Jonkler
I have made my thoughts well known on the launch of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s launch of its Joker season, which is devoid of both new types of missions and significant new story content. But the reason people showed up at all is the Joker, a new squad member pulled from an alternate reality, rather than resurrecting Arkham’s dead version.
So, after grinding or paying (sigh), how is Joker himself? I’m going to just give a breakdown on the character now that I’ve maxed him out and kitted him out in builds I’m using in around Mayhem 25 Incursions at this point, meaning I think I can give some opinions.
I don’t mind the new Joker design. Sure, old Joker with Mark Hamill voicework especially here would have been better, but this slender, theatrical version is one that still works. I think they’ve done a lot of interesting work with his exaggerated, almost cartoony fighting animations where he seems like a true carnival clown rather than merely some psychopath strutting around in a purple suit. He fits in the with the squad in that capacity.
The biggest difference between all characters is traversal, and while for some reason there was no Joker movement tutorial, you can figure it out pretty quick. The main mechanism is launching yourself up high with an explosive blast, then rocket surfing forward on your umbrella. It feels like sort of a combination between Shark’s big vertical jump and then Deadshot’s midair jetpack steering. Also like Deadshot you can float in midair and shoot, which is very useful, particularly with some airborne damage bonuses. As in the trailer, you can grind on the ground and rooftops on your umbrella, but the way combat works that doesn’t really come into play that often.
Suicide Squad
His ultimate is launching himself up in the air and raining bombs down on enemies, but the way that shields work with the new modifiers is that it barely does any damage until those shields are broken. I’m trying to find a way to make this work consistently, but it’s more for utility than damage right now, refilling my shield or at higher combos, setting things on fire.
Joker’s tree has a bunch of different burn-based options, the first character to really lean on one element specifically, making non-fire builds with him a bit tougher to justify. But this season there is also a modifier where damage over time from blaze effects is reduced so…that sucks. Still, between his kit and weapons it’s pretty easy to spread fire around and I’m finding him still strong at higher mastery levels. Like Harley, it’s simple to get a good grenade build going on him.
I suppose this isn’t really a Joker thing specifically, but naturally I have been using a bunch of the new equipment, both in terms of Scarecrow sets and the new Notorious items, which have a lot of double villain interactions. Scarecrow’s whole thing is based around poison and different effects that happen with poisoned enemies. It seems a bit less straightforward than the Bane sets, but I don’t have the third set fully unlocked yet so we’ll see how powerful that one is. Rather than doing two full sets I’m doing a bunch of Notorious items that in many instances feel better, and almost all have poison modifiers to them.
One problem with poison is again, a modifier, this time one that gives poisoned enemies effectively two health bars when killed, which seems super counter-intuitive, as what’s the point of big damage if enemies get double health from the effect? Again, these sets can be built on anyone but I mean, you’re probably going to be playing Joker, right?
Suicide Squad does continue to have a problem that these characters really do feel very similar minus traversal, an ultimate and maybe some points on the skill tree, though there are lots of points of overlap there too. I do enjoy Joker, minus the fact that there’s no truly new content to use him in, and he’s easily the highlight of what I would consider more generally a waste of a season. But if you don’t want to grind for two hours to unlock him, I can’t blame you for that either, as that’s incredibly poor design.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
