Flight speed needs a buff

[Sunsette]

I have to object to the notion that hover is bad for melee builds. I think that's true at low levels or if you have a power that requires being on the ground, which affects some but not all melee builds; that's about it. Prestige Jump Jets allow you full speed in hover for a button press, are affected by global recharge, and you get two of them. That's faster and more convenient movement than anything else. Afterburner itself is a useful panic button.

 

While their usages vary in different builds, all of the opening powers in flight are good. I will admit that if you're only going one-deep that standard flight is outclassed by Mystic Flight, yes.

 

If I have a complaint about afterburner, it's that it's not an auto power, because toggling it on can be clunky; I wouldn't mind an added autopower version of afterburner that you could choose to take instead of the toggle that grants Fly its benefits natively.

 

I agree that it's counterintuitive that you need another power to improve the speed of fly, but it's a difficult problem to alleviate, and I don't think it's worth the effort to alleviate it when I just don't agree at all that it's unbalanced. Flight + AB practically reaches the same straight line speed as Super Speed and Hover is better than SS and rivals CJ for in-combat maneuvering. This is a strong pool.

[ShardWarrior]

Your original post eluded to a desire far something far different than what this post indicates.

 

Yes ... that's kind of the purpose for having a discussion - to discuss a topic with others and flesh out ideas.

[SwitchFade]

Your original post eluded to a desire far something far different than what this post indicates.

 

Yes ... that's kind of the purpose for having a discussion - to discuss a topic with others and flesh out ideas.

 

I'm glad you educated me on the nature and purpose of discussion.

 

Alternatively, the purpose of highlighting your evidently contradicting statements would be to demonstrate the incompatibility of your posts.

 

Now that we have helped each other, would you mind further helping me by clarifying your EVOLVED disposition on this matter? I kindly ask, as it has evidently changed from your original stance.

 

Imagine my inability to comprehend your views, due to the quixotically juxtaposed nature of your thoughts.

 

Mind helping a brother out?

[Obitus]

I have to object to the notion that hover is bad for melee builds. I think that's true at low levels or if you have a power that requires being on the ground, which affects some but not all melee builds; that's about it. Prestige Jump Jets allow you full speed in hover for a button press, are affected by global recharge, and you get two of them. That's faster and more convenient movement than anything else. Afterburner itself is a useful panic button.

 

While their usages vary in different builds, all of the opening powers in flight are good.

 

Well, in fairness, I have to admit that I was talking about a prior age, when I designed that tank build.  Back then, you needed to ED-cap Hover's enhancement to get it to move at more than a crawl.  These days, IIRC, it moves at a fairly decent 25 mph or so even with no slotting.  So I'd have less objection to using Hover on a melee build now, but it's still not exactly what I'd call super well suited to melee, certainly inferior to CJ in the general case.  (The auto-follow thing can be really jarring if you're used to pressing F to close with the nearest foe on a melee build, for example.)

 

I am a big fan of Hover on ranged builds though, so don't think that I'm bagging on the power.  I'm something of a Hover evangelist in many contexts, in fact; Hover's just not anywhere near as generally appealing as Hasten.

 

Air Superiority I could take or leave.  I know some people have always sung its praises because of its control utility (guaranteed knockdown and -fly debuff), but it's still a filler melee attack.  Generally the builds that need that sort of control most are going to be concentrated on ranged attacks - and the builds that focus on melee will generally have to sacrifice DPS to use Air Superiority.

 

That said, and based on my experience in game, just now, I have to say that Fly itself appears to be the big loser here.  What's funny is that this whole time I've been arguing that Pool choice matters, and that comparing the travel powers themselves on a 1-to-1 basis is therefore misleading.  But Fly (by itself) is apparently rendered completely redundant by an infinitely rebuyable temp power that costs 5k INF (Jet Pack).  I'm actually laughing about this as I type.  The whole discussion seems silly in retrospect.

 

The jet pack even works with Afterburner.  That combo doesn't go quite as fast as Fly + AB, but it still gets you over the customary Fly cap.  New Flight meta:  Skip Fly.  :P

 

People were getting all exercised about how Fly even without afterburner has massive advantages:

 

 

If I have a complaint about afterburner, it's that it's not an auto power, because toggling it on can be clunky; I wouldn't mind an added autopower version of afterburner that you could choose to take instead of the toggle that grants Fly its benefits natively.

 

This would be very cool.

 

I agree that it's counterintuitive that you need another power to improve the speed of fly, but it's a difficult problem to alleviate, and I don't think it's worth the effort to alleviate it when I just don't agree at all that it's unbalanced. Flight + AB practically reaches the same straight line speed as Super Speed and Hover is better than SS and rivals CJ for in-combat maneuvering. This is a strong pool.

 

Well, given that our dev team works entirely for free, I'd say just about nothing's really worth the effort to change.  I'm just happy to have the game back, whatever its flaws.  And sure, changing the Flight pool would be a low priority even if we did have a paid dev team - but in principle, I think all of the arguments working from the premise that Fly must be slow or must require massive investment to increase its speed fall a little flat these days.

[ShardWarrior]

I'm glad you educated me on the nature and purpose of discussion.

 

Alternatively, the purpose of highlighting your evidently contradicting statements would be to demonstrate the incompatibility of your posts.

 

You do know that through discussion and sharing thoughts with others, ideas and opinions can change and evolve over time, right?

[jack_nomind]

You seem to think it's blindingly obvious that people who want a flying character concept should have to pay 3 power picks and several slots (not to mention a pool pick that may or may not suit their build, mechanically) in return for the privilege of maxing fly speed.

 

The thing I think is blindingly obvious is that Afterburner is an indirect buff on pre-i20 Fly and nothing else, and the high base speed of Fly is a direct buff on i-18 Fly and nothing else.  The position I argued against earlier today is that these things somehow make Fly worse because it "needs" Afterburner  to work as a power pick (it doesn't) or that it is hurt by lacking a benefit from slotting (it used to need slotting, but now has the fully-slotted efficacy at one slot).

 

I don't want to give the impression that I'm minimizing the importance of Afterburner.  It changes Fly from a mobility-focused travel power into a speed-focused one.  Afterburner is an enormous change to a mechanical function -- and it's not the concept tax.  For characters that don't benefit from Fly in combat, Fly is the concept tax of Flight.

 

You might ask, "But if you're only taking Fly for your character concept, then what do you care about its speed?"  And on the surface, I suppose that might sound like a rhetorical kill shot to you, but to me it sounds like willful blindness...

 

I wouldn't put it quite like that... I think to warrant a pick even for a concept build, it would have to be at least as fast as Sprint along with the vertical movement.  But to the larger sentiment... we'll have to agree to disagree on that.  To me, it sounds like you're contorting into knots to illustrate whatever it is you're trying to illustrate.  We're at a point where we have the flying Super Strength melee concept build who can't use Hover and doesn't want to rely on temp powers to fly and doesn't have the picks available for Afterburner and...

[Sunsette]

All of this discussion makes me wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to entirely discard the notion of prerequisite powers for the travel pools. Would it really break anything to be able to take any of them in any order you choose?

[Vanden]

All of this discussion makes me wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to entirely discard the notion of prerequisite powers for the travel pools. Would it really break anything to be able to take any of them in any order you choose?

 

Squishies could take Acrobatics for no investment.

[SwitchFade]

I'm glad you educated me on the nature and purpose of discussion.

 

Alternatively, the purpose of highlighting your evidently contradicting statements would be to demonstrate the incompatibility of your posts.

 

You do know that through discussion and sharing thoughts with others, ideas and opinions can change and evolve over time, right?

 

Most assuredly. I am pleased we agree and can teach and learn from each other. Similarly, I am sure we can agree than should an individual make suppositions found to be contradictive, this can cause confusion. Being that confusion can be the direct result of contradictive statements, I am further sure we can both summarily agree that pointing this contradiction out is valid, in order to properly understand.

 

Hence, the mention of incongruent statements.

[ShardWarrior]

Most assuredly. I am pleased we agree and can teach and learn from each other. Similarly, I am sure we can agree than should an individual make suppositions found to be contradictive, this can cause confusion. Being that confusion can be the direct result of contradictive statements, I am further sure we can both summarily agree that pointing this contradiction out is valid, in order to properly understand.

 

Hence, the mention of incongruent statements.

 

What exactly is confusing?  A discussion started, people expressed ideas, thoughts and opinions and people changed their thoughts, opinions and ideas based on what they learned from other points of view.

 

Squishies could take Acrobatics for no investment.

 

Is this really relevant anymore in an age where IO set bonuses make these things obsolete?

[Obitus]

 

I wouldn't put it quite like that... I think to warrant a pick even for a concept build, it would have to be at least as fast as Sprint along with the vertical movement.  But to the larger sentiment... we'll have to agree to disagree on that.  To me, it sounds like you're contorting into knots to illustrate whatever it is you're trying to illustrate.  We're at a point where we have the flying Super Strength melee concept build who can't use Hover and doesn't want to rely on temp powers to fly and doesn't have the picks available for Afterburner and...

 

Cute.

 

 

I'd prefer to assume that you're arguing in good faith, but this line of attack, "you're tying yourself in knots to illustrate whatever it is you're trying it illustrate," seems like a transparent attempt to dismiss my position, which is really pretty simple, out of hand.  Your suggestion that super strength characters are some sort of bizarre niche build rings hollow too.  Is it really so hard to accept that a whole bunch of builds don't get much mechanical benefit out of Hover or Air Superiority?  Do I really have to spell out why power and pool picks are valuable?  Do I have to comment, again, on the relative appeal of Hasten?  I might as well save my breath, based on your prior record of engaging on that subject. 

 

You've simply resorted to baseless mockery, pretending that you have no idea why I would bring up build investment costs - when it was you who originally tried to argue that Fly had an advantage in that regard.  "SS has to spend more power picks on travel than Fly, because it has to supplement its 2d movement."  Care to revise that position now, or are we just gonna go with pretending that that post never existed?

 

But hey, I guess you admitted that Fly is a concept tax now.  That's something.

 

This whole discussion reads as farce when you look at that screenshot - all of the pious posturing about how Fly has enormous mobility advantages, about how Fly should only get better inherent (or slottable) speed when SS gets commensurate vertical movement, all of it, reduced to a lame joke.  It turns out that Afterburner is the only thing that makes Fly the power even the slightest bit worth taking, given that an infinitely refillable temp power costing 5k INF does exactly the same thing that Fly does, by itself.

 

It's fine if you genuinely believe that maxed Fly should cost 3 powers; I'm all for good-faith disagreement, but your tone suggests that everyone who disagrees with you is a babbling moron.  "Heh heh, we should have the devs reduce Fly's speed to I-18 levels so that these idiots can slot it to get back to their current level of speed, heh, what a good troll."  It's not I-18 anymore, in case you hadn't noticed.  Issue 18 was what?  A decade ago now?

[jack_nomind]

I'm neither pious nor posturing; I clearly think you're mistaken and blowing the issue well out of proportion.  Your rhetoric is escalating to a place I don't feel comfortable following.

[Zep]

Lets not forget that Super Speed is capped where it is based on limitations of the engine as it existed on live.

 

I think fly should stay where it is and SS increased.

[justicebeliever]

Lets not forget that Super Speed is capped where it is based on limitations of the engine as it existed on live.

 

I think fly should stay where it is and SS increased.

 

I am a big fan of giving the Speed pool some love, but making Super Speed faster will make it faster than I could manage.  Literally my reaction time wouldn’t be able to react quick enough to obstacles, turns, mobs, etc.  I am a gigantic no on buffing SS.  Because doing so would make it useless to me.

[Obitus]

I'm neither pious nor posturing; I clearly think you're mistaken and blowing the issue well out of proportion.  Your rhetoric is escalating to a place I don't feel comfortable following.

 

"Let's agree to disagree, but not before I characterize your position as dumb and incoherent," isn't exactly diplomatic.  I actually agree with you that this Fly issue isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but your tone needs a lot of work if you're truly interested in avoiding escalation.

[Vanden]

Squishies could take Acrobatics for no investment.

 

Is this really relevant anymore in an age where IO set bonuses make these things obsolete?

 

Acrobatics isn't just knockback protection, it's Hold protection as well.

[Burnt Toast]

Ugh would you two just F already and get it over with.