(This has been an issue for the last few years) Recently I have been trying to level my controller alt to play endgame content (or at least catch up with the most recent episode). Normally I am main DPS or heal, and may occasionally tank in certain situations. It has been an enlightening experience for sure, purely for the fact because there is no room in elite and certainly elite plus content for players who have controller alts. Yes, this topic of conversation is tied to artifact swapping. There are several artifacts to level to be considered viable to buff troll *effectively* in elite and especially elite plus content. These being the following: BOP Commlink Amulet of Rao Claw of Aelkhund Cog of Mageddon Tetrahedron of Urgrund Some players may also consider: Entwined Rings of Azar Parasite's Power Harness (this may be a requirement for some endgame groups as gadgets DPS need the extra power) Grimbor's Chains Scrap of the Soul Cloak Eye of Gemini Dead Kings Scepter Philosopher's Stone Note this conversation isn't necessarily tied to battle controlling, as this falls into a similar category to DPS where swapping is more optional. Now the above list likely doesn't cover it all, but that is a fairly lengthy list of artifacts that are mostly just for the controller role. The expectation on controllers has become increasingly ridiculous with time and this was only made worse when the power cost issues with Gadgets were patched and made Gadgets DPS more power heavy. The easy solution would be to get rid of artifact swapping entirely (when selecting an artifact from inventory it doesn't just go straight into your bottom artifact slot), and/or create an Artifacts UI similar to allies. While I do enjoy artifact swapping from a Might DPS standpoint, this change would affect an increasingly small minority of players. It's fine if there are buff controllers who have all these artifacts for now, but if those players quit the game, sell their account etc. then what? Controllers being in this state alienates many controllers from endgame, and any players who have controller alts geared for current episode who don't have a lot of maxed artifacts. This is an issue based on logistics, not skill or money spent. Last year we had the big Eye of Gemini changes. This year I think artifact swapping but in particular the Controller role needs to be looked at. It's an increasingly ridiculous meta for an increasingly small amount of players. Thoughts on this please. Also if anyone has any solutions to this outside of getting rid of art swap (a middle ground argument) then please discuss. Please also be respectful to others as differing opinions are likely.
We need an artifact that fuses precision buff and power into an artifact! Personally, I don’t swap, I didn’t come to DCUO to play an artifact simulator!
I would like the Cog and Tetra artifacts as one also! Although I'm not sure how this would factor in if art swapping did get patched somehow.
Simply creates a new artifact that offers the same as the existing 2 and remove the others, spanking so that they can be broken for other artifacts without loss of XP NTH as was done for EOG.
Just play it as you want. Don’t listen to others as to how to level your arts. If they don’t like your loadout, then they can leave and go cry for a group that specifically has xyz arts, abc loadout, x amount sp, Huggies extra blowout diaper adult size, consumables, etc, etc. I am here to play myself and if I wanna use claw, then so be it, not my fault you spam powers while precision focused.
I stopped trolling unless nobody else could be found. My problem is more about the power output. Most of the time players wouldnt know if you swapped both Tetra AND Cog the whole raid anyway, so I used to only do it when there was no risk to die when entering my inventory. However, since Prec combos get clipped with abilities and Dps's "exploit" Ebons max stacks without cancelling more frequently, the average need for power has gone up greatly. I used to play Rao, Claw and Tetra. Swapping Cog for Tetra sometimes if I felt like the effort was worth it and although my power output was never great, it was always just enough. This is not the case anymore. If you dont swap out Claw now, there is no way you can keep the group powered up unless you have other sources of power regeneration like Brand of Hecate. Because all current artifacts have such a major impact, there is no way its possible to play the role at the demanded level without swapping, unless Dps' heavily alter their loadouts/specs. Ranmaru brought up some ideas about how Cog/Tetra may change in the future a while ago and I wonder if thats still something currently being worked on, but addressing only Tetra/Cog won't make any big differences as it would help in balancing Prec vs Might Dps, but for Trolls the swap-dilemma still remains. So, besides fusing the Tetra and Cog effect, I would also like to see an increase in power output from such artifact. That way there would be no need to swap with the best possible stat boost as Troll and those that still want to go the extra mile, can do so if they desire.
Just get brand of hecate to keep power-hungry powers up and swap 6 arts per rotation, easy. I said this a while back when they nerfed ORCL ally passive, they're just gonna release an art/ally that fixes the power issues.
The bigger overarching issue is the fact that artifact swapping is required for controllers for endgame by the endgame players, when it shouldn't be. It also has knock on effects on the amount of remaining players running elite and elite plus content. How many players left in the DCUO community who are buff troll actually do all of this, 5, 10 players at most across all servers? Again, how much longer will these 5-10 players continue to play the game? Artifact swapping but especially for controllers is increasingly the lizard eating its own tail for the endgame players. I would like in the future for elite and elite plus content to continue in episodes going forward, but to do so having artifact swapping become such a requirement for controllers needs to be addressed on a developmental level (again this would also affect DPS as well but art swapping as DPS is optional). While the power output idea is nice, I just don't see it happening. Endgame players would still expect swaps from their controllers regardless. This has resulted in the death of the controller alt in elite/elite plus content unless the player in question is willing to spend copious amounts of time and money on their artifacts, which hasn't helped either. Not many controller mains still play elite/elite plus content at this point. BiB: That won't happen
One solution would be to simply keep trolls more busy. Currently, trolls usually use 1 or 2 debuffs and spam instant power (unless they use claw without swap). Nothing else is mandatory to perform the role and since debuffs last 10 or 12 seconds, there is a lot of downtime. Controllers are meant to do objectives and pick up players due to that playstyle but since many encounters lack the need for either nowadays, main trolls just get bored and therefor try to do anything to keep them busy while getting the most out of it for the group. I think its similar to some Dps' jumping inbetween their abilities just to do something within the 1-2 second animation window, even though it has no impact on the performance. Adding one ability to cycle through our "rotations" as troll inbetween debuffs could help with that downtime. Essentially the way it has always been before the PoT ability got removed. Removing that ability was definitely good for loadout variety, but it certainly had an impact I havent seen until recently. One solution could be a general change on the healing debuff acting as a primer for other debuffs. If the defense and damage debuff get reduced by 50% and the heal debuff gets a priming effect, boosting those debuffs by 25% while stacking up to 2x, trolls become much more active in combat, restrict their optimal loadouts slightly, but also give them access to a heal debuff at all times, which is usually something you have to manually swap in before one of the few encounters where its needed starts (which often results in a bad performance or wipe if the troll forgot about it). Another change that should come at the same time would be a passive ability to generate a shield when attempting a pickup while in controller role. This would address the loadout restriction because most trolls will simply drop the shield they use to pickup other players safely. That way no main artifact or ally gets affected, while also increasing the depth of the troll role without the need for swaps. Combined with the Claw change for power regeneration I mentioned in another comment before, it would allow for an active and more fun gameplay loop without the need to swap artifacts, but still keep the option to do so if necessary (extremely power-heavy Dps' for example). Although this wouldnt help for the groups you're talking about, it would still help the role in general.Some players need to stop optimizing their loadouts on sparring targets with near infinite power... . It still baffles me at times whenever someone complains about power when its really not bad for 7/8 players but that one person doesnt want to use Orcale or Cyborg because he'd lose 1,5%-2% dmg.
Easy solution. Get rid of all sparring targets in the game and replace with Glitched Sparring Targets (or just have them as the go-to Sparring Target). Also give them significantly more health so it doesn't give a false impression for Might DPS with finishers.
So that might becomes even less fun to play? No thanks for this bad solution, we can't even play with Fun in might anymore, for half of the powers it wouldn't help the situation for might at all, do elite content with a full group might and you'll see how annoying they've made it with the lack of might dps, the game is broken enough as it is, don't make it any worse! They've wanted to promote precision for several years now, and because of that and the artefacts, they've lost most of the population...
Think you have misunderstood. Might DPS rotations do large damage currently to the point where beyond one rotation the sparring target is below 35% health. Finishers then add more damage to give false impressions of combat parsers when in reality in current endgame content this would make up a much smaller portion of time in combat fighting bosses. The power back is more to set an expectation for power out, especially if in the future artifact swapping does get patched and it affects the meta of controllers where power back is harder to come by in content. Unless you mean you enjoy using your might rotations on sparring targets with endless power regeneration? Again the post you responded to was purely in regard to sparring targets, not instanced/open world content.
Except for everyone that wolfpacked either.... Honestly I don't see any end to art swapping or any huge changes to existing artis (like the EOG ones) now that they've pushed the Wolfpacks. Unless they also come up with some sort of 'wolfpack recovery kit' where you'd be able to dissolve ALL your wolfpacks (of one artifact that is) for the XP in the original one. WAY too much money dumped into these now where I think we'd have riots in the DC streets if they put a major nerf on any of the popular ones. New ones, if the changes are made soon after launch...sure. Anyone should be able to tell an arti that's too OP and avoid using a wolfpack on one until a few months later at least...seeing as a nerf would likely be coming.
This proves just how incompetent Daybreak are in their decision making by clearly omitting the consequences on some of their choices (influenced by money) and the long term, in this case, the monetisation of linked artefacts, artefacts should be linked to the account from the start for everyone without being monetised, as proposed by Lost ark with their card system (for example), now see the problem for artefact balancing over time, although I've put forward an idea for that.
