I've tried them all out to obtain maximum damage. Don't worry what op is, stick with Fire, Quantum, or Celestial
If you take the best of the best "pound per pound" burst damage Celestial and HL top the charts currently.. Gadgets is just fast and can pile the damage very quickly.. Mental Too.. Those powers have high burst potential and in the right hands can top charts... I am Sorcery DPS.. I have topped charts and beaten those powersets in various raids... but it's likely they didn't know what they were doing to fully take advantage of their power (not using PI or weak combos). Many will say.. It's not the power... it's the person. I will agree partly with that.... some people know their power really well and can maximize what they can do with that power (this is where I'm at with Sorcery).. Until I have someone I can compare myself to, I'm damned in my progression with it... I need a mentor to learn from and I know no one.. Those powers I listed above mine have great potential and Each one has the potential of beating out the other depending on who is using it. You need to find a power YOU like and know well... I have put out better numbers with my Sorcery DPS than other powersets I have tried.. that's me though..
coming from one of the best dps players in the game, celestial, hard light and nature are the best in terms of damage per power output...
Most people are HL and Cel. Gadgets, Fire and Mental are just as good. The "player" just has to know what he/she is doing, but for the most part any power is decent, some just flow better than others.
My hat is off to you. I wish more people would say this rather than just the generic "it's all about your playstyle" nonsense. And I used to agree that it has more to do with the player than the powerset. However, given how detailed some of the guides are and how easy Celestial is to use, I don't know if I can still agree with that.
The devs are starting to rebalance the game, and most of the power sets are becoming more even. These days, there are so many good power sets that it is generally the player and not the power. Instead of telling you what power you want to maximize your damage, I would simply say avoid earth, electricity, and ice. Everything else has the potential to be top notch, in at least one of the two main situations(range single target vs range aoe).
I could take it further... But my experience in this game is about 2 years old.. I have tested lots of powers and I have 16 toons (take full advantage of my Legendary membership) I take all my fresh lvl 30s and take them to the test dummies and turn on the combat log. And all powers are not created equal... Celestial is made "OP" on purpose so people will buy it (or the DLC related to it).. people want to be the best... Sorcery is free.. if people could top charts for free.. there is no need to buy "the best".. hence why HL is up there too. Long story short.. the only way we can truly gauge DPS (damage per second) is have a test run in some sort of "Damage" arena. "Best case scenario" type arena (nothing blocks nothing attacks) things just respawn over and over for about a given amount of time (3 minutes, 5 minutes or more) and we as DPSers go in and kill stuff and then calculate damage at the end of the exercise. (in these instances you would have unlimited power for testing purposes, think of it as spawning sparring targets over and over but they die.). You could choose a multi add room or a single target room to test damage between adds vs damage on single target... This is the only way we will be able to test times and "best times" of what power did what damage and have a leader chart. I am willing to bet it wouldn't be Sorcery at the top. A list of speed runs would be a god send to any dps of ANY power so they can measure SOMETHING if their powerset isn't popular enough to measure against a peer.
If you don't think Ice can top the charts against the powers commonly thought to be OP (and use less power), you suck with Ice. OP, pick a power that you like and you feel comfortable with and learn it inside and out. You will be successful with it.
Most effecient power in to damage out while still having really no damage cap...hardlight. the "easy mode" of hl would be celestial...but there is a damage cap. And third I would say gadgets if you have a steady stream of power. If you need any advice PM me. Also nature but I don't like the playstyle.
Let's see you top the charts with Ice playing with equally skilled and equally geared players using those powersets. I think that some people say the things they say because they don't play with enough good players because it seems that a lot of the top-end players are very realistic in their assessment of the powersets.
Any power with the current weapon of the month will work. I got demolished last night in damage for the first time in a while in Nexus. I'm not talking about beat, demolished. I finally found out what he was doing in the fights towards the end of the raid. Weapon throw clipped to a power. He was quantum and barely used any power. He beat me by 1.5 million at the end of the raid. He had 3.2 million. We beat the raid easily and in like 35 minutes but he was one of those players that was pretty load mouthed even though I didn't use a mic. One of his buddies was flipping out in the last room because I didn't pick him up since there was a lot of people around and closer. He was the third troll who didn't play the entirety of the raid until the last boss. No, playing baseball was more important while he talked about it all raid. Anyway, venting out of the way... I had acquired this weapon at the Sentinel bosses in that run. 10 minutes later I go into another Nexus run. 4.3 million damage for 370k power input using this weapon at 913 precision. 2 wipes in the raid. And considering mental seems kind of nerfed right now I put 3 precision mods on immediately after... I'm sure everyone can guess the weapon, but really as long as you figure out a nice combination of weapons and clipping, you can do adequate damage with anything. Some are better, some are worse. Celestial Dps and HL are the consensus best, but you don't have to change to them to do good damage. Whatever works for you will work for you, and if something seems more powerful that you can use, test that out too.
Having been damn near every power I'll be honest with you. 1.celestial - if you do RETcWIT over and over you'll be a good DPS. Everyone who cries about celestial assumes that is all we do. If you learn the powerset however you will be unstoppable. Is a very forgiving power. Is a troll friendly power. 2. HL- Has all the potential in the world but is limited by the power available, and the player not making any mistakes. If power wasn't an issue in dcuo this would be the number 1. Those are the top 2 . The third best is a toss up but its between Nature, Gadgets, Mental, Fire, and Quantum. All can be good and some are really good in the right hands. I've never lost on a scoreboard to anything other than the top two though. That was one time.
HL, Celes, Gadgets, and updated Nature. Which system are you on? On a PC Superspeed Mental, Fire, Quantum, and even Ice can hang with or even surpass those top dogs.....for 10x the power of course. Sorcery, Electricity, and Earth round out the bottom and need specific scenarios to shine (or even be noticed) On a PS HL and Celes pull away from Gadgets and Nature a smidge; the T2s even with Phase Dodge will struggle slightly more to keep up and the T3s are not only viable but are right there with the rest of the pack with the aforementioned specific scenarios allowing dominance. Not to hijack this but ^that change is my biggest dislike of clipping; it really does alter the game being played.
This obsession with the "best" is getting very annoying. Why cant people just pick a power that looks cool to them and play it to the fullest of theirs and its abilities?
USPS3 servers, I frequently run in the "inner circle" of players that que up PW for oddys/SF's. Gadgets, mental, nature, celestial, and HL are VERY balanced with one another in comparing them in SF runs. This is 90% single target damage, but seeing as this is by far the biggest point DPS strive to be able to do for the time being content-wise, there isnt a better test. also, with GU33, weapons being even more broken than 1h focus blast, im not sure people even bother with using powers on their tray other than clipping a weapon throw or a 35%er....
