If you look in the forums for information about DCUO’s tier 5 raid, “Paradox Wave”, it makes it sound like a simple gear check. If you have the gear, you win — and that required gear is much lower than we all have now. Further, there’s an easy and a hard mode to the raid.
So, why can’t we win?
The basic plot is that Future Luthor actually staged the whole Brainiac invasion so that he could rule the world or something. We’ll come back to that. While the heroes and villains of Earth are trying to save the world from Brainiac, Future Luthor has opened the hellmouth beneath Gotham, and all the alternate realities are colliding. In Paradox Wave, you help alternate Batmans close the hellmouth. In Nexus, you defeat alternate Luthors once and for all.
Okay, back to the question of why Luthor wants to rule the world. In the comics, he is a really successful industrialist. He has all the power he could ever want. He can do anything he wants. He really hates Superman, but Superman, for whatever reason, is unable to really harm any of Luthor’s plans. What does Luthor get out of destroying Earth and all its alternates? He really has never seemed insane on the order of Joker, who is literally bat-shit crazy.
Anyway, we threw ourselves at Paradox Wave a few times. I think our problem comes down to focused DPS. Stuff doesn’t die fast enough. I know we have the DPS to do this, so people must be wasting it on different mobs.
After we decided to let Paradox Wave beat us up for the last time, we went on to Nexus and beat up on some Luthors. We had a pickup DPS named “Hal Jordam” around, who was, confusingly, a RED lantern. He bugged out after we screwed up killing two mobs that were supposed to die at the same time. We worked through it without him, easily winning the instance.
7/8ths of the raid were talking to each other on Skype. 1/8th had no idea what we were all talking about, but since that 1/8th was, by far, the top DPS in the raid and seemed most knowledgeable, we were all racing around trying to guess what he was up to, leading to the mistakes.
I’m thinking communication is really a problem for us. Once we really know a raid — like Sunstone Matrix, for instance — we execute flawlessly. Even before we were overpowered for it. These new (to us) raids, though — we’re unsure, nobody knows exactly what to do, and we lose.
No different than any other MMO, I guess.
