What's your Powerup loadout?

[Traycer]

I'm not sure this works--I've watched my wife play Jackpot with Blast Notes and the Blast Notes points are not added to the Jackpot (I don't think she even gets jackpot points for the base notes destroyed by the blast.)

You do get the 300% Jackpot bonus for the note you land on. You see the triple value added to the Jackpot score at the center of the screen. However, the collateral damage from a Blast note is not part of the Jackpot score, but it is counted towards the normal game score. Keep an eye on that counter (the regular one in the upper-right) next time... it is normally frozen while Jackpot is in effect, unless you destroy other notes with a Blast.

That being said, I was talking about Jackpot + Flame.

[Traycer]

I'll have to take another look today while she's playing; I thought they were either 1200 or 1500.

Flame notes are always worth 1500 base, as far as I can tell. It is not affected by the track multiplier, and appears to be constant no matter the track or song difficulty. It is affected by power-up multipliers: Super (2250 points), Doubler (3000 points), Jackpot (4500 points). They stack too, so a flame note with 2X on a Super track is 4500 points, while Jackpot + Super + Flame is 6750 points. I watched a replay of one of my games, and 6750 points are indeed added to the jackpot, at least for the two or three seconds I could keep it up.

[jaystonepk]

Road Rage/Blast/Guitar works well on metal songs or with lots of notes at the same time. Blast is nice because you can level up a track without actually playing on it. Bandmate/Flame and Jackpot/Flame I like as well. I also haven't quite mastered pinball yet. I find I spend way to much time watching the ball and not playing the track, and misjudge what lane the pinball will fall in about half the time.

[joseph5185]

Great discussion thread..

Question:

If I use band mate in conjunction with super "guitar" .. if the band mate is playing guitar will I receive the super 1.5x bonus while activated?

To Apples or any other Moderator here in terms of power-up "load-outs"

Would it be possible to have "classes" if you will (think of .. I dare say it .. Call of Duty" that way switching between different load outs would be easier?

I know it's not a big deal or that much effort, but I'm just trying to contribute with my ideas.

It would appear that band mate + flame notes + super is the most powerful layout.

And Apples also pointed out another great point in terms of using bandmate on a difficult solo such as "Cult of Personality".

Best of luck everyone

=)

[madcapmatt]

I switch it up between Road Rage and Bandmate depending on the song. Road Rage works great on the songs with walls of notes on all instruments. Doesn't even have to be blistering metal songs. A good example of a slower song would be "Edge of Seventeen (Just Like the White Winged Dove)".

Bandmate is a great powerup to use when you're almost at the level cap for a at a checkpoint because it will hit notes just after the check point and knock it up another level before crossing over the checkpoint.

EDIT: I just realized joseph seems to have the same question I did...that's what i get for not reading all the posts.

[madcapmatt]

Has anybody tried using Shockwave on "Shockwave" yet? I imagine it works well on it but I haven't yet.

[KMO_2000]

If I use band mate in conjunction with super "guitar" .. if the band mate is playing guitar will I receive the super 1.5x bonus while activated?

Yes. But note that the extra x0.5 points earned are added to the "Bandmate" total on the end screen, not "Super Guitar". Which has caused a little confusion, with people seeing 0 or nearly 0 under "Super Guitar".

[Epsilon82]

My baseline loadout is virtually always Road Rage/Blast Notes/Super Guitar. There are rare cases where I know in advance that a different Super instrument will be better, but usually I stick with Guitar unless I don't get Gold Stars, which is pretty rare. Most of the times when I only get 5 stars, it's because there's some real weirdness with the multipliers or it becomes obvious that Jackpot would be much better. But for now I'm just focusing on playing everything in my collection at least once, and then I'll worry about drilling down and maximizing scores later on.

What makes this loadout particularly effective for "sight reads" is that the Road Rage and Blast Notes combo makes keeping all of your multipliers up MUCH easier, because not only does Road Rage pick up random notes in all lanes and add to it, but it can hit Blast Notes as well. This frees me up to mostly just be able to chase OD phrases/Blast Notes across all the lanes and rarely do I have to worry about having any one lane lagging way behind.

I have a feeling that once I start chasing specific Gold Stars for the few songs I don't get them or pushing up leaderboards, I'll play the song once with this basic loadout and try to get a sense for where reasonably busy but hittable phrases are, and then use that knowledge with Jackpot on subsequent attempts.

[joseph5185]

Yes. But note that the extra x0.5 points earned are added to the "Bandmate" total on the end screen, not "Super Guitar". Which has caused a little confusion, with people seeing 0 or nearly 0 under "Super Guitar".

Ty.. I could see how that would cause confusion.