How am I supposed to know what powers to put where in what loadouts when I can get no relevant information on them outside the basic mechanics and whether they do some unspecified amount of damage/buff/debuff/control/heal? The way the game hides all relevant numbers from power description text makes it impossible to simply learn by playing.
How exactly is it hidden? It’s extremely easy to find out how powers work.. Powers either set up a power interaction, deal more damage based on power interaction, or deal base damage regardless of power interaction. You have .5 sec, 1 sec, 3 sec, 6 sec, 12 sec, and a few random sec abilities. The game even has a built in parser set up to allow players to test these things. They even have different forms of parsers like out of combat, 10 sec, and 30 sec parsers to have more information at your finger tips. What more do you need? Want the devs to just give you the loadout?
No? I think I made pretty clear I just expect some basic indication of how MUCH of something a power is intended to do. For instance a power mainly intended to group up and lock down enemies is probably going to do less damage than one which is meant to mainly deal damage, if it has a similar cost right? Even just telling us "Slight/Light/Medium/High/Extreme" would be much more useful than the descriptions we get.
Turn on your combat parcers and go test your setup on a sparring target like everyone else has done since the game came out. Sure it takes time to find the right rotation but if you don't wanna wait check a youtube video for a loadout and start from there.
Combat parsers? is this a utility in the game or do I need to use a 3rd party app? You realize that whether you will admit it or not I am making an extremely valid point, no other game gives no relevant info on how much damage an ability is supposed to do, pretty much every other game at least gives some abstract idea to help you guesstimate if you're not into min maxing yet. Plenty of time to min max once I've actually leveled up and raised CR a bit.
That’s already in the game. The description literally says how powers interact with each other. Powers that deal bonus damage from PI will do more than those that set up PI. Powers that cost more deal more. It’s not like each powerset had 100s of power to choose from. Most powers only had a handful of damaging powers mixed in with utility powers. When I test loadouts I can literally fit all the different powers of the same type in a single loadout. IE all AoE that set up/deal bonus based on PI. Same for ST. Not sure why you need to be told exactly one’s deal more damage when the game already offers you ways to see that yourself (pretty accurately too)
Don't worry, you are making a valid point. The game could be much clearer, and not all powers follow the power cost to damage ratio. (With electricity, for example, one PI will do drastically less damage compared to the other, following this pattern will lead you nowhere fast...) No where in game does it outline where or how to set up parsers either, so you're not at any fault for not knowing this. There's no reason for any of this to be hidden either. It does feel satisfying to finally figure out a solid rotation, but the hurdles you have to jump trying to achieve it are quite ridiculous. This game has never done a good job at defining much of anything, and as you can see by the replies... apparently this is on you to know right out of the gate. That, or it's some closely guarded secret... Either way, don't get too worked up. There are some guides on the forums.
For guides, go to Oracle’s Database (Guides). If you can't find it via scrolling, use the forum thread search function or Google search function (to search the forum). For personal testing, use the Test Server. For console players, make a DCUO PC account just for testing on the Test Server. If looking for a powerset guide (text), only Gadgets (The Cutting Edge Gadgets Guide) is updated and kept current. All other powerset guides are not regularly updated enough. If you prefer video format, look for ObsidianChill and/or iEddy and/or Zoe (Zoe's Showcases & Guides - in one place). For aesthetics go to The New Costume Contest. For things outside of DCUO, go to Joker’s Funhouse (Off Topic) ----> What are you listening to now? (music), Random Videos (videos), Random Pics plz keep clean to keep it going (gifs). For efficient (time + $) levelling of Artifacts, go to DeitySupreme's Artifact Guide. For a guide on planning / prep when new DCUO dlc content hits, go to DeitySupreme's How to Approach New DLCs. Keep track of posts by following people on the thread and / or watching threads (then checking your News Feed).
So many of you are missing the point of the OP....you should not have to do any of that BS to play the game knowledgably. The game should simply tell you the damage a power does. Period. I should be able to look at a power and it tell me the range, power cost, damage, AOE type (if any), additional effects, etc. Once you start talking about parsers and test servers, you have just proven the OP's point. I know it make some folks around here feel superior that knowledge like this is something you have to actually dig for and thus makes them special for knowing it, this is a game. It should tell you how to play, not make you guess and spend time in a lab to figure it out. And frankly it would benefit everyone if it did. There would be way less poorly built characters it people could actually know what they are doing. Also, that obtuseness keeps people from playing. They may join because it is free, but as they play more, the realize they don't know what they are doing and leave because they don't want their second job to be learning how to play a game they picked up just for fun. One of the reasons FF14 has such huge player numbers is because the game is much better at teaching beginners how to play. And while I realize the Dev team here is MUCH smaller and thus can't implement everything it could, a suggestion like this should not immediately be met with "Oh we don't need that, just spend hours testing it yourself". It makes me wonder if part of what is holding this game back are the gatekeepers that like that it is obtuse and filters out people that they don't thing 'deserve' to play.
Parsers are part of the game and doesn’t require anything extra. The game literally gives you all the tools to know what’s better. You hit 2 abilities and one does more than the other. Is it that complicated to know that the ones that does more damage is better? It’s not rocket science. There isn’t some mystical formula that players are trying to keep from lower players. You can’t hit 2 abilities at the same time (very few exceptions), so it means that you hit the ability that does more. If you have 6 abilities with 3 second cooldown it means you can only use 3 without having wasted spots. You pick the 3 that do more damage. People are acting as if there is info that people want to keep hidden when the base game gives you everything you need to find out with very little effort. What exactly is stopping the OP from doing this? The OP even made another complain thread saying that players should make written guides with guides on using mostly power set powers. Why is the OP expecting others to do all the work?
Most abilities that do damage are not measured by a specific number but a range of numbers. Also depending on the ability there can be multiple variables that affect that abilities total damage. That's why parsers exist so you can find the average output. Not that you have to do any of that anyway because better players have already done it for you.
As a data point, I’ve been playing this game since at least 2016, and I only THIS YEAR discovered how to set up parsers. I had erroneously assumed the video folks talking about parsers and test server had something specific to test that showed them damage outputs. I think folks have a reasonable point insofar as DCUO isn’t especially great at exposing / pointing to its tools so that players can take advantage of them.
All of the powers do different damage depending on how high your CR is and how high your Skill Points are. There is no set number. Plus, when you pop a trinket or drink a cola for a might or precision buff the numbers are higher still. Because of this there is no set amount of damage that one power will do. Also, a lot of dps powers have a "pre requisite" so to say before they do more damage. For example, with nature, I have to set up poison spores if I want all of the powers I use to hit harder. I know with Hard Light and Celestial there is the same type of power interaction. I am less familiar with other power sets. I'm pretty sure this is why we all test out our powers with sparring targets. Because this is one of the only ways to know. The Combat Log will help a lot because you can see what damage you do in real time during content but the log moves super fast so not sure how helpful it really is of you are in any form of content and not just messing around with a sparring target. I don't play other MMOs so idk how they all work. But I know that without knowledgeable players who are willing to help people learn the learning curve for this game is really steep.
This is not a pen-and-paper RPG. You don't need to know precise numbers, especially that most abilities scale with all sorts of stats and are subject to random number generator. And if you want the numbers - you have a Combat tab set up, by default. Detailed explanations of base damage, modifiers, RNG rolls, etc. might be off-putting for casual players, would need to be updated with every minor change and would also take away some of the fun of experimentation. Sure - this game has a bunch of mechanics to learn and could probably explain some of them better... or at all, but for those who haven't figured out the basics of their powerset by the time it matters - there's Youtube and stuff.
Sorry but this is wrong. Powers for have a base range. This is then amplified by the players current might/prec stat at the time of casting. It’s not affected by cr other than by the correlation between higher cr having more stats. But it is the stats that impact damage directly. This is why popping a buff trinket gives more damage. This is then multiplied by damage multipliers like your crit magnitude, SCs, and damage consumables. But even those numbers are given to you.
The numbers are not given to you when you look at the loadout powers. This is why the thread was started, because the OP was frustrated that you can't look for how much damage powers do when you are building your loadout and that frustrates the OP. You said all the basic things I said just more consice so.... Your response to me gives me a chuckle. Good luck OP.
You said powers do not have a set amount of damage, they do, most have a specific range. Most people that test, do so with the base number without applying all the multipliers (artifacts, ally passives, etc etc). Higher CR & SP obviously equate to more stats, but they do not directly affect the base damage of any ability unless specified (e.g. Solar Amplifier & heat vision or La Mort card & finishers). What you said was inherently wrong and not the same. As L T said, power cost is usually an indicator of how much damage one ability does within the powerset compared to others, but there are a myriad of other factors. And also, at least might abilities have this metric to partially quanitify expected damage, no weapon combos tell you the base damage multiplier they do.
Tj this the only time I could ever agree with you even a new born baby could learn how to play DC in 0.0s so it's no excuse DC ain't like it was 2012 to 2015 the guy is playing in a DC time where the game is very easy to get in and understand imagine him trying to play DC in 2011
