Seigmoraig

WASD is most certainly not just an MMORPG thing, basically every game that has you control a character in first or third person will use that layout by default. The advantage of using it instead of the arrow keys is that you have easier access to many more buttons so you can avoid having to click on powers. This is why the buttons on your hotbar are numbered, when you use WASD, your fingers are close to the number keys. You then set up the powers you use most often on 1,2,3,4 so you can activate them with minimal movement. In addition to the number keys you also have quick and easy access to every button around the WASD keys that you can bind to other powers that you use semi often to suppliment your 1,2,3,4 powers in addition to CTRL and ALT combinations. On most full sized keyboards the arrow keys are seperate without any other keys around them which makes it a bit harder to find and press your keybinds since you need to look away from the game. CoH is a very easy game where anything works and there isn't that many buttons that you need to be pressing at any time. Some MMORPGs like Final Fantasy 14, even with it's generous global cooldown, have many, many more buttons that you need to be pressing and it would be a nightmare to remap everything to work on an arrow key setup while maintaining any semblance of performance Please keep in mind that I'm not telling you how to play by any means, just explaining why WASD is by default in MMORPGs, First Person Shooters and almost every game that has you move around a single character in a 3D plane.

Yes it's faster if you only have 1 character that you are carrying and there is no reason to turn off XP no farmers

The best thing to do at 50 is roll another character

Omega Maneuver. It looks really cool but it's really bad

Build Up + Aim + T9 never gets old !

Remind me never to let you drive in a snowstorm

The new Seismic Blast set is a great addition the the ranged damage AT. It's fun to play and it has good powers. The problem though is when you aren't playing Seismic Blast. When you are playing a melee class in any sort of closed space area, all you see are Upthrusts in your screen. If there are more than one SBers in the team you can barely see anything else. Seeing as it is new and all a lot of people are playing it, playing melee has become really painful to the point that I'm not sure the game is better with this set in it. There either needs to be an option to minimum FX the Upthrust from Null the Gull or the animation needs to be toned down somewhat

Maybe on your server it's different but on Everlasting it's not implied that any and every TF run is a speed run. If I run a Yin TF and it's not advertised as a speed run, there is no skipping straight to Clamor, same with ITF. If I advertise a Speed Run then it's implied that we will be skipping all available content. The XP/hour is most certainly diminished in a speed run because we are skipping most of the mobs in mission 3 and 4. Not sure in which fantasy world you live in but forming a TF takes time, easily 10-15 mins when the TF in question isn't the weekly TF, so speeding the run without a doubt greatly impacts the XP gain of lower level characters. Honestly I don't even understand how speeding a TF hurts XP is even a topic of debate

I have run and hosted ITF regularly for months and no, sorry this is not a normal tactic unless it is called as a speed run. What part of doing the strict minimum of kills to finish the mission make it anything other than a speed run ? The point of running ITF with a character that is under level 50 is to get XP, not merits/hour and skipping 75% of the mission cuts a huge chunk of my XP, especially if the run is not stated as being a speed run and you didn't ask if it was cool to skip

Unless you are playing solo, you shouldn't really use the assassin's strike from stealth, it just takes too much time. Any attack you use from stealth will still get a guaranteed crit so you don't really need it. Just keep it for your unstealthed attacks and everything will be much smoother Stalkers are (imo) the least new player friendly melee class. If you want to properly try out a melee build, Scrappers and Tankers are where it's at

What really grinds my gears is when you start a taskforce when below level 50. Taskforce is not advertised as being a rush or fast or whatever and somebody rushes to the end anyways without asking anyone's opinion and either just finishes it to group teleports the team there. A few weeks ago this happened on the last mission of ITF, not everybody was even in the door yet and the cut scene was already playing and he ATT'd us to the final boss without asking. I'm not even ashamed to say that we (RL friend who had lead to make the mission level 50) immediately kicked him out of the team and asked everyone left to fly back to the start so we could do the mission normally.

Now that they reduced the casting time on Full Auto and Ignite you now only have time to get a drink while the animation happens instead of having time to go to the grocery store (4sec to 2 and 2.5 sec cast time and even then it's still on the long side), the main problem with Assault Rifle is still there: It doesn't have Build Up. Pairing it with Devices is even worst... that one doesn't have Aim... People do it for thematic reasons (ie: Duke Nukem/Rambo cosplays) more so that it being good. The lack of Build-Up, Lethal being the most resisted type in the game and the awful animation times on the powers just makes it a bad set for anyone not looking to cosplay as GI Joe. If you want to play Assault Rifle, have a look at a Gun Crab build, you get all the gun shoot pew pew action AND Venom Grenade which is one of the best powers in the game

You need to use Aim more often, it is a great boost to damage. Whenever I go for my T9 Nuke I pop Aim and Build Up for the extra boom factor

Range enhancements are amazing in cone powers, but they do little to nothing in anything else. Swift and Hurdle can't take anything other than +run speed/+jump, not something that helps you deal damage, not to mention that these are incidental bonuses you get from slotting defensive/heal/endurance sets. I usually reserve CJ/Hover for single enhancements that gives global bonuses since the rest of what they give it tiny. Adding procs to an Iceblast type power is pretty basic for dealing damage and I don't see why you wouldn't do it while still getting maneuvers, tough and weave

The key point here is "When people talk about builds" If you aren't talking about your build we can't know what you are doing with it. When people talk about builds they are usually talking about how to optimize it and defcaps are the first step to optimizing a build