does your character move around when you fight?

Usually, but the degree to which I move changes drastically depending on the character.

Examples:

• SM/WP Brute - shuffle around slightly to increase regen from RttC, but no drastic changes since I need to be planted if I have to use Fault.
• SS/FA Brute - I have large radius AoEs and ranged attacks, let them come to me to die. Small shifts to maximize Burn placement if they aren't packing in tightly enough.
• Rad/Kin Corruptor - is it even allowed to play a Kinetic character that doesn't move a lot? Without a way of herding or taunting she's always on the move to maximize AoE effects (Irradiate, Void, and Fulcrum Shift) or avoid potential mezzes (look ma, no Clarion!).
• Dark/Dark Dominator - she's all over the place: cone fear/-tohit + PBAoE stun and attack, melee attacks until things start responding then jump back while using Gloom and/or Life Drain to set up another Fearsome Stare...

Clarifying this some: only if you're either using a lot of procs or are a Stalker that is on a team. Throwing out procs and just looking at the DPA for the powers, the order is ET >> TF > BS > EP > Barrage > WH >> Stun.

The difference between Bone Smasher and Energy Punch is very small and will shuffle around with procs, but I'm not sure how PPM procs affect them because of BS's higher recharge - and thus proc rate. I double-proc'd EP on my EM Brute due to the faster animation on her last respec (for inherent Fitness). Now Total Focus is still annoyingly slow, but it's not like you can't queue it and jump backwards just as it starts to cheat and get some mobility during the root time.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

Your a shark! *blows shark whistle*

nah, he's a Jet

and when you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way

I don't really have a problem with games that expect me to move. Hell, one of my favourite moves in most action games is the instant-translication dash-teleport dodge move. I LOVE being able to move out of the way of a big attack in the nick of time. The problem is that City of Heroes doesn't really have this. It has, as a point of fact, really awkward unresponsive controls. It doesn't have action-game controls, it has click-n-kill RPG controls. The game can even be navigated via click-to-move.

If this were an action game like Devil May Cry or Oniblade or Kaan: Barbarian's Blade, then I really wouldn't mind it, but in City of Heroes it's just AWKWARD. Few things bug me more than a game with bad controls which require fast, precise reactions. Very, very few things cause me to punch my keyboard, but this is one of them.

Moreover, the way people most often suggest I move around just looks horribly ugly. City of Heroes does not have jumping animations for its powers. It has standing ones and flying ones. Jumping past a stationary enemy to avoid getting hit stuck with a long root just looks horrid to me, because it plays the standing animation, and it delivers a melee attack at long range. If we had running attacks or jumping attacks or any way for the game to acknowledge moving and attacking at the same time, I might feel differently, but I've seen what this looks like and it looks WORSE.

Besides, all this does is promote exploits that circumvent rooting, like the one I found where you can skip all rooting for any Electric powers. Just make sure you're not in combat mode, activate Build Up or equivalent to go into a "false" combat mode then just don't stop moving. No more rooting, no more animations, and the game looks like *** because of it.

I'm not so much worried about DPS as I am about the game never letting me fight. Protean is actually not that bad of a fight, since his Power Syphon is so rare. Every minute or so is actually pretty conservative. It's enemies like the ******* Knives of Vengeance Prophetesses and that GOD DAMN Stutter TF with the absolutely constant airstrikes that follow you even underground.

I don't mind having to move in order to react to a developing situation, so long as it's used with some degree of moderation. I mind when the mission designers go berserk and have me run around the whole ******* time and don't give me a millisecond of time to actually get in an attack, and yet I have to fight a tough enemy at the same time that I don't get the chance to even ******* approach! God damn that Stutter TF!

*edit*
Seriously, that TF is probably single-handedly responsible for my hatred of moving around.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Problem with this viewpoint is, it's mechanically impossible to achieve with the current game engine, for reasons Samuel's been explaining for several pages. What the game "should be" is irrelevant to what the game IS. If power rooting were done away with, the "safety dance" style of gameplay might become viable. Until then, this line of thinking has no merit.

That's Soundwave, you nit!

/TF-Fan

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

This. When you're getting swarmed, it doesn't make much difference; your cones and PBAoEs are going to get good swathes of mobs anyway. But when the Mad Minute dies down and you can start paying attention to where individual mobs are, moving to get the best coverage of targets is essential.

Of course, with a significant fraction of my Blasters, "best coverage of targets" sometimes comes down to 'See that dot?" (i.e., LRM with three Dmg/Rng HOs, Boost Range stacked on top, and range bonuses from sets)...