ATR 72 is underpowered?

I’m playing on xbox and just found this thread after leaving my atr72 in disgust after too many botched takeoff’s from short runways NTTB KEYW EIDL et al, always on a turnaround. I had no idea about switching ftom TO to MCT TO might help. Is that during the takeoff roll or can you switch before? I had a perfect safety record before the atr released going back to fs98 so 1999 , i hadn’t crashed but my atr soon put an end to that!