We’ve been working on the T7 DCUO alert, Desecrated Cathedral, for a few weeks. The basic plot is that the demon Trigon’s miscreant sons are fighting over the scraps of their father’s power. Trigon’s not that interest in giving them any of it. HE wants to share his power with his daughter, Raven. SHE keeps waffling between being evil and good. When she’s good, she’s a member of the Teen Titans and stops robbers and stuff. When she’s evil, she is a psychic juggernaut who infects your dreams and is totally awesome.
Unfortunately, in Desecrated Cathedral, we end up helping the good version of Raven. The perils of being a hero, I guess.
We’ve had issues with this alert because our DPS is too low, and I am a non-contributer. Not because controllers can’t contribute in general, it’s just because I, personally, don’t contribute. Hold on, lemme show you.
That’s me, at the bottom, just above the people who joined our three person group, saw my CR, and quit. Well, there was a guy who stuck around until we failed on the first boss, and then quit. That guy is just ahead of me. He quit before killing the first boss and still did five times the damage I did on the entire instance.
I know, I know, I shouldn’t let my cruddy DPS get to me. It’s my own fault. I could play a lot more, get all the mods, get a couple hundred more skill points, and be effective. And after the first boss, I didn’t die as much. The REAL surprise is that we did this all without a HEALER. Without a controller (after I died on the first boss), the DPS and Spode as tank could not really do their jobs. But they got along pretty well without a healer.
The achievement is for helping the “best” Raven win… but isn’t being really evil being the “best” at being evil? Maybe the White Raven is the “worst” Raven at being evil…. I dunno.
Completing the alert got me a huge foot slot upgrade that boosted my combat rating to 127. That’s only a few CR from being able to go to the latest content. One of the really nice things about higher CR is that I can go back and try to accomplish things I couldn’t do before, such as dailies in previous adventure zones, or particularly vexing solo instances.
With that in mind, I headed to New Genesis to earn some marks. I need a high CR dual wield weapon so I can get away from the pistols. They are thematically appropriate for a munitions controller, I guess, but they fire too slowly to build up the combos I need to regain power in a fight. If I don’t have power, I can’t give power to others. It’s a weird sort of mathematics, there. I use to use blasters (which was thematically appropriate back when I was a Green Lantern), but moved to dual wield for their speed and ranged prowess. They can shift into a secondary bow attack very easily with weapon mastery, making them a fantastic pick for both range and melee. And they are super fast.
The basic daily in New Genesis involves killing a lot of parademons, clicking on the things they are guarding, and killing whichever boss shows up to see what’s going down. I don’t know what New Genesis does with player villains who show up. I don’t think Darkseid cares much about anyone from Earth, hero, villain, or otherwise.
I started with the killing. Munitions is an AE power set focused on keeping the bad people away where they can’t hurt anyone. Fine by me. I have never been able to take a punch. It really concerns me that superheroes have usually one ability — they can fly, they are strong, they can run fast, whatever. They get knocked around, thrown through walls, dropped-kicked into space, and only rarely are there any repercussions. Usually they must be thrown through several walls before they show any after effects. Regular people, first wall would kill us dead, and running fast would just make it hurt more.
Anyway, I play it legit. First time any enemy touches me, I crumple to the ground, close my eyes, and wish for the bad guy to go away and hope that Kaptain KY is nearby to rez me.
No wait, anyone BUT Kaptain KY. Nope nope nopenopenope.
There’s a group there already, and they invite me in. There’s a controller, so there’s power and I can stay in my damage role. Everyone is AEing. The quest objectives are being completed. Steppenwolf shows up, we kill him. Five marks, BAM.
It was over so quickly that I forgot that I was supposed to be recording it, so I went back and killed a few more parademons for posterity. And nowhere was there a report card to tell me how ineffectual I was.
Thankfully.
