Blaster Travel Powers

Short & Sweet: I have a young blaster with whom I don't want to take Flight for "character concept" reasons. Setting aside Flight, which travel power will serve me best as a blaster? Or are they all about the same after that?

I'm making the assumption here that Flight would be the go-to power for the obvious "keep out of reach of the bad guys" reason.

I'd say the Leaping would be your power of choice if you're avoiding flight. It's the median of travel powers: can't be as fast as SS, but can also jump really freaking high, and is faster than flight, but can't go as high as flight. It also have a fair amount of utility. In combat jumping you get immobilize protection (and a small amount of defense), and in Acrobatics you get some hold and knockback protection, which is nice to have when leveling up.

(QR)
Hrm, I love taking Flight on my Blasters, so I'll try to not do so here.

When looking at the Travel pools, I look more at the early powers instead of the Travel itself. Which of those would help the character more? Adding in Suppression means you need to look at more than just the Travel, too.

The Speed Pool's good for Hasten. Some love having that one, personally, I don't, so I rarely take this pool. It may prove to be a real asset when you get your longer charging powers though.

The Jumping Pool is my usual go-to for non-flyers. Combat Jumping + Hurdle makes for some VERY good combat mobility. It's unsuppressed, costs very little to run and can keep you bouncing out of melee with ease.

Teleport? Ehh... odd man out. Not fond of the Travel and the prereqs generally don't endear themselves to me either.

Still waiting for his Official BackAlleyBrawler No-Prize

Hasten makes SS the clear winner here. That's the route I almost exclusively go. Since Super speed lacks vertical mobility I make up for it by getting Hover from flight. This is perfect, since now I can travel to hard to reach places (when running) also get that Blaster invulnerability by hugging the ceiling bonus.

Also, SS allows me to jump into a spawn, drop a Nova, and vacate the area before it goes off, which is a scary thought.

All travel powers are play style choices to be honest.

I have several blasters with Super Speed, a few with Flight, a few with Jumping and one (a Fire/Fire) with Teleport. Each type of travel has it's advantages and disadvantages. Once you learn how to get around easily with each type you can tailor your playstyle to your travel power or tailor your travel power to your playstyle.

In all honesty, if I weren't going to take Flight then I would just take Swift and Hurdle.

Having gotten two Blasters to level 50 so far, here's my take on travel powers.

Flight

My favorite travel pool by far for my Blasters.

Flight is a very lucrative choice, not only for the absolute freedom of movement, but for two very useful powers as well: Hover and Air Superiority. Hover has a very low endurance cost rate when active and does not detoggle to holds, stuns and mind-affecting effects. Also, staying in the air away from melee-focused enemies and forcing them to use their range attacks that are significantly weaker will improve your surivability alot if you're playing a range build.

Air Superiority is a fast-recharge, single target mitigation attack with knockdown, and slamming flying enemies to the ground is always satisfying. Note that it works for non-flying enemies too, even if its name suggests otherwise.

EDIT: I just reread your post saying that you won't want to take Flight, so please disregard the above if you want to.

Teleport

Recall Friend is a always a useful transport power that can get things moving when teammates are straggling behind, and also for teleporting downed teammates a safe distance away for a revive opportunity. When doing a TF in the Shadow Shard, your teammates will love you for having this power too.

I found Teleport to be useful for my AoE Blaster (Blapper) build. I charge up my attacks with Build Up + Aim, Teleport into the mob, unleash my AoE attacks, then Teleport out if things don't go according to plan. As a travel power in general, it takes up alot of endurance at the start when travelling far distances, and the pattern of using the power may seem tedious since you have to repeatedly click on your next location after the previous. It's easy to get used to though.

Tip: Use a LSHIFT + LBUTTON "powexecname Teleport" bind so that you can instantly port to your next location by just pressing left shift + left mouse button to whereever your ingame cursor is pointing at.

Also, take note that if you have Fly enabled while Teleporting, it overcomes the lag you face before you can activate your next Teleport.

Speed

Hasten is the reason you'd want to go with this travel pool, though I find that Hasten isn't a crucial power to take. I rely on recharge enchancements and set IO bonuses to its place. Flurry is a nice mitigation melee attack if someone is harrassing you close up.

Super Speed is really a double-edged sword for me. The plus side of it is that it gives a stealth bonus that is good for stealth runner player types. On the other hand it's difficult to zip through tight, indoor maps like caves unless you've had alot of practice overcoming it.

Leaping

Combat Jumping and Acrobatics are the two toggles to give you nice little bonuses to defense, immobilization and hold protection. Jump Kick is an average mitigation knockdown attack. Super Jumping from rooftop to rooftop is immensely fun and never gets old.

In summary, each travel pool has brings their own advantages to the table. Personally I would say go with Flight, because you can never go wrong with it, and improves your survivability. Don't restrict yourself to taking just one travel pool either, consider taking two if you feel like it. Above all, listen to what your preference tells you and pick whichever feels most fun to you.

Cheers and have fun.

If you're taking fly and want another travel power as a blaster, I suggest going with Hasten/Super Speed. Not only do you have fast ground movement, but you get extra recharge which can help you do your job as a blaster a little better.

So you got a win win win situation here... you have fly for Z movement, you have SS for XY movement and you get more recharge. Whats not to like?!

To the person above me, he said he's NOT taking fly. It's literally the first sentence.

If you don't want to take Flight, I recommend Super Jump.

Hasten is the best pre-req out of every power pool in the game, but Super Speed alone, sucks. Okay, you can move really fast, on the ground. That's it. Unlike the super hero versions, there is no wall-running, no creating a tornado by running in a circle to go vertical, nor can you make small whirlwinds with your arms like The Flash did in JLU to prevent himself from hitting the ground during a plane crash. Also, during combat, it's suppressed with no lower alternative unlike Hover and Combat Jumping.

I never really liked Flight for Blasters. Partly because I hate having to waste slots on travel powers when I can put them into something more useful and partly because every time you get stunned/slept/held you drop out of the air.

Teleportation is another power that requires slots to be good, and all of the other powers in the set are pretty useless, so I've never taken that on any of my Blasters.

I used to really love the Speed pool for Hasten and Super Speed. The stealth component of Super Speed is very useful, and the recharge bonus of Hasten is great for getting those long-recharge powers (like Trip Mines, Conserve Power, etc) to come back sooner.

Lately, though, I've really been loving the Leaping pool. I find that Super Jump is, by far, the best travel power since you move plenty fast yet you also have great vertical movement for clearing obstacles. Plus, I've really fallen in love with Acrobatics. I found that my Blasters were dying a lot in their 30's and 40's due to being knocked down and pummelled before they could regain their feet. Acrobatics solves that problem nicely (yes, I know I could get the same effect with an IO, but I usually don't have the 30 million influence in my 30's to buy one.)

My mistake, I misread his post. The hasten/ss still applies... I suggest taking hurdle and slotting sprint for extra jump. That will give you more Z movement.

Stern_Verdict, Flight has actually been revamped. 1 enhancement in Fly and the other in Swift puts you right near the cap. It's no longer the build crippler it used to be.

All of my blasters have superspeed, due to me thinking hasten is the best power in the entire game. I usually take hover too, for vertical movement and hoverblasting.

[ QUOTE ]
Stern_Verdict, Flight has actually been revamped. 1 enhancement in Fly and the other in Swift puts you right near the cap. It's no longer the build crippler it used to be.

[/ QUOTE ]

You also no longer get dropped out of the sky as often as the toggle doesn't drop anymore. Only powers that actually have -fly would do it. I loved it the first time that happened while I was flying thorugh an area, got hit by a sleep and instead of dropping out of the sky I just start coasting in the sky while asleep.

I first took Teleport on my first blaster (while first learning about the game), then respec'd into SJ a short time later (once I shelved the character for a while not liking my power choices and then learned we could respec LOL) and picked SJ. I haven't gone back. I have CJ/SJ on ALL my blasters and most other characters as well. CJ offers the greatest combat mobility for my playstyle (melee/range mixed) I also will add hasten/SS for flavor. My Fire/MM blasters couldn't play properly without SS and always has CJ and SS on with Hasten on auto, meanwhile my Nrg/Nrg and Ice/Elec have maintaned only CJ and SJ. Blasting just isn't fun for me unless I'm standing next to something while I'm hitting it in the face.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Sure, the devs are supposed to listen to their customers, mister business 101 out there. And if I decide to start suggesting that the devs change the game from being about superheroes and supervillains to being about clowns that is my right as well, and technically Paragon Studios is supposed to pay attention to me. But I hope strongly that they assume a meth-head somehow managed to hack into my forum account and make paper airplanes out of my posts, because I hope they recognize stupid when they see it. I assume they will recognize futile just as accurately.