Never, ever, ever design a Villain again that uses Super-Jump as a travel power. You can tell Arachnos is in charge of the Mercy Island because the place is a veritable spider-web of buildings, cat-walks, piping runs, towers, and other things that make getting from Point A to Point B an exercise in frustration.
I imagine Super-Speed would be similarly frustrating, given the street layouts. Teleport works better, but it’s a PitA in and of itself.
Fly, baby. Fly.
Skip to content
***Dave Does the Game
Huh…
Not that much of a problem with SJ, but I guess I just got use to it. Yes, Mercy is the worst.
Super Speed sucketh muchly except in places where you can travel by water.
I only took SJ with Mirror to get KB protection from Acrobatics. I’m half-tempted to redesign him to use Hover/Fly. With some flight speeds, Hover will give me some protection.
The build I am using is one without Stamina. The idea is to use Consume and Dark Consumption to regain enduarance. After last nights battle of Red and Purple, I am wondering if this build needs a tweak. I was running near empty more often than I liked.
01 : Fire Shield endred(01) damres(3) damres(3) damres(5)
01 : Shadow Punch acc(01) endred(5) dam(34) dam(37) dam(37)
02 : Smite acc(02) endred(7) dam(34) dam(37) dam(39)
04 : Shadow Maul acc(04) endred(7) dam(27) dam(29) dam(29)
06 : Blazing Aura acc(06) endred(9)
08 : Siphon Life acc(08) endred(9) hel(11) hel(11) hel(27) recred(40)
10 : Healing Flames recred(10) recred(13) recred(13) hel(15) hel(15) hel(17)
12 : Combat Jumping endred(12)
14 : Super Jump jmp(14)
16 : Plasma Shield endred(16) damres(17) damres(19) damres(19)
18 : Dark Consumption acc(18) recred(21) recred(21) recred(23)
20 : Consume acc(20) recred(23) recred(25) recred(25)
22 : Acrobatics endred(22)
24 : Swift runspd(24)
26 : Health hel(26) hel(39) hel(40)
28 : Soul Drain acc(28) recred(31) recred(31) recred(31)
30 : Boxing acc(30)
32 : Midnight Grasp acc(32) endred(33) dam(33) dam(33) dam(34)
35 : Tough endred(35) damres(36) damres(36) damres(36)
38 : Fiery Embrace recred(38) recred(39) recred(40)
If I swap CJ/SJ for Hover/Fly, and poke things a bit to get Stamina by 20 or 22…Time to put my brain back into the jar and hook up the jumper cables.
Mercy sucks, yes. But Cap and Sharkhead are pretty nasty, too, in terms of things to snag you up.
Mr. R was sucking air last night. I had to drop Unyielding most of the battles because of the end drain, and I was resting more for endurance than health.
Your ideas for Smoking Mirror (nice name, btw — and I just flashed on where you pulled it from and the whole “steal your heart” thing, ha!) are interesting but — a brute/meleer using Hover in battle? I can’t imagine doing that.
Sure, I get caught on window ledges, under catwalks, and on roof eaves, but when I’m not getting stuck? Fun, fun, fun!
Yeah, fly is probably better, but I LIKE super jump. And it makes a better kind of sense for my ninja than a real super-y power like fly. Oh — and I’m avoiding stamina, too. If the point of a stalker is to be sneaky and stealthy, I shouldn’t need the full on endurance boost of stamina. Pllus, you know, I’m running with a kinetics villain most of the time…
Hmm… from top to bottom:
Kethos: Super-jump. Needed it for Acrobatics and honestly, I was so damned happy to get a move power (and I was in Port Oakes at the time, which is harmless for SJump) it wasn’t a problem. Only time I’ve been in Mercy since then was for … that one semi-Ghost Widow arc, and by then I was jumping so far that it didn’t matter. Why in the heck would the annoyance of MERCY be a problem for a travel power?
Markov: Siphon Speed, which is basically Super Speed and which in turn is well-and-truly a pain in Sharkshead, with the huge strip-mining pit and all that business. Later (28) he’ll have inertial reduction, which is basically AoE Superjump, so that’s what I’ll have on him, basically.
Dolmen: Super-jump, again, for the Acrobatics.
Damosel Distress: Gravity-powers, so she’ll have flight.
Kitara: Dunno
Omicron Black 5: He’s a Malta gunslinger look-alike, so teleport.
Mister Brightside: Really, he ought to have heavily-hurdled Super-speed, just for the concept and to complete the whole travel-power set.
As far as zones go? Heh. You g’head take Flight to worry about Mercy… I’ll take Super-jump and not be annoyed in Shadow-Shard-sized Nerva Archipelago where I’ll be spending a LOT more of my characters’ careers. For the really annoying places (Grandville), I’ve got temp fly powers on my higher levels guys, each with 90 minutes of use.
Super Jump is much, much, much better than Super Speed! My first (and highest-level) villain has SS, and it’s a royal pain. You can’t get anywhere. There are just so many danged walls blocking the paths, you wind up going a mile out of your way to get anywhere. And that Pit… Ugh. As BD points out, swimming around an island is often the best way to get somewhere with SS.
Oh, and it looks like he’ll be taking Stamina at 30, especially with Mayhem Missions. The non-stop carnage is a real drain on the old bluebar.
The idea is to use the knockback “protection” of hover– mid-air flip rather than actual knockback.
With 3 flight speeds, hover is close to base run speed. I’d have to check it again on Mal. I do know that I can use hover and expect to get a heal where I need it, unlike my old one-slot hover. Now if only I remember to turn it on…
The question is do I need Stamina by 20? If not, I can tweak the later build and start working towards it now.
Mirror does have a temp fly power, and that will serve as needed. SJ keeps my life interesting–except when I get caught in something and set upon by angry mobs. Unless I am underpowered for that zone, I survive the experience.
Thanks, Dave. (I do need to have a few RP emote macros for each character, so I can do things when I am too tired to type…)
I actually have 29 in-combat flavor-texts for Mr Ravenous (“Take out this $target? I *love* take-out!” — and discovered last night I hadn’t actually implemented them yet (just need to load up the new keybinds for him).
If I make Wednesday the normal CoV night for us, I’ll definitely do more of that.
My toons and travel powers.
Super Jump: Puck, Zazi, Vene, Bane, Ring
Super Speed: Zot and 19. I couldn’t come up with a reason for 19 to have any other type of travel power RP wise, and for a stalker SS just made sense. Though I had to take Hurdle and Combat Jump so I can get over things. Yes, I did not know that you could slot Sprint with a Jump enhancement. So, now Zot is like the long jump Champ if the islands. She doesn’t get much elevation, but she goes for great amounts of distance.
Teleport (most with hover for comfort TP’ing 🙂 ): Cuinas, Dubh, Gaz.
TP/Fly: Both Warshades. Fly is slow, but you can type while moving. ;P
And yes, I know that you can make fly faster, but I refuse to put more than the one standard slot into a travel power.
I prefere TP, but I just have a hard time putting it on any origin other than the Magic types (I have Gaz push buttons on her belt).
Okay, my primary toons and their travel powers (“The game the whole family can play!”):
Fly: Psi-clone, Torchielle*, Fazenda**
SJ: Velvet, Lynn, Torchielle*, Ho Ho, Mr Azure, Mister Ravenous
TP: Fazenda**, Mister Thorne
*Just changed from SJ to Fly.
**Changed a bit back from TP to Fly.
Lady Zebra will be SS (if I ever get her there)
In most cases, the power is dictated by RP. I can’t imagine, for example, changing Ravvy to Fly; not only would it look ridiculous, but it makes no sense for his powers. But I’ve found RP ways to get two characters over to Fly because, dammit, I like it best — it’s the “lazy” power (or the “conversational” power), not to mention conceptually just being too cool for words.