Flurry Rework - Tap Repeatedly to chain Normal Consecutive Punches

[Bluhman]

Core Issue: Speed Pool's Flurry, even back in the old days of Issue 6/7 when I was playing this as a teen, was not seen as a good power - even before the numbers behind the powers became available to us, or the tangible impact of animation time could really be put into words by most players. Guides I read said as much, vastly favoring Haste over Flurry in basically every case.

The factors that all weigh into this are both matters of objective balance and subjective experiences with the ability:

• Objectively speaking: the attack takes 3+ seconds to elapse, is single-target, and the overall DPA is outpaced by brawl. Only a single to-hit check is made at the very start of the attack, so you're either spending that time landing every punch, or uselessly whiffing, immobilized - even if this attack in its current state was immensely buffed in terms of DPS or effect, it'd still be a very risky and inflexible attack, incidentally making it nearly impossible to integrate to other powersets that rely on timing such as Titan Weapons or Street Brawling.
• Subjectively speaking: It is currently a terrible fit for the Super-Speedster style of play or combat. A moderately-damaging attack with a fast recharge and ridiculously long animation is probably the last thing a person with the Speed Pool would need when Haste is its pairing. Using it doesn't feel great at all either, given that it fully roots you in place. Tying back to the riskiness of the ability, it totally ruins the otherwise high amount of mobility or attack-cycling that other powers in the pool gravitate towards.

 

My Suggestion: Much of this is going to focus entirely on making Flurry subjectively feel much better integrated with the idea of being a speedster, without fundamentally changing the use case of the ability as an attack - Note that's a big thing that probably should be preserved simply to avoid potential complications on player builds that took the ability and for whatever reason didn't have time/respecs to convert it to a different ability, the logistics of transferring or recharacterizing enhancements, etc - granted, since the move's had a terrible reputation for decades now that probably's an unfounded concern. Also it's for some consistency since Flight's Aerial Superiority or Jump's Leap Attack still stick around.

 

So, here's what I propose we turn flurry into:

Animation: Use something similar in length or pattern to SB's initial strike - just two swift punches, maybe if possible in different cycles or variants if there's more animations to use. This'll make sense later on, stick with me here.

Activation: Back-end it should have minimal startup time (like 1 frame???), not root in place, and have the entire animation only take about 1 second tops. Heck if the animations don't entirely line up if you continue walking: there's plenty of other sets where the timing of the animation and the timing of the damage dealt aren't spot on (Momentum-Less Crushing Blow in TW), and gliding across the ground as you're throwing out hooks can be handwaved as like running too fast for the eye to see.

Recharge/Mechanics: Here's the big twist - so while the Flurry power now might only consist of a single attack roll for two punches, it now will integrate similar mechanics as Speed of Sound's Jaunt or Teleport, where it can be activated multiple times in quick succession without recharge (probably to a maximum of like 5). This will give it a useful ancillary use for an attack rotation: if your other attacks are taking slightly too long to recharge you can just mash the flurry activation to fill in dead air for some rapid, light-damage attacks - and apply to taste as well. Either hitting the activation limit, running out of time, or using another attack will activate the cooldown proper.

Should be noted that referring back to the Activation, the overall length of the ability shouldn't be too short, otherwise you get into key-mashing territory and we don't want people's Flurrying-key/Flurrying-finger to get too worn down.

Raw Numbers: The overall DPS of the attack could remain the same for all I care, and some of its other utility features like Stun could be applied to the later attacks in the 'combo'. What I'm really getting across here is just to do with the tactical uses, feel, and application of Flurry - if you got fast hands and fast feet, you should be able to get an attack that's:

• Flexible
• Mobile
• Granular
• and most importantly, something you can sneak in between other cooldowns, attacks, or even movement.

[Rudra]

38 minutes ago, Bluhman said:

not root in place,

In order for power animations to work, they need a root time. The purpose of the root time is give the animation time to animate. So you will not get a power that has no root time. The only way to not have root times is for the devs to sit down and make new animations for walking, running, and jumping (in each different direction since each uses a different animation) for the power in question's animation.