Good point Steve, even with an ESC that is working properly, letting the motor stop sometimes makes getting the motor started again difficult. Doesn't happen too often to me, but I've seen it. I set up the idle to a slider and set an idle just as you mentioned and never have the motor stop until after I land. Even so though, when I bring up the throttle to taxi back the motor still comes up to power smoothly, just at a higher throttle setting.

Does the ESC work without issue if you don't allow it to stop? If so, the setting an idle would fix it. I believe some of the earlier model ESCs of one brand had an issue where you had to 'hand prop' the motor to get started, but once it started it worked fine. Could be just a glitch in the programming.