DCUO - Regarding the artifacts Cog of Mageddon and Tetrahedron of Urgrund

I would suggest leaving cog and tetra separate. There's a simple solution that the community ignores out of selfishness; DPS wearing cog or tetra. DPS don't wear cog/tetra because they don't want to give fellow DPS anything that would potentially give someone else MORE damage than them. By default trolls already buff prec so why are people not asking to have trolls group buff also buff might? I buff might on my troll because claw and tetra are nice buffs but let's be honest, dps won't because again they make the entire game revolve around chasing numbers. One of the YouTubers outright admitted that he wouldn't use tetra to buff someone else damage( go team huh). If anything needs some love, it's starheart fragment and rings of azar. Thanks for responding to community.

I'm not a buff troll so I got no dog in this fight. I just supply power and throw debuffs. If i was going to buff, I would use claw.

This is the best thing I've heard in a while.
In my opinion, nerfing things has always been the easy way out of problems. It may take a while but addressing the problem properly and bringing balance by bringing everything else up at level is the more difficult path but the proper one.

Just wanted to respond to this, since it is nice to finally hear something from a dev regarding EoG balance. I am by no means a game designer, but I do feel strongly about EoG negatively impacting the meta of every role in DCUO at the moment. I am a longtime Dota player (measly pos 3-5 player) and fan as well, and I understand where your sentiment is coming from. After all, in Dota, if everything is OP, then nothing is OP, right? Well, I’m not so sure. The difference is that Dota is a PvP game, where if there are imbalances, there is usually counterplay and a banning phase that removes outliers from consistently shaping the meta of the game. DCUO is a PvE game (PvP is not real in this game, let’s face it), and I think that Dota’s balance philosophy only works when you have a fantastic balance team constantly making minor adjustments to the game.

EoG is a problem because, well, there’s no reason NOT to run it on every role. The green side gives a crap ton of stats that Tanks use, additionally, it heals and gives so much supercharge to both the user and its allies. The orange side also gives a crap ton of DPS stats, and it stacks on top of itself AND it counts all the dmg you do (except orbitals and allies I believe) towards the damage. This artifact does too much, especially when everyone in a raid can have one. Not to mention, it’s one of the best arts for swapping (even Trolls can do that).

The issue, as I’m sure you’re aware of on your end, is that EoG seems to limit gameplay design, since it does so much, is so strong, and is extremely versatile. It also creates problems where the damage output of a full EoG spam group is significantly higher than a non-EoG spam group. It seems like now every new instance is going to have constant floor mechanics to prevent people from standing together in their circles, and I honestly think that is going to get very boring pretty quickly. Don’t even get me started on the Supercharge balance situation right now and why every DPS trying to BiS is going electricity and ice EoG spam

I totally agree that other artifacts need reworks and improvements to make them more appealing and interesting, but EoG is certainly an outlier. It’s not completely broken by itself, but it certainly is with a full group of high-level players spamming it. It would not be easy to change it without making people upset, but I strongly believe it would be worth it for the health of the game.

Agree with this.

I'm curious as to whether your tracking breakthroughs include just currently possesed artifacts or all breakthroughs over time?

Given these are the free artifacts as well as the fact they're the oldest doesn't distort the popularity of them when looking at that statistic?

When they're the first one you get there's a good chance they'll be leveled by players even if they're not the best choice.

Also given they're staple artifacts for a buff controller I also wonder whether that also skews the perception that players like both and they're leveling both out of compulsion even if doing so is a pain from a player experience perspective.

I appreciate you've given it thought in the past but I actually do tend to think these artifacts should be merged because it'll create a slightly better experience for the player.

Just my thoughts.

Why no comment on my post?

I often run Tetra on my Ice character because I care more about the team's success than my own. I also have a ton of health thrown into my base mods for my tank side, so I feel like it makes sense to use it to buff other players.

That said, I'm open to solutions that free up Controllers to do more. I think it's bad to pigeonhole any role into playing a certain way through community dynamics.

This is why those artifact´s must merge, DPS´s never will buff other´s damage because that would stop them from being the best players in the server

You are one in a million. A real team player.

This is why I wish the game could track how much damage you added for other players. We track healing, power given, damage doe and damage taken, but not much for buffs.

We need a Batarang toss artifact to compete with Heat vision.

Or a Polar Amplifier artifact for Freezing Breath.

Just to clarify in this post I meant having separate artifacts/allies for buffing precision/might respectively makes it more divisive for the community than it needs to be imo.

I think those who saw it knew what I meant but I wrote it in a way that could be misinterpreted.

I think everyone understood perfectly, your message is quite clear. You want to continue to make it the controllers responsibility to buff the DPS. I play as a hardlight troll and I run claw and tetra, and people will whine because I don't have cog as well to which I reply" you can always run cog if you need buff that bad".

So called division - how? Because they operate differently? Question, how many DPS spec as hybrid ( not Joe schmoe but like the comp DPS. Do they spec hybrid?)? Do you also suggest they combine might and prec augmentation? Retroactively add the option for prec with rage/celes/hardlight combos? Do you actually care about the trolls? Are you a troll power?

Buff or no buff- wasn't too long ago that people were posting about why their buffs( hive mind, wired, bloodlust etc) were being given to team mates as well but now , oh yeah let the troll do it so I can run something else.

Abusing the trolls- the selfish DPS community expects the troll to
1. Do all pickups by themselves
2. Do all mechanics by themselves even if the boss is invulnerable
3. Buff might
4. Buff prec
5.give power
6. Debuff

Meanwhile DPS won't even block or move out of damage on purpose just to pad more numbers. DPS will specifically not pick someone up to pad numbers

Final thought- I would vote no to merging tetra and cog simply because dps only want it if a troll has it. DPS don't care about the team, only garbage number padding.

You're a rare breed. On EU server there's a similar issue with controllers only running cog.

It's division because if the controller isn't running cog or tetra it's penalising the DPS who levelled their artifacts and spent time on their rotations as precision or might only to do less damage. If the controller is exclusively running cog then Might DPS will underperform next to precision players. That is something in the meta currently and as mentioned before in a previous post players shouldn't have to play a certain way of DPSing just for the buffs from the controller.

Regarding the other points you made, they seem to be in the meta so it's not an individual issue. The controller is often less busy than the tank or even the heal, depending on the boss encounter, so it makes sense for more experienced content groups to give the controller more to do regarding mechanics. There's also situations where maybe the controller player wants more to do.

If most of the controllers only run cog OR tetra rather than both, the same question could be addressed to the play style not being buffed. If you have most endgame controllers only running cog, does anyone care about Might DPS? If you have most endgame controllers only running tetra, does anyone care about Precision DPS? There should imo be a middle ground where both are happy. In terms of the controller role itself it was once mainly used to give power and debuffs, but with various updates, artifacts/allies, easy ways of replenishing your own power, this changed in more recent years, especially with the introduction of Claw of Aelkhund and then later updating Cog/Tetra. There's another discussion at hand but it concerns the controller role as a whole than the cog/tetra debate, which is what this thread is focusing on.

Precision/might from a DPS standpoint is a topic for another day - at the moment it is fine but if cog/tetra was one artifact we would have a better idea of balance with DPS in the game. Hybrid DPS isn't really a thing, very few players have tried this out that I know of. And not many players I know of use Cog or Tetra as DPS, there's few exceptions where they can be used to buff the group but at the cost of their own damage.

Who knows a cog/tetra hybrid might work out for hybrid DPS, but in any case if there were any changes it would have to go through test server first.

I know I'm going to be in the complete minority when I say this but the honest truth of the matter is EOG isn't the "problem"
The real issue is it's one of the only (team) based artifacts. At it's very creation the original dev specifically highlighted that your damage increase is directly related to your group being selfless. If we had a wider array of powerful team based artifacts more ppl will deviate from EoG. Tanks mainly use it b/c a movement mode shields or iconic sc are better than the things in the actual powerset. That means the powersets themselves need to be buffed, whether it's stronger shields, higher damage mitigation, or heals added even if those those things were never traditionally associated with that powerset before. As a lot of artifacts have been a bridge to fix short comings in powersets rather than taking the time to fix those powersets weaknesses directly.

Imagine the dps amulet artifact said, "while in dps role players within 8 meters of the user recieve 60 of your buff & the user takes 35% less damage to self." More ppl would be interested in it. Or if the starheart Fragment said "using a priority heal on players below 50% health grants healed players 40% damage mitigation for 15sec in addition to health increased based on your restoration. Or something team based with the Philosopher's stone to take supply drops off cooldown much faster to make it worth using (as the current 6sec per power used isn't to appealing to me personally) or make it turn supply drops into a super shield that protects you & your group with it's strength increased with each player standing in it. Or rings of Azar adds stun duration to enemies & reduces their resistance.

Even if these particular examples from the of my head may sound outlandish to some the point still stands that if you turn other under used artifacts into powerful team category artifacts EOG will no longer be an "outliner" b/c it will have other artifacts in it's category with competive effects that can ppl may be more interested in using.

Creating more powerfull group based artifacts is very bad imo it will make elite more and more gatekeeping for most players the devs shouldnt give the community more reasons to be picky to exclude most players because they dont have this or that artifact and cause more complains regarding difficulty from too easy to too hard and Them having to create content around a broken artifact that shouldnt even exist in its current state. Group based artifacts raise the gap between groups the most while individual based ones are far less broken and easyier to predict its pretty clear that eog wasnt meant to be as strong as it is.

Elite content isn't gatekeeping just b/c a specific handful of ppl ask for a particular setup in LFG. Ppl often feel that way b/c they aren't willing to take the time to (make) an LFG group tailored to their playstyle. If a player won't take initiative they can't be mad at what's being posted. Balance won't be an issue if content is designed around mechanics & puzzles that need to be completed. Difficulty is then based on how well a group can follow said mechanics that always trigger based on the bosses current health. Bosses should also become impervious to said damage until that mechanic or puzzle is solved.

Again EOG (was) intended to be as strong as it is b/c it was created to be a group based artifact for the beginning. The dev even said on the livestream reveal that it "was created to encourage teamwork". The issue is there haven't been any other (team) based artifacts made that will encourage players to try something different.

When you do nerf EoG, and let's face it, it's going to happen. Please take into account that it's the stacking that is really causing the problem. Just limit the bonus for multiple EoG's. e.g. No one is complaining about having ONE EoG spammer in a group. It's when multiple people are all using the artifact. Please don't nerf INDIVIDUAL usage when it's group use that is the problem.