Flight power - essential or not even close?

Hi folks,

I'm a pretty new player here - previously when making chars, for whatever reason (I think I read it in a guide at GameFAQs or something), I was always under the impression that you should get a flight power, even just hover, in case there's a hard to reach/impossible to reach place by super speed.

However, with the Temporary Power: Jetpack, this isn't even remotely true is it? Of course, permanent hover is... y'know, more permanent than a temporary power. But resources permitting - and they should be given how cheap the recipe is - you can just rely on that for flying, can't you?

Thanks for any help. ^^

Jax

You can also buy the temporary jet pack in FBZ (Hero Side) and Grandville (Villain Side) for 10,000 influence. This power unlike the crafted one last for 2 hours of in game time. That is what I use on all my toons... cheaper to do that way than buy/craft the recipe.

Those Guides you've read must be pretty ancient. While Jet Pack temp power recipes are fairly new (a couple of years maybe), we've been able to get temporary Jet Packs as mission rewards or flat out purchasable for several years now.

Personally, I always take the Flight travel pool because I like to fly and the Air Superiority attack is very good. But if you'd rather a different travel power, hey, do it.

Thanks, it's great to hear that I don't even need to worry about getting my hands on a constant stream of recipes. =P

Been planning out my MM, and hated feeling like I had to take Hover just in case, so it's a load off knowing I can give the slot to a more relevant power. =)

If you want to just buy a Jet Pack, which you can do at level 1:

Hero side: from Atlas, go into the Vanguard DPO and take the portal to the Vanguard Base at the RWZ. When you appear, immediately turn around and click the portal to exit to Peregrine Island. Make the mad dash to Portal Corp (try not to get sniped!). Go into the middle building, take the elevators down, then hang a right to the Portal room. Click on the portal there to go to Fire Base Zulu in the Shadow Shard. When you come out at FBZ, hang a left. After you get off the catwalk, you should see a soldier Jet Pack vendor. A Jet Pack cost 10,000 Inf. Note: each of the 4 Shadow Shard zones has a Jet Pack vendor near the portal at that zone.

Villain side: from Mercy Island, take the Ferry to Grandville. Run up to the central plaza where the Trainer Arbitor is. Behind and to the right is the Jet Pack vendor, who looks like another Arbitor. Again, 10K Inf for the Jet Pack.

Touch more so at the heart of your question: You can get everywhere you need to entirely on foot- you'll never have to have fly/hover/super jump/teleport. I've, personally, stopped getting travel powers on my characters... although all of them have Ninja Run for free (part of one of the booster packs, you can use it lvl 4+ if you've bought the pack).


I'd suggest avoiding using any guide that you find on a third party website, it's very likely to be WOEFULLY out of date. I would only trust what you see on these boards (but watch the date for the post of any guides here still, CoH has changed a lot over the years), ParagonWiki (not the wikia version!), and the rest of the TitanNetwork.

Mids' Hero Design is great for roughly planning out your characters power selections & slotting (altough since you're new, I'd recommend against following any preset build too closely... feel free to explore and make mistakes... this is a forgiving game).

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

I'm the same opinion as Rodion, SJ for melee, flight for ranged. Not a hard rule but 90% of the time true. Only break it for theme reasons.

Personally I think everyone who is new should start with flight. It's the easiest travel power, just point and shoot.

Even for melee toons: my first tanker is a flier. Air Superiority is a great attack, and it's so nice while I'm pounding on someone who flies away... I just fly right after. It's SO convenient on my melee toons I actually try to work into to concept now. No one is ever out of my melee range.

Plus arial battles don't last long with Air Sup-- usually one hit and they hit the deck right away.

Only travel powers I use are flight, ninja run, and beast run. On the latter two, I keep a jetpack temp power handy just in case.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Also, if you're looking at an old guide, please note that you don't need to spend power selections on Fitness any more. Does that open your build up any?

Travel powers are really just a matter of taste. For the most part, you can get anywhere with any of them. There are some exceptions, mostly for Super Speed, but those can be got around with temp powers or even just taking a more roundabout way... the few places in the game that cannot be gotten to at all with Super Speed are only of importance if you're looking to get every exploration badge, because a small handful are in those inaccessible spots. (You'd be surprised how few, if you're willing to work on getting there.)

If you have the jump jet or a temp power jetpack, you can get anywhere, even with just Ninja/Beast Run.

I've never felt that fly or hover were essential. I choose travel powers based on what fits the theme, because they all work well enough. If there's no clear winner and it doesn't matter otherwise, I tend to take Super Jump because it happens to be my favorite.

Flight: When you need it, you don't have it. When you have it, you don't need it.

All of my characters that don't have fly have a jetpack. There are just too many places where flight is useful.

BTW - does anyone know if you already have a jetpack from the Shard vendor and it's almost out of fuel, can you just buy a new one and replace the old one or do you have to wait for the old one to be completely exhausted before you buy the new one? If not, is the jetpack recipe a different temp power? Can you have one of each at the same time?

Thanks for both responses! I didn't even think about deleting the old one. Brilliant!

I'm pretty sure there are two different jetpacks available - the vendor will sell you a Sky Raider type if you have a classic and vice versa- so you can have a backup-pack.

Thanks again for all the info - very informative, but of course, being a newbie it raises a couple more questions if you're willing to (please) indulge me. =3

The first one that comes to mind is super speed - with a few responses along the lines of "super jump and flight, with super jump primarily for melee and flight primarily for ranged", are people choosing these over super speed for any particular reason? Is it for mobility in a PvE/PvP setting? Just the fact that you have greater vertical range, instead of just relying on ground speed? Or are the pre-reqs (I'm guessing people go with Air Superiority and Combat Jumping) just better than Hasten (as a new player coming from a mainly WoW background, this bit I don't get - Hasten seems like a fantastic power for most archetypes, potentially almost doubling dps).

The second question pertains to Super Jump itself - because I haven't had a chance to test many power pool powers out myself yet (and I'm hesitant to bloat my second tree with it just to test it, as I don't want to throw away respecs unnecessarily), does it actually increase movement speed? Like, am I going to get places significantly faster with Super Jump than with just sprint?

Thanks in advance (again! ^_^).

Jax

Flight is a pure travel power and is convenient. Superspeed is very fast and gives some stealth but you need to have some jump or jetpacks for some situations. Superjump is faster than flight but you can't hover and it may be difficult for you to bring down flying foes. Teleport is the fastest travel power with lots of vertical mobility but it is annoying to use and you may tp yourself into trouble and it uses up a lot of end.

TRAVEL POWERS:

Super Speed has a couple of significant advantages. It has built in Stealth (in the original beta, superspeeders were getting capped on the way past guys they barely even saw) and it's very fast. Stealth, by the way, doesn't usually stack- but it stacks with Superspeed Stealth just fine. So you can stand on the toes of most badguys in the game and they'll never know you're there. I always say "Every travel power has advantages and disadvantages, so pick the one that works for you." Superspeed has a lot of steering involved, a lot of getting caught up on bus stops and inadvertently zooming off cliffs. (Talos Island, I'm looking at you.) But it is fast. It FEELS fast. (It feels great.) And if that's the superpower you love, go with it. I have a friend who kept a subscription to the game for a few months and didn't play normally. He loved flying THAT MUCH. He'd log in and just buzz bridges, do hammerheads, cruise the skies.

Super Jump, Super Speed, etc. are indeed siginficantly faster than Sprint. It's been a while since I checked it, but I think Sprint is around 25 MPH and Superspeed is around 65.

HASTEN: It is great for a large number of builds, but not as great as you think. For the first few levels in this game, you will indeed not have enough powers. You'll be sitting there waiting for Brawl to come back, wishing you had Hasten. But these powers have both recharge time and activation time- people refer to DPA, or "damage per activation"- so once you have four or five attacks you will always have SOMETHING ready to go. At that point it's just the difference between higher DPA and lower DPA attacks. And most of the higher DPA attacks aren't THAT much better. So you're replacing maybe half your attack chain with attacks that are maybe 50% better; and Hasten itself is not up all the time, unless you've gone crazy with a ten billion inf build that is optimized till the angels flinch.

(You don't need a ten billion inf build that is optimized till the angels flinch. You can do fine with basic enhancements, or a cheaply optimized build once you start getting the basics of the game down.)

Where Hasten helps is with powers that are on long recharges- a 45-second power will become a 30-second power, a 3-minute power becomes a 2-minute power. [I'm trying to keep the math out of this post- if you like the math , let me know and I'll never shut up.]