How do I deal with SS/SD and the 3 clicks.

Looking for advice from anyone who played ss/sd here. Rage/Active Defense/Hasten, which one do you prefer on auto, and how did you make it easier for you to manage the other two?

I have several shield toons, and plenty of SS toons as well, so I know the strenghts of both sets, but I also know the downside which is that I only have one auto-fire option, but I want rage, hasten and Active Defense of course.

I also know that it really sucks to have 2 of them crashing (rage and hasten) which can make things really difficult if it already is abit dodgy.

Basically: Is SS/SD worth the effort, or should I just look for another primary?

While I can't claim to any expert knowledge, my train of thought leads me to believe that Hasten would be the best option for autofire.

Logic follows:

• Rage will only be needed when actively fighting.
  Meaning that you don't actually need it between spawns.
  So if it runs out while you're moving from one spawn to another, no problem.
• Active Defense will only be needed when fighting enemies with mez or defense debuff.
  So you don't really need it on all the time, you just have to remember to use it before battle.
• When you DO need Active Defense or want Rage however, you're definately going to need those two abilities available for use and fully recharged.
• Hasten will be boosting the recharge of Active Defense and Rage while you're in between fights.
  And if Hasten runs out, and you forget to reactivate it, then it's going to be longer for the other two abilities to be available.

Punching slowly will not kill you.
Punching lightly will not kill you.
Getting mezzed will drop AaO, and suppress all your defenses. You will die.

I put Active Defense on auto. I bind Rage (and all Build-Up style powers) to the thumb button on my mouse. I bind Hasten to an easily accessible key on my second row of power keys (I use a ZBoard Fang, it has two rows of buttons above the movement keys).

Yes, mez protection is the most important, without a doubt. I spent some time thinking about the binds, and was trying to find a way around the limitations of binding multiple powers to one key. I was thinking something like I can rebind the keys that executes the 3 most commonly used attacks to also auto Rage, Hasten and Active Defense...

Mez protection is the highest priority out of those three, easily.

I put my mez protection on autofire, as it stacks long enough that even when stringing attacks together, I'm still covered.

I put Hasten and Rage as binds on my keyboard's numpad, so that they are easily accessible. Having them bound makes them easier to manage, because I can triple stack rage, but only if I want to have zero end left after all the crashes.

I don't need Hasten between mobs, or Rage, but I don't like getting shot out of the sky by something.

This guide has a keybind that changes which power is on autocast amongst the 3 powers: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=137289

I didn't like that as much though, stacking rage wasn't worth having to deal with the crashes more. I just fire Rage when it's about to end now.

Personally I keep Active Defense on auto and have a key that fires either hasten or rage. I might change Rage to thumb button on mouse and keep hasten easily accessible.

The ONLY powers I ever place on auto are an attack, or a heal (or Siphon Speed when between missions on a Kinetics character).

I set up a seperate keybind file for all of my characters. One of the default binds is * is Hasten (The key name for binds is MULTIPLY). When I finally make a SS/SD character, I'll bind Rage and Active Defense to the Numpad's + and Enter keys (ADD and NUMPADENTER). Those are the keys I generally bind Aim and Build Up to.

It's very easy to just move my hand over to the Numpad and press + and Enter.

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It's actually quite interesting to see how you all bind and what you choose to activate when. On my shield toons, I actually have Active Defense set to auto, but I also have it bound to "E" on my keyboard because of the lag/not activating issue that I found to occur every now and then, especially during ITF, but sometimes also while just standing still and waiting for something to happen.

...and yes, I find mez protection to be important enough to have the premiere choice bind key on the keyboard

Everyone has their own style.

Rage is not auto fire for me, I just pop it when the previous is about to drop to negate the -25% def.

Active Defense's (ddr) is so vital to my survival that I (almost) always hit it when I see it, regardless of my next attack.

Hasten gets the auto-fire for me, I tend to forget about it if I don't.

Something else is if you are a button smasher (like me) sometimes you will block your auto-fire from firing if you don't give it an oppurtunity, thats another reason I have hasten on auto and not AD.

Find what works for you is the best advice I have.

Typically, I put Hasten on auto fire. On my ss/sd, I chose to put Rage on auto. I think this depends largely on playstyle and value. I keep rage on tray two, and hidden out of sight. I keep both hasten and active defense on tray one where I can see them. Honestly, after reading a few of these responses, I might putting AD on auto and hitting Rage manually.

Knock out blow sets hasten to auto. Rage sets active defense to auto. Rage recharges in like 80 seconds and AD recharges a few seconds quicker than that.

Generally I hit rage (thumb button, like many of you), wait about three seconds, continue attack chain. Everything stays up all the time except hasten which is somewhere around 10 seconds short of perma.

Active defense gets theauto for my shielded toons...i can live with forgetting a little extra recharge or damage for a few secs if i forget it or am traveling from mob to mob...not so much any defensive aspect....but as others haveposted its up to play style...on many other toons hasten is my auto fire

Rage is stupid to autofire. Its drawback is such that you need to keep it controlled. Hasten is not neccesary to autofire. You will see when it needs to be reapplied. Active Defense going down will easily mean your death. It gets auto.

I Actually put Brawl on auto for the now Free fury building and I stuffed a KD proc in it for giggles. I actually see Active defense as a good candidate for auto however I like being able to stack DDR when it matters only and i usually time Rage and Active defense to crash together so I have "cycles" of reclicking powers. I use hasten on a need basis only, with Foot Stomp having FF proc, Shield Charge and Dark Obliteration im usually covered AoE/wise.

I always put active defense on auto, and use manual clicks for rage/hasten at least 10 secs apart so the crashes do not stack. If you are not right with the timing, you can run into the tri-fecta of doom that is rage crash, hasten crash, auto-fire AD which is a lot of end going bye bye really quickly. I think thats somewhere around 50 end if they all drop/fire at once... say hello to detoggle death if you are busy spamming AoEs at the time...

So I leave AD on auto and time my hasten to keep AD double stacked when needed, and I usually try to double stack rage for the -def avoidance right before it crashes. But generally I dont find a need for double stacked rage and the double crashes it brings.

I actually find my SS/fire to be tedious with the timing on hasten/rage, so my ss/sh is even more frustrating. I am thinking of rolling a fire/shield and calling it a day on rage for fast paced farm toons... too much work when all i want to do is button mash and not keep checking my timers on crashes.