Setting Up Your Power Tray
It’s important to level up and get new powers, but another thing to keep in mind is how your powers are arranged in your power tray. One might not think power arrangement is so important—-they’re all within reach, just by hitting the numbers, or using Alt or Control plus a number, right?
Well, they are all within reach, and yet, in the heat of battle, or just after leveling up and setting up your power tray differently, sometimes fingers forget which key is the “PWN ATTACK” key and which key is the “Weak Attack” key. Having an organizational pattern for your powers can help you stay on top of enemies and not lose your rhythm of attack.
For my characters, I do my best to set my 1-0 powers as my most frequently-accessed powers. 1-5 are usually my primary attack powers, 9 is usually Fly/Jump Pack, and 0 is usually Sprint. 6, 7, and 8 fluctuate depending on what level my character currently is and how many attack powers I have. Usually, the power on 1 is my leading attack—-the one I use to “start the party,” in other words. For Austara (my Tank), her 1 power is Ablating Strike, a devastating Dual Blades attack that reduces the opponent’s Defense, making it easier for her to hit them with her other 5 attacks. For Milara (my Controller), I have experimented with using her Group Sleep power as 1 and one of her Group Immobilize powers as 1. (I’m still fiddling around with how I want her power tray set up, since Controllers play very differently from Tanks.)
As for my Alt and Control power trays, I usually put lesser-used but still good powers on Alt and occasional powers on Control. Toggle powers like Rise to the Challenge, Combat Jumping, and others are good for an Alt tray, as well as Rest, and occasional powers like Pocket D Teleporter, Mission Teleporter, and Mystic Fortune usually hang out on my Control tray.
This is the system that works for me, but this is simply an example. You will need to experiment with each of your characters to try out different systems and see which one works best with your playstyle. It may be that you end up having different tray setups for each character, and it may be that you set all your characters up basically the same way. To each his (or her) own!