As soon as players got stuck into the Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League endgame, one build burned way brighter than the rest when it came to rising through the Mastery Levels – the fated Burn build. Due to a “major” bug, the Suicide Squad Burn build has been breaking the endgame difficulty for PS5 and Xbox players, and developer Rocksteady is finally turning the heat down.
When it comes to build variety in Suicide Squad, there already isn’t all that much to choose from, though the Burn build was evidently the best in the new PS5 game and new Xbox game. Confirmed in the game’s Discord server, Rocksteady has revealed that a “major” bug was causing Burn damage to be break level-scaling, which will soon be fixed.
“As Mastery levels increased, Burn’s damage also increased, which basically meant that if you used a Burn build, every Mastery Level had the same difficulty,” Rocksteady explains.
“Our most dedicated players had now reached a Mastery Level far beyond what the game was balanced for at launch due to this bug, and weren’t getting the challenge or variety we wanted our endgame to provide. We had to ask ourselves, what can we do to fix this, and more importantly, should we fix it at all?”
Ultimately, the Burn status effect needed to be changed, so Rocksteady will be fixing the bug to ensure that damage scales correctly with damage-over-time effects – as was originally intended for the co-op game. “While there is no doubt that the Burn build is a really powerful and fun build – it should be! – we didn’t intend for it to be the only viable endgame build for launch and beyond.”
As you might expect, with dedicated players starting to reach “Mastery Levels beyond [Rocksteady’s] wildest expectations”, the endgame grind and leaderboards have been all over the place. As a result, this bug fix will coincide with a brand-new leaderboard to ensure that it accurately reflects the intended balance.
“Since this change will be pretty fundamental to the leaderboards and your continued progression on them, [Rocksteady is] committed to creating a new leaderboard” for endgame activities so you can continue to explore the different builds without worrying about Burn dominating the competition.
“All the entries on the current leaderboard will exist in perpetuity and will be a permanent record of all your achievements. We want to applaud you all for both your dedication on getting this high in the Mastery Levels (and also breaking the game). Kudos!”
While you might be worried that nerfing the best Suicide Squad build will make high Mastery Levels a slog, Rocksteady is also evaluating enemy health. At level 50 and beyond, the developer will be “adjusting [its] approach to Mastery Level balancing. Enemy health will now increase in a much less aggressive way, with the intent that more builds will crop up as viable options”.
With these changes on the way, hopefully Suicide Squad Season 1 will get off to a flying start – especially with the Joker arriving on PS5 and Xbox. That’s not all though, as a bug within the game unintentionally revealed that Suicide Squad Season 2 will be bringing a new version of Mr Freeze. While you’re powering through the Mastery Levels once again, there’s no better time to find out how this Suicide Squad easter egg teases Batman’s return or how the rarest easter egg needs 48 minutes of your time to find in the new looter-shooter.