Hey all, I've been playing dcuo since 2012 intermittently and returned to game 2 month ago after few years break. The game has never got a perfect balance(I think it is not possible in any game), but still, it was really fun to play it and every meta change was like fresh air. And 1 important thing is that this game was always about powers. Im not gonna talk about prec dpsing (which is really boring and similar with every powerset, because there already a lot of threads about it). I wanna talk about iconic powers\movement mods. From my point of view, this game is not about iconic powers or movement mods, I mean it is a great addition, but when I play my power, I want to have not 3, but 6 powerset skills on my loadout. Nowadays almost every power has robot sidekick, heat vision, and venom boost + superspeed skills in their loadout. This makes gameplay for every power pretty similar, I really love this game and hope someday this will change, just want to know, how many ppl think the same
A lot of this comes down to artifacts it seems. Heat vision with the solar amplifier artifact is a game changer from what I've heard, and the main reason so many people use heat vision now (whereas before solar amplifier, it used to be a joke of an ability and rarely used). Personally I wouldnt let it bother you so much. Unless you're min-maxing to try and fit in with the elitist punks that try to tell everyone how to play the game, the returns you'll see from using those iconic abilities is minimal. You can get by without them.
For my Rage character (melee) I use nothing but Rage powers, and fork out some serious damage. For range, yes, guilty, Rage range sucks, so robot and heat vision it is. For celestial, I've got 5 celestial powers and rsk.
I agree prec DPS will look kinda similar with each powerset becsuse you know... prec... Is weapon based and not powerset based unless you are specifically pointing out DW Flurryshot and Doomspin. If you are talking about the current meta then, yes, everybody uses HV, RSK, NVM and PD. Not to blame the current meta but the ideology of the community. Everyone is just a copycat of each other whether it is just based on pure unimaginativeness or based on the logic that "if you ain't with us then you're against us". To be short on that one, everybody wants to be "in" because of the fear of being ridiculed just for the reason that their loadout isn't youtube approved. In addition to the idea that the youtube recommend "meta" loadout performs the best. You can actually see some players perform even better with just their base powerset... sometimez with the addition of an RSK though. But hey! What is not to love about the little dude! Nonetheless, I agree. Some ability are like "just there" for the sake of just being there. Some powersets have more of these filler abilities than the other (I still can't find the use for vortex cannon, really!). Movement abilities and iconics suffers this the most. It is like the movement abilites and most iconics are just there for the reason of "cosplay". I too want some even more variety with our abilities but to get a significant usefulness out of the iconics and movement powers in the form of artifacts or whatever is just wishful thinking at this point. I agree with DietySupreme, changing things just to satisfy cosplayers seems to be greedy on our part and might be a considerable waste of resources on theirs. It might be better to put the resources in other contents at will help the game progress (iny opinion of course). P.S. Solar Amp = Superman Lasso = Wonderwoman Batarang = Batman?? FR! I felt that they've missed the chance to create a batarang art during Metal II. Come on! They've even got the element X batarang in the story (comics).
