The sad thing is that you can beat DDA even on increased difficulties with brawler, and the devs genuinely think people just need to crutch of ultra OP guns to win in their casual sandbox game. And I don't mean cheating by recruiting NPCs to shoot your guns for you. Powergaming in cataclysm is all about actively recognizing and abstaining from the casualization features in the game that they hoped would make it big on steam.