2-Row Ability Tray Recommendations
Happy 15th Anniversary! The 16th year starts off with a pretty big bang with the addition of a 2nd row of loadouts. The sudden addition increases our characters' power levels considerably once ironed out and used right, but can be quite overwhelming at first. Hopefully this article give you some direction in how to set up your loadouts. I will keep it as general as possible so that it can apply to all power sets.
From Patch Notes: New Additional Ability Tray
The Additional Ability Tray is a major quality-of-life and combat flexibility upgrade that significantly expands how players build and use their loadouts. This new system introduces a second, fully functional ability tray, giving players more room to adapt, specialize, and react during combat.
With the Additional Ability Tray, players gain access to a second full set of abilities that can be configured independently from their primary tray. While only one tray is active at a time, players can instantly swap between trays with no cooldown and no delay, allowing combat to flow seamlessly without interruption.
[Click Here to Read More on the DCUO News Section...]
Keep in Mind:
- You now have 12 powers active at a time... this is NOT the same as an armory switch with no cooldown. You can combo from one row to the other. A pet spawned in one row does not despawn when switching to the other row. It's as if you have a bar with 12 items (it's just in 2 rows for space/input reasons)
- This does not switch gear, roles, SP assignment like armories do.
- The swap is immediate. You can do it in the middle of an animation, cutscene, interaction, etc.
- You can still repeat moves on the 2 rows if you want something readily available all the time... though over time you'll likely be working this out of muscle memory.
Recommended Main Row ("1st Row")
You can start by adjusting your classic loadout. Keep things comfortable and familiar, but there are few things that SHOULD NOT be in this row.
- Pet: because it's a passive move. You hit the loadout and then you never use it again... save that for 2nd Row.
- Supercharge: because it's mostly NOT available. It's not there when you login and it's not there after you fire it off.
- X Over Time: because you set down the power and it has a long cooldown while providing some stat over time.
That being said, here are the things that SHOULD be in your 1st Row:
- SC Generator: which is often the PI starter too. This is the opening move where most other moves in your powerset get a bonus if fired first
- Ambush: which is currently just Shadow Curse, because it gives a bonus on high health NPCs, so you'll want to fire this often at the start until NPC health is below 75%.
- Knockdowns/Stuns: because that are starter moves that setup other combos.
- Weapon Buff: because it's a starter move that buffs the next attack It also double as an animation clipper.
- Shield: because it acts as a buff and you'd want it in the beginning of a sequence. In most cases, this is also an animation clipper.
Recommended 2nd Row
The 2nd row is something you should toggle to fire the long cooldown moves and power hits, after which you'd quickly toggle back to the Main Row. Some things to put here are:
- Pet: but be sure to summon it when you login or before combat. There's now space for the passive damaging Robot Sidekick in every power set. No excuses!
- Supercharge: because it's not a spammable ability. You fire the big hit then it's not available until built up again. This is also a good place to have multiple SC's ready. Maybe you want a 50% and a 100% ready to go.
- X Over Time: because you're going to set down the ability (like a damage/heal circle) and it'll be on cooldown for a while.
- Backup Moves: good to have some move that mirror 1st Row, but are stronger and have higher power cost/cooldown.
- Finishers: because they occur at the end of sequences when NPC health is low. Cooldown is longer for these moves.
Other Ideas
- 1st Row for a ranged rotation + 2nd Row for melee
- Some powers have 2 PI's... so 1 row for each
