DCUO Census

Atomic is one of the highest powersets on my list for getting a rework from scratch. If it was my top three it would be Quantum, Atomic and then Sorcery. Atomic has so much potential but it's overall boring animation and core function wise. If they made it go "Boom" a lot more like Bakugo from MHA it would be so much better imo.

I appreciate your hard work. Could you do a video on powersets that could use reworks or certain new added elements?

People have stated almost exactly this for YEARS - I think it ruined so much..

It is too late now though.. the revolt would be huge if they tried to remove it now

Except for Rising Legends - we were awesome lol

Aesthetics are subjective. I personally love atomic aesthetics as they are. Performance wise, people are just bad with atomic.

I finally saw someone using Atomic the day before yesterday. It looked pretty cool. Unfortunately, I have no character slots to spare, to try it out. I have a Quantum toon, but I got bored of it pretty quickly. There are some interesting ideas there, but the execution is sort of meh. On the other hand, Fire strikes me as being pretty versatile. I have two Fire toons, and their loadouts are almost completely different, with the exception of the ground-pound (what can I say, I love to do ground-pounds) and a quick heal.

We can agree to disagree. I would love if atomic was more nuclear explosion based. Like, Garou's Nuclear fission punches. Atomic Weapon buffs would be cool if it was like (pre stats revamp) and did might damage ticks and caused explosion damage after each tick hit. Even an AOE floor 12 tick damage pool would be a nice addition of repeated explosions going off under the feet of enemies standing within it. There's so many cool things you can do with Atomic that hasn't been utilized.

But all of that is subjective. As I said, what you may find aesthetically pleasing others may not. So these kind of things aren’t really needed.

The issue with Atomic and Earth is its functionality when it comes to end game content. especially elite, that is why you see both Earth and Atomic to a greater extent drop off a cliff in terms of participation level once you hit those upper levels.

Unfortunately game design is at fault. When you've got aspects of the game frequently being over tuned resulting in excessive kiting and grey range tanking that is going to put Earth and Atomic immediately at a disadvantage only few people are going to want to persist with overcoming.

This is because Atomic has to combo to create its Qwark aura and Earth has to combo to do Jackhammer and combo construct its Gemstone shield, the alternative being Brick which brings with it it's own weaknesses. The way these two powers mitigate their damage requires the player to be more frequently stationary or without damage mitigation for longer resulting in more windows for mistakes and a more difficult playing experience.

Rage, Ice and Fire on the other hand are all pretty much pop and done powers, they're very fluid and very effective at what they do, Ice and Fire are also top tier damage dealing powers so a good chunk of the players using those powers are probably not even tanks, they're taking advantage of the very effective damage dealing received being perpetually in Ice Golem state fueled by the EOG and fire's very effective ST damage output.

There are a lot of rage tanks because typically speaking rage is probably the strongest tanking power in the game in terms of raw ability in tandem with those other two being very close, but rage has a less appealing damage dealing prospect

People know all of this hence the results.

Well said. This is the main reason why I strongly feel Atomic needs a rework of sorts. Core function and ascetics wise of course. Your points are extremely valid and I couldn't have said it better.

Atomic is at the bottom for a reason my friend. Those abilities I mentioned aren't for ascetic purposes but for added abilities.

Not all that uncommon. I have like 20 of them myself that I use for storage and some I just didn't like the powerset...so they got to be storage, too.

I was talking more on dps side than tank side. As for tanking, I feel like atomic and ice tend to be polar opposites when it comes to elite raids. Ice performs a lot better when dlcs have more ST fights with less adds while atomic tends to be more sought after when there are more Adds in a fight. Perfect example is TSD when there were more atomic tanks because its infinite CC allowed it to make the first boss almost a joke. It’s also why we see so many ice tanks when SM comes around the corner. I think tanks aren’t the best role to talk about balance since all tanks have very different mechanics that let them shine in different moments.

But I’m the dps side (which I was referring to and didn’t make it clear so that’s on me) both atomic and earth are stronger than players give them credit.

Read my response to proxy

That's okay I was merely making a general observation in any case. Yes, Earth and Atomic do have some rather circumstantial advantages, at times, more so Atomic than Earth and often people won't persevere with either power because of the difficulties in mastering them.

You've highlighted a scenario where Atomics' abilities offered a benefit, the issue though is that the benefit received is often not that demonstrably greater than the likes of Rage which is arguably the most effective tank power in the game when it comes to add control and the inevitable absorption of the incoming damage. People will also typically go rage because it provides a greater benefit when boss tanking and not just the niche advantage Atomic might have over it with adds.

As for the DPS sides we're realistically in the same boat when it comes to Atomic and Earth and the reason why they drop off a cliff also relates to their DPS potential.

Atomic is a combo construct type power, certainly more effective in melee than range and Earth is the same with Jackhammer, given it is in these builds the powers truly shine and given such builds are impractical in elite content, the use of these powers, unsurprisingly so, drops off a cliff, Atomic certainly suffers more in this respect as its ability to create a range based load out is worse than Earth and Earth is no complete slouch but terms of range potential but it's also no Fire or Ice.

Ice used to suffer a little in the DPS respect also until someone in their wisdom decided players could start using iconics in Ice Golem form setting off an EOG fueled perpetual Ice Golem meta fiesta with it's cooldown only being 0.5s.

So in the context of this discussion, I wasn't really talking about just tanking either, despite it making up a dominant amount of my prior post. The reason for the drop off in use of these two powers is rather simple.

Fire - Tanking Ability, Very Strong - DPS Ability, Very Strong Difficulty 2✭
Rage - Tanking ability, Very Strong - DPS Ability, Sufficient Difficulty 3✭
Ice - Tanking Ability, Very Strong - DPS Ability, Very Strong Difficulty1✭
Atomic - Tanking Ability, Strong, DPS Ability, Weak - Difficulty 5✭
Earth - Tanking Ability, Strong, DPS Ability, Strong - Difficulty 4✭

1✭ being easiest to use and 5✭ being the hardest.

DPS is as much the reason why those two powers drop off in use as tanking is, Rage is also lower than Fire and Ice because it's mechanic of rage crashing makes it fundamentally more difficult to play but its sheer strength in tanking ability makes it more popular than Earth and Atomic and the feasibility of DPS in elite content is lower with rage than Ice and Fire.

The reality is Ice and Fire are both super strong in both roles and are super easy to pick up and play, as a result they're the path of least resistance hence the reason there are approximately 2,000 Fire and Ice players and 1,500 Rage, Earth and Atomic players (with half of that 1,500 being rage alone)

More widely as indicative as these numbers are, they also show a very 'telling story' and I don't know why the developers don't look at them more closely because to put it bluntly they're ******* scary.

When you've got nearly 2,000 players in the game at the upper levels playing just Electricity and Celestial and Nature are all the way down at 250~ then you've got a massive balance problem because this tells you the powers don't perform or are too difficult to use because the best players in this game aren't even utilizing them, it's also highly, highly indicative that something is broken or being abused, now whether that's the power fundamentally itself or the way an artifact or ally might be feeding it is up for debate, nevertheless however, the fact electricity is as high as it is indicates to me that something is off.

Where's there's smoke, there's usually fire (and that's next in line to electricity)

I think that atomic is extremely underrated when it comes to dps. Specifically it’s ST damage which is a lot higher than players actually realize. It’s like water in terms of high skill cap. I think this is the real reason why these powers are over looked. A lot do the time the skill game means players don’t bother to learn it. Look at nature. It’s at the bottom of the list. Takes a lot of work but is far stronger than players actually know. Biggest issue with nature is that it’s not a one size fits all. When my main was nature I had about 5-6 armories specifically for dps. Never had any issues being top dps. And when it got its perfect scenarios it’s damage when extremely high. This without art swapping (cause I don’t art swap) and without the whole healer wolf form damage. This is also why powers like munitions are highly used too. Easy mode damage which everyone can get into.

Now, I’m not saying their max damage is balanced. I believe perfect balance is impossible. Only way true balance can be achieved is every single power he exact copy paste abilities with just color differences. But the biggest issue I see with all these players talking about powers being bad are just bad dps lol. Im a perfect example lol. When I’m on my prec toon I very rarely “try”. By that I mean actually trying to clip perfectly. Im normally just going through the motions and am still top dps in most groups. Then I get into groups with good dps and I actually have to try to be top dps. And then there are those who I just won’t beat because they swap arts and I don’t (zNot doesn’t I want it nerfed lol. I know he will try to jump on this).

I just think players are really just that bad lol

I agree with you in so far as people frequently choose powers that offer an easy route, I've even highlighted that in my prior posts, I do not however agree with the extent to which you appear to be expressing the existence of an untapped latent potential existing within clearly inferior powers and the census simply doesn't back up that position either, in fact if anything it proves entirely the opposite, (because the people ignoring the power classes you assert have latent potential are the most skilled in the game still)

There is certainly a higher level of effort required to tap in to some powers ability to each an 'acceptable level' of output but any inference, that they're capable of beating the powers that are clearly "FOTM" is not an accurate reflection of reality.

This would be to say that "Atomic" in the hands of an extremely skilled player would have the same damage output potential as an "Electric" player, anyone in the elite level of this game knows that statement couldn't be further from the truth, so it isn't actually a case of a player just "knowing what they're doing".

Let's break down Electricty for a moment to prove this point.

You've got an incredibly strong super charge in circuit breaker, unique to electricity, you've got a strong DPS move set in general and artifacts, particularly EOG, feeding all of this potential even further.

You've then got a healer build in electricity perfectly suited to EOG spamming because of its quick spam like nature of healing perfectly suited for catching people in what is a world of crazy one shots and other mechanics best suited for electricities' rapid healing output at the higher levels.

It is literally no surprise at all why everyone is electricity.

No matter how much effort you put in to Atomic you are not beating an equivalent skilled electricity player, ever and that is because the powers are not even remotely balanced, an Atomic DPS, respectfully, wouldn't even get close and that's why very few people are playing Atomic at end game, because even if they do desire to have fun, they also desire to succeed and Electricity better provides for both.

I'm not asking for perfect balance either and I know that'll never be achieved without creating cookie cutters, but it can still be closer than it is.

Half the battle is most people don't even want to admit there's issues with anything because the thing they fear more than anything in the world is their power taking a nerf, so they aren't frequently prepared to actually be honest when talking about it.

Oh I’m not saying it’s as good as electric. The thing is that most “competitive” players will go for whatever are the top 1-3 powers. Player in general will go for either the top powers or the easy powers while go away from the harder/worse powers. That’s why the bulk of dps go to electric and gadgets. Then you’ll see ice and fire in the mix with munitions being the easy power choice. Again, I’m not saying atomic is a strong as electric. Anyone saying so would be lying. But it’s not as bad as players make it out to be. The charts do not show the damage potential of the powers. It just shows what are the more popular ones. If atomic was right being those powers players would still choose electric because it’s easier. If munitions was as good as electric players would then go to munitions because it’s easier. Just because EG players done go to a specific power doesn’t mean it’s as bad as some claim. It just means there are better options.

I disagree.

I think the charts do show damage potential, damage potential is exactly why powers are more favored, coupled by whether or not they have a robust support build.

The ones at the bottom of the list are the ones that suffer for performance.

The people choosing the 6th or 7th power aren’t choosing it because they are the 6th or 7th best thou. That’s the issue with using a chart like this to determine damage potential. Players who look to switch to meta powers will switch to the top powers. Those picking the other powers are choosing it because of reasons outside of damage.

In that chart it showed that 20.5% of players were electricity, 11.5% were fire, 9.7% were munitions, and 8.5% were ice. So if that chart show what dps were better would you honestly say that munitions when played at max potential is better than gadgets when played at max potential? The chart does not show damage potential.

Atomic celestial and nature are all at 2%. Can you honestly say that electric is 10x better than those powers?

Sorry but no. Electric and gadgets are the 2 best powers. More people are electric because it’s easier than gadgets. Munitions is higher than gadgets because it’s easier.

If a player is choosing a power to chase the scoreboard they will switch to one of those 3 powers. Or fire/ice if they want to be a tank power. If someone wants to chase the scoreboard they won’t choose mental. After you get past the top 5 most populated powers you just get the powers players choose because they want to be that power. So I disagree that the chart has any indications of damage potentials.

1000% this^.