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

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the testing thread for the duo. There is an Event, Normal, and Elite version of this Duo! Please report here on any bugs you find or feedback you have in general! Also be sure to specify which difficulty you are in.

Thanks! Now go and enter the Flashpoint!

A bug I would like to report: My friend is receiving Elite feats on Normal level. I am sure this is not intended.

Also, another friend and I are trying to attempt "Cover Formation", but we just can't seem to complete it. We even tried two tanks.

Is there a chance the feat is bugged? The adds also loose Aggro, so how are we supposed to do this?

Did your friend queue for Event or Normal mode? Then received Elite only feats?

I'll investigate the Cover Formation issue you reported, thanks!

Normal version and they receive the elite feats only

Cover formation is definitely bugged, but I don't see where running Normalgets you Elite feats. Ran it three times to get all feats and not once did we get Elite feats in Normal.

Before when I played this on test my feedback was that the Amazo fight was too easy, I'm not quite sure what you were doing when you added in these hard stuns.

I get the drone and the stun, the lunge mechanic, but some of the other stuff as well on top of that, if you're not getting perma stunned by the drone (not to mention PUGS don't seem to know what lunge is) you're getting stunned by Amazo, you've then got these little adds running around as well and then you've got your powers being stripped off you. I mean really? I mean it went from being super easy to just super tedious.

And what's with all these stuns all the time that indicate to press an action button to break out when pressing the action button doesn't seem to do squat?...

The Amazo fight isn't particularly hard, it's certainly not fun imo, that's for sure.

The Heatwave fight is largely fine.

Ran the duo (reg) with a leaguemate. First attempt, they were invisible, so they left and were reinvited, didn't fix it. I left and was reinvited, didn't fix it. We both left and requeued, fixed it. Cyborg seems to have trouble remembering which role he's supposed to be. I had to keep switching him to troll. After the duo was over, we noticed that the void gazers weren't going away. As I type this, I'm still in the duo and the void gazer is still out. It doesn't follow me normally either; it just teleports if I get too far away.

The dúo keeps you in combat even after scoreboard pops.

Wait....You can select a role for Cyborg? How? When?

Using circle on him. You can change Batman too, I think. I was just changing cyborg each time I've run it. You can change it at basically at any time, but it takes a few seconds for him to switch his icon.

Tank perspective(Elite)

I would like to express my opinion based on the previous runs and today's run, in which I just tanked this with 1-h weapon and full broken gear.

1st Boss
Amazo is not even a problem, he barely does any damage.
Stealing powers is not even that impactfull nor the ocasional stunning drones.
For this to be elite would be nice to see some changes, I would suggest that everytime a drone dies 2 spawn to replace it.
Or make this drones spawn every 15 seconds, forcing players to always lunge and kill them as soon as possible.

Adds Phase
Saddly, this is prob the most exciting part of this duo It would be amazing if it had a little bit of twist, for example an occasional stunning drone, because we can.

Final boss
Saddly, I personally don't like this boss. The skull flamethrower is not exciting nor does have a counter. Would be really nice if this boss could be more skill expressive, maybe we could Interrupted him with a lunge?
I think this boss could again add that stunning drone. Something that would be a constant threat in conjunction with plastic man attack, maybe nerfing the fire spam on the floor to just 3?

Sorry for the late response, but I think this duo is lacking abit, it feels like any other normal duo.

Elite duo :

The ATOM bot is a bit annoying, if you're going to have dialogue saying "lunge atom bot" is it possible to sync it up a bit more to the drone's actual arrival so that I'm not searching for a mechanic I can't perform yet?

Aside from that it seems pretty rough compared to the regular difficulty so I wouldn't worry about making it any more difficult since "not alienating the mass of your player base" is a real thing and I've already had to explain to three different people in as many days how the minutiae of the mechanics operate.

Its strange to me why you have to explain elite mechanics in the way you described, aren't u running this with exp players? I though exp players was the demographic of elite. Sorry if I'm wrong.

I've only ran the elite version, so I don't know anything else, but I enjoyed this duo a lot, but tbh, it's not as friendly to all the roles. It's pretty much healer + dps. Possibly tank + dps. Not a lot of room for a controller or 2 dps.

Anyways, I'm enjoying this DLC.

Uhm, not everyone running elite content is entrenched in a league full of other elite players yo; people have to start somewhere and sometimes you're there when they do.

The longer answer is somewhere between "not everyone practiced it for 3 weeks on the test server before playing it on live" and "the amount of people in the community actively running solo survival builds is really quite low".

I ran it with 2 dps, if you're gonna do that make sure everyone leaves their ego at the door - you're gonna have to run the mechanics or you WILL both die.

Sorry for the quality my pc needs an upgrade;_;
Resume, of this run:
- Only 1 artifact
- Wrong loadout/Lacking iconic/moviment powers
- Mix of DPS and TANK cause i messed with my armory
- Full broken gear
- 82 cr

If this is not suposed to be elite content, may as well not bother making it.

Ran the elite duo with controller + dps, Heatwave got deleted in less than 15s

Any plans to bump the duo elite difficulty?

As I previously shown, this elite duo doesn't provide enough of a challenge.
I'm a fan of elite duos, however there is no moment of thrill in this duo.
The adds phase is prob the best part of this duo, but even that is lacking because is just to easy.
I defend all elite content should be made in acordance to the best of the best, not the masses.
Casual players already have event and normal mode, there is no need for a 3 level of casuality.
For the players that want to get into Elite, there is always the previous DLC which after the cr bump becomes more forgiving.

So your argument is, since you crippled yourself intentionally and miraculously survived being carried by an electric percision DPS, the elite duo is to easy? Let's examine your bullet points here;

- The one artifact you have on is the Manacles of Force, maxed out at 200, which boosts your health and restoration, decreases the damage you take and makes your shields come off cooldown faster.

- Your loadout may not be optimal, but conveniently is full of abilities that help you survive, either by healing you and/or upping your defense and activating rage mechanics to negate incoming damage while you waited to be healed.

- Mixed gear shouldn't matter one way or the other if it's broken, since you shouldn't be getting the benefits from it in any case, so the fact it's mixed between tank and DPS is irrelevant.

- Most of your gear may be broken, but you still have enough working elite gear to give you at least one affinity mod, which you've slotted for a health boost.

- Your CR here would be relevant, if you actually played the content as intended instead of kiting around the enemies, but that's not the case.

As for your video, all it proves is that it's possible to carry someone the whole way through, which in of itself is a remarkable accomplishment, though not surprising for an electric precision DPS. I bet you probably didn't reset any of your 450+ SP for your tank role either, though obviously it's hard to say since you conveniently didn't show us your stats.

Here's something you should consider; Yes, it's an elite duo, but it's still a duo. Duos let you get some gear in order to do alerts, and should therefore be easier than alerts; alerts are therefore easier than raids for the same reason. Just because now there's an elite duo, doesn't throw this logic out the window; Elite duos should be easier than elite alerts to prep you for them, and those should be easier than elite raids for the same reason.

In short, I hardly think a video that shows you brandishing rage mechanics and healing items to stay alive while kiting enemies so your partner does all the work in actually fighting them proves that the content is "too easy", since by all means it's intended not to be extremely hard by design.