One thing that's struck me about powersets in superhero RPGs is the complete lack of fantasy for speedster characters. Speedsters are a staple of the genre: the Flash is a member of the JLA! Quicksilver is a major player in the Marvel Universe! And yet, City of Heroes, Champions Online, and DCUO have all treated superspeed as a travel pool power only.

Both COH and CO had a "Super Reflexes" defense set, but neither did anything fun with the offensive abilities of the speedster. If you wanted to make a speedster, you were stuck with Street Justice, Martial Arts, Kinetic Melee, or Super Strength. Flash isn't a brawler, he isn't a ninja, and he's not Superman.

Ask yourself: which is more common in comic books: the speedster or the bubble projector?

Superspeed melee would be an awesome opportunity for fantastic animations structured around blindingly fast strikes, multiple hits, whirlwinds, tornadoes, etc. It would be FUN!

Right now, Valiance is in a similar spot-- we've got Street Brawling, Super Strength, and Martial Arts. Those aren't speedsters though! I would love to see Valiance lead the charge on expanding super speed beyond a simple Pool Power.

Why not extend that idea to allow people to build for super speed ranged themes as well? if I'm super fast and can also shoot energy bolts, why shouldn't the game allow me to make that?

ZeeHero wrote:
That sounds like an Energy Projection character with Superspeed as a travel power. Or are you talking about custom animations for every Powerset? Because that's beyond the scope of this thread. I'm talking specifically about a speedster-theme melee Power Set.

Animations for a super speed melee powerset could include a lot of afterimages, like blurry extra fists floating in the air as you throw 10,000 punches within one second.

ZeeHero wrote:
I agree. There could be a ton of fun animation work in this set.

I remember playing a character with three flurry power: Flurry from the Speed set, Sands of Mu (veteran) and Shadow Maul. I think I had a second Sands of Mu for a while from the appropriate story arch, which gave me a full cycle of flurry mauls. Was a lot of fun but not really suitable for teams that required you to play optimally. And the animation could have been better, certainly. But what specific powers should we clamor for besides different versions of flurry?
Offhand I can think of an armor-ignoring attack, like the DC speedsters' phase-through thing. Ignoring or greatly diminishing damage-mitigation type powers would be a pretty powerful but somewhat situational higher-level power. A short to mid-range static lightning attack would also be something you didn't start with, if we're talking a primarily melee-based power set. The basic flurry-style speedster attacks should have a bonus against evasive defense, unlike the phase power, so they would complement each other. Another situational power would be the equivalent of combat teleport, or possibly a fixed transposition that placed you behind your enemy, temporarily out of their reach, and instantly initiates a surprise flurry attack. Again situational, at it would not be smart to do this to an enemy standing in a group of enemies. Good against bosses though. I am sure there are many other possibilities.

This is a subject I have been working on for a bit, we are not ready to release any details because the backbone to how this will work with the archetype/primary/secondary/travel powers is all still a WIP. But do not worry, Bubble Projection does not mean speedster power sets is out of our wheel house.

Don't worry, you will be able to playing a speedster in Valiance Online and it will be epic.

alltrueist wrote:
DCUO actually treated their travel powers more like powers. you could get super speed attacks (and flying and athletic ones. it REALLY needed teleport >.< )

out of all the games i think it treated travel powers the best, and would love something more akin to that.

sersi wrote:
The problem with DCUO's travel powers is if you wanted special abilities from acrobatics, they were always going to be batman-gadget themed. which was really stupid and didn't allow for much choice.

Jaximus wrote:
You guys are awesome. Thanks for listening to feedback. The speedster is a core superhero fantasy, and I can't wait to see it done justice.

ZeeHero wrote:
not saying its perfect. just out of the ones we've seen, its the one i think did it the best.

i think city of heroes did travel powers best, nothing like hovering around poping in and out with teleport, then hitting the ground popping super speed and covering strait lines fast/stealthing through maps to the end.

so much utility in so much fun taking 4 power slots total sure(5 really cause of recall friend) but one of those was hasten, then fitness tree and you still had plenty of room for attacks and defences cause with hasten you had great cool downs. i had multiple chars that used variatons of that combo, with a temp jetpack pack and a vet 30 sec jump pack.

another great combo for say brutes that needed a lot of secondary defences you could take combat jumping and hasten + super speed with temporary rocket packs as backup giving you ability to stealth content and also jump up the side of almost any building pretty easily and where you actually need to get altitude you would use a min or 2 of temp power

i had one or 2 that had super jump at least 1 stalker, but many had SS for the stealth utility, a couple like my stone brute just had teleport self recall friend and some of my trollers and such only had TP and hover and would rely on someone with SS and TP or TP and stealth to pull them to the action.

the biggest limiting factor on travels was where the utility value of them stopped equaling the value of something from your primary or secondary or a non travel pool power like fitness or leadership so it varied nicely from character to character

Along the same lines, a teleporter type powerset (ranged?) where you jump in to strike and out to your casting point would be awesome to see!

Maybe even an evasion type defense powerset where you teleport in order to evade an incoming blow!