Paragons of Fey Valor

[bargle0]

In a way we do: a d20 is percentile dice in disguise - using 5% increments.

I agree, though, that not every attack at every level in every encounter should end up having a 55% chance to hit. Now, _that_ would be boring!

Of course 55% for every attack would be boring. But 55% should be the baseline under normal conditions. Incompetence is not the same thing as flavor. Incompetence imparts no value to the game except to masochists.

I'm all for reducing the amount of crunch in DDI articles. However, the crunch we get should be good and useful. Bad crunch does nothing but pollute the design space, pollute the interface (Character Builder, Compendium), and create traps for those who are not interested in optimizing. Bad crunch hurts everybody. If the choice is between bad crunch or no crunch, I would rather take the latter.

 

[Marshall]

So the Soaring Rake *is* the class that offers the most flight: spend action point to gain a fly speed until EONT, encounter fly-by attack power, at-will "fly your speed" power and daily "fly speed for you and allies" (not to mention a damage bonus against nonflyers and clumst flyers). All without restriction. Some have posited it as a "Peter Pan" path, but you can have a Chaladin in full plate or an Infernal Hexblade in chainmail flying about.

No, its the class most likely to get you killed because you think you can fly. Both the encounter and the at-will power are "jump" speeds that force you to land or you fall, which wouldnt be bad if the level 11 feature actually worked right. The in-game effect of those powers is "Ignore difficult terrain". Cute, but not even Pixie level flight.
What you're left with is Action Point and the Daily Flight Power. The Daily is cool and a black/blue option for a 20lvl PP power. It would be damn near perfect if the effect and the hit lines were reversed, as-is it reads "Hit target and draw op attack as you fly away". I'd say thats not "as intended".
The Action point and the level 16 should probably be flipped. Then they reinforce the earlier powers and the 20 acts as a party buff.

I see where the Path is trying to go, being able to shoot yourself into the sky to melee with flying opponents would be great but the mechanics of getting there dont fly(pun intended).

 

[Klaus]

No, its the class most likely to get you killed because you think you can fly. Both the encounter and the at-will power are "jump" speeds that force you to land or you fall, which wouldnt be bad if the level 11 feature actually worked right. The in-game effect of those powers is "Ignore difficult terrain". Cute, but not even Pixie level flight.
What you're left with is Action Point and the Daily Flight Power. The Daily is cool and a black/blue option for a 20lvl PP power. It would be damn near perfect if the effect and the hit lines were reversed, as-is it reads "Hit target and draw op attack as you fly away". I'd say thats not "as intended".
The Action point and the level 16 should probably be flipped. Then they reinforce the earlier powers and the 20 acts as a party buff.

I see where the Path is trying to go, being able to shoot yourself into the sky to melee with flying opponents would be great but the mechanics of getting there dont fly(pun intended).

You may dislike the mechanics, but it is the PP that offers the most flight, as I've demonstrated above. It may think it's not flight enough, that's fair. Encounter-long fly speeds only begin to be available to D&D characters at around level 16 (with the daily spell Fly). If you factor in a monetary cost, there's the consumable Elixir of Flying (350 gp), although that only grants a fly speed of 4, or the Winged Boots (which are daily) at level 13. In fact, I'd recommend that even a Soaring Rake buy Winged Boots, not only to give him an additional option for flight, but also for negating any fall damage. It's not mandatory for the path, but can serve to reinforce the concept.

And for an extra bit of fun: none of the Soaring Rake's powers demand that you land at the end of the movement. Get an Immovable Shaft so you can have a perch anywhere you go!

 

[Larrin]

Soaring Rake is a mobility based PP, which is often an odd duck to figure out. The goal is to let you fly. The attacks are just excuses to fly, which makes them likeable if you want to fly, less impressive if you want to actually impact the enemy you hit. Sure you flew without provoking, and at one point you did 2[w], but so what? With CA its something a rogue _could_ want, but it goes down hill from there. opinion: just damage isn't worth even a hexblades time (+dex to dmg), when you could be gaining invisibility or a bonus to defense. In the end its less combat worthy that an unstanced powerstrike at level 1, you just got to make it in a flashy way. Similar story for the daily. you make a boring attack, and for some reason now people can fly. Why? Because its an attack AND its a movement based PP, thats why. They exist for the effects they provide, which makes them feel like utilities, but require you make a diminished combat contribution to activate them, which makes them feel diminished. Thats my complaint. As much fun as flying is, combat should not be ignored.

And if it is to be ignored (or just diminished) you'd better be getting something in return. And in a mobility based PP what you should be getting is mobility. And to my eye it is hard to claim this doesn't give you mobility. You have mobility coming out your eyeballs, dripping off you like pixie dust. If you want to fly often and not rely on items or being X class that gets wings/flight, this gives you that chance. And flying is really good. I've seen it in action, and at times even with my at will teleport of 7 at epic I've thought "I wish i could fly".

To complain that you don't gain permanent fly speed, feels incorrect. That's a [very] valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing; sure, you're more of a Flitting Rake than a Soaring rake, but flitting (let flitting= flying where you must land) is really useful. You just don't treat it the same as you do a fly speed. With a fly speed you're all "I'm hovering/circling 40 feet up, i'll shoot the mage with range 10" or "I charge the flying dragon". This is nice and cool and something that is worth obtaining. But flitting is also good. You'll only kill yourself falling if you're foolish and ignoring your acrobatics and halving of fall damage the PP gives you.

On a simple level, its similar to teleport, you can ignore difficult terrain, jumps, climbs. In fact, you can fly places you can't teleport to because you can fly around corners and what not. (teleport is all around better, no question, but you'll notice that teleport speeds are even less common than fly speeds, and a PP that simply replace the word fly with teleport in this PP would be insane beyond belief). Flitting is better than walking, better than jumping, better than climbing. It is an upgrade to movement, and one that others will be jealous of if you have a chance to show it off. The use for flitting is to see be able to get to any square in your movement range, going over enemies, fences, chasms with ease to get yourself to the precise location you want to be on the ground (Not hovering over the battle). Teleport does it better, but the investment cost is VERY high (expensive item-wise to get a range equivalent to your speed, assassins and warlocks have the market on doing it reliably at will). This is good movement at a good price.

I've seen enough 'flitting' about to know that for a mobile type character, this is a useful tool, very useful. I would take this PP for a mobility based character with a fey flying feel. My complaint about the attack powers stands, but I would still enjoy playing this PP immensly.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, its the class most likely to get you killed because you think you can fly. Both the encounter and the at-will power are "jump" speeds that force you to land or you fall, which wouldnt be bad if the level 11 feature actually worked right. The in-game effect of those powers is "Ignore difficult terrain". Cute, but not even Pixie level flight.
What you're left with is Action Point and the Daily Flight Power. The Daily is cool and a black/blue option for a 20lvl PP power. It would be damn near perfect if the effect and the hit lines were reversed, as-is it reads "Hit target and draw op attack as you fly away". I'd say thats not "as intended".
The Action point and the level 16 should probably be flipped. Then they reinforce the earlier powers and the 20 acts as a party buff.

I see where the Path is trying to go, being able to shoot yourself into the sky to melee with flying opponents would be great but the mechanics of getting there dont fly(pun intended).

You seriously lack any amount of build creativity if you can't make great use of this, really. First of all the attack is just an attack, so what? There are a billion and one things that make attacks worthwhile, and a vast number of them have nothing to do with what power you happen to be using. You don't want to be subject to an OA? Feh, there are a billion ways to ignore or negate the ability of enemies to make them. Tack a 'knock prone' or a push onto your attack, at paragon that's so easy it is a laugh. There are tons of interrupts and whatnot that will deal with that issue too. I can find any number of items that will do it and not even break a sweat.

If you're after pure unadulterated "kill 'em fast" then yup, you can just take one of the half-dozen best PPs for that if you want. There's more to the game than that and its a pity if people can't see that, but its their loss.

As for the whole issue of different powers being more useful for different characters. We're not discussing some power that has some ridiculous triggering conditions. Indeed there are some of those (though I will note that a substantial number of them ARE actually pretty good for the character that can regularly arrange for that situation to come up). There are a residue of those that are poor, but that wasn't what I was talking about. You can find oodles of powers that are purple, and quite a substantial fraction of those that some handbook writer deemed 'red' that are still quite effective with some builds, and many are even noted as such. There's also substantial disagreement as to what rankings various powers should have. I've seen players that are quite adept at using any number of powers that didn't happen to appeal to some handbook writer. I think your ideas of what makes a good build and what will work with it are quite narrow. In fact I've built some amazingly effective PCs using options that are regularly relegated to the dust bin.

What we have here is a good solid PP that in even a casual build will be fun and in many situations tactically advantageous. I think it would be quite easy to build a really effective character around it as well if you want to do that. Its easy to say "well, it would be BETTER if only..." but the goal is not to build just overpowered optimum mechanics. Flight can be a real serious boon and so yep, there are some checks on it here that will mean either you're going to have to work in other synergistic elements into your character build or just accept that sometimes you'll be able to really do something super cool and other times your PP is just not going to be a huge payoff. At worst it is substantially better than a number of other PPs I can name, and at best MUCH MUCH better.