Why are keybinds for changing the power trays so popular?

[Garble]

It seems like every guide about Kheldians includes 'essential' keybinds that will change forms and adjust the power tray to match the form.

 

But... why?

 

The game already has a mechanic that will pop-up a temporary tray containing the powers appropriate for the forms. Do people really hate that so much that they need an alternative? 

 

I can understand if it's just a preference thing, but it seems so pervasive that I'm wondering if there's some downside to the pop-up power tray that I'm just not seeing.

[Microcosm]

The pop-up tray didn't exist at shutdown, so guides from before homecoming won't have that. For the rest, it's mostly preference.

[nicoliy]

It also helps for rotations. For example, I use a mmo mouse and order my powers in slots 1-10 by priority. By having it swap trays I know to continue with pressing 1, 2, etc.

[Machariel]

It's a LOT faster for me in practice to just hit Q or E than to bother with putting the power on my tray and then starting to use the pop-up trays.  I actually wish I could disable the pop-up trays, to be honest.

[Sirken1138]

1 hour ago, Machariel said:

I actually wish I could disable the pop-up trays, to be honest.

Can’t you do that at Null the Gull?

[Microcosm]

2 hours ago, Sirken1138 said:

Can’t you do that at Null the Gull?

Yes.

[egoprovince]

Can't you do that with slash-command? I swear I saw somebody post it in the help chat earlier this week..

[Machariel]

12 hours ago, Microcosm said:

Yes.

Learn something every day, thanksss 🤓

 

[Blackbird71]

It's a conservation of keyboard commands for me.  The pop-up tray exists as it's own tray separate from the other numbered trays.  If you activate powers by clicking with the mouse, this may not be a problem.  But if you use key commands, you would have to bind new keys for these powers.

 

Instead, I have my different forms bound into commands that also change my bottom tray to the numbered tray which has the powers for that form.  Then these powers are now activated by my 1-0 keys.  Since changing forms makes other powers inaccessible anyway, there's no point in having these useful keys taken up bu unusable powers while in another form.

 

Changing back to human form is also handled by a keybind that reverts the bottom tray back to tray 1.

[WanderingAries]

Changing trays is extremely valuable for a multiform alt. Yes, it's Very time consuming at first to set it up or if you end up doing a Respec (screenshots and bind files are your friend!), but extremely helpful in practice. I don't think I ever got around to it (had just barely played my V/EATs but sunset), but I know the First thing I did was bookmark everything about it! I still have to redo that now, but it's not so bad Yet because I'm playing a "pure Human" build right now. Well, except for the travel power, but still.

[Redlynne]

While a lot of people do set up tray rotations, those are great ... until they get desynchronized by hitting buttons too fast.  Point being that it's possible to "mess up" tray rotations where you switch trays around with your form switching, even when automated via bindloadfile executables.

 

This is why for my Peacebringer and Warshade builds I decided that I was going to use fixed trays and just simply put all of the form powers in Tray 1, while all the Human+ powers went into Trays 2+, and made that a standardized feature of how I arranged by trays for ALL of my alts (so as to use a common backbone framework for all characters).  You'll see in the respective bind file for each Kheldian that I've got things rigged up like so (this is the Peacebringer side):

 

t "powexectoggleoff White Dwarf$$powexectoggleon Bright Nova"
g "powexectoggleoff Bright Nova$$powexectoggleoff White Dwarf"
b "powexectoggleoff Bright Nova$$powexectoggleon White Dwarf"
1 "powexectray 1 2"
2 "powexectray 2 2"
3 "powexectray 3 2$$powexectray 5 1$$powexectray 1 1"
4 "powexectray 4 2$$powexectray 6 1$$powexectray 2 1"
5 "powexectray 5 2$$powexectray 7 1$$powexectray 3 1"
6 "powexectray 6 2$$powexectray 8 1$$powexectray 4 1"
7 "powexectray 7 2$$powexectray 9 1"
8 "powexectray 8 2"
9 "powexectray 9 2"
0 "powexectray 10 2"

The way this works out in practice is:

The 1 and 2 keys are always going to activate the Human form T1 and T2 powers, respectively, in Tray 2 slots 1 and 2.

The 3-7 keys use a "fall through" system to execute powers.  If in Nova form, the 3-6 powers activate Tray 1 slots 1-4, which is where I put the Nova attack powers.  If in Dwarf form, the 3-7 powers activate Tray 1 slots 5-9, which is where I put the Dwarf attack powers.  But if neither of those forms are active, then the 3-7 keys activate Tray 2 slots 3-7.

I use the T, G and B keys to switch forms.  T goes to Nova, G goes to Human, B goes to Dwarf ... which makes things easy to remember.

 

This whole setup means that I don't need to do any rotating or swapping of trays and I likewise don't have to be loading different bindloadfile control schemes for each form.  It's, ironically, a much "leaner" and more reliable way to control form switching via a single bindloadfile for governing all three forms than an alternative that not only rotates trays but also loads different control scheme bindloadfiles every time you switch forms.  That reliable simplicity gives me a lot more confidence in being able to make FAST form shifts without needing to worry about mucking up my control scheme through needing to make too many updates too quickly resulting in a desync of loading/changing control schemes on the fly (or teleport, or ... you get the idea).