Super Speed

[Captain Fabulous]

16 hours ago, Biff Pow said:

I'd like to see Flurry moved to a level 14 power and changed to a decent cone attack.

*cough*Sands of Mu*cough*

[Ultimo]

24 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

*cough*Sands of Mu*cough*

The main difficulty with Sands of Mu is that it can't be enhanced (which makes its accuracy dreadful).

[Captain Fabulous]

9 hours ago, Ultimo said:

The main difficulty with Sands of Mu is that it can't be enhanced (which makes its accuracy dreadful).

That's what tohit buffs are for. 😜

[Biff Pow]

10 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

*cough*Sands of Mu*cough*

 

Sands of Mu being in the game is all the more reason for Flurry to not suck.

[Captain Fabulous]

10 hours ago, Biff Pow said:

 

Sands of Mu being in the game is all the more reason for Flurry to not suck.

All the pool attacks suck, not just Flurry.

[Ultimo]

7 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

All the pool attacks suck, not just Flurry.

Actually, there ARE a few that are decent, and at least one that's rather good (maybe TOO good).  Boxing and Cross Punch are both pretty decent, and have places in many of my character builds (especially my Sentinels), and Air Superiority is AMAZING.  Just spamming that thing will do as much damage as Super Strength's Punch, AND will consistently knock the enemy down, over and over, while also preventing them flying away.

None of the ranged attacks are worth ANYTHING though.  I've tried... HOW I've tried, to make Toxic Dart or Corrosive Vial workable...

 

Actually, I have to amend that thought, because SORCERY is pretty awesome as a set.  Some good support powers, some personal defense powers a travel power AND a couple of decent offensive powers.  I wish ALL the pools were like this one.

[srmalloy]

On 9/25/2025 at 3:51 PM, Ukase said:

If we could remove this, I might start to pvp again. This change was brought about in some attempt to make pvp more fair...for someone. Because of the pvp circumstances, I think we're stuck with this turd side-effect. 

And movement suppression in PvE seems to be an artifact of the original devs saying "We won't make PvE changes for PvP reasons", then changing it to "We won't make PvE changes purely for PvP reasons", then to "We'll try not to make PvE changes for PvP reasons", then stopped talking about it entirely as more PvP-centric changes spread back into PvE.

 

The initial justification for movement suppression was to counter jousting, where you could queue up an attack, then boom past your target close enough for the attack to trigger, which because of network delay wouldn't happen until you were well past your target, and if your target only had melee attacks (or only short-ranged attacks, you would be out of range and they would be unable to attack back. And in the initial implementation for PvE, I can sort of understand it, even though it does run up hard against how superspeed is used in the genre. And movement suppression only changed how jousting was done in PvE, not eliminated it; I had a Katana/Regen Scrapper with Super Jump, and I got pretty good at attacking the Sky Raider Sky Skiffs by queueing up an attack, then jumping past them; Movement Suppression didn't abruptly halt his momentum, so he'd carry on the jump and land a fair distance away, wait for the suppression to fade, and repeat the process until the Sky Skiff went down.

 

And with the sweeping "give every mob in the game a ranged attack" change, the original PvE justification is no longer there -- no matter what mob you're making a jousting run against, they've got a ranged attack that, with their response being entirely server-side, will be queued up for them to shoot back the moment you aggro them, so unless you one-shot them, you'll be taking return fire from them, and likely from their entire spawn. I don't see that there is any real remaining justification for movement suppression in PvE (I try to avoid PvP wherever possible, so I can't judge there); it's an artificial mechanic that I feel has outlived its original purpose.

[Rudra]

13 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

And movement suppression in PvE seems to be an artifact of the original devs saying "We won't make PvE changes for PvP reasons", then changing it to "We won't make PvE changes purely for PvP reasons", then to "We'll try not to make PvE changes for PvP reasons", then stopped talking about it entirely as more PvP-centric changes spread back into PvE.

 

The initial justification for movement suppression was to counter jousting, where you could queue up an attack, then boom past your target close enough for the attack to trigger, which because of network delay wouldn't happen until you were well past your target, and if your target only had melee attacks (or only short-ranged attacks, you would be out of range and they would be unable to attack back. And in the initial implementation for PvE, I can sort of understand it, even though it does run up hard against how superspeed is used in the genre. And movement suppression only changed how jousting was done in PvE, not eliminated it; I had a Katana/Regen Scrapper with Super Jump, and I got pretty good at attacking the Sky Raider Sky Skiffs by queueing up an attack, then jumping past them; Movement Suppression didn't abruptly halt his momentum, so he'd carry on the jump and land a fair distance away, wait for the suppression to fade, and repeat the process until the Sky Skiff went down.

 

And with the sweeping "give every mob in the game a ranged attack" change, the original PvE justification is no longer there -- no matter what mob you're making a jousting run against, they've got a ranged attack that, with their response being entirely server-side, will be queued up for them to shoot back the moment you aggro them, so unless you one-shot them, you'll be taking return fire from them, and likely from their entire spawn. I don't see that there is any real remaining justification for movement suppression in PvE (I try to avoid PvP wherever possible, so I can't judge there); it's an artificial mechanic that I feel has outlived its original purpose.

Movement suppression has always existed in City of Heroes. It was not added because of PvP. It existed to keep players from simply jousting the mobs so there was an element of risk involved. We couldn't just take our level 14 with Super Speed and go after that level 20 mob because as soon as we were in combat, we would be slowed at least briefly and that level 20 could now attack us back. That said, out of the travels that actually required the character to move away as opposed to simply teleport away, all the running powers (Sprint and Super Speed) had the least amount of travel suppression. You could always escape from a bad fight faster with Super Speed than say Fly which knocked you down to slower than Hover speed when combat started, so there was basically no getting away.

 

(Edit: And jumping always gave us a means to work around travel suppression. To a point. Because it could stop in mid-jump and root you for the attack animation if you did it wrong. It's just that if you hit your attack at the right time, near the apex of the jump, you would not suddenly find yourself falling in place as you attacked.)

 

(Edit again: I have no idea where this nonsense about travel suppression appearing after PvP was added because of PvP jousting came from, but we have been contending with travel suppression in the game since the game was in Issue 0. Now, were there changes to it after PvP was added because of the jousting we figured out how to do despite the travel suppression possibly aggravating players in PvP? I don't know and I don't care. But travel suppression has always existed in the game.)

 

Edited Sunday at 05:03 PM by Rudra

[DoctorDitko]

I believe they removed the Stealth effect from Super Speed in favor of Speed Phase, no?

 

A shame, because SS + any other stealth effect (even just the IO) gave full invisibility, without the side effect of pets losing boss buffs because you're not with them.

[Rudra]

2 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

I believe they removed the Stealth effect from Super Speed in favor of Speed Phase, no?

No, they didn't. While they may have reduced its effectiveness, I don't remember, they did not take away the stealth effect. Even today Super Speed has a stealth effect. Before you activate Speed Phase.

[Captain Fabulous]

17 hours ago, Ultimo said:

Actually, there ARE a few that are decent, and at least one that's rather good (maybe TOO good).  Boxing and Cross Punch are both pretty decent, and have places in many of my character builds (especially my Sentinels), and Air Superiority is AMAZING.  Just spamming that thing will do as much damage as Super Strength's Punch, AND will consistently knock the enemy down, over and over, while also preventing them flying away.

None of the ranged attacks are worth ANYTHING though.  I've tried... HOW I've tried, to make Toxic Dart or Corrosive Vial workable...

 

Actually, I have to amend that thought, because SORCERY is pretty awesome as a set.  Some good support powers, some personal defense powers a travel power AND a couple of decent offensive powers.  I wish ALL the pools were like this one.

I want to love Sorcery but just don't. It suffers from the same issues nearly all pool sets do -- thoroughly underwhelming long-recharge low-damage low-effectiveness high-endurance powers that are inferior to just about everything you could take in your primary and secondary sets. Sure there are a few outliers like Fighting (Cross Punch is ok, but only if you have Kick and Boxing, which is a heavy cost for a mediocre melee cone attack) and Leadership, and a handful of useful non-travel powers like Hover, Combat Jumping, and Hasten. But by and large unless you're building on a theme you'll almost always be more effective by picking a primary or secondary power over a pool. And I really wish this wasn't the case but it is. I would love to see pool powers boosted to be useful and viable alternatives (get rid of prerequisites and move up the level at which they're available to match their increased effectiveness). It would give us the opportunity to explore so many different themed build options without having to gimp ourselves for it. And this is also true of the APPs. Again, there are a few good ones here and there, but by and large they're mostly useless and only worth taking when you literally have nothing better left.

[lemming]

1 hour ago, DoctorDitko said:

I believe they removed the Stealth effect from Super Speed in favor of Speed Phase, no?

 

A shame, because SS + any other stealth effect (even just the IO) gave full invisibility, without the side effect of pets losing boss buffs because you're not with them.

No. It gives 35' of stealth like it always has.   It just doesn't stack with most other forms of stealth, but will stack with Celerity.

[Ultimo]

7 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

I want to love Sorcery but just don't. It suffers from the same issues nearly all pool sets do -- thoroughly underwhelming long-recharge low-damage low-effectiveness high-endurance powers that are inferior to just about everything you could take in your primary and secondary sets. Sure there are a few outliers like Fighting (Cross Punch is ok, but only if you have Kick and Boxing, which is a heavy cost for a mediocre melee cone attack) and Leadership, and a handful of useful non-travel powers like Hover, Combat Jumping, and Hasten. But by and large unless you're building on a theme you'll almost always be more effective by picking a primary or secondary power over a pool. And I really wish this wasn't the case but it is. I would love to see pool powers boosted to be useful and viable alternatives (get rid of prerequisites and move up the level at which they're available to match their increased effectiveness). It would give us the opportunity to explore so many different themed build options without having to gimp ourselves for it. And this is also true of the APPs. Again, there are a few good ones here and there, but by and large they're mostly useless and only worth taking when you literally have nothing better left.

I've found Sorcery especially useful on Controllers, as Mystic Blast gets the benefit of Containment (doing double damage!).  I'm not sure about Enflame, but the fire does get foes running around, which means they're not attacking me.  Shadow Ward is also a decent shield for an ally, and the personal ward is useful if it's all you have access to...

I usually think of pool powers as ways of filling in gaps in the main power sets.  For example, Cross Punch is pretty well necessary on any Super Strength character, because there's NO area effect power before L30... and Cross Punch does have a disorient effect, which is helpful.  Most of my Sentinels get good benefit from that.

I suppose I'm saying it does depend on the character.

[srmalloy]

22 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

I've found Sorcery especially useful on Controllers, as Mystic Blast gets the benefit of Containment (doing double damage!). 

Mystic Blast makes a decent single-slot power if you have a power pick you don't have a good choice for (i.e., nothing you can pick to use for a LotG mule), drop an Acc/Dam IO or HO into it and boost it to +5, then use it only when its powerup triggers. The only drawback is that it has a relatively slow animation, but with the augmented damage it's worth keeping as a fallback.

[PoptartsNinja]

The one thing I'd do with Super Speed is turn Flurry into a toggle that costs a little end and gives all of your powers a small chance for a damage proc (with one of the ghost fists from the flurry attack animation popping out of you to show it triggered).

But the people who love flurry as it is would miss it, so I'm not sure the tradeoff is worth it.

[macskull]

11 hours ago, Rudra said:

Movement suppression has always existed in City of Heroes.

No, at launch there was no movement suppression and the only negative effect of running a travel power was a large -tohit debuff when running Fly. This was done away with in favor of the travel suppression we have now after the launch of issue 4, which just so happened to be the issue PvP launched so of course everyone blames PvP. (They're wrong, which is a different story, but...)

 

11 hours ago, srmalloy said:

And movement suppression in PvE seems to be an artifact of the original devs saying "We won't make PvE changes for PvP reasons", then changing it to "We won't make PvE changes purely for PvP reasons", then to "We'll try not to make PvE changes for PvP reasons", then stopped talking about it entirely as more PvP-centric changes spread back into PvE.

In the entire history of this game there has been exactly one power which got nerfed in PvE for solely PvP reasons and I will bet a billion inf you don't know what that power is. Regardless, the fact none of those changes which were supposedly made for PvP reasons got rolled back once the dev team had the ability to make powers function completely differently in PvE and PvP shows what a load of shit that argument is.

 

On the other hand, if you actually believe that, I'm sure you'd also be more than happy to undo all the PvE buffs that happened because of PvP, such as the 40% range buff for all melee attacks, -range on taunt powers, and toggles not dropping while mezzed.

[Rudra]

27 minutes ago, macskull said:

11 hours ago, Rudra said:

Movement suppression has always existed in City of Heroes.

No, at launch there was no movement suppression and the only negative effect of running a travel power was a large -tohit debuff when running Fly. This was done away with in favor of the travel suppression we have now after the launch of issue 4, which just so happened to be the issue PvP launched so of course everyone blames PvP. (They're wrong, which is a different story, but...)

Issue 4's travel suppression entries:

Added 50% ToHit debuff to Super Speed and Super Leap. To bring these travel powers in line with Flight.

 

                      Added Issue 4 Suppression reference despite not being travel power related:

Suppression

• Supression: You cannot chain control your opponent. If you are affected by any controlling effect (Sleep, Hold, Disorient, Immobilize, Fear, Confuse), you will be immune to such effects for some time after the effect wears of (approx. 15 seconds, but this time may vary). This is so you can not perma-control opponents in PvP.
• Knockdown and Knockback powers also have a Suppression effect to protect players from chain knockdowns. This is a separate from the Suppression timer for controlling effects, and is shorter (approx. 10 seconds). This is so you can not perma-control opponents in PvP.

(https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Issue_4)

 

 

 

 

Issue 5's travel suppression entries:

Travel powers will no longer be suppressed by toggle powers. Flyspeed of Fly, Speed Buff of Super Speed and JumpHeight/Distance buff of Super Leap will now only suppress if you use a 'click' attack powers (toggles like Enervating Field and Invincibility will no longer cause Suppression). The penalty was too great for players who rely on toggle powers to protect themselves.

(https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Issue_5)

 

 

 

 

Issue 14's travel suppression entries:

The minimum speed of Hover and the Suppressed Speed of Flight, including the Kheldian versions, is now higher.

(https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Issue_14)

 

 

 

 

Issue 18's travel suppression entries:

PVP

• Tanker and Scrapper versions of Fiery Embrace were set to cause Travel Suppression in PVP, while Brute and Dominator versions were not. The Tanker and Scrapper versions have had the Travel Suppression flag removed.

(https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Issue_18)

 

No other patch notes make any mention of travel suppression prior to Issue 24.

 

Edited Monday at 04:32 AM by Rudra
Edited to bold and underline issue entry sections for clarity of reading. And again to add more line breaks for easier reference of sections.

[macskull]

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

<snip>

That’s all great, but you missed this patch note from a week after Page 4:

 

• Quote

   

  • Removed ToHit penalty from Super Speed, Super Leap, Fly and Peacebringer Fly.
  • If you attack a target while you have Super Speed on, you will be reduced to your base run speed for 4 seconds.
  • If you attack a target while you have Super Leap on, you will be reduced to your base jumping for 4 seconds.
  • If you attack a target while you have Flight on, you will be reduced to Hover flight speed for 4 seconds.

   

[Rudra]

35 minutes ago, macskull said:

That’s all great, but you missed this patch note from a week after Page 4:

 

•  

Indeed I did. I sit corrected.

 

(Edit: I used this page (https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Patch_Notes) to check and went up through the issues.)

 

Edited Monday at 07:00 AM by Rudra

[Wavicle]

On 9/25/2025 at 4:48 PM, Ultimo said:

One of my speedsters is a Defender with Kinetics.  When using Drain Speed, his speed is substantially increased.  Even with Super Speed turned off, his movement rate is quite adequate.  The issue is that only THAT set has access to that power... and any character with Super Speed really ought to be able to move around like that.  Perhaps the set needs some kind of power to use as "combat running"?  Teleport has combat teleporting, Leaping has combat jumping... why not make something similar for Super Speed?

 

As for the idea of running past an enemy to do damage... what if Super Speed had a dash attack, like Shield Charge?

Sprint IS Combat Running. Literally.

If you want a speedster in combat without Quickness or set bonuses or Kinetics, use Sprint. Heck, slot it for max speed!

I've never tried that, but now I kind of want to just to see what it's like.

Edited Monday at 09:22 AM by Wavicle

[Doomguide2005]

3 hours ago, Wavicle said:

Sprint IS Combat Running. Literally.

If you want a speedster in combat without Quickness or set bonuses or Kinetics, use Sprint. Heck, slot it for max speed!

I've never tried that, but now I kind of want to just to see what it's like.

It was pretty stupid fast way back when I did up a build on Retail post IO sets.  SR scrapper, two run spd in Sprint. Swift and Quckness.  5 GotA run spds, probably some other set bonuses (i.e. PerformanceShifter set bonus, etc.).  It's only going higher now things like the Synapse set etc. these days.  Memories are old, very old but feel like it hit the then spd cap.

[Ultimo]

What would you say to this setup:

 

Dash (replaces Flurry) - same effect as Shield Charge.

Combat Speed (replaces Hasten) - increases run speed the same as Sprint, and adds Defense equal to Combat Jumping.

Super Speed - Travel power, unchanged.

Hasten - Unchanged, but now requires 2 prior Speed powers.

Whirlwind - Unchanged.

 

My thinking is this...  Flurry is SLOW, and immobilizes the character, which is not very thematic.  It's also redundant, given the availability of Sands of Mu.

Combat Speed would help to counter movement suppression, and would give the character a slight boost to Defense.  It would also be customizable, and enhancable, which Sprint is not.

Super Speed is unchanged.

Hasten... I moved it up to where it would be necessary to have 2 prior Speed powers, but this could be switched around with Combat Speed.

Whirlwind is a nifty power, and is in keeping with the theme, so I'm leaving it there.  It does have uses.

 

[tidge]

18 hours ago, macskull said:

In the entire history of this game there has been exactly one power which got nerfed in PvE for solely PvP reasons and I will bet a billion inf you don't know what that power is.

 

Can we try 20 questions? Was it a power usable by an Invulnerable/Energy Melee Tanker?

[Rudra]

48 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

What would you say to this setup:

 

Dash (replaces Flurry) - same effect as Shield Charge.

Combat Speed (replaces Hasten) - increases run speed the same as Sprint, and adds Defense equal to Combat Jumping.

Super Speed - Travel power, unchanged.

Hasten - Unchanged, but now requires 2 prior Speed powers.

Whirlwind - Unchanged.

 

My thinking is this...  Flurry is SLOW, and immobilizes the character, which is not very thematic.  It's also redundant, given the availability of Sands of Mu.

Combat Speed would help to counter movement suppression, and would give the character a slight boost to Defense.  It would also be customizable, and enhancable, which Sprint is not.

Super Speed is unchanged.

Hasten... I moved it up to where it would be necessary to have 2 prior Speed powers, but this could be switched around with Combat Speed.

Whirlwind is a nifty power, and is in keeping with the theme, so I'm leaving it there.  It does have uses.

 

What would someone say to this? I would say you are asking Holy Quad players to hunt you down and brutalize you.

 

First, you say "replaces Hasten" followed by still having Hasten. Second, you are making a current no prerequisites power, that is widely used, especially by Holy Quad players, jump to needing 2 prerequisites with no justification for why it should now require 2 power picks from the pool to get. Third, we already have Combat Jumping and Hover for almost no END cost DEF buffs for players to mule whatever they want in them, so there is no reason to add a third power for players to do so with.

 

Also, all attacks root the character. The teleport attacks just teleport our characters to the target location before rooting them for the attack animation. You are also saying that since Sands of Mu is available for players, a temp power that is not affected by our enhancements and cannot itself be slotted with enhancements, there is no need for a flurry of blows style power like many melee speedsters use that is affected by our slotted enhancements and can be slotted with enhancements itself.

 

Edited Monday at 11:15 PM by Rudra
Edited to uncapitalize "you".

[Ultimo]

6 minutes ago, Rudra said:

What would someone say to this? I would say you are asking Holy Quad players to hunt you down and brutalize you.

 

First, you say "replaces Hasten" followed by still having Hasten. Second, you are making a current no prerequisites power, that is widely used, especially by Holy Quad players, jump to needing 2 prerequisites with no justification for why it should now require 2 power picks from the pool to get. Third, we already have Combat Jumping and Hover for almost no END cost DEF buffs for players to mule whatever they want in them, so there is no reason to add a third power for players to do so with.

 

Also, all attacks root the character. The teleport attacks just teleport our characters to the target location before rooting them for the attack animation. You are also saying that since Sands of Mu is available for players, a temp power that is not affected by our enhancements and cannot itself be slotted with enhancements, there is no need for a flurry of blows style power like many melee speedsters use that is affected by our slotted enhancements and can be slotted with enhancements itself.

 

Well, I replaced it in the sequence of powers, making it require prerequisite powers.  Not just a semantic difference.  It's also why I mentioned leaving it where it was and putting Combat Speed at the higher tier.

 

Neither Combat Jumping nor Hover affect run speed.  Someone else suggested just using Sprint, but that's not customizable and costs a ton of endurance, and doesn't affect Defense.  It just seemed like a logical addition.  There's a combat flight power, a combat teleport power, a combat jumping power... why not a combat running power?

 

Yes, attacks root the character.  Not all attacks root the character for SEVERAL SECONDS.  Shield Charge maintains mobility, while being thematic.  I'd like to retain Flurry, but it's effectiveness is very limited, and it's thematically troubled.  I just thought the Dash power would be more useful and thematically appropriate.  Again, based on some of the discussion in the thread.  I'm not drawing this from nowhere, it's the result of some of the discussion here.