The "GET GUD AT THE GAME" Crowd:

TOO MANY don't know the basics, and they'll never find their way to the forum or any other resource online to get good. They're face-rolling-button-mashers. I was stun locked for the entire duration of the attack in the Flash duo fighting Pied Piper because the Pug I was paired with didn't LUNGE Piper to stop it.

https://www.dcuniverseonline.com/guides/guides-combat-basics-action-combos-mechanics-dcuo

COUNTER MECHANICS
Your opponents won’t just take the punches you throw at them, though, and will seek to counter your attacks just as you seek to counter theirs. This is best understood through the three basic kinds of counters.

• Block: Hold R (NS), RB (XB), R1 (PS), or Shift (PC) to reduce incoming damage and to counter large attacks
  • When blocking, you are vulnerable to Block Break
• Block Break: Use a Range (Hold) attack to counter a blocking opponent
  • When block breaking, you are vulnerable to Interrupt
• Interrupt: Use a Melee (Hold) attack to counter a block-breaking opponent
  • When interrupting, you are vulnerable to Block

When you successfully counter your opponent, you gain immunity from damage and from being countered for a short period of time, as well as knock them to the ground. Try to counter your opponents as often as you can!
When you are countered, you are knocked to the ground. Try to avoid this, but when you can’t, you can hold RB (XB), R1 (PS), or Shift (PC) to Break Out and get back to the fight faster.

If you have that much hate say someone is unemployed and has no life just cause they have max gear than maybe the problem is with you? People can be good at a game and still be productive in real life. It’s called managing your time. Just like a player can be terrible at the game and have no life either. One if not a result of the other.

The health alone no. But there are other stats too. Stats that weren’t present when that content was endgame. And that little extra light not be big now, but back than it was. I remember a time when having even 200 sp was a huge deal. Being able to max out just 1 extra weapon tree was big. These small things that don’t seem big now were a big deal back than. On top of artifact that weren’t even present back than. And I don’t mean the stats. I mean the actual effects.

Maybe that's the case here on the forums but the various conversations in the various chats that's I've been privy to paint a very different picture. If I had to guess at a breakdown of the opinions I've heard, I'd say about 10% are against / 35% are for / 55% don't care either way because they feel they are SOOO OP that there's nothing this game can throw at them that they won't "pwn" without even trying (their attitude, not necessarily an objective or accurate assessment lol).

Hmmm, being diplomatic on this could be challenging.

I can understand the frustrations and everything that can come with that being hurled at you. It's a downright rude statement to have thrown at you, not to mention insulting. And I do appreciate the "building your strength" method that some prefer.

But this MMO has always had a rather strong focus on how well a player plays their character and less of a reliance on stats powering them through everything. And there is an argument to be made about how the "building your strength" method undermines having to play your character well.

Now, with that said, building strength on a character now still has benefits. Anything that doesn't contribute to CR still adds to your character, so everything from Augments to Base Mods will still boost your character when clamped. It doesn't help that the vast majority of our stats come from gear that contributes to CR, but all the other things you do to build a character still have an effect. Plus we get clamped at 10 CR higher than the NPCs in the older content, so while it isn't the ideal amount of stats from gear we are still above what we're fighting.

We can still build our strength, but it's not going to have the same effect as it did in the past. So if the strength you've built isn't quite doing the job, then yes it may be time to examine what you're doing and seeing where and how you might be able to up your game.

I've NEVER been super-speed. can't stand it. I use the speed ring when tanking raids with long hallways because people are impatient but I kind of hate that too. I've been zipping all up and down no-mans-land in FOS2. ugh.

As for art switching, I actually tried it for the first time last night but only because I was trolling for a group going for the FFe critical no death feat checkmark and figured more group shields via the soul cloak could help. But that's was a special circumstance and to do it even remotely safely and efficiently I gotta use a bluetooth keyboard and hit i>spacebar>esc. But my current bluetooth keyboard glitches out when actually trying to type anything in a chat textbook so that will definitely not even be a semi-regular thing. I already made a formal announcement to my league that any request to art-switch cog/tetra or anything else will strictly be responded to via multiple various incendiary and profanity-laced phrases, all of which translate to HEEEELLLLL NOOOOOOOO

When I said "falling behind" I'm not referencing characters that are behind in stats such as new players or returning veterans. I am specifically calling out people that:
A. Make conscious decisions to not keep up with their peers in a casual-paced game. Not just in terms of CR or stats but also learning mechanics, following tried and true best practices, etc.
B. Actively avoid any direct social engagement in in-game content where group participation is key.

These are people that pop up in random queues because any interaction with premade groups will lead to personal disaster. They do not and will not stand up to the most basic expectations of gameplay (tanks that sit in the back, healers that won't heal, trolls with no debuffs, etc). They will slap anything on their character without any foreknowledge: wrong gear, wrong artifacts (artifacts not meant for their role, people that wear Lernaea's Amulet without reading what it does, etc), wrong augments (Skittles), crazy loadouts with abilities that do not serve their role. When you offer them any help or friendly advice it's met with vicious rebuke. These are the people that spend most of their time at failing (or getting kicked and playing victim) than actually playing the game.

And yes I know not everyone is like this, all of us were new at some point and none of us knew what we were doing. The difference is we took steps to figure things out. We make friends in game, we join leagues, we have discussions on the forum, we learn different aspects of gameplay and we create/read/watch guides. The aforementioned people that I just described, they don't want anything to do with that but they will come to the forums under the guise of anonymity to tell others that missed out on learning the mechanics of a particular raid to "get good". It's crazy.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

All joking aside, I do have a difficult time interacting with many players in this game. The expectations of some can be extremely grating, and after weeks of being harassed by one player, a former leader of a league I was in, I tend to avoid interactions even more now. I'm proficient at my roles, and I learn mechanics either here or via videos, reading guides, etc.

I would like to find a good group of people to run with. I'm just not comfortable trying yet. I'm sure there are others with similar experiences that random queue instead of using LFG.

Throw me in with the group that doesn't care. Originally I was against having it and not for the same reasons everyone is complaining about now. I was for having it as an option but now that everything is said and done... I have a feeling this is going to play out something like the Titanic. Right now we're at the part where we've just hit the iceberg but haven't realized the extent of the damage yet.

I've been dabbling in different pieces of content over the past week and I can safely say that some places feel overwhelming like Desecrated Cathedral Elite and other places feel underwhelming like The Threat Below Elite. Personally I've found there is definitely more places that feel underwhelming. I'm not sure if that was the goal however. Is feeling super the same as content feeling underwhelming? But definitely who you are and which people you choose to run with are going to arouse contrasting opinions and experiences.

It wouldn't be as bad, if new players actually knew another role besides dps. We all know new players need to "get good" but the fall out of veteran players that know how to "play good" are having shocking pug runs by blind queueing and then just think " nah this sucks, I'm just gonna lfg it or run with friends etc"

I totally get your points. I just wanted omnibus (blind queueing to work). Devs need to rethink the blind queueing and it's bugs and give us all (new and old players) a reason to queue it.

We should maybe get more source Mark's the higher cr we are.... I dunno but it needs a rework for sure.

Thunder_Cats_Only, Justice Girls, Amazing Valkyries, Frozen Empire, and Royal Knights are really great leagues to run with.

I don't want to play the violin as we sink into icy depths

Social anxiety and harassment from other players can really ruin someone's gaming experience and I completely understand where you are coming from.

Let me ask you this, if someone were to message you with the sole intent to offer some friendly advice how would you naturally react?

Ok let me try this, your pride to go fight mike Tyson but in a no rules street match you bring a piece with you, surely it's not a part of the rules to fight fair but we're is the self pride of winning in a honorable way, bosses like Trigon or Darkseid, you're suppose to struggle against no matter how much you've progressed.

How do you feel about the electric harmonica?

Meh, I can take it or leave it "shrugs"

Tuba?

Are you talking DPS? If so I do agree that an extra 210 health is mostly inconsequential. However, DPS health is usually pretty much the same across the board anyway. Might DPS with high sp that don't care about stronger weapon taps (eye roll) or shield strength would be higher. But even for DPS on the low side, (which I would be with 0 sp in health and all power gen mods), survivability is all about mechanics, positioning, timing, awareness and most importantly support role competency. Outside of the occasional random crap mystery deaths that we all experience from time to time, any and all death-inducing damage is designed to be able to be mitigated via those factors. If there's a situation where that is not the case, I'd bet it's not intended and should be reported to the devs for fixing. But to your point, outside of maybe some solo content, the game is not designed for a DPS to solve the problem of getting killed by stacking more and more health. Hell, half the boss attacks deal health scaling damage anyway, at least in content from the last few years. Otherwise, these all health & no vit buff trolls would be practically invincible.

If for some reason the above mentioned survivability tools/factors are in effect but more survivability is still needed, throw a shield in your LO. Even personal dampening fields in the utility belt can make a huge difference. I actually recently learned they are a lot stronger than I thought they were. If you can't bare the thought of sacrificing one of your utility belt goodies for PDF's, you can always replace orbital or supply drop and quickly swap those in every 5 minutes or so. I am by no means an advocate for this inventory swapping crap, but once every 5 minutes isn't too bad.

If you're talking about tank health, the total aggregate % modifiers are WAAAY higher than what you stated. But even on top of that, passive artifact benefits, properly rotating shields, utility belt goodies, understanding raid mechanics, understanding counter mechanics, kiting (if necessary), self healing mechanics (Atomic and Fire) and more are all tools a tank can use to stay alive. I mean, my tank is atomic which has the lowest base health of all tank powers in tank role and even with 623 sp I stop at 100 for health, opting instead for 100 in resto (for the 10%), max healing crits and 60 in might/power. Base health just isn't a huge factor for tanking and that's even with the Everyman converting health to defense.

In short, health is really not all that big of a factor in overall survivability.

It depends on whether I agreed with the advice or not, but I would not react hostile in either case. If I agreed, I would let the person know that I appreciated the advice and will make changes to my playstyle accordingly. If I disagreed, I would ask what led to the conclusion that x would be helpful, say I would be willing to test it out, and maybe explain why I am hesitant to accept it without verifying first.

I've had arguments with players in the past. As an example, I had a player accuse me of being a noob because I told him raid matchmaking was looking for a Controller, and that was the reason it was taking a while. He told me he'd been playing since Beta, and raid matchmaking never looks for roles to fill. He then said that the only way to reset it was to initiate a kick, and since I was a noob, he initiated a kick to kick me from the raid. The point of that example: people can be horribly wrong about mechanics in the game and try to force their beliefs on others. People who believe dominance causes aggro (also wrong) is another one I've seen cause arguments.

Too many people like that in the game as well.