread...

[tidge]

My opinion: "Hover Blasting", as a purely defensive strategy, is generally not worth pursuing... it is from an earlier era of the game. It is pretty easy to get +6% Defenses early and with P2W and DFB boosts nobody should really need to plan to 'hover blast' (as a defensive trick).

 

There are times I will have a blaster 'hovering' to get a better view of the battlefield, and there are times when facing certain AVs that it will be smarter for some ATs to stay out of the range of their melee attacks, but generally most maps don't really favor this tactic.

 

I do prefer Flying (via Flight, Mystic Flight or Temps) as a travel power, and I will often simply just use the higher-speed flying power (usually taken before level 10) to zip around maps. I usually only take Hover if (a) I have taken the Flying pool (b) sometime in the 40's as a mule.

 

It is rare that I take Combat Jumping, but I won't deny I think it is a pretty good power choice in terms of both utility and slotting potential. I also like jumping around the zones... but I feel like the Leaping pool is somewhat vanilla compared to other power pools which include travel powers.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

I usually take both

they cost very little endurance

can both mule quite well

have benefits that compliment each other (hover has KB psuedo-kb protection)

I'm pretty vanilla so on ranged chars I fly and on melee I jump

but if you forced me to choose..................

I would probably take CJ over hover. 

that air control is magnificent

Edited September 26, 2023 by Saiyajinzoningen
I'm stupid......heh

[Yomo Kimyata]

With VERY few exceptions, all my alts have Combat Jumping or Hover (and it's easily 10:1 in favor of CJ).  For me, the question is "Which power can I have on 100% of the time that will not annoy me?"  Hover is fine when you want to be hovering, but I'm not going to slot it enough for it to be as auto-useful as Combat Jumping is for me.

[Shred Monkey]

combat jumping is my pick for 2 reasons.  

 

1.  It uses almost no endurance.  No reason to even slot end reduction because you'll save at most .05 per second.

2.  It's more fun.  Hover blasting is like cruise control on a highway.  But staying on the ground forces you to think and react the situtaiton to stay at range (a little bit) and it gives you more ability to move at the same time.  Hover is just button mash attacks until you're out of targets, then move to the next group and repeat.

 

I almost always have combat jumping on every toon.  The ones that don't I notice it a lot when running around... the lack of control while jumping in the air is annoying.

[High_Beam]

I take Combat Jumping on almost every toon regardless of AT but especially with Blasters, Corruptors and Controllers because of the immob protection and the ability to slot several good things, Especially a Karma KB protection.  Super great at low level and never stops being useful.  Even if you aren't trying to eek out a small extra defense percentage its useful.  Now that's not saying Hover doesn't have those same secondary benefits but CJ doesn't impede with your normal play.  Also, as has been said by others, are you going to hover blast/control.  And that isn't even factoring the small amount of powers that require you to be on the ground to use (Seismic, earth).  Funny enough, with the exception of my hover blasters, I take Fly as my travel power but always take CJ and almost never Super Jump.  Bleah.

[Onlyasandwich]

I almost always take Hover on my fliers, as I appreciate the fine air control as well as unsuppressed speed, and don't like the end expenditure of running the full travel power. Fly+CJ is nowhere near as smooth.

 

If not flying, CJ every time.

 

Even on my fliers, I will very often take CJ as well for extra lotg mule and defense. This is my go-to on characters that are more end-hungry and can't support Fighting pool comfortably. More and more I just don't like dealing with the empty power picks, heavy end cost, and toggle management of Fighting pool.

Edited October 2, 2023 by Onlyasandwich

[Outrider_01]

On 9/25/2023 at 10:59 PM, Greenbone said:

Been playing with builds, and at a crossroads. Do I take Combat Jumping for its Immobilized -8.3 or Hover for its hover-blasting out of range? I am building a range blaster, so Hover seems logical, but wondering if the Immob resistance is just too good to pass up. I only seem to be able to fit one, which sucks. Any advice? Thanks.

Evasive Maneuvers in Flight gives same Immb protection, but the endurance cost is higher combined with Hover.  Downside is you lose the maneuverability if you Blap and need to jump in / out of combat a lot.  The plus is the ability to use 2 LotG from two def toggles (Evasive suppresses in combat but gives about 15% defense out of combat)

[Doomguide2005]

     First off Huge fan of Combat Jumping.  Virtually every character I have runs CJ.  That said one of my recent characters, an Emp/Rad, is at times running Evasive Maneuvers and Fly and as @Outrider_01said it has immobilize protection as well and and gives me a great deal of aerial quickness and precise movements while in flight.  Further I almost always run around at ground level with both off especially indoors to conserve end  (even when my Aura is up).  But it counters immobilize just fine, if I get "stuck" or it's to my advantage to get airborne I'll turn it on and typically become mobile again.  She's just level 31 atm so it also wouldn't surprise me if I pick up CJ later in the build as it's so dang useful for ground movement and of course it can take an enormous number of unique and special IOs (as does Evasive Maneuvers).  I'd also note Evasive Maneuvers defensive bonus applies out of combat whether you're airborne or on the ground.  In short I've been quite happy with changing out CJ for Evasive Maneuvers plus Fly and typically by now I've grabbed CJ.

[Captain Fabulous]

If you aren't already invested in the Flight pool go with CJ. Hover gives you some vertical advantages, but you can get that with a cheap flight pack from the P2W vendor.

[ryokoryu]

On 9/26/2023 at 8:40 AM, tidge said:

My opinion: "Hover Blasting", as a purely defensive strategy, is generally not worth pursuing... it is from an earlier era of the game. It is pretty easy to get +6% Defenses early and with P2W and DFB boosts nobody should really need to plan to 'hover blast' (as a defensive trick).

 

There are times I will have a blaster 'hovering' to get a better view of the battlefield, and there are times when facing certain AVs that it will be smarter for some ATs to stay out of the range of their melee attacks, but generally most maps don't really favor this tactic.

 

I do prefer Flying (via Flight, Mystic Flight or Temps) as a travel power, and I will often simply just use the higher-speed flying power (usually taken before level 10) to zip around maps. I usually only take Hover if (a) I have taken the Flying pool (b) sometime in the 40's as a mule.

 

It is rare that I take Combat Jumping, but I won't deny I think it is a pretty good power choice in terms of both utility and slotting potential. I also like jumping around the zones... but I feel like the Leaping pool is somewhat vanilla compared to other power pools which include travel powers.

this is context dependent, I find hovering just outside melee aoe range on my squishies that have to be in the middle of the action actually works better.  (things like my aoe healers)  Soloing things likewise Hover Blasting can allow you to solo more efficiently which may be important if your doing downlevel TFs.  Note that this isn't always the case, it depends on what your fighting but I find that having everything run into each other right below you trying to find their way to melee range makes a lot of them bunch up just a little bit tighter for those AOEs but if you have cones you want the maneuvering that CJ affords you.  most of the time if you jump straight up you will get maximum cone coverage at the peak of your jump and then you can move once you hit the power button, or just before which takes a little practice to develop the finesse to the maneuver.  Likewise if your using ice and slowing things down CJ is also invaluable and for so many stone/rock based sets you have to be on the ground.  Finally something I don't see mentioned here is if you take hover and fly you also get Evasive which if you need another LOTG mule and can't afford to grab another pool you have it right there.  it's happened a few times where I have 4 pools and need a mule.  Neither is the end all be all but you will learn which style you prefer with practice so build one in one build slot and the other in the second build slot and play with them both.

[nihilii]

COMBAT JUMPING

- turn into a ninja bouncing up and down

- your leaps slice the sky, you get air control and can move in any direction

- pressing that space bar starts feeling good and kinetic

- happy mood makes your blasts deal more damage

- generally look cool, well-liked by every teammate, men and women both envy you and desire you

 

HOVER

- somewhat hobble in the air, awkward and sad

- very very slow even in these days where it's not so slow

- by the time you align yourself properly for a narrow cone, half of the enemies are dead

- always feels like you're late even when you're not

- teammates look at you with pity, tank starts paternalizing you gently

 

Choose wisely, my friend.

[High_Beam]

Hover Blasting

 

- Great if you wear skirts.  You are everyone's friend then 🙂.  Now That's an Air Show!

- Save slots by not having to slot KB-KD Converters so teams wont auto-kick you.

- Hours of fun watching War Wolves try to path to pummel you.

 

But I have a couple of hover blasters, one specifically built for that role.