Which Power Ups to use?

[Banjofan284]

My usual power ups are Jackpot, Runaway Notes, and Super Instrument (which varies depending on the song). The runaway notes give you 10,000 point for each completed section, which works out well for me.

[thatmarkguy]

Personally, I usually use Bandmate, Blast Notes, and one of the super tracks. With that, had quite a lot of high ranks, and some top ranks.

Really? I find bandmate+blast to be completely incompatible. If the bandmate hits a blast and removes the note you were about to play, so ends your time in Blitz. And it's often too much info to track to watch upcoming notes both in your lane, the other lanes you're thinking of switching to, _and_ the bandmate lane. The benefit of Bandmate should be that you can stop caring about that lane for a little while.

[CharityDiary]

Really? I find bandmate+blast to be completely incompatible. If the bandmate hits a blast and removes the note you were about to play, so ends your time in Blitz. And it's often too much info to track to watch upcoming notes both in your lane, the other lanes you're thinking of switching to, _and_ the bandmate lane. The benefit of Bandmate should be that you can stop caring about that lane for a little while.

And really, not caring about a lane will probably result in your score dropping.

So maybe you shouldn't use Bandmate when going for high scores =\

[Wave57]

Depends on the song.

If it is a song where there are a lot of solos, or the difficulty is minimal, I will use Jackpot, Runaway Notes, and a super instrument.

If it is a super fast and difficult song, I will use bandmate, runaway notes, and super instrument.

Runaway notes is incredible since it gives you 10,000 when you successfully do it. It combos well with bandmate since if the runaway notes swap over to that track, you can focus on getting some more OD or getting your multipliers up.

[BohemianMatt]

Bandmate and Blast notes works well for me. Bandmate helps keep those pesky drum/vocals lanes occupied while I focus on the others. I usually leave slot 3 open to save a few coins.

[VAgentZero]

Really? I find bandmate+blast to be completely incompatible. If the bandmate hits a blast and removes the note you were about to play, so ends your time in Blitz.

/agree

I have the best success with Bandmate, Jackpot, or Road Rage, Flame Notes, Blast Notes, or Runaway Notes (but usually Runaway Notes), and Super-Whatever. Still not super-jazzed about Synchrony, but that could just be because I'm not using it right. I'm also terrible with Pinball and Shockwave. (I also don't ever seem to have much luck with Super Vocals either, even when the song has a high difficulty on vocals. There's always another track that has more notes I find.)

Comboing them up, for me, Bandmate + Blast Notes = fail, and Jackpot + Runaway = fail, so I go Bandmate + Runaway, Jackpot + Blast or Flame, Road Rage + whatever, and super-whatever. Yeah, I realize I basically said "all of them", and that's pretty much true. It very, very much depends on the song.

[CharityDiary]

/agree

I have the best success with Bandmate, Jackpot, or Road Rage, Flame Notes, Blast Notes, or Runaway Notes (but usually Runaway Notes), and Super-Whatever. Still not super-jazzed about Synchrony, but that could just be because I'm not using it right. I'm also terrible with Pinball and Shockwave. (I also don't ever seem to have much luck with Super Vocals either, even when the song has a high difficulty on vocals. There's always another track that has more notes I find.)

Comboing them up, for me, Bandmate + Blast Notes = fail, and Jackpot + Runaway = fail, so I go Bandmate + Runaway, Jackpot + Blast or Flame, Road Rage + whatever, and super-whatever. Yeah, I realize I basically said "all of them", and that's pretty much true. It very, very much depends on the song.

Very true.

I find that Road Rage + Blast Notes + Super Guitar is a good enough combination to get top scores on pretty much every song. However, if you're going to go for #1, Jackpot would be more useful, as long as you put enough work into memorizing the optimal overdrive paths.

[wealldiebadly]

Depends on the song for me. I usually use Bandmate and Flame Notes along with one of the Super instruments which varies from song to song. I'll use Jackpot on songs that I feel comfortable enough that I won't mess up. Finally, on tracks with one or two lanes (maybe three), Pinball almost breaks the game. Let me put it to you this way. My first Gold Star in this game was on Fur Elise, just a bass and keyboard track. Got 220k on it. 100k of that score was from the pinball.

EDIT: Just tried the Pinball powerup on a single-track song (Upstream by Cory Wong). 8 mil. Wow. And not even near the top of the leaderboard. The one minor setback from this is the pinball bouncing around throughout the entire song really messes with your eyes.

This is really cool tip, thanks for the heads up. One of the reasons I started this thread was I was having trouble gold starring a song. I tried your trick on Landslide (which only has a guitar and vox part), and it worked really well. That said, I then used bandmate and the flame notes and get an even higher score. Weird.

[VAgentZero]

Okay, I've got some more playtime under my belt, so I can better point to a few combinations that have been working consistently for me now.

Jackpot + Blast Notes has been a constant winner for me in mid-to-long songs with predictable patterns. If you're playing a long song, I've found powerups that give you a multiplier to points earned (like Point Doubler, Jackpot, Bandmate, and Super-Whatever) are much more valuable than powerups that give you a fixed score like Pinball, Flame Notes, Runaway Notes, etc., and if you can get away with using Jackpot, it's huge. Jackpot is even more useful to me in songs with a lot of less-than-impossible solos as well. I have a suspicion that Jackpot + Synchrony would be a good combination, but again, Synchrony's best application eludes me. The main reason I like Blast Notes with Jackpot is that it stays out of your way, and you don't have to chase it around the track (like Flame Notes or Pinball) which causes you to run the risk of dropping your Jackpot streak.

Shockwave + Pinball are great for dense tracks. I'm looking at you, Through The Fire And Flames.

Bandmate + Flame Notes or Bandmate + Runaway Notes are pretty decent ones for me when a song has a lot going on, but isn't super dense (or super-long), or when the tracks are all tricky and I can't rely on one for Jackpot.

[nascarfan19]

I always use road rage, and on difficult songs I'll choose an instrument power-up that I think would best match the song. I NEVER use a note power-up, that really screws up my strategy.