Why is fly speed capped so low?

My two cents on this has long been that the flight speed cap should be raised, but the base fly speed should not. That way, the people who care about faster fly speed could have it, but it would cost them a couple slots. It would also make my GvE jetpack "afterburners" useful

Super Speed is the only travel power I take anymore. I take it more for the stealth than anything else. You can even run Super Speed with the temp power jet pack and, with a Celerity IO, fly around invisible. Plus Hasten is the prereq. This pretty much seals the deal for me on which travel power is best for me.

Super Jump is my least favorite. Its ok on certain characters, but only if they can handle the aggro they are sure to pull from it. My squishies absolutely avoid this power. Add in how annoying it is indoors and it comes in last place for me. The only reason I'd take it on most characters is as a set mule in a situation where I had already taken Combat Jumping. If for some weird reason I wanted to Super Jump there is a temp power for it. Acrobatics might be an attraction if IOs hadnt handed knockback protection out like candy.

Teleport is ok but it annoys me to be forced to spend slots to make a travel power do what others could with no slotting. I take it for flavor or if I need lots of Defense from IOs (Recall Friend, Teleport Foe, Teleport, and Team Teleport all take Blessing of the Zephyr IOs).

Fly is something I'd pretty much never take. Air Superiority and Hover are ok, possibly. Fly itself is outdone simply because of the easy availability of jet packs.

My characters who don't end up with Super Speed end up with Ninja Run.


IMO the imbalance with travel powers comes from several changes made to the game over the years:

- The Celerity IO, which gives out almost the same stealth radius as the actual power named "Stealth". What's worse, it's slottable into a travel power, speeding you up, while Stealth itself slows you down. The Stealth radius on Celerity should really be something like 10ft or even 5ft. Also, the invisibility in Super Speed should really not stack with other sources of invisibility if the Stealth power itself doesn't stack.

- The temp power jet pack. I guess it was created to deal with the nightmare that is the shadow shard. If so, there should probably be a jet pack that only works there. The bank mission jet pack would be far more balanced if a) you couldn't keep Super Speed running while flying around (for the invisibility) and b) it had a longer recharge time after you turn it off, like the mini jet packs we start the game with.

- Anti-knockback IOs that provide 3 or 4 mag protection against knockback but should probably only offer about .2 resistance if we use other anti-mezz IOs as a guide. I assume the reason these were created was to address holes in certain armor types, but it really would have been more balanced to change those sets directly than allow every character to be immune to knockback. As it is, there is little reason to chase after Acrobatics on most characters who might otherwise have been attracted to Super Jump.

- Ninja Run, which allows a character to take no travel power at all.


All of this said, I don't think raising the flight cap speed would fix everything that's wrong with Fly. It would be a start, but Fly needs some serious advantages before I'd take it over Super Speed in the current game environment.

Devs hate fliers, even more than Villains.

If you're a flying Villain... well my friend, prepare to be whomped by the Nerf Bat.

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Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Admittedly...as much of a fan of fly that i am...particularly on my squishy, ranged toons, ie blasters and defenders...i've really started to use ninja run as a replacement. With the normal slotting that i've been doing on a few of my toons (+2 slots in swift, sprint, and hurdle...which isn't much more than what i would do with teleport), most of them have turned out running just about as fast or faster than capped flight speed with an even faster jump. There are a few exceptions to this though. My Kin/Sonic defender has only the base slot in each..but with siphon speed and inertial redux...he doesn't need any extras. Both his run and jump speeds can be capped (thus far...he's lvl 23 right now) with a little self buffing/speed stealing. My El/El stalker has another +2 slots in lightning reflexes and is hitting speeds of 72 mph running and 73 jumping. My current experiment is my new ninjaz/thermalz mm, with +2 slots in sprint and hurdle...and he's already doing remarkably well at lvl 12. He's at like 38-39 mph running with sprint toggled on and 51 mph jumping with just 2 DO's in sprint and hurdle.

I hate to say it but...I might not be dipping too much into travel pools at all anymore with the advent of NR...unless it's for concept. I can actually get around just about as fast or faster than with fly...and if i have a tall obstacle i have to navigate...GVE Jump Pack or a temp flight. Plus...it's just a damn fun power! Yay martial arts pack! And best of all...it saves me power choices.

That said...there will be toons that will still have/take fly. IE my lvl 50 TA/Archery defender. He's geared towards perma hover/fly. He stayed airborne most of his carreer and shall forever remain that way. And i may still make other toons along this line.

Now...if and when (mostly if) fly ever got a top speed buff...I'd be one of the happy folkz in the "Yay! It's about time!" bandwagon. The only real times that I got really sick of the slower speeds of fly is when i had to fly 1+ miles across a zone (i'm looking at you IP and Nerva) to get to a freaking mission door/contact. O...MG! HATED fly then. It's definitely times like that i wished fly was faster.

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Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe ::looks at RaikenX's signature:: Something funny.

The argument that Fly has an advantage over other travel powers in that you can take short breaks while your character auto-flies to the mission is invalid due to the fact that with any other travel power I can simply *be* at the mission, use the bathroom, and return before any of the fliers on my team have arrived. I still operate under the same rules of time as the fliers do, after all. In doing this I also avoid embarrassingly returning to see my character has spent the last 2 minutes of his free-will trying desperately to move through a solid object.


The argument that Fly has the advantage of going in a straight line, thus arriving faster has yet to be true during my game-play experience. Save for perhaps Grandville or Terra Volta on a Super Speed character, I have never been beaten to a mission by a flier when we both started from the same point at the same time. I have often beaten the flier even when they had a head start. It is often not even the case for me that fliers can even travel in a straight line. Often a building gets in the way before I can reach a high enough altitude to avoid it, meaning I either have to stop going forward and travel straight up, increasing my travel time, or go around the building at a much slower speed than the others would have gone, and risk hitting another building I will have to go around as well, also increasing my travel time.

Assuming I *did* take the time to go all the way up to the ceiling, I now have to descend as well. If the area is particularly crowded I may not be able to simply descend down to the door. If I decide to just drop down by turning of flight so I can get to the ground quicker I risk taking damage, though I'll admit I do like to suicide drop and turn on hover at the last moment as a thrill so maybe you enjoy this sort of thing. I also risk hitting a spawn I might not have seen from so high up in the clouds when doing this, which, if I just plummeted to the earth like a rock, could wind up in a very embarrassing death.


The argument that Fly has superiority in certain maps is inaccurate as well. The Shard becomes far faster to navigate if you learn and use the jump points located all over the map. It does require that you map the area out a bit, but once done it is far quicker to use SS, SJ, or TP to quickly move to a jump pad and reach your destination in far less time. The only real advantage Fly has in the Shard is that it can be useful if the jump pad decides to be cute and throw you into the abyss, in which case you can activate Fly and correct your course. However, you can also just activate your temporary Fly power, which you can have indefinitely, so it's a moot point. The only zones where Fly has an advantage is Terra Volta, and Grandvill, and only against Super Speeders. Teleporting and Super Jumping work just as well they normally do.


The argument that Fly is safer is due to being out of the sight of anything that could harm it is also in accurate. There are enemies in the sky, but they still travel fairly low to the ground, so I will not include them as a threat. Snipers, however, have proven deadly at times for the slower fliers who can take 2-3 shots before getting out of their range, only to clunk their way into the range of another. This is especially hazardous for squishier characters. Conversely, my Super Speeder is typically unnoticed and out of a sniper's range before the shot even goes off, assuming I am even seen at all. He also has the advantage of slotting the (admittedly expensive) stealth IO for perma-invisibility, thus escaping the attention of nearly every enemy in the game. I have also never died from landing in a bad spot with Super Jump, but then, I have adapted the amazing ability to adjust my camera downward so I can see where I am going before getting there. While on this note, every other travel power has the advantage in that it can move the camera without having to worry that it will ruin its’ path. This is not true for Fly (and teleport to some degree). Teleport has the same vertical advantage Fly does, except that it is also the fastest travel power available, so the snipers are a virtual non-issue. Additionally, a Teleporter can keep moving if it gets immobilized, and can be useful for escaping such a situation in a combat scenario.


Fly has a disadvantage in that you have to slot it to get it to an acceptable level which is, unfortunately, still very low compared to all others. Often I will leave Super Jump and Super Speed with only the initial slot until very late levels, if I slot them at all. Fly, on the other hand, forces you to devote slots to it early so that you can even comprehend getting to a mission in a realistic time, and even then, you will still probably just get teleported by someone faster than you. This problem is alleviated somewhat with IO’s such as Blessing of the Zephyr in that they add benefits from slotting a travel power, however, it isn’t as though the much faster Super Speed and Super Jump can’t also take advantage of these IO bonuses and be made even better than Fly by utilizing them, thus negating any real advantage this might have given Fly.

Fly has a disadvantage in its perquisite powers. Combat Jumping and Hasten often make it into my character builds for their min/maxing potential. Combat Jumping costs nothing, can be slotted for defense and travel, both of which offer very good set bonuses for very few slots, offers the same defense as hover, grants immobilization resistance, and does not disrupt the flow of combat. Hasten makes everything faster, thus allowing me to do everything faster, such as attacking, healing, controlling, whatever, at the cost of a moderate amount of endurance which is typically very easy to get around. It is also essential for perma-Hasten, obviously. Builds which achieve perma-hasten are typically the kinds of creatures that are running around soloing enemies designed to be a challenge for groups of eight and more. Recall Friend is useful for getting the flier to your door, and Teleport Foe is useful for dividing a dangerous spawn, after you've slotted it with some range enhancements to beat the aggro radius of the spawn, of course.

Air Superiority offers limited control for melee characters, but lacks enough power to typically stay on my builds, and becomes less useful as my defenses rise and my need for such gimmicks decreases. Hover is much better after the latest speed boost, and can be slotted similarly to Combat Jumping, however, it's endurance cost is much higher, lacks any res protection of any kind, and leads to Fly, which is still the worst travel power available. Unless your build somehow required both powers, for the interests of reaching the soft cap or fitting in another Luck of the Gambler, or concept, there's no real reason to take Hover over Combat Jumping.


Finally, everyone can Fly now with temporary powers, thus negating any vertical penalties the other travel powers may have had. Not only are they handed out like candy, but you can buy them if you do manage to run out of all the free ones somehow for next to nothing. Actual game play experience has also proven to me that despite the reduced speed of these temp powers compared to Fly, I am still capable of arriving to the mission faster than a flier even if I do have to utilize them. In fact, they made me *faster* than I was before, as I no longer have to go around, thus pretty much *ensuring* that I arrive faster than a flier, where before it might have been close. Additionally, if an enemy flies out of my range, I can just activate my temp power and attack them, thusly negating any advantage Fly or Hover had in a combat scenario as well.


I often feel that arguments against flight getting any sort of buff are based on purely on a conceptual basis, and lack any actual practical analysis. After having practically applied flight in various situations for the better part of three years, I can do nothing but conclude that Flight is the very worst travel power in the game with few, if any, redeeming qualities over other selections which are just as easily available, save, of course, for conceptual reasons.

On my toon that has maxed flight speed, I get to mish doors about the same time as others with super jump and superspeed. Depending on the zone. It is really not all that bad. Still could use a minor bump in speed but not really that big of deal.

While I would certainly not be against a raise in the speed cap for flight, up to superjump's speed or so, the thing that I think would most make Fly more viable is to remove the level scaling.

Fly at the "true" speed cap (ie the level 50 speed cap of Fly) is acceptable, but you only hit that cap at 50...down in the 30's that cap is much, much lower.

Still, I take my toons movement powers based on thier concepts, not on the power levels, so I've got Flyers, Runners, Jumpers, Teleporters, and travel-pool-less toons - whichever is appropriate for that character.

Let's race Super Speed and Fly through Grandville, then decide which "needs" the speed increase.

Travel is fast enough as is and I can guarantee you that you're not going to miss/laud the extra minute it costs/saves you.

Am I only the one who is bothered by Fly's 1.0 end/sec?

And /unsigned on the people who are making all these claims about how godawful slow Fly is. I just don't have these problems. I used to slot two fly speeds in it, now I slot two BotZ in it, and I just don't arrive that much later. The only time where people with other travel powers significantly outpace me are where we have a nice flat straight shot at the destination. If there's any meaningful terrain jigging, I usually get there seconds after most of them, and sometimes I still beat them in really broken or urban terrain. I think it's worth pointing out that the above is based on play with a regular crew of people who speed run TFs, practically every of whom has SS+CJ, SJ+CJ or SS+SJ, because they want SS's stealth. (I have other ways to get it on my fliers.)

I take Fly because I want Hover and I don't want to consume another power pool for a travel power from a different pool. I take Fly because I hate Super Speed and don't always want SJ or even CJ. I take Fly because it's just not as bad as people in this thread are suggesting unless I try to drag race a SSer or SJer.