Why do I never see fly on builds?
By
Airhammer,
Posted on: 2010-09-29 02:04 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
I've seen several more hoverers on yellowside since it got a speed buff. I imagine they grew up to be flyers.
It's due to min/maxing taking Hasten and having Combat Jumping for the defence (Hover gives the same defence but it has a higher end cost) and then taking Super Speed and/or Super Jump as a travel power is easier than taking Hover/Air Superiority + Fly for a slightly slower but easier to manuever travel power.
Ingame I see an even spread of travel powers myself. With a slight lead from the Teleport to mission and teleport team to self using a booster pack people.
My characters are probably about evenly split between sj and fly. I think the no travel power characters aren't far behind, and I only have one or two with super speed.
I find super jump is fun and fast, and fly is fun, but not quite as fun as sj, and easy to use. I don't like super speed very much for some reason.
I prefer Superspeed myself, my main account can skip the prereq. My second account still has a few years to go for the vet reward. I take hasten on all my toons however so it works out. :P
You get spoiled by the speed TBH, when on other MMOs, me and other friends often mention we miss SS from city.
all bar one of my chars are flyers - I just find it easier to use than SS/SJ
http://www.scene-and-heard.com/cov/covsig.jpg
If: End Cost of Combat Jumping = End Cost of Hover
Then: Hover > Combat Jumping?
I made the following comment recently in a thread asking about sonic:
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That pretty much answers the question on why you don't see fly on any of the builds getting tossed around on the forums. Most of the builds posted here are not for casual players, and many of the builds neglect factors such as fun, roleplay concept, or character theme in favor of maximum invention origin and stat performance at all costs. This is also "why" you'll see lots of threads of players asking for fly to be changed to ignore the soft-factors of travel risk management in favor of pure statistical performance in a spread-sheet.
... when you go searching the forums, remember these two important points:
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Does that mean you should not take fly? I don't think so. Fly, as a power, is pretty much useful to every class with a ranged component. It's also not a bad travel power for melee classes with anti-mez's for those who don't build with IO's in mind.
In the past, armor sets with no knockback protection (Dark and Fire) pretty much needed Acrobatics, and it was a safe presumption that these armor types with fly were probably players you didn't want to interact with. With the defense set and resist set knockback protection IO's being relatively cheap (at 75 regular merits) pretty much anybody with a dark or fire armor can easily pick up some protection against knockback and be free to take the fly power pool.
If you do take fly, do be aware that it is the slowest travel power in the game. The slow speed is balanced against the risk of using the power. Fly allows you to avoid pretty much all enemies when traveling. Fly is also lag resistant, so if you have a rubber-banding or a re-synch, your chances of suddenly winding up in a mob as the server places your character where the server thinks it should be are pretty much nil.
everytime I talk to one of my "gonna-get-back-into-it-soon" friends, the thing they always miss the most is flying lol.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Warkupo
End Cost of Combat Jumping = End Cost of Hover
then Hover > Combat Jumping? |
Base end cost for Combat Jumping = 0.07/s
Base end cost for Hover = 0.2/s
Base end cost for Sprint = 0.29/s
Combat Jumping has a barely noticable end cost, where Hover has an almost Sprint matching end cost.
All because the versitility of Hover and the mitigation it causes from melee enemies...
Fly is still too slow compared to SJ or SS.
I took Hover+Fly on my Empath because it keeps me safe.
I took Hover+Fly on my Scrapper because it fits my concept and helps my defenses.
Mains (Freedom) @Auroxis
Auroxis - Emp/Rad/Power Defender Pylon Video Soloing an AV
Pelvic Thunder - SS/Elec/Mu Brute
Sorajin - Elec/Nin Stalker
Neuropain - Sonic/Mental/Elec Blaster
I have quite a few characters with fly. I think it's the most friendly travel power there is. The ones that didn't have fly were because I wanted other travel pool prereqs, and now that I have the vet bonus of not needing a prereq and travel power available at lvl 6, alot more have fly 
Spines/ D A lvl 50 Scrap, stone/wm lvl 50 tank, Kat/reg lvl 50 Scrap
Grav/Kin lvl 50 Cont, Fire/Enegry lvl 50 Blast
Warshade lvl 50, PB lvl 39, nightwidow lvl 50, crab lvl 42
plant/thorns lvl 50 dom, ice/fire lvl 40 dom, grav/nrg lvl 41 dom
because hasten is too good. its basically a must have skill on every build, so why waste and another skill to get fly when you can get SS
The main benefits fo Fly (3D movement) can be had for the price of a 10,000 inf with a temporary jetpack these days.
Having said that, my current stable of characters has 1 warshade, 1 superspeedster, 1 teleporter, 3 fliers and 2 non-travellers who just use jetpacks.
Often on the tp-er or speedster I'll just use the jetpack because its handier.
Flight has always been my travel power of choice.
Air superiority is nice, but I can never seem to find a good place for it in my builds. My melee-centric builds don't need it, since they already have plenty of melee attacks, and my ranged builds wouldn't use it, because they stay the hell out of melee.
All of my blasters have hover, it's awesome for a blaster.
I'm not fond of fly as a travel power simply because it's too slow. The point of a travel power is to minimize my downtime as much as possible, and for that, I like superspeed best, which is why nearly all my toons have it.
Quote:
Air Sup is fantastic on a Controller if you're planning to solo them at all before level 32. 'Trollers have very few sources of good damage, and can swap Air Sup between smacking a mezzed enemy for Containment damage, or keeping a bad guy on his back while you get the spawn under control. Brutes can aslo get some good use out of Air Sup, as they need as many attacks as they can get to build Fury, and Air Sup animates really quickly.
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Originally Posted by firespray
Air superiority is nice, but I can never seem to find a good place for it in my builds. My melee-centric builds don't need it, since they already have plenty of melee attacks, and my ranged builds wouldn't use it, because they stay the hell out of melee.
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Quote:
For me, Air Superiority is more useful as mitigation than the damage. The guaranteed knockdown is very useful so I use it even when I have plenty of other attacks.
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Originally Posted by firespray
Air superiority is nice, but I can never seem to find a good place for it in my builds. My melee-centric builds don't need it, since they already have plenty of melee attacks, and my ranged builds wouldn't use it, because they stay the hell out of melee.
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Quote:
My reasons:|
Originally Posted by TameDragon
Really this post is more a rant and also to ask for those who do builds WHY? WHY NO FLY? Where has the love gone?
 (and no I am not trolling i honestly would like an answer) |
1) SS & SJ are faster, and both belong to power pools I often want other stuff from anyway.
2) Hover is too slow and too "floaty" for me, and costs almost as much endurance to run as a jet/raptor pack.
I have fly on a couple of builds, due to concept. Everything else gets SS or SJ + a jet pack.
Quote:
You forgot an "if" there. Hover = 0.19/s, Combat Jumping = 0.06/s, last I looked.|
Originally Posted by Warkupo
End Cost of Combat Jumping = End Cost of Hover
then Hover > Combat Jumping? |
And the only problem with Fly is that it's too freaking expensive at 1.00/s.
And, at 50, the temp power jet packs (or at least the 30-day jet pack; haven't used the others since I started having to buy Game Cards to play) cap your flight speed for 0.19/s (at least it does on my L50 Ill/Rad Controller, who lacks Swift), making Fly an even worse deal.
SS gives 35 feet stealth radius. Throw Stealth IO (30 feet) into sprint and you have 65 feet stealth, making you invisible to almost all enemies in the game.
Exceptions are either NPCs with elevated perception or NPC that ignoring stealth altogether:
Snipers - 149 feet perception
Giant Monsters and turrets - 100 feet perception
Bane Scouts - 83 feet perception
KoA, Rikti Drones and Rularuu Eyeballs ignoring stealth.
Also SS is 0.46 end/sec unslotted ( almost the same as SJ - 0.45 end/sec) as opposed to Fly 1.04 end/sec
Let's be honest: Only a small subset of a subset of users post builds around here, and the reason they do often goes back to three reasons: to show a well min/maxed build for survival/offense, ("it solos pylons!") to show a lawnmower farmer build, or for PvP performance. In many of these cases, the ability to fly is considered extraneous. Heck, In PvP it's looked at often as almost a liability.
Also, people focusing on builds in such ways hang in groups that exchange their ideas. If you're looking to find out about the game, and your group tells you SS/SJ are best, in time you will think that.
Personally? I take fly all the time. more than two third of my characters use it,as it's often the best for my characters. Magic users hovering/flying? Makes a bit more sense than superjumps, by theme. Natural character? Rocket boots, and I'm good to go. Classic superhero? Few things are as iconic as flight.
After flight I have teleport, ninja run, and superjump as travel in equal measures. I have one character that I made with superspeed last year, and I've been here since launch. It really did take me that long. It just really didn't interest me that much...I did use it for a fire character where it looked right, and only after buying the jump pack when jetpacks became easy to obtain. The hard to quantify side of flight is that it really is safer/easier for getting around, but that comes from gameplay experience rather than numbers. I also don't dig the yellow glow, but some do.
...Not to mention the fact that those who like those powers are not bothered by the slight inconveniences that come with them. I'm used to flight, and don't find the speed that bad, but those who only want to get from here to there pronto are bugged by it.
I have fly on two of my blasters two reasons because it keeps them out of danger and I hate the way teleport, super speed, and super jump look.
Virtue: @Santorican
Dark/Shield Build Thread
I have Air Sup. and Fly on my Stone/wp brute. Some things just don't stand a chance against him because they have a hard enough time standing at all. 
I use Fly on a number of characters, but my preferred travel power is SJ.
Nice to see a few replies to my OP.
As i stated in the OP i nearly always take the flight pool cause it fits my concepts on most of my chars (mainly dragons or some type of winged toon) and when I'm on a squishy i like to be able to float above the NPCs shooting away on blaster/troller/fender etc without getting hurt (much)
It's just a shame when you get people with the "must have" mentality for other travel pools.
I haven't seen many flyer's on my home server since i started but i did get a PUG TF with about 6 or 7 of us who did which was awesome.
Yes fly can be slower than SS but when you're up in the air you don't have to zoom around buildings etc as much as you would if you had SS IMO.
I love fly and no-one will take that away from me
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Short Story I did: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=228383
DevArt Page: http://tamedragon.deviantart.com/
I know super speed is usually taken for for hasten, leaping for CJ/Acro but WHY do i never seen builds with fly in? I love air sup and on a squishy I take hover for the LOTG/extra def.
(and no I am not trolling i honestly would like an answer)
Super Speed i can only handle on 1 or 2 of my toons due to bashing into walls etc. Most of the time i find it too quick. 98% of my toons have some form of Air Sup/Hover/Fly. Whenever I've asked for build help via forums or friends nearly all the builds suggested to me have SS in them even if i say that I want fly.
I understand that a lot of people want to min/max their toons but fly to me is such an awesome pool i just don't understand why people don't take it much. And I figure its easy enough to work in hasten if a toon REALLY needs it.
Really this post is more a rant and also to ask for those who do builds WHY? WHY NO FLY? Where has the love gone?
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Short Story I did: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=228383
DevArt Page: http://tamedragon.deviantart.com/