Air Superiority

Whack!

Not particularly powerful or cool looking, the main advantage to this power is that it drops an opponent from the air. If flying enemies always tick you off, this may be a power for you. That or if you need a double over-hand attack for your character concept.

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Hover and Fly

Hover and Fly are basically the same as far as the power goes so I'll talk about both of them at the same time.

Goodbye City of Heroes.

The two powers from this pool that you're likely to take are Hover and Fly, and they have most of the same advantages:

• Fun - There are some views and screen captures you can't ever get without fly.
• You can get to places that no one else except Teleporters can (and flying is much easier than accurate teleporting). Tops of statues, tops of buildings, anywhere you please.
  I flew up to the highest building in Crey's Folly to take my final screen capture before deactivating my account. There, Jordan waits till the time that I can return…
  *Sniff*… If you read the tells in the chat window, you can even see my good friend Justice Avatar promising not to forget me .
• Unattended travel - Don't underestimate the power of turning on "run" and walking away while your character flies/hovers to a mission, zone entrance, or whatever. If you have to get up every now and then for a drink, potty break, or to do little things around the house now and then, this is for you.

Yup, it's the Hallows, but I'm not getting hit up here.
• Safe - When traveling through dangerous zones, landing in the wrong place with Super Jump will get you killed. Super Speed has a stealth element, but if you get stuck on a land object (like a dumpster or wall) next to a group of enemies for a few seconds, they could notice you and beat you senseless. With Teleport, you run the risk of running out of endurance or teleporting to a bad spot where some enemies were hiding. With fly, you can go high above all buildings and terrain and just fly.
• Useful to solve the vertical problem of Super Speed - I run most of the way and just before I get to an obstacle, hit the fly power to get over it. Then I turn off the fly power to use the
  speed of Super Speed again. This combination gets you from place to place VERY fast.

Flight helps for the high-up badges.
• Semi invisibility with a stealth power - While Super Speed is the best with stealth powers, in open areas or warehouse or ship missions, flying with Stealth is just as good. I've been able to get to the end of many missions with just hover and Stealth without drawing any fire. The place where this breaks down is in caves where there's usually not enough space to hover over enemies.
• Badge hunting - Finding a certain type of enemy, reaching exploration points, and locating plaques are all easy with Fly. You can also spot Giant Monsters like Babbage, Hydra, Paladin, etc much easier.
• Knockback/knockup protection

Certain powers like those used by Earth Mages (CoT) won't even hit you, but strong attacks that do hit will only make you do a midair flip and you're back into the action again.

Hover

Hover is slow, but can get you anywhere Fly can with far less endurance. It also adds a bonus to your defense. If you take it, but don't want Fly, three slot it with fly Enhancements. Otherwise, save the slots for other powers.

Minimum Slotting

Fly

Nice flying pose :)

Fly uses more endurance which is a problem early on as you'll use more endurance than you gain and run the risk of falling out of the air. However, I really like Fly so I took it as my support power for Super Speed (which I kept for Sneaking purposes).

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With an Endurance Reducer, I can often fight battles with Fly on, but if it's dropping too fast, I switch to Hover until the battle is over or the End has recovered a little.

Group Fly

I don't know that I've ever seen this used. At best, it can be a good way to bring your pets with you, but in group play, it has just about no use. If you're trying to help someone get to a mission or certain location, you're much better off with Recall Friend from the Teleport pool.

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This set was more useful when they allowed the effects to stack if there were two or more people on your team with these powers, but that's changed as of Issue 7.

Note to Masterminds (Villain class). Leadership is great because it affects you and your pets. As someone with a built-in team, this is a primary power pool for you.

Maneuvers

Turning on Maneuvers

Increases the defense of your and any Pet or teammate nearby. For this to be useful, you need to be the kind of person who plays in teams and typically stands near other players. If you're a flyer for example, chances are you won't be near the other players much and this would be kind of a waste of time.

It covers me and my pets with pretty good range.

TIP: Not everyone realizes this but any thing that affects you or your teammates (and pets in CoV) has a small icon next to your name/power bar. If you look in this photo, you can see the purple-colored shield signifying the effect of the Maneuvers power on my power bar and the Power Effects bar of each of my pets that's close enough. This picture will also give you a pretty good idea of the range of the power based on which pets are covered and which aren't.

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Slot with endurance reducers if you find you're running to many Toggles.

Assault

Turning on Assault

Increase your attack and the attack of nearby Pets/players. Get it or don't for the same reason as Maneuvers. The only useful Enhancement to put in it is End Reducers.

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Tactics

Increase your Acc and the Acc of nearby Pets/players. If you've taken either Assault or Maneuvers, make sure to get this power. Imagine being able to drop accuracy from all of your other powers! Not only that, but the team will notice when you're in range or not because of the difference in their hit percentage (especially against high-level opponents).

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Vengeance

Teammate dies, click this power to give your surviving teammates some strong Buffs to damage and defense. You may have seen this power used by Nemesis enemies.

One problem with the power is that it might affect your mentality towards your teammates and you might not be as willing to keep them safe:

• Oh sorry! Forgot to heal you.
• Looks clear! You go first.
• Oops, didn't see that war wolf there…

On the other hand, you'll find that accidents happen or sometimes you'll team with a trigger-happy somebody who rushes in and gets killed. Now, instead of saving them, let them die, use Recall Friend to plot them down in front of you, have the team gather around and use Vengence to start the real battle.

For someone who's used to having powers that affect dead guys (Warshades and Dark Defenders), this is a nice change in that the body you need to use for the power doesn't disappear like enemies. The main challenge is convincing your teammate to STAY THE HELL DEAD and not rez himself until you're ready. Usually the kind of player that rushes into battle without listening to the team will also not pay attention and let you use your power. In that case, if you have stealth powers (or if you don't have recall friend), just sneak close or wait until the team engages the enemies that are standing on you mate's head to use it.

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