Test Discussion Episode 40: Queens' Row Penitentiary (Duo)

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the testing thread for the duo. Please report here on any bugs you find or feedback you have in general!

This is our first time trying an Elite Duo. Since this is something new, we'd like to get feedback on how easy/hard it is. Plus suggestions are welcome. We'd prefer to make it challenging to all Roles, what we don't want is that 2 specific roles are required to be it, say a Tank and DPS for example.

Thanks! Now go and enter the Flashpoint!


Known Issues
- No Feats yet
- Elite balance still ongoing
- Unknown Red Dots in the Wave Event

I would like to start by saying, I am a casual player and my friend who played with me and this video is more experienced than me,
but we both felt like this was the easiest run of our lives. The regular had even more sense of danger than the actual elite version.
Adds fall like flies and I don't think I even needed to heal. Combat Tab information can be shown at 11:01


Hope this helps.
By the way - are the NPC's intended to have no roles in Elite?

I ran the elite duo as well, I found it was actually the first boss fight that was most disappointing, there's basically no mechanics in that fight and no real challenge, that's the boss fight that probably needs to be looked at the most.

The Heatwave fight is probably fine imo, there are times when damage is decent and the mechanics have to be followed, if you ignore the mechanics you can get punished and it seems its easier with a support partner, which is a good thing (not sure what it'll be like when max leveled towards end of the DLC, but I think at that point it doesn't really matter.)

The important thing in elite is that the mechanics have to be followed and this appears necessary in the Heatwave fight, although I've only run it the once I'll try again later and see if my experience changes.

Was on test earlier looking at the on-duty requirements and noticed the event version of the duo has a typo that lists parts of the endgame cr range for the rewards, it states
“Rewards:
Lvl 12-cr354: source marks, wayne casino chips, loot items
Cr>=355 wayne casino chips, loot items”

While crs should match the event alert’s description with
“Rewards:
Lvl 12-cr 321: source marks, wayne casino chips, loot items
Cr>=322 wayne casino chips, loot items”

I don't really get how the support NPC's is supposed to function. I had assumed that if you start off with batman healing and Cyborg Tanking that they are just off doing that for the run unless you toggle them to change roles. But batman never seemed to actually heal me? So I don't know if its just the usual NPC's never heal you when you need it old game design or if you are supposed to interact with them in some way to get them to perform that role.

I tried changing Batmans role when I was just above half health and I did start healing but that might have just been because I went out of combat without noticing. He also went back to the heal role after a time of having no symbol over his head. And their didn't seem to be a way to choose which role he should change to.

I think the livestream said this feature was still in the works so could I get some more information of how this is intended to work to judge the outcome against? Then I can try the duo again with that information to watch for.

Ran Elite earlier this evening, with me as DPS and my partner as Tank. Have to say that Amazo and the wave event were extremely easy with this combination. I didn't feel any threat to myself at all. Heatwave, however, was a very different story. I kept getting killed by something I couldn't see. When I checked my logs it said it was "Intense Heat." My best guess is that either the Intense Heat is an invisible AoE or it just wasn't showing up for me. I'm assuming that using the fire suppressant cog gets rid of/suppresses it, but I still couldn't actually see this mysterious "Intense Heat."

I also noticed in my Elite run that neither Cyborg nor Batman had a role at all throughout the whole duo. Is this intentional for Elite? They both had roles in regular, so I assumed they'd have roles for Elite also.

Another bug: During Heatwave my partner died and then a couple of seconds later the whole fight reset even though I was very much still alive and in the fight. Heatwave went back to full health and the arena re-opened.

The only healing I've seen from Batman is that he throws down a gas grenade thing that emits gas. It could easily be mistaken as an enemy attack but it's actually a healing AoE. Standing in it heals you up.

I ran both the regular and elite duo with a leaguemate. 327 and 329 crs, artifacts leveled to just over 160 (to reflect our arts on the live server) and middling-leveled augments. The regular duo was a little challenging, about what you *should* expect in the regular duo, and we got through just fine. In the elite, the NPCs hit harder but were doable, Amazo was tougher than in the regular -- about what you'd expect for a first subboss, but I can see why a couple people say he was easier than expected. Heatwave was a lot tougher, certainly not a cakewalk by any means, and we wiped a couple of times while figuring out the new mechanics. We got through on the third attempt, and it helped a LOT that one of us ran as a healer in that run.

To answer a question I've seen a couple times now, the roles are turned off in Elite mode. They help a little too much than we liked for the challenge of Elite.

I league mate and I ran this last night after Atom bots were added. We found the experience was not great. We kept running into an issue with the infinite stun of the atom bots. (i know you are suppose to lung them) We found where one of us got stunned relitivly quickly and the other either being swarmed by adds or stunned from Amazo and couldn't get to the atom bot or being stunned by the bot and getting hit by a swarm of adds. Our burn an Amazo was good, he would get down to 1/4 health but inevitably one of the above instances occurred every time.

I wanted to share the experience, we are not the best in the game but are skilled. Let me know if we are missing something please. Maybe need to turn the NPC roles if the Atom bots are staying.

Feedback
This is for the current Elite iteration of the duo.

General
Is there a reason this duo is still listed before Batscape in the Queuing Menu?


Amazo Fight
This fight just isn't that fun. Amazo can strip of you of your weapons and powers. The ATOM bot can lock you in a very long-duration stun and can be really difficult to pick out in the middle of the fight. Here is an example:


You see the warning message and start looking around. That small BOT is hard to see on its own and generally blends into the action. Usually I couldn't pick it out until it started stunning someone.

It is hard to know even where the ATOM-bot will spawn. It spawns directly in front of me in this video and immediately starts stunning me:


Sometimes it spawns in mid-air. Sometimes in spawns in the middle of the group. Sometimes it spawns way to the side. I'd really prefer this thing to be a very easy-to-see enemy.


Turret Room Fight
Not much has changed from previous iterations of the instance. The friendly Foam Turrets still show up as red blips on your radar though.


Heatwave
This Critical Heat mechanic stinks if you are a DPS. You don't have the Defense or Heals to survive the large AoE ticks. If your partner isn't right beside the consoles as the cogs spawn, you're dead. Even if you do make it to the consoles in time, you're both helpless to Heatwave's AoE attack while you are turning cogs:


If you're already at low-health as a DPS when the Critical Heat phase starts, you're dead:


It didn't help that my partner was usually stuck in a stun animation immediately following a "Disable the Fuel Tank" phase.

I can't say I had much fun on this fight. You have to make sure you're always at full-health since the Critical Heat DoT starts very quickly. You have to hope you don't get interrupted by Heatwave while you are trying to turn cogs. I feel like we were lucky to pull off this attempt: