The Stamina Crunch

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Editor's Note: This guide was written in January 2009 before Fitness was made Inherent. Some of the advice in this guide does not apply to characters with Inherent Fitness.

Overview

I have seen so many people complain about having to skip over a bunch of powers in order to have Stamina and a travel power (in this example, we're using Super Jump) by level 20-22. I felt it was time to throw things at people. How could you guys have missed it?! I thought of this tactic immediately when announced...before we could even play with it!

Multiple Builds

This feature was added in Issue 13. This allows your character to have more than one build (currently it is limited to two, or "Dual Builds", but could be expanded in the future, though no dev comment says yea or nay).

Example Builds

Let's pretend we have a Fire/Fire Blaster. First we'll build up the "normal way", taking Stamina and travel power prerequisites, then we will build up with the intention of switching over at level 20 or 22 to the second build.

The Stamina Crunch

We'll build this character up to level 22 the "normal" way first:

NORMAL

Fire Blast (Level 1), Ring of Fire (L1), Fire Sword (L2), Combustion (L4), SWIFT (L6), COMBAT JUMPING (L8), Fire Sword Circle (L10), Fire Ball (L12), SUPER JUMP (L14), HEALTH (L16), Blaze (L18), STAMINA (L20).

This means that a whole THREE POWERS are taken up by utility powers that don't really do very much for you, they're just lead-ups to TWO MORE powers that aren't available until 1/5 the way into your character's career! (Yes, level 20 is generally considered about 1/5 the way through progression...progression is heavily weighted toward the higher end levels...the halfway mark for XP is somewhere around level 40!!)

No Crunch Here

Well....Issue 13 introduced Multiple Builds! This means, since players have access to a fly and jump pack from Safeguards/Mayhems, and villains have access to the repurchasable fly pack in Grandville, you can skip your travel power for a little while. And since all Swift/Hurdle/Health do is lead up to Stamina, and that doesn't come until level 20, they're kinda just taking up space, right?

Let's build a character from 1-20 with the intention of switching over to the second build at level 22! We have up to FIVE! extra powers to play with!

DUAL BUILDS

Fire Blast (Level 1), Ring of Fire (L1), Fire Sword (L2), Fire Ball (L4), Combustion (L6), Rain of Fire (L8), Fire Sword Circle (L10), Aim (L12), Fire Breath (L14), Build Up (L16), Blaze (L18), Blazing Aura (L20)

How much more fun would that list of powers be than the previous one? More things to do, faster killing speed, and you don't really lose a WHOLE lot. Heck, you can even substitute SWIFT in for one of the powers if you like the movement speed bonus, or play with random power pools...because it doesn't matter, at level 20 or 22, you're just going to switch over to your second build anyway, so who cares about taking weird options you wouldn't ever have at level 50?

Push it Back

REMEMBER YOUR "POTIONS"!

Three inspirations of the same flavor and level can be combined to create one of another flavor of the same level. Three small reds (or whatever) combine into a small blue, and small blues recover 25% of a character's endurance in one click! Medium blues recover 33%, and big blues recover 50%!

UTILIZE ALL YOUR OPTIONS!

Slot endurance reduction enhancements in your powers, especially low level when you're doing piddly damage, and therefore damage enhancements don't increase damage output by much. Invention Origin Enhancement Sets include set bonuses to boost recovery and boost maximum endurance. Remember, more endurance means the same percentage of recovery rate recovers more at a time! There are special IOs that boost recovery or have a chance to grant endurance to the target of the power. There are accolades that boost maximum endurance. There are Day Jobs that boost recovery and maximum endurance. There is an Empowerment that boosts recovery.

SWITCH WHEN YOU WANT TO!

Feel free to push back the switch by as many levels as you like! One of my characters (plant/rad controller) STILL hasn't picked up Stamina, and she's level 44! She may or may not spec into Stamina sometime down the road, but right now, she has no true need of it. Stamina is useful, it's not required!

The End

MULTIPLE BUILDS...learn it, live it, love it!