Are iconic moves too prominent / powerset moves too weak?

So I came back to the game after a few years, and I've noticed (via youtube and other players I meet and play with) that what many consider to be the optimal dps loadout for each powerset usually includes 3-4 iconic moves (heat vision, freeze breath, neo-venom boost and robot sidekick) and only 2-3 powerset moves. Personally I don't like this trend because it makes the power you choose feel kinda inconsequential, with little variety between powersets. Last time I played the game iconics were little more than a gimmick. The only iconic I saw somewhat often was robot sidekick, but most popular loadouts seemed to rely MUCH more heavily on powerset moves.

The thing is, I haven't really seen any complaints about this from the community. It's possible that I just haven't scanned the forums enough, but otherwise this leads me to one of two conclusions.

1) My assessment of the situation is wrong and most of the top loadouts for each powerset DON'T feature iconics heavily at all. I'm just looking in the wrong places.

2) My assessment of the situation is right, but the community by and large are happy with things this way.

I guess I just want you guys' thoughts on the state of dps loadouts and rotations at the moment. Should iconics be nerfed / powersets buffed in order to bring back the uniqueness to each powerset at the top levels of play? Are iconics fine the way they are and I just need to get with the programme or get left behind? Am I wrong altogether and over-exaggerating the use of iconics? Is there a conversation happening about this that I'm just not aware of?

Edit: I know nobody has to use iconics in their loadout and technically they can do whatever they want. I'm just assuming most dps want to be as competitive as possible and that leads them to flock to iconics because they're so strong.

You actually left out movement mode moves, with superspeed tornado pull and one other move being standard to lots of DPS loadouts. I think most powersets can still do very well without these, but you may be right that they won't be the best possible.

Yeah I totally forgot about those! I see a lot of Whirling dervish in close range loadouts too. Are you happy with things as they are?

Not only close range but range and ST too because of the clipping for precision.

I’d normally be against it. But unfortunately the devs are bad a balancing the powers. Maybe it’s because they don’t play the game, maybe it’s because they like people swapping powers. Who knows. But they aren’t good at balancing them out. And a true 100% balance is not possible with how certain dps work. But because of so many factors, maybe it’s best for iconics to stay being good. That way the dps who are at the bottom of the tier list can use them to keep up until it’s their turn to be the op power.

Like I said, I don’t like it. But hey at least it helps the lower powers right?

Thanks for this post I just said this to myself last night sad if you play rage 80-90% of your load out is iconic & movement I’ll rather have AM back & just nerf the power back from it

I see what you mean. I forgot how often players would switch powers whenever a particular power got buffed into 'flavor of the month' status. I guess everyone sharing half their loadout with the rest of the playerbase kinda removes the need to switch powers with every balance patch. Still, as someone who just came back to the game and recently switched powers, I've been watching a lot of loadout videos. It's disappointing to know that if I wanna push the power to its limit, I need to ignore all but 2 or 3 moves. It almost feels like a waste of money.

It's all about having options for different situations. Certain powersets specialize in multi-target offense but lack single target options, Heat Vision and some movement abilities can fill in those gaps. Same goes for the powersets that specialize in single target offense but lack multi-target options, iconic and movement abilities can satisfy those needs. Competitive DPS will have at least two varying armories that support different fighting situations.

With Heat Vision you need the appropriate artifact in order for it to be competitive. Solar Amplifier is a great artifact for Might DPS but there are a few powersets that would benefit from using something else.

Frost Breath has a trick to it, it is a damage loss in any situation if not used correctly so there are risks having it in your loadout.

Robot Sidekick is a great option for players with a powerset that lack a pet but RSK can't replace Sorcery's Fury or Earth's Crystal. Not all powersets can support a full loadout with RSK taking up a slot.

Damage supercharge balance is a separate issue. There is a planned balance pass but currently Electric, Rage and to some extent Quantum have better options than what Neo-Venom Boost offers. It's not that Neo-Venom Boost is 'stronger' than the other damage supercharges but it is more reliable. Some damage supercharges are strong but can miss the target completely or the target can move out of range. With Neo-Venom Boost the only downside is if you get stunned or are unable to attack during the time the boost is active.

In short, wanting an iconic/movement ability will depend heavily on your powerset, your damage focus (Might or Precision), your choice of artifacts and the present situation (single target fight vs multi-target fight).

Everything in this, well said!

The only playstyle that relies on iconics/ movement mode abilities is the precision spec (but even thats power dependent). For the most part, iconics are only used as a substitute when your power set is underperforming in a certain situation

Lorax explained it perfectly. I definitely over simplified it but I do stand by what I said. It’s hard for the devs to balance all powers to perform in all situations similarly while also keeping their different play styles. While yes it’s true that the iconics and movements can give powers a boost. They aren’t always straight forward. And it doesn’t mean that every single power benefits equally from it. For example on electric the standard loadout most use doesn’t use neither heat vision or frost blast for aoe. The loadout I use for might does however use heat vision and not freezing breath while other might players will use freezing breath but not heat vision. It’s not as simple as have these 4 powers in your loadout and fill in the last 2 with your powers abilities.

Now personally I do enjoy freezing breath because it makes loadouts a little more complicated. I’ve never been a fan of 1234 repeat until the raid is over. Using freezing breath means that you can’t do that unless you want to give up your pet or supercharge. Now I’ll admit I haven’t really tested might for a while since I’m mostly a Prec player. My main is Prec my 2 higher alts are atomic might and HL might. The videos I post are older so I wouldn’t be surprised if they are outdated. But I do use freezing breath in a lot of loadouts cause I personally enjoy it. For someone who can’t get the timing for the freezing breath it may be better of to not use it.

You are right that the iconics fill gaps in powersets that would otherwise go unfilled. I guess my next question is, wouldn't you prefer if the devs fixed the NUMEROUS redundant and useless moves in each powerset to fill those gaps instead? I was electricity for years and I've just switched to Atomic. In both those powers there are multiple moves that I'm sure aren't in the loadout of anyone over lvl 30. I wish the devs would make those moves as worthwhile as the current iconics so that people will go back to using mainly powerset moves.

I know DCUO is just a numbers game to most, and so long as they're topping the scoreboard they don't care how they do it, but for me, I want to be immersed in my character and power. It's just a shame that you are handicapping yourself in almost every situation if you're not using some combination of iconics

Also, you are right that different iconics complement different powersets differently, but from my observations there is a tonne of overlap.

I get where you are coming from and I also agree that some powers that are useless should be either buffed or upgraded. For example, atomic doesn’t have a ST combo which could easily replace beta surge or the other ranged combos. There’s only one ranged combo that’s a must have and changing of the AoE ranged attacks to be a ST ranged attack could replace an iconic that would otherwise be in that slot. So yes I do agree.

However players who use iconics could also argue that they should have an advantage over players who exclusively chose to only run power abilities. Should a player that refuses to go outside their power set do as much damage as someone who is willing to use outside abilities to min max? It’s more complicated than it seems. Most MMOs (all that’s I’ve seen personally) give players the ability to get outside moves to enhance class moves. I’m not advocating towards one or the other. I would love for more abilities to be made more useful to open up the play styles. But at the end of the day, when running high end stuff I know I’ll always personally go back to what works best for those situations. I have different loadouts for aoe, ST, and even a survival/speed loadout for the duo and open world stuff.

My wifi would die as I'm about to post a reply. Didn't feel like retyping this out on my phone lol.

That idea about a ST atomic combo is a fantastic idea and exactly the kind of change I'd like to see.

As for your second point, I don't really see a player's willingness to use iconics as something that needs to be especially rewarded. We already have all kinds of interesting rotations, artifacts, consumables, trinkets, mods and stat builds that we can tweak to min max. The moment you give players an advantage for going outside their powerset, you incentivize it, leading to the current state of affairs. I'm not saying iconics should be as weak as they were years ago. I like them being viable for more player variety. I just don't want them to be NECESSARY in order to have the optimal loadout for any powerset. Each powerset should rework their bad / redundant moves to give viable options for a wider variety of situations: single target, AOE, close range, etc.

I couldn't agree with this more. I really hope the devs do this.

Yeah my best loadouts typically feature at least 1 iconic and my melee or EOG loadout also feature a movement mode power or 2.

I guess it’s a problem that everybody is running SA for ST situations because everybody is using HV and it does kill the variety.

I'm ok with it tbh because like Deity said the devs are bad at balancing powers for the most part. Mainly because they just go off raw numbers for each ability but don't really know any loadouts and how practical/viable it is.


Even if they were to give certain abilities a boost within the power tree the top notch players will always find a way to push it's limit outside the powerset and make it meta.

One thing which wasn't mentioned about Freeze Breath is that it works with any powerset load out which uses Empowered Channelling. For instance, as a Fire user I used it when I was running Solar Amplifier (Heat Vision), Absorb Heat, and Snuff Out. This meant I have at least three powers running back-to-back which can't be interrupted, I'm immune to most control effects, and get a 5% Defense buff.

This worked pretty well for awhile. Unfortunately due to not being able to jump cancel Absorb Heat, please fix this!, I had to go another route.

I definitely agree that weaker/redundant moves should be updated. But that can only go so far. Each power works differently. Some have channels, some have combos, some are burst, others are DoT, some have class pets, some have sub class pets (snow devil/swarm). Even if you bring up the weaker powers there will still be gabs. If they bring up the combos and it makes the none combos weaker than they will have to fine new ways to work around it.

I definitely think that all powers have to many redundant moves and a lot of them have to be upgraded. But iconics is something that everyone has access too. If someone who has access to them chooses to not use them for esthetics than yes they should be able to do good damage. But someone who is willing to break the esthetics and try to min Max should definitely be rewarded. Again, the gap shouldn’t be huge but they should have an edge.

It’s like ice for example. Right now they have winter ward, reflection, and shatter restrain (can’t remember if there is a fourth). And they can also use hard light shield. The only shield that I’ve had that can match HLS is winter ward. So most ice tanks will always use winter ward and HLS. They can buff reflection to match them but they would still use HLS. The only way I’ve wouldnt use HLS is if they made all their class shields as strong or stronger than HLS. But then that leads to imbalance for other powers. They could nerf HLS but that would end up hurting other powers. So an ice tank can choose to run with only class shields and be ok with not using the string HLS. Or they can break esthetics and use HLS.

I personally do think that iconics and other abilities should be available to min Max. But they shouldn’t be mandatory to be competitive. Would I be upset if they buffed powers to be better than iconics? No I wouldn’t. I’d just figure out what works after and just use that. But don’t forget that the devs can’t seems to do balancing well. There is always a power that out performs and there is always a few powers that struggle. Take away iconics and those powers that struggle will be stuck to support role or cosplay dps.

Yes each power works differently, and the devs should take that into account when balancing the powers against each other. We can see the devs already trying to do this with the upcoming supercharge changes. They're not just balancing them based on SC cost. They're looking at Dot vs burst. Combo vs channel Vs instant cast etc. It's still a work in progress but clearly the devs know there is more to balance than just comparing numbers, and they're acting on it.

I really don't agree that breaking from your powerset should be rewarded. Every powerset has access to the same iconics, in other words it's super easy for every player to just copy the same(ish) loadout and rotation. How is that worthy of rewarding? What happened to learning the intricacies and strengths of your specific powerset and and min-maxing based on what is available to you? That's the way it should be. It's the devs job to balance the powers, so we should be encouraging them to do their job to make the game feel immersive and varied. Not just accepting some lazy excuse at "balance" in the form of half the playerbase running the same iconics that ruin powerset aestheics and gameplay variety. Using iconics should not give you an edge. At BEST, it should put you on equal footing. The most important thing should be mastering your power. Changing power should require you to learn the new power in and out to reach the top level. Not just swap your 2 dots for 2 new dots (oversimplification I know).

Regarding your ice example, don't you think it would make more sense if the devs balanced the powers around each other without considering iconics, and then allowed you to swap in an iconic for variety at the expense of class synergy? Let tank powers function perfectly at the highest level, without having to rely on immersion-breaking generic moves that anyone can use. As I mentioned earlier, I recently switched to Atomic so I've been learning how to tank with it. At the moment I don't use HLS but I could make room for it by getting rid of the group break out. Most online loadouts I've seen don't use the breakout, but I find it has multiple strengths:
1) Can be used as another shortcut for QG aura (alongside Proton Remedy)
2) Provides a small heal
3) Can allow me to do combos uninterrupted (the bread and butter of the tanking mechanic). Especially important when I lose the QG aura mid fight.

This is the kind of variety I'm advocating for. Buff powersets so they are totally self-sufficient without iconics, but give players the ability to swap an iconic in and stay totally viable. If a powerset consistently under-performs without iconics that means it is underpowered.