What about BUFF Elite content?

It actually is as opposed to the current state of Elite-content. The majority of event and normal content caters to their intended audiences, Elite content doesn't.

I was just in a Throne run that ended with a disband. Great catering to causal players there, clearly.

It clearly is, but you seem to forget you are not the only person in the game they try to cater to. Are we done trying to attempt to derail the topic yet? You can make another rant thread about how god awful you personally find it to pug normal content all day long if you like but that is still not what is being discussed here. Again, let's stick to the subject, thank you.

You’re the one who chose to make a big deal of one small part of what I said and are refusing to drop it. I agree that normal and elite need more to differentiate them. I’m with the OP. Not my fault you decided to take exception to my reasoning.

I think you hit on a good point here. Theoretically any tank power should be able to do any job, albeit with some varying difficulties when comparing scenario to tank power. As we all can see from reality, that is not true. Some tank powers excel with one circumstance while other powers excel in the opposite kind. Buffing add damage or doubling the number of them doesn't make the content elite. It favors certain tank powers while dissing others. Sure, that means you can and should have some variety in your group... but practically requiring one kind of tank to do a certain job is unhelpful.

Elite content should have things hitting a little harder, but should also be more mechanics heavy, requiring you to do more while involved in the fight beyond just killing more adds. Add an extra sub-boss, sure (or maybe give the main boss a different attack requiring a different counter)... making you accomplish extra tasks like enabling/disabling certain devices, sure... but doubling the adds, not so much. All you do with that is make it a tank-and-spank for the favored tanking powers.

You adressed my post in the first place, only to try and turn into yet another one of your rants about normal content-difficulty rather than discussing what the topic is actually about, Elite difficulty. We can pick the discussion back up when you actually intend to stay on topic rather than derailing it into something else. Thank you.

People have been soloing and 3 and 4 manning things in mmos forever.

You can use the video to say all kinds of things, but at the end of the day DC isn't going to make anything actually hard when people are paying for 227 gear instead of 225.

Its just a money grab for the elitists of DC.

Im a former elitist, i know. I want that feat, that stat boost, and loot.

Think people really care about difficulty?

I agree completely, just what I was thinking as well in regards to favored tanking powers.

As I've always said define the spectrum of the intended audience.

People often get real upset because people do the first two bosses, I agree that the culture needs to shift in terms of people wallking in with the goal of only ever doing the first two bosses, but as long as people intend on trying to finish there's nothing wrong with going in and giving it a go but in the end only coming out with some of the renown/loot.

In fact arguably this is what should be happening with "all" groups, even the most skilled at the start of en elite content window. If even the most skilled players are finishing it in the first day in the most basic of gear then yea there's a problem.

But what would you rather? Every boss in the raid be super punishing difficult, 2 or perhaps just the last?

One primary factor always missed here is revenue, people have to see elite for what it is as well, a revenue machine and if you make it difficult you start to affect your revenue machine.

And before anyone "jumps" on me for saying that and goes "Proxy you just don't want hard content", sit back down... I don't say that at all because I'm against hard content, when I say that I'm not saying make easy content, I'm explaining to you a fact surrounding why the developers make it the level of difficulty they do. Just because it says "elite" in the name doesn't remove the developers desire to make money from it.

Yes we do.

"Define the spectrum of the intended audience" is something Mepps did as they first introduced Elite-content. A spectrum relevant to this day as Mepps himself recently talked about putting aspects of SM into Elite-content in regards of its purpose of difficulty and audience.

A lot of players are not intending to try and finish unless the boss is easy enough, because Elite-content has become all about getting the the rewards by any means necessary rather than overcoming the challenge to get said rewards. This invites a lot of casual players to feel entitled to rewards not necessary made for them and instead of overcoming the challenge to get it, they want it nerfed to fit their own playstyle of which they already have a category of content being catered to them.

There are many different ways they could counter it. Anything from the second boss being the hardest and the first and last boss being the easier (it could fcause it to feel a bit anti-climactic to end the raid with the easiest boss, especially if they chose a very iconic bossfight at the end as they usually do, but still).

This issue kind of tackled itself back when Elite-raids used to have Elite-drops in which certain bosses dropped certain pieces of gear, meaning nobody would be full Elite-gear unless they beat the last boss. If they could find a way to use a similar system with renown and vendor-gear involved rather than the Elite-gear RnG we had, that could be one way aswell.

The revenue factor is not missed on my end, there's plenty of players out there willing to run challenging content and also keep spending money on it. I am just not a fan of putting the "must have max revenue"-card onto any and every single aspect of the game when we already have so many different aspects of the game being monetized for revenue purposes.

At some point, there has to be decisions made for the sake of playerbase and playertypes in regards to content rather than how you can fleece more money by giving us a category with a label that doesn't deliver to its intended crowd. It makes it feel moot to have the category if it's basically going to be Normal content 2.0.

It's somewhat of a strawman though, isn't it?

Firstly like you say, good on them, clearly they're exemplary players, but to provide context we'd need to know exactly how many players are capable of completing the instance in this manner, how many times it's being completed in this manner before ascertaining whether there's a problem.

DeathMike used to solo a lot of stuff as you know does that mean we buff it because one exemplary player can go in and push the limits of their abilities; of course not.

Now again before anyone jumps on me again saying "you just want easy content", that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying let's build some context before making decisions about anything.

We should ask questions like the above first, we should also be asking questions about the fundamental game issues this video raises such as a broken power back mechanic and the absence of a necessary controller, we should also be asking, does this set up highlight broken imbalanced powers, could this feat be repeated with any variation of all powers available within the game or is it's success or failure defined by the powers the players choose to play.

So many questions and thoughts other than just 'let's buff it all", again I'm not saying content doesn't need adjusting I'm just saying there's more to the conversation and as highlighted in my post just above as well, revenue has to always be a factor because it will always be a factor to the developers.

There are plenty of more difficult games to play. I play those for challenge. DCUO is for casuals and having fun in comic book world.

LOL it just looks to me that controll role is not needed anylonger ... just tolerated lmao.

Maybe before talking about buffing elite content how about talking about nerfing power regeneration of other two support roles ?

Who gets to decide the spectrum though I guess is something I'm saying, is it the players or the developers when they choose to set the difficulty where ever it is they set it.

You could make the first boss "hard" sure, but what if it's still not "hard enough" for those that think it should be harder? That's the problem we have with a subjective difficulty level.

The exceptionally good players benchmark other players on their own personal abilities and expect them to be as good as they are, if they aren't then they will often consider them "unworthy" of elite and hell breaks loose if such a "scrub" obtains elite gear.

This is the spectrum I discuss though, a skill spectrum of players not all equally capable as each other, but who gets to define that?

It seems to me and I'm not saying this is you by any means, but there is a segment of the elite at the top of this game that seems hell bent on making elite content so difficult that only a small minority of players probably even less than 1% of the game can complete it and everyone else should be locked out.

Their argument is that "oh they've got other areas of the game to play or normal content"; which is absolutely true and again isn't what I'm saying. What I am saying is that the developers get to choose the spectrum length and set the difficulty based on what percentage of the community they want/think should be completing the content, with some people inevitably finding it too difficult or too hard; that old saying 'you can't please everyone'.

I also wholeheartedly agree that they need to do better things to encourage players to finish the content however so that they don't just approach it with the mentality of "oh well first two bosses" are fine.

Perhaps some sort of additional statistical item received at the end upon completion? some sort of meaningful reward might be better.

The other option is obviously the devs make one "easier elite" raid which often seems to be the case anyway and one super punishing raid to provide the challenge.

The problems arise because both raids are too easy.

Or how about requiring debuffs to prevent the boss from doing the kind of damage that can one-shot a team? You know, kinda like in the higher levels of SM... no damage out debuff, tank can't survive more than one or two hits and dies. Or perhaps adjust the stuns used by controllers so their duration can be impacted by dominance instead of being a fixed amount of time? If there is no future for reviving SM, do the next best thing and incorporate some of the elements necessary for higher SM levels in terms of what the different roles bring to the table... a recently-cast damage out debuff turns what would otherwise be a one-shot into a more survivable big hit... to go along with the defense and healing debuffs being far more mandatory if you want to get past the boss in a timely fashion.

however the video above shows to me rather the problem the game has with its controller role than with elite content.

I've been of the mindset since TTBE/SSE and the water shield argument that shield supercharges, especially now with Eye of Gemini and Scap of the Soul Cloak, are more of a detriment to the game than a benefit as far as elite content is concerned. What you've said has been an issue, and now with the Eye of Gemini and the amount of super regeneration healers and tanks can provide with it, the spam is going to be virtually infinite. It's not difficult at all to coordinate. I personally see the game being better as far as elite is concerned with them not existing, or if they were 10,000 sc. However, then Water would be a crutch power for every group.

That tells me though that the shields aren't fundamentally the issue but rather the zero thought seemingly going into how these artifacts affect balance in the game.

They're not even tested by the community first they're just thrust upon us.

My experience, of course, was a success but not with less than 8 players and without troll. That does not change if was me or not. The point is just "Elite content should never be completed without the 4 roles in action", if it does not, it is not elite at all and try now to create a group with no troll or no DPS or no Tank or no Healer is unthinkable.