DC Universe Online Powers Guide: What You Need to Know About Superpowers

DC Universe Online Powers Guide: What You Need to Know About Superpowers
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Building your Character with Powers

In DC Universe Online the powers your superhero or villain has are essentially your character’s class. Rather than picking a “mage” you pick a specific power - fire, for example - and then use that to accomplish your goals.

DC Universe Online powers are chosen at character creation. Every set of powers has a DPS role, but the other roles are dependent on the power chosen. In total there are six powers, each of which has two unique talent trees.

The Tanking Powers: Fire & Ice

If you’d like to be a tank you should choose either Fire or Ice, the two sets of powers available in the game that provide bonuses to a character’s durability.

Both the Fire and Ice powersets have a number of survivability upgrades, but because all character in DCUO are capable of performing a DPS role, only one talent tree is devoted to tanking. For Ice characters this is the Cryogenics tree, while Fire tanks will want to take the Immolation tree.

The Controller Powers: Gadgets and Mental

DC Universe Online Powers

DCUO has a role called the controller. If you’re a controller, you have two jobs in a group. One is to use crowd-control abilities against opponents, stunning them and keeping them out of the fight. Your other job is to provide vitalization, which helps your allies regain power (i.e. mana) in combat.

As stated before, all controllers also have a DPS role available to them. However, unlike the tanking powers, both of the talent trees available to Gadget and Mental powered characters seem to be various and provide new abilities that can be used to deal damage or control enemies - and sometimes both.

The Healing Powers: Sorcery and Nature

If you want to support your allies directly by keeping them alive you need to use a healing power. In DC Universe Online the only characters who can heal allies are Sorcery and Nature characters (Fire characters have some self-heals, but that is it).

The design of the Sorcery and Nature powers is more similar to the controller powers. Both of the talent trees for each of these powers has a mixture of healing, support and damage-dealing abilities.

Although these characters are healers, its important to keep in mind that they are just as deadly as any other while in their DPS role. Forgetting this can gimp your character if you don’t change roles when approriate, and it can also doom you if you under-estimate an opponent with these powers in PvP combat.

Iconic Powers

In addition to the powers that you choose when you create your character, all characters have access to a second set of powers known as Iconic Powers.

Iconic Powers are based off the powers of famous DC superheroes. This includes awesome abilities like Superman’s heat vision and Wonder Woman’s amazon shield. While you the ability to use this talent tree without any effort on your part, picking up an Iconic power does take away points that could be spent towards powers in your normal talent trees.

Your access to Iconic Powers is restricted by level. You will first gain access to some of these powers at level 10.

Conclusion

These are all of the powers available in the game. You also are given the chance to spend points in other areas, such as your weapons and your movement. Doing this can unlock new combos and new ways to navigate the game world, but these are not powers.

Once you’ve figured out your powers, you may need to figure out your equipment. Check out our DC Universe Online items guide for more information about the gear you should seek out.