backstory: so me and the kid hopped on to play around to get some sources marks for him to buy some ally tokens to get his batman who laughs ally up for the passive. his couple month old cr boosted account was able to beat the solo cursed gotham elite recently, so figured we try New Apok duo in hopes of getting an alliance token drop from loot. the 2nd to last boss had other ideas 2nd to last boss is where we could not overcome and was looking for some info. I was running in tank mode (still dps gear) with superman ally for shields and a poison ivy ally for reduce dmg. my kid was in damage mode. first thing i want to ask is, is there a better ally for me to run duos with him, while i am in tank mode besides poison ivy? i got her and used her to help me solo open world bosses and it worked great, most my kill feats are done. and she gives bonus for being alone. secondly, we both would hold block on this dudes head-hurty attack and still lost half our hp each time. guessing this dmg is unavoidable? i even got 100skill points in hp, in tank mode and he has no extra health and we still getting chunked down just from blocking, whats up with that? thirdly, when he died, i would pop my shields, but it didnt matter, i could not stay locked on him to revive at all, i was getting bounced and thrown around like a dogs chew toy. not 1 revive was able to take place. whats the deal with that? fourthy, watching guide videos, the mobs in those vids were way calmer than they were in our fight. in fact, in one vid, the mobs were even going after grail the npc, we had no such luck in our attempts. it was hot n heavy, even with me pulling them away from my kid. idk, got any ideas about these pesky mobs? anyway, got any other helpful tips to deal with this pesky firelord or watever he was called. is this fight hard or just us? thanks in advance and as always, appreciated the advice! -sidenote- i still finished the night getting him enough source marks to finish his first ally
You gotta use sodas and supply drops wisely due to the damage you still take from blocking the one shot. I also run Queen Diana in combat role for the heal in this boss fight for that reason. Though I wouldn't expect anybody to level her up at this point. She was good when released but at this point is situational at best. But without her, just pop a soda after the 1st one shot, pop supply drop after the 2nd and soda again after the 3rd. It's counterintuitive, but it may be wise to slow your burn rate so you have more time for your soda to come off cooldown between the 1-shot phases. As for pickups in scenarios with frequent CC's, run your immunity power and/or a breakout trinket in your utility belt. CC immunity plus a shield should ensure a pickup in just about any scenario. If you don't have a breakout trinket you should get one as it's a tanking standard. They can be purchased at any of the gear vendors in the Watchtower for very few source marks. It's probably somewhere in the HoL too but it's been years since I've had to get one so I don't know where it would be. The toughest part of that 2nd boss is if you get the red circles that spawn the mini-volcanoes during the 1-shot phase and you're forced to choose between blocking or rolling out, which can be a lose/lose. Good ol' DCUO overlapping mechanics... For third boss, just make sure to roll out of the omega orbital and lunge the boss just before he releases the Omega beam. As a tank, you should focus on pulling and juggling adds and lil' man should keep target locked on the boss and focus on single target damage and getting the aforementioned lunge. Easy Peasy
Take it slow. When this was current endgame dlc and i got a low level player on the Q, that was my aproach. If you burn too much it begins to overlap phases and adds stacks and it can get pretty nasty (also adding extra CC effects, besides the boss). Burn boss, hold block, burn adds, go back to boss...and so on. And ofcourse, roll out of red zones. Shield for pickups, HLS should be enough (unless youre getting extremely unlucky, which seems you have) but using breakout power+shield should do be more than enough.
Sounds like the burn was too focused on the boss, causing multiple waves of ads to spawn. As soon as ads are out, switch target and burn them before going back to work on the boss.
For general tanking I like Future Lex better than Superman and run him and Ivy. But since you're focused more specifically on running duos with your kid and Superman will provide him with a shield (weak though it may be), I'd say those two are great choices.
If you haven't cleared the Adds before Brimstone goes into meltdown, you have two problems: - 1. As you say, if one of you dies they can make it very hard for you to revive your teammate 2. They can block-break you when you're blocking Brimstone's one-shot, effectively killing you. In both cases you can neutralize the Adds for long enough to do your thing by using that old Tanking standard - Chronometric Emitters.
As others have said, you need to take out the adds as they appear because they can block break you. Then it's really a matter of moving around a lot. Pickups are extremely difficult in this duo, so I would usually finish it solo. Here is an old solo run I did which captures some of the strategy:
