Combat Rating — “CR” — in DCUO determines where you can go, what you can do, and what kind of groups will want you. Shouting “103 DPS LF TD” will get you a group in a moment. I don’t know what TD is. I don’t know because I don’t have 103 CR. 105 is the current target; the elites have 107 or more.
Every point is incredibly important, and you can upgrade several pieces of gear without seeing any improvement in this vital stat. To bring some clarity to this problem, many independent programmers have published CR calculators, which take your current and future gear choices and explain just how much CR you can get from them — and if they’ll be worth the effort.
Team Spode is back together after the bloodbath of the last patch deguilded vast swaths of people that belonged to smaller leagues. Team Spode was obliterated. Forums say that this was due to some fiddling with league ranks, but it was a tense day or two until we got our league back.
Our league has been focused on the past couple of weeks in lifting up my CR and Kaptain KY’s. Sting took me through some Gotham Under Siege duos and helped me with a round of solos, and that got me some key upgrades — enough to get to CR 100. The grind to 101 would be all on me, though.
The CR calculator suggested that I could make the jump with two key mod upgrades. I had enough Marks of Fury — the new expansion currency (every expansion comes with its own currency) — for one mod. I bought and applied it and still CR 100. I was actually going to have to solo a round of solo missions to get enough marks for the other.
There really should not be a problem soloing. Hard Light is one of the better damage power sets. Though my gear is heavily tuned to the controller role, it has some decent damage stats. And I’ve been really working on my combos.
Still a bloodbath in damage role. Utterly devastated by my inability to really get stuff done solo. I moved to controller role — a role that includes an additional self heal and also controller powers — and did a lot better. I got through my dailies, but I didn’t really have fun doing it. Not like the Neverwinter dailies, which tend to have lots of opportunities to join in on group heroic encounters.
I forgot to take pictures of one of the dailies, where you use roof-mounted ballistae to kill flying cockatrices, which look like large eagles. Some of whom are carrying bombs in their talons. Practice with my combos helped out as I went through, and I even mostly got through a miniboss fight solo — another lantern helped me out near the end.
We lanterns have to stick together, you know. Best thing about being a lantern — Green or even Teal — is the instant camaraderie you feel with every other ring slinger you happen across.
Anyway, dailies done, I bought the tier 5 synth mod, slotted it, and CR 101. I need to farm a lot of exobytes some time soon so I can get Clever Clara to make me some more tier 5 experts that include vitalization.
Maybe that will help me to someday see CR 103, and be able to get a group for TD — wherever that is!
