Praetorian content is no fun

Besides the fact that every two years, be it ultra mode or increased gaming demands of praetorian content, I can't effectively participate in the incarnate trials. It's a huge lag fest like the worst Rikti invasion ever on the hill in Talos. I thought after my recent recuperation period after eye surgery I would dive into the incarnate material. It's not happening.

1) Targetting has been borked since Issue 1.

2) Although it is advertised as having a 1.07 sec time for activation it's more like 15 seconds.
First you click the power button in the tray, look to find that targetting circle. It's gone, computer says you were dragging calrops power. Click again, you get the circle, but you move just a bit too fast too far in a hurry now, and boom the circle disappears, you moved the targetting circle so far that everything is back at square 1.

There must be some short cut after 7 years to avoid this kind of crap. (Yeah I know if I can't use the power correctly, don't take it. Well the player isn't exactly an incarnate either.)

3) I have vision problems and screen displaying problems. We did a new dimensional warder mission in an outdoor map with DE. The DE would not show up on screen, but if I clicked tab enough times I could pull up the reticle. It was a sneaky DE mission as opposed to sneaky Freaks in the Rogue Islands.

Right after that mission, we did a dimensional warden mission with the new resistance spawns. They apparently (not to my eyes) are supposed to phase in and out. Mini-rant here, even the most loathesome despicable Romulan would never fire upon an opponent while cloaked. Shooting from a phased status is pure unadulterated bull-manure.

4) Apparently doors also phase in and out. The worst are hospital doors. I literally cuss out loud if I zone into an upper floor of the hospital because I have to click 5-10 times to get the damn door open - twice, to actually exit the hospital. I feel as helpless as the skulls in their break-in ritual, except I'm a hero leaving the hospital. The other doors that are a problem are the two sets of doors into the portal room in portal corp, and God help you if someone dashes between your character and the portal elevator door and zones in the middle of you activating the preposterous clicking ritual because now, the door is off-limits to you, so you might as well try the next door.

5) The very worst thing is, the mission completes, and to my experience, I dash out of the mission first. While I am zoning back into the city zone map, like the portal room at Peregrine Island, my teammates can zone out, cross Peregrine and be in the next mission before I materialize in Portal Corp. That's the worst.

Does anyone have any short-cuts, programming or bind cheats that get you through these turmoils faster and with less hair loss? I know some TFs and story arcs, I don't even zone out of the mission, I drop an ouroportal and skip the exit mission step.

First of all, what targeting issue are you referring to?

For the help with your system, you want the "Technical Issue" forum in the "Development" sub forum above player help.

I, too, use the keyboard to activate powers in my trays. I also bind 'goto tray X' to several of my keys so that I can switch between trays quickly.

Aside from that, there is also a way to lock powers in your trays, so that you don't accidentally move them(Although I, personally don't use it).

So if you activate caltrops from the keyboard, how does that place the targeting circle and 'drop' it where you want? or tar patch or freezing rain or sleet or ...

Activating all the powers from the keyboard would really suck. I play support characters by preference and easily fill 5 trays with powers binds and macros. I doubt I could remember all the powers let alone the keys to activate them.

I do write binds, such as for O2 boost to target and heal 8 individual teammates or 6/7 pets from the numpad.

I need to the lock the power trays.

First off, for the caltrops issue. /bind shift+lbutton powexec_name caltrops
Now when you hold shift and left-click a spot you will automatically cast your caltrops there. I use it for Sleet, Rain of Fire, etc.

For the rest, check your video card. Seriously. I recently upgraded to a new PC, but my old one (which ran the game on bare minimum settings) didn't have as much trouble in Praetoria or Incarnate content just trying to run. It sounds like a serious hardware issue or maybe just your drivers.

Locking the trays will help. As far as using the keyboard - all powers like caltrops, when you use them with a keyboard shortcut, queue and wait for you to place. Using it will mean not dragging the power icon as you won't need to click it, only the targeted spot.

I bind shift+lbutton for petcom_all goto aggressive

He's not telling you WHAT to do, he's telling you HOW to do. As in: Your method isn't very good if your computer is lagging.

I use, for example, to fire caltrops, heals, anything I don't want to 'normally' do the actual Ctrl+ or Alt+ on the keyboard (Alt-3 and Alt-4 are my mains) , or bind Ctrl-C for travel power (such as teleport)

Using the Ctrl-C for teleporting, I tap those on my keyboard, and use the middle mouse click to bring up my cursor to say 'where', click it, middle mouse click to get out of the mouse cursor and back to mouse look. All in about 1 second's work.

Some are better at TP than I am, but I'm really really good at it this way.

The other issues, and honestly, this one, are *definitely* computer system capability related, every one of them, and you need to either post a new topic for this in the technical area, or you need to post a new topic for this, and then POINT TO this thread so you don't have to retype it.

Either way, this isn't the right place for the help you want.

Oh, and in the tech area, there's stickies. Read them, they're helpful, and may just point to exactly what your issue may actually be.

Good luck to ya!

I'm sorry, most of these issues don't sound like problems with the game itself. Since Ultra Mode is optional, blaming that on problems would only be true if you're trying to implement it on a machine not designed to handle it.

If you're not already running on absolute minimum graphics, start there. If you still have the issues with long load times, and lag in activating powers, look at your internet connection.

As others said, repost or ask for this to be moved to Tech Issues. The regulars there are good at this and can figure out a lot just from some basic information (that you have to be prepared to give them.

Quite a bit of this sounds like underpowered machine and/or ISP. Yes, in some situations, there's bad lag that will have a power not be ready when it should (as mentioned, Rikti invasions,) but the rest? No.

I'm not sure what you mean by "sneaky DE." There are no DE with stealth that I can think of. There ARE two instanced maps that have ongoing display issues (an instanced Shard mission and the Rikti portal room,) but I don't recall ever seeing DE in either one.

Seconding the "Post your machine specs and other requested info up in tech issues and bugs."

See my Guides and Tutorials

This has since been posted in the Gameplay / Technical Issue and Bugs forums.

Targeting has been broken since Issue 1. Click on hellion, ok there's a boss next to him, click tab and voila! You targeted the hellion 300 yds across the map meanwhile the Damned Damned is still bearing down on you. I know for certainty that this is NOT how next is calculated on powers like cinders, targeted AoE powers or Taunt that counts 15 targets to be affected in range of the target. CoH uses two different rules for 'Next' and one of them has NOTHING to do with usage of the English language.

Actually there were answers to questions in this thread about targeted powers,(binds, but I still have trouble with cursor movement and placement), locking the power trays (a very useful reminder), and the technical aspects of how I bought a sub-standard vid card when I intended to get one compliant with ultra-mode, Going Rogue, Praetorian content, and incarnate content, which are in another thread (check the stickies). Now in the praetorian content, the new dimensional warder badge mission arc, based in Peregrine Island. I find myself in mid-sized team missions on outdoor map - Primeva style map, looking for the new Praetorian Chimera. I approach what appears to be 2 or 3 minions and suddenly find my character surrounded by 10 or so level 54 DE +5 to my supersidekicked up 49, and I don't where they came from. Has anyone dealt with this before? It reminded me of the 'sneaky freak' mission on red-side except (I am pretty sure) these vegetables are not intended to be stealthy. Is there a work-around for this problem?