Been tempted to download this again as its been a long time since i played but before i potentially waste my time a few quesitons:
Is PvE at all challenging yet? I stopped playing pretty much as they released the 2nd Batcave place with the many beams on the last boss, which was basically ... looks pretty, isnt hard. Something that required coordination and skill was very much required when i packed it in.
Is the itemisation sorted yet? I think i was very very slowly managing to get my point across to other high-end raiders that precision was essentially the only stat you needed to to the most dps, bit of health never hurt but a few points in precision was worth a whole load of most others. Was kinda sad to see the greens i had contributing more to my dps than some of the tier items.
Any interesting pvp arenas? Hold the point was ok but ctf just turned in to a fight in the middle then camp the other teams spawn point.
Lastly, anything been done to lessen the pure grinding required to stay in the top X% of players? When "do 500 duo's" becomes your next quickest/easiest achievement to get more points its a little disheartening :\
Thanks
Good lord, dude where do I start? Lol.
The game is now free to play first and formost. So expect to see a lot of new players running around. They released a new update a couple of months back where you can now craft modifications to give you that extra edge on your gear. This has helped a lot of people in terms raising their combat rating for raids and such (others just abuse it for the sake of it, but there you go).
PVP has changed a fair bit. They have something big planned for the next DLC (probably out in June) for PVP so will be looking out for that. I wouldn't worry about people ganking you at the doors, cos you can get your own back and return the favour
PVE is a lot more challenging since the new Fortress Of Solitude and now Themyiscira raids have been added. Plus the new Flash DLC has made things interesting. So yeah it is challenging. New alerts, duos and raids. You have no idea what you've missed out on dude.
So many things have changed, I can only suggest looking back at past posts I and others have made regarding new content and look at the DCUO forum for more extensive changes. There's only so much I can tell you. But we now have 3 new powersets: Light (controller), Electric (healer) and Earth (tank) which just came out last night.
And regarding the PVE, if you thought the Inner Sanctum raid for Batcave wasn't "hard", just wait for the 2nd Fortress Of Solitude raid. It makes the Inner Sanctum look like a walk in the park.
Feat wise, no one is forcing you to do the "500 duos" and such. It is up to you how you manage your feats and skill points. It's not about getting the highest amount of skill points and feats in the quickest time possible. I have 4 characters on the game and 64 skill points is the highest I have on one of them. The lowest is currently at 41. So quite varied. but again, as long as you know where to spec for your character, then all is good.
Also lots and lots of new gear are now available. So get back in the game.