Thanks for the detailed explanation - thought I was losing my edge there. What's left of itMark wrote: For a bunch of reasons (not all of them within my power to change) you will probably take hits that you have little chance of avoiding (unless you're an absolute demon with the shield). Once you know how the enemies behave you can lessen that considerably, but it'll probably still happen from time to time. The game has been designed with that in mind though - hence the recharging health system. Also bullets do very little damage generally, so you should only really have a real problem with bullet damage with enemies that spam loads of the things, and they should behave more predictably anyway.
The Plasma Arc takes a bit of getting used to, but the pay-off is that it can be incredibly useful - especially later on. The best way to use it is to aim at the target using your regular bullets, then double-tap the toggle button with enough of a delay to allow one shot of plasma arc out. The plasma arc doesn't inflict a massive amount of damage to any one target but will hurt everything in its blast radius equally. So generally one shot does what you want - clears most regular enemies, or stuns bigger ones. For big enemies your cannon or lasers will be more effective at finishing it off quickly.
Will spend some more time with it now the mechanics are clearer.
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