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

I'm aware of the games history, been here the whole time as well

I don't disagree with the way the game is structured in terms of competitive dps, the reason for my passing comment of intrigue was merely because that is the mentality and it's not a mentality, I personally, think is constructive. There's a reason other MMO's don't have scorecards. The competition does and can at times cause actual tangible problems in content, ranging from refusing to pick ups to not stopping on reflects and so forth.

As for your battle support comment I fundamentally disagree with you on that, it's not selfish to battle role, in fact it's the very opposite as long as it's not done detrimentally. The art of battle role is building your character in a way that improves damage potential while not losing the ability to carry out your fundamental support role.

A good battle role player knows the limits or at the very least seeks to find them and exploit them for the groups gain, that isn't selfish, it's in fact the very opposite of it.

A responsible battle player will always have a pure support build ready when necessary on an armory and will also know when they need to dial back their stat balances, a bad battle role player will insist on putting out damage while jeopardizing the groups success in a way no different from any other 'bad player'.

Battle roles have a meaningful place in this game, despite the fact I know you loathe them

That's the catch though, how many good, knowledgeable battle roles are out there? it's usually already good dps that just shifted their talents to the support role and found an opportunity to expand their role. The battle roles posts we see on the forums or asking in my comment section aren't that type of player they are used to how other MMO's approach that role and you see that type of player being a detriment to group where its usually not until afterwards where you start inspecting wondering why the power was low or the heals were weak and you have your answer. Or you can tell from the powerset they have chosen where they want to be a battle elec heal or a battle ice tank where literally the powerset wasn't even remotely designed for that and you are just left spec'ing prec and using flurry or brawling, which isn't really a battle role its just taking advantage of overly tuned weapon damage.

It’s not about linking arms and singing. There is a difference between you saying you refuse to use an art because it helps other dps and dps in the group just not caring and singing while not making any progress. The only factor that matters in any given run is if the raid is beat. Forget about trolls for a second. A group would just be better if one dps had this. Statistically speaking it’s just a basic fact. You not wanting to use it and telling others to not use it is simple selfish and scoreboard chasing. There is a difference between increasing one’s damage and chasing the scoreboard.

I agree that too many people try to adopt battle builds without knowing what they're doing, which I guess is why I said good players seek to find the limits and exploit them, to benefit the group. Bad ones don't as you say they're just DPS players wrapped up as a support player, but the battle builds definitely do have a time and a place, especially as content ages.

My battle tank builds for example are particularly robust in omnibus content and in fact can often survive even in the most recent content outside of perhaps elite+ where I just wouldn't even try it for obvious reasons.

Eking out extra damage is a great way to assist groups going for feats that might require burn, I know at that point you could argue, dps just gotta "git gud" and while that's true, why not help out if it can be done while not sacrificing at all your ability to undertake your support job?

I think that's actually the fundamental difference between the mind set of a bad battle player and a good one. A good one has the default mindset that their job is first and foremost to be their support role, that has to succeed at all cost and damage comes second. A bad battle player does the opposite and puts damage above support, because what they're really trying to do is "pew-pew" in disguise.

In respect to your precision comments, I appreciate you have a viewpoint on it, I'm not sure I agree though because of how far might has come in terms of its competitive potential. I don't think people choose to go precision because it's necessarily demonstrably over tuned, they do it because of its more flexible maneuverability, its ability to change between AOE and ST on the fly and to take advantage of having more SP so as to best utilize both the precision and might/power SP trees.

Sorry, overly tuned weapon? You only say that because you personally do not like prec. You have even stated before that you want prec nerfed to the ground. At this moment in time prec and might are actually pretty balanced. The only ones who have said other wise are either just bad might dps or are biased and want everyone to play how they want.

fully agreed in my opinion no support roll should be buffing group damage,those who want damage need to do find their own ways to increase dps output all this buffing has created a toxic meta on a game thats already caterring towards damage with the content design.

Yeah it's been a while since I saw a scoreboard blow out simply by virtue of one player being might and the other being precision, if the might player knows what they're doing.

Free to Play it zNot's way™

How is scorecard chasing any different from what you are asking for by players working together to achieve that goal of beating a raid? Better DPS you not only speed up the completion but can routinely skip mechanics due directly to the burn which in turn makes the groups life easier. How many orb phases in TTE are skipped simply from increased burn which at any wrong RNG turn could instantly lead to a group wipe. How many less Taser Punches does the tank have to not worry about blocking due to increased burn from dps? Take out the scorecard chasing and you still have healers using EOG to rotate supers, you still have controllers buffing the group and using extra debuffs. All the roles tie into one another. Considering like I said the average raid is 62.5% DPS ROLES

This is the most facetious remark I think you have ever made. I wasn't talking about might vs prec I was saying THERE IS NO PREC without dw flurry shot and brawling shuriken storm. How successful are "might" battle roles outside of ones that specifically have powers that make it easy like jackhammer spam as a tank? Battle roles exist because they don't have to change their playstyle because of how ridiculously skewed precision playstyle is to 2/44 viable weapon masteries. Prec and Might are "pretty balanced" because you have arts like amulet/ebon and allies like Ivy adding 200k+ might to players stats.

My goal isn't to turn this into a prec vs might discussion but the competitive advantage gap for might and prec is only due to spending hundreds of dollars on several artifacts and allies. Past episode Ice might had the potential to pass gadgets prec. That might player needed to have 5k supers off cooldown for Ice Elemental, needed to swap in Mercy procs, scrap before every super, eog, if amulet was used then they were swapping dks to save stacks. Might had to have supers it could take advantage of with unlimited eog spam.

There is so much that favors prec. Swapping strat cancelling your channels, random grounding cancelling your channels, having to cancel a channel to move or dodge where prec doesn't even have to interrupt anything and can smoothly move while in combat. Might players having to choose between abilities that deal greater damage in melee-midrage or range damage focus where flurry shot and brawling are all max range full damage for prec players. Controllers recharge giving 20% precision buff and 0 might, controllers needing either to swap claw every 12s or keep it on with reduced power to the group just for the controllers to get the 7% extra might to make up. Numerous trinkets and consumables that can be used to clip timings (nothing clips might abilities) As you said swapping instantly without any change to their loadout from ST to AOE when adds spawn, which is something no might power has ever been able to do so you either are ST focused with some extra aoe moves or you have to pick and choose on the damage loss. Arts like amulet or ebon to increase might competitiveness you either have to choose to possibly kill yourself or run out of power, where prec doesn't have to make any such decision. It's hard for me even to think about what competitive advantages Might has over Precision. Prec players can chose any powerset they want due to the loadout being all SS and iconic powers anyways.

Can anyone honestly say that if the group effect artifacts we have now were only to the user so much toxicity, balance and gameplay issues would have never even occurred? Without the group effect on EOG we wouldn't have had to worry about any DPS stacking impacting mechanics, pet and ally damage wouldn't have been a concern. Healers wouldn't have been using multiple supers off cooldown for an entire instance. Tetra/Cog wouldn't have been needed to shift to a controller's duty, thus freeing up 2 complete slots in their rotation and cut down severely on the controller artifact swapping. Azar and Starheart wouldn't have been needed to level just for that extra bit of health and could have been reworked entirely.

Literally there would have been no drawback if all were current user only effects and entire metas would have been avoided. No one can say otherwise to that.

And... if you just start nerfing precision those exact same artifacts and allies you speak of simply reverse the effect and turn the tables in favor of might, I'd be lying if I said I didn't think that was partly what you deep down want given your often transparently verbalized distaste for precision in general, I think it's fairly safe to say based on the evidence you're a solid might fanboy

It's interesting that you highlight gadgets precision, which we both know individually needs adjustment outside of the wider precision debate for a bunch of reasons, it's one of the over performing precision based powers, along with electricity for reasons other than what you allege to be an over tuned weapon output.

It is the individual characteristics of those particular power sets that need adjustment, not the weapon outputs as they perform under other powers with lesser potential.

As for the swapping between ST and AOE, that's simply an advantage of precision based damage output in the sense that it is your weapon that predominantly determines whether you are AOE or ST and not your choice of might based powers that accompany it, it's been like that forever and unless you take issue with players being able to access their inventory, which they've been able to do since this games inception I'm not sure why you are taking issue with it?

Perhaps the answer is to allow people to be able to more quickly change their armories so that might based DPS can more rapidly alternate between different builds, I wouldn't have a problem with that, do you?

Also, and I'm sure we've had this debate before, if people weren't clipping their weapon attacks with SS abilities, they'd still be doing it with others, it'd be a loss of damage for sure, but the implication SS abilities are the defining factor is misleading, they're not.

The defining factor in a might player suffering against a precision based player is typically them having a bad load out and rotation and as you say not having the artifacts and allies, but when it comes to those last two, where's the justification to nerf precision because of it? Why is it precision players fault the developers chose to band aid fix might output through artifacts and allies you have to pay for?

There is a difference between trying to do more damage and scoreboard chasing. One can try put out more damage with the intent to make the group runs be more smooth. On the other hand when the scoreboard becomes the focus dps will put themselves over the groups needs. That is a very distinct difference. Doing things like getting out of others red circles because they “steal” you damage. Or refusing to run tetra/cog because you help other dps do better. That’s almost equivalent to a dps ignoring a downed dps right next to them just to pull ahead on the scoreboard. Or attaching during phases that punish the group like in twse. What’s even funnier is dps attaching during the dome phase in TT even thou they take no damage. That does nothing to advance the group.

And that statement has nothing to do with dw/brawling being overtuned and instead has to do with every other combo being under tuned.

If this answers the question, I think this game would have far less toxicity if it never had a damage dealing scorecard.

The fact the scorecard exists despite all its usefulness, is the same reason people don't run team based artifacts and allies efficiently, it's the reason why people deliberately leave and evade orange circles, and act and explicity say its damage theft, it's the reason people will stand right next to a downed ally and not pick them up, it's the reason a dps won't press an objective, it's the reason a dps won't properly stop while reflects are running, it's the reason you highlighted earlier people won't run tetra in dps role leaving the controller to have to artifact swap it.

It's the reason why dps are so obsessed with chasing damage that they'll play like toxic *** holes and ruin content

Exactly, the other weapons are horribly under performing, that's the real problem resulting in why other weapons are ignored. I remember Doom Spin was great too when you could risk being in melee range, but it upset the might players, that people were using it and instead of just tweaking it a little, nerfed into the ground that was, not actually into the ground 6 foot below the ground...

What a waste, simply a waste, most nerfs in this game always tend to be massive overreactions.

Tbf, it can also lead to funny moments like trying to get one last hit on in Daboom and ending up downed lol

A precision nerf doesn't come without a Weapons Pass, similarly to a Supercharge Pass as well. You can't call Precision in general balanced when 4.5% of the available weapon mastery combos are being used and movement mode powers are better than actual powerset abilities to fill out a precision based loadout. I understand a Supercharge Pass requires fundamental understanding of all the legacy code and how the different powersets ineract with each other but a Weapons Pass is literally just numbers on an spreadsheet. The only reason DoomSpin was overtuned for so long was the previous developer put a decimal point in the wrong spot. With just a simple time investment weapons could be balanced accordingly.

How do you try to do more damage without a point of reference? My point of reference is the other dps in the run. You can't take total damage done as a point of reference because there are tons of variables that go into play unless across multiple runs of an instance everything is the same, which isn't nearly as feasible. However, if I am dpsing against Player A and he consistently does well the closer I close the gap or pass him in damage I can use that as a reference point to my own damage increase. You call that scorecard chasing, I call that just regular DPSing. If someone doesn't want to swap DKS every 4 seconds on a finisher with amulet/ebon that is fine. That player would already know he wouldn't be using his damage as a reference against other dps that are just looking to deal as much damage as the can and check who came out on top at the end. Those "scorecard chasing" dps can't do anything without the group supporting them with buffs and super regen. So still not sure how you can treat that differently. You are just calling the same thing a different label.

DCUO is entirely a DPS centric given game. You can't complete any instance without defeating and needing millions upon millions of damage. You can't just "survive" tanking and healing and giving power and then get rewarded with a completion. With a DPS centric game you need some way to compare and track your progress as a DPS, thus the scorecard. Now could the scorecard be much more detailed that would include "Objectives Completed"? it sure would. If there was some "scorecard chasing" dps and at the end had 0 rally's and 0 Objectives Completed vs another dps who has a ton of both that first dps would just be mocked by the community. As far as ive seen with any other MMO they all have DPS meters so you know exactly what dps is doing the most damage at any given time. They also have cool things like Taunt Meters too. The only scorecard that should be removed is the first screen that displays the name of players with the "Most of" stats. THAT is pointless.

I never said weapons were balanced between themselves, I said that by and large, brawling and duel wield are balanced in terms of output when compared to a might player properly playing to their potential. Put to one side whether it sucks that might player has to level some artifacts and allies to achieve that, that's developments fault for going down that track, that's too late now, fixing that properly would result in artifact nerfs long term and we've seen how those go.

Multiple weapons are not being used because they're under performing, put it this way Chill, you can't sit there and tell me a player can pick up a shield for example and do the same amount of damage as a might player by using shield in to dual pistols for example and nor can they do the same as bow flurry or brawling while using a shield, it's not even close.

All the other weapons except for dual wield and brawling are performing worse than even might, so its entirely expected they'll be ignored outside of the role play community.

If you reduced duel wield and brawling down to the levels of the other weapons in an attempt to call it a weapon pass or balance then what you're really asking for is for the entire server to change to might overnight, because that's the end result of such a pass to obtain weapon flexibility the other weapons in the game need a serious buff.

Doom Spin wasn't really over performing or if it was it definitely wasn't over performing to the extent alleged, the decimal point may have been in the wrong place but in having so it was much closer to brawling and duel wield than it is now 6ft underground and in a steel coffin.

Yes a weapon pass needs a time investment but it also needs people to start being honest about where they think the damage output potential should be so that they can be properly adjusted and that potential needs to be void of bias and favoritism with respect to either might or precision.

If you adjust the weapons to the point their potential is worse than that of a might player you're no longer asking for balance you're asking for precision to be killed so that might can shine as superior.