power popularity?

[Supernautilus]

Returning player here and I was just wondering which powers are most and least popular for each role these days. I thought there used to be a character census website that showed all that stuff but I can't find it now.

Any info would great, thanks.

[M14EBR Overwatch]

The most popular are the ones you don't have to pay for. Among those, there are fire/ice for tanking, nature and sorcery for healing, and finally mental & gadgets for controlling.

They can all dps, but have some built in preferences for whether or not they are better suited for single target or multitarget might based dps.

Gadgets has massive issues with power drain compared to mental, due to having way too many low end powers with tiny cooldowns, compared to mental which is a little more balanced in that area. Gadgets seems to be more popular there, as it's been a hot minute since i've seen a mental dps in any content.

Between nature and sorcery, nature is more lazy mode healing, but it's dps side suffers considerably until you realize it's better suited to melee range dps, where as sorcery can use the same loadout in ranged or melee range, due to its powers being AOE fests, so see more sorcery players than nature.

Between fire and ice, the buffs to fire's self healing have made it more popular in recent years as a self healing tank. Ice and fire both struggle in dps a bit due to some oddball design decisions with some of its powers, but both can overcome those issues by borrowing from the iconics or movement trees to pad out damage a bit.

All powers have access to a generic dps loadout utilizing a rotation of four powers - 3 of which are from the iconics tree, and mixes in AOE and single target. This starts with sonic shout, then freeze breath, then heat vision, and finally your powersets finisher attack. Issue here is that sonic shout only goes up to mid range. It and freezy breath are both conal AOEs. All four powers can be protected by the empowered channeling tactical mod, as well. (Hand slot). Some power types have additional channel attacks they can substitute in place of sonic shout, though.

TLDR:
Fire (tanking), Sorcery (healing), Gadgets (controlling)

Of the paywalled powers, munitions is the most popular dps due to its mobility perk (can move while attacking), higher damage, ease of use, low power drain, and full protection by the empowered channeling mod.

Earth does the most damage of tank powers thanks to jackhammer, so it's pretty popular for dual roles, but it's biggest weakness is it's lack of adequate self healing, and how it's mechanic requires constant upkeep, which limits your ability to self heal using the Clarion artifact compared to ice, which can simply shield up them use weapon combos to heal any lost health. You'll just see more earth tanks than ice, either way. (Ice was the original popular tank power type before DLC powers started trickling in). Rage is 2nd most popular, due to it's self healing and adequate damage output, though it's riskier and is heavily melee range.

For controlling, hands down it's going to be hard light. It would be more popular than munitions for the dps side if the dps side's best output wasn't melee range, but has the benefit of being able to create a 3 power rotation for ranged attacks and 3 power rotation for melee, by using chompers as a shared power between them.

(Ranged: Chompers > minigun > light blast (a multi-targeting finisher), repeat / melee: chompers > whip thrash x2, light weight + throw - whip thrash's 2nd usage needs to be clipped with light weight ASAP to avoid dps loss while losing none of the 2nd usage's damage ticks, and need to hit with every hit of lightweight spin and the throw. The throw must be animation cancelled with chompers ASAP for the same reason).

These are both AOE rotations, but can slap on hand clap as the final power for any single target spam, or throw in a supercharge, or robot sidekick.


Healing wise, the most popular pay power is a toss up between electric and water. (Elec has a slight edge).

Water is more difficult to use in terms of DPS, but there is a viable six power rotation that can be employed for a simple, play from the tray, left to right setup.

Electric technically only needs a 3 power rotation so has more flexibility with whatever else you want to stack on to them. Tend to see slightly more elec healers than water, but dps wise it's about the same. Elec may take the lead due to it's usage as a base power for Flash imitators, but they tend to use the movement tree powers more than the base powers. There was a more recent bump with the Shazam movies raising popularity for a bit, but it's mostly gone back to normal levels after the terrible Flash movie and death of the DC movie franchise.

[Supernautilus]

Originally posted by M14:

The most popular are the ones you don't have to pay for. Among those, there are fire/ice for tanking, nature and sorcery for healing, and finally mental & gadgets for controlling.

They can all dps, but have some built in preferences for whether or not they are better suited for single target or multitarget might based dps.

Gadgets has massive issues with power drain compared to mental, due to having way too many low end powers with tiny cooldowns, compared to mental which is a little more balanced in that area. Gadgets seems to be more popular there, as it's been a hot minute since i've seen a mental dps in any content.

Between nature and sorcery, nature is more lazy mode healing, but it's dps side suffers considerably until you realize it's better suited to melee range dps, where as sorcery can use the same loadout in ranged or melee range, due to its powers being AOE fests, so see more sorcery players than nature.

Between fire and ice, the buffs to fire's self healing have made it more popular in recent years as a self healing tank. Ice and fire both struggle in dps a bit due to some oddball design decisions with some of its powers, but both can overcome those issues by borrowing from the iconics or movement trees to pad out damage a bit.

All powers have access to a generic dps loadout utilizing a rotation of four powers - 3 of which are from the iconics tree, and mixes in AOE and single target. This starts with sonic shout, then freeze breath, then heat vision, and finally your powersets finisher attack. Issue here is that sonic shout only goes up to mid range. It and freezy breath are both conal AOEs. All four powers can be protected by the empowered channeling tactical mod, as well. (Hand slot). Some power types have additional channel attacks they can substitute in place of sonic shout, though.

TLDR:
Fire (tanking), Sorcery (healing), Gadgets (controlling)

Of the paywalled powers, munitions is the most popular dps due to its mobility perk (can move while attacking), higher damage, ease of use, low power drain, and full protection by the empowered channeling mod.

Earth does the most damage of tank powers thanks to jackhammer, so it's pretty popular for dual roles, but it's biggest weakness is it's lack of adequate self healing, and how it's mechanic requires constant upkeep, which limits your ability to self heal using the Clarion artifact compared to ice, which can simply shield up them use weapon combos to heal any lost health. You'll just see more earth tanks than ice, either way. (Ice was the original popular tank power type before DLC powers started trickling in). Rage is 2nd most popular, due to it's self healing and adequate damage output, though it's riskier and is heavily melee range.

For controlling, hands down it's going to be hard light. It would be more popular than munitions for the dps side if the dps side's best output wasn't melee range, but has the benefit of being able to create a 3 power rotation for ranged attacks and 3 power rotation for melee, by using chompers as a shared power between them.

(Ranged: Chompers > minigun > light blast (a multi-targeting finisher), repeat / melee: chompers > whip thrash x2, light weight + throw - whip thrash's 2nd usage needs to be clipped with light weight ASAP to avoid dps loss while losing none of the 2nd usage's damage ticks, and need to hit with every hit of lightweight spin and the throw. The throw must be animation cancelled with chompers ASAP for the same reason).

These are both AOE rotations, but can slap on hand clap as the final power for any single target spam, or throw in a supercharge, or robot sidekick.


Healing wise, the most popular pay power is a toss up between electric and water. (Elec has a slight edge).

Water is more difficult to use in terms of DPS, but there is a viable six power rotation that can be employed for a simple, play from the tray, left to right setup.

Electric technically only needs a 3 power rotation so has more flexibility with whatever else you want to stack on to them. Tend to see slightly more elec healers than water, but dps wise it's about the same. Elec may take the lead due to it's usage as a base power for Flash imitators, but they tend to use the movement tree powers more than the base powers. There was a more recent bump with the Shazam movies raising popularity for a bit, but it's mostly gone back to normal levels after the terrible Flash movie and death of the DC movie franchise.

Thank you very much for all that info, I appreciate you sharing that. Very helpful. I'm legit surprised about munitions being popular as that's what I've been playing and I haven't really seen that many. But then, I haven't done a lot of group play lately.

So you didn't really specify the LEAST popular pay powers but I'm going to take a guess:

heals: celestial
tank: atomic
controller: quantum

Is that about right?

[Frost]

Originally posted by Supernautilus:

I thought there used to be a character census website that showed all that stuff but I can't find it now.

https://dcuocommunity.com/ used to have character count where you could filter characters by cr, power, faction etc but currently it is down. In september 2024 ObsidianChill said it's going to be up soon[forums.daybreakgames.com] but it's still not, not sure if there are other census sites that show character count, so you can try to contact him through dcuo forums or his youtube or discord to check on the status of the site if you want the nubmers.
Latest info that I've found is from 2023:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XLnNrtU8gY

[Supernautilus]

Originally posted by Frost:

Originally posted by Supernautilus:

I thought there used to be a character census website that showed all that stuff but I can't find it now.

https://dcuocommunity.com/ used to have character count where you could filter characters by cr, power, faction etc but currently it is down. In september 2024 ObsidianChill said it's going to be up soon[forums.daybreakgames.com] but it's still not, not sure if there are other census sites that show character count, so you can try to contact him through dcuo forums or his youtube or discord to check on the status of the site if you want the nubmers.
Latest info that I've found is from 2023:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XLnNrtU8gY

Cool thanks. I left a comment on their latest video about the website. Hopefully they'll response. We'll see I guess lol.

[M14EBR Overwatch]

Woops. Got the rotation on lanterns wrong. Misremembered what I had slapped on mine and had to log in to check. I ditched chompers a while back and replaced it with downdraft, and the shared power between melee/range is actually light blast (finisher), so the ranged rotation is downdraft > minigun > light blast, and the melee rotation is whip thrash x2, with the 2nd combo clipped into light weight spin > weight throw > light blast, leaving with you with one power in the tray to fill in with whatever - a supercharge, robot sidekick, a shield or whatever plays into your artifact usage.


I'd say celestial is the least popular healing power due to the combo system getting in the way of ease of use. Power combos don't count as channeled abilities, so without any protection they are prone to interrupt and require more attention on your own animations than other power types, that can spend more time eyeballing combat/enemy positions/attacks/health bars, etc. Some of its shortcomings can be compensated for by dipping into the movement trees and iconics, and can sadly create a more powerful rotation using only those abilities, or perhaps carrying over only on celestial's finisher. (The sonic shout > freezy breath > heat vision > finisher ability combo is still very strong, and can be fully protected by empowered channeling)

Atomic is still used enough that it's harder to say. Slightly less popular than rage, but you'll still see them used often enough. The pull spam, self healing combo makes it easier to use than rage, but is still prone to interrupt (so it needs an A/B combo to cover its ass, just in case, to keep the atomic/nuclear stacks going).

For actual controlling, as in locking down adds, munitions does seem to be less useful than others that have nicer CC options. Quantum has a unique lockdown effect not shared by other controller powers, in so much that enemies can be locked down but can still be pulled around and relocated/repositioned without breaking the CC effect. Plus it's blue. Makes it more popular with the DBZ clone character crowd. The dps side is a little more problematic, as people try to make 'time bomb' work, and it's just too detrimental to timely and consistent dps that it's better not being used at all and instead dip into movement/iconics to compensate.

It's been a hot minute since i've seen a munitions controller. Munitions dps are much more frequent. Would imagine it's the least popular for controlling purposes.

Also wouldn't say that how many characters created of x power type factors into popularity, but rather how many of x power type are actually actively being used, which is just something you'll have to eyeball as you play the raid grind daily.