Season One ofSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leaguehas arrived, bringing with it the first new playable squad member: Joker. As is looter-shooter tradition, optimizing a build will be a top priority for most players when they begin to collect pieces of Scarecrow’s infamy set. These powerful items are given as rewards for completing incursions, adding more choices as you construct the Joker that best fits your playstyle.

The Clown Prince of Crime excels in short-range firefights and has various affliction effects built into his talent trees. Effective builds will harness this ability to sow chaos while incorporating the brand-new poison status effect into his loadout.

Joker’s talent trees in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

Best Talents For Joker

Within Joker’s talent trees, he hasthree suggested upgrade pathsnamedRingmaster, Jester,andFirestarter. Ringmaster prioritizes Joker’s traversal abilities and Jester buffs his melee skills, butFirestarter is the most interesting path by far.

It equips Joker with a number of talents that willafflict enemies with the burn effect, dealing damage over time. He’ll also gain access to skills like Temper Temper, whichbuffs damage to burning enemies by 50 percent.

Joker with the Faint of Heart pistol in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

It’s highly recommended that youinvest heavily in the Firestarter talents. Combining them with the right weapons and augments will result in huge damage bonuses.

Faint of Heart pistol

Joker with the Master Confrontation shield mod in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

Creeping Dread assault rife

Grenades

One Man’s Trash grenade

Your first instinct might be to load the Joker up with Scarecrow’s tier three infamy weapons, butthat isn’t the best choice for him. He can only wield one of them (Tachycardia, the shotgun), andthe tier three set bonuses are a bit of a gamble, increasing the amount of poison damage you deal but making yourself a lot spongier in the process.

The tier two gear is a much better bet, as the set bonuses incentivize the use of your grenades. Joker can equip the pistol, Faint of Heart, the assault rifle, Creeping Dread, or both. Critical reloads with these weapons progressivelyincrease your chances of poisoning enemiesshot with them. When used in conjunction with Firestarter talents,you’ll be able to double up on damage-over-time status effects.

When it comes to melee weapons and grenades, you have a lot of options and can generally choose more freely. Justmake sure you have both of them imbued with the Diablo Blaze affliction,so you’re able to get quick access to your burning damage buffs. If you have it,the One Man’s Trash grenade can be incredibly useful, since the first Gizmo infamy set bonus is anadditional 50 percent damage to burning enemies.

Consider using Dr. Poison’s Maru II Injector assault riflein conjunction with your Scarecrow gear. Not only will it poison enemies outright, Scarecrow and Dr. Poison have avillain synergywhich states thatany enemies you afflict will take 100 percent more damage and be poisoned. This meansinflicting the burn status on enemies will also automatically poison them!

Gear

Scarecrow infamy set

Finding the best gear for Joker should just be aboutcompleting the Scarecrow infamy set and optimizing synergies. If you don’t have three tier two Scarecrow items equipped,equip the remaining number you needin the shield mod, neck bomb mod, and lucky charm slots.

Dr. Poison may again prove useful, sinceher lucky charm ups your damage on afflicted enemies by 110 percent after you kill a poisoned enemy, and can be stacked up to three times. Consider equipping it if you have the slot available!

After you’ve found all the gear you need for your Joker build,go to Toyman to optimize even further.Equip burning damage augments on every item you canto further boost your destructive might.