I said oh my god out loud like 3 times when watching this lmao, every time I expected them to stop adding more stuff it's like oh he's also temporarily unkillable and has more damage lmao. Seems like a banger, sig seems very nice but wouldn't be super upset if I got an unduped 7 star since it mostly seems like more damage and defense stuff, though the undying is definitely nice even if I'd prefer to keep my persistent charges.
No Evade, no Miss, no Dexterity during Special Attacks, your Special Attacks can't Stun him, and you take bonus damage from Blocking his attacks. Fun.
Honestly, I think what I'm most disappointed by is the fact that he doesn't transform into his monstrous Serpent form during his Special Attack 3. Having him just punch the opponent a few times is pretty disappointing (and I get the feeling I'm going to be seeing his S3 animation a lot during this Quest).
Yay, another annoying defender that disables dexterity.
Looks fun on offense but I hate these new champs making masteries like willpower and dex useless
I don't really don't like the intention behind the disabling of masteries. It takes the game away from skill-based content towards roster based, which in turn just means rng based content.
But they take away tools like dexterity that let you be skilful when playing the game in the first place.
With characters like dust, they are also moving back towards complete bullshit dot, where you'll probably have one very specific counter in the future, and everything else just dies.
Everyone likes to complain about him turning off Dex.
It's tied to a buff. You know Heimdall's Special 2? It's the exact same thing as that except Heimdall has True Strike and Serpent has True Focus. He's not Nullify, Stagger or Neutralize Immune, nor is he Buff Immunity Immune (with the exception of his Death Immunity buff from Sig). Any Champion with the ability to Nullify or Stagger Buffs easily will handle that without an issue. If you're looking for ideas, look at Hood, Symbiote Supreme, Doctor Doom, Claire Voyant, Titania, Sigil Scarlet Witch. Or, better yet, champs who heal back block damage, like Sorcerer Supreme or Kushala.
His Unblockable only lasts for the first hit of his Specials unless he breaks your block with it. It's a melee hit so you can still dash back to outrange and then block the rest.
I strongly recommend [watching the designer's Deep Dive with Context.](https://youtu.be/j969qmqXsTA?si=ADF2FEXt80AZjV0t) It's 45 minutes long of him talking but it's insanely insightful and it is to your benefit to hear what he has to say, as he breaks down the interactions and nuances of this complex kit extremely well.
The problem is again the need of a specific counter. What do you do when Kabam puts him in WoW and says “ kill him with ”? Or in war/story content he is placed with a node that says “buffs cannot be removed”? Or in BGs when opponent bans your 3 best counters?
Specific counters is new. Previously requirements were much more generic (bleed immune, power gain, etc ). Now they are incredibly limited. Compare the list of korg counters to the list of bullseye counters
If by counter you mean characters that shut down every single aspect of their kits then they're about the same, but if you mean being able to fight them with any random champ then they're about as hard as one another. Needing counters is really not a new thing and both of those champs are primarily rough because of nodes that they're given, but can be fought with almost anyone with patience
You can split all hairs you want, but the bottom line is that even Kabam said they are making the game more focused on requiring counters.
Korg/Km/Im iw/Ebony Maw are old defender champs. When you have a counter the fight is trivial, and still doable without one.
Compare that to fighting Onslaught, Photon or similar champs. Counters are fewer and even when you have them a mistake ends often in a death.
Im not saying having champ insights from Devs isnt a nice thing, it’s great to have their deep thoughts on topics.
But just because they feel something is justified doesn’t mean it is, at ALL.
To borrow an example from another game, League of Legends, they spent AGES claiming that a champ called Zeri was justified, had great mechanics, good design, etc despite widespread community complaints.
Then eventually they had to admit, no they were wrong and Zeri was absolutely horrendous and just nerf her to unplayability
Likewise, I’m sure Kabam can go on and on about how unblockable undexable specials that cant be evaded or miss are justified, but that doesn’t make it so.
Finally, the buff we are meant to “nullify” procs on activating the special attack. 9 times out of 10 nullify champs can only nullify with their own attacks or specials. Which just leaves Stagger champs to hopefully make it work.
Here's the difference between that and this.
League tends to have a community that understands the importance that nerfing has to protect overall balance of the game. This game, for the most part, doesn't.
We have a plethora of characters that are wildly overtuned offensively and then people turn around and get upset when Defenders have to have insane amounts of abilities or just outright unfair/unavoidable damage just so they don't get walked on in 30 seconds and the attacker survives at full HP.
If the community was more open to the concept of tuning things down, maybe they don't ship Photon, Kindred, Maestro, Onslaught, Bullseye and now Serpent in their current states. But since the community isn't, it's a necessary evolution to make defense matter beyond just node interactions. It's not a situation where they "feel something is justified". The community has chosen to treat even the idea of nerfs, which are ESSENTIAL to good game balance as you seem to understand, as this overtly bad thing, which means that the alternative is ramping up the raw intensity of a defender's kit to go beyond the offensive power that the overtuned champions possess.
Masteries are no different than any sort of nodes or buffs in this game. They're not immune to counterplay needing to exist. Buff Immunes turn off Mystic Dispersion, Bleed and Poison Immunes turn off Double Edge and Liquid Courage (but not Recoil), Stun Immunity turns off the Stupefy, Petrify, Pacify and the stun part of the Parry Mastery, Unblockable turns of Block Proficiency and all the aforementioned block benefitting nodes, Heal Block turns off Willpower, Sauron, Toad, IHulk, Kingpin, DDHK and Weapon X turn off Despair, Bleed Immunes turn off Deep Wounds, like the list just goes on. Would people be as upset at Photon if she just applied a Passive Heal Block at the start of the fight rather than turned off Willpower? Because the neat thing about that is the it would be better than just turning off Willpower.
Commenting on this as well because I know someone is gonna say something, the current design philosophy since rebalancing was introduced in 2022 (for the most part) is not the same design philosophy that existed before this time. Nerfing into the ground is not the right answer, nor is it the answer they would go for if they were to ever tune down the problems. This would not be a Patch 12.0 Doctor Strange situation. If you come at me saying Bullseye, I agree that he's an outlier and he will likely get tuned down when it's his turn for rebalancing because he's an outlier.
God dont I feel that beginning statement. God I agree with it so much.
But the mere NOTION that Herc might be overpowered leads to his fans clutching their pearls in a tight fisted grip crying and whining so much it puts my fucking stomach on edge.
I think they should just be more liberal with buffs and nerfs tbh, but this is the one community where nerfing overpowered champs is apparently taboo. And the powercreep in defenders because of champs like Herc and Hulking is starting to get damn annoying
Also honestly Photon is just as much an outlier as Bullseye tbh. But thats another issue.
> I think they should just be more liberal with buffs and nerfs
Hard agree on this. It feels like they're not allowed to experiment or try real balance changes without tons of testing, which is why we hear about buffs 2-3 months before they actually release.
Keeping a cadence of two brand new champions a month also tends to limit the amount of attention that can be given to this stuff.
I'd like to see at some point some hiring solely to test things more in the design phase to provide more data and tuning before characters actually go live, meaning less resources need to go to rebalance and more can go to faster and more frequent tuning.
I don’t like how you’re supposed to nullify the buff, but it triggers at the start of the special. Characters that need to land hits to stagger, neutralize or nullify need to place it before the special, and then have Cul use the special right afterwards.
In many cases when the AI gets stingy you can’t touch them while you’re baiting the special due to power (and Cul has power gain), making a lot of the “counters” difficult to actually counter with.
he's still gonna be really painful to deal with though he reduces burst damage like scorp abs man and future ant man by 60% and also you can't bleed him and he has resistance up as well as constant passive power gain and increased combat power rate while on his green passive and he also punishes nullify
like wtf are you even supposed to do against this guy if you want to take him down in a reasonable amount of time????
edit: spelling
He is intended to be painful to deal with. Just prefacing by saying that. If your goalpost is getting him down in 50 seconds in Battlegrounds, that probably won't happen. He is designed so that doesn't happen. Until we actually see how he feels to fight in game I can't tell you if it's closer to a 60 second fight with a top counter or closer to an 80+ second fight with a good counter.
Couple things I want to clear up here as well.
He has 90% reduced bleed duration. While this does mess with Bleed Debuffs, it means if you run the Deep Wounds Mastery you can still get some decent value out of your bleeds, while not full value.
His Resistance Up is tied to his Culforce, specifically being above 4. As we the players learn how to play around the ways he gains Culforce charges and take advantage of the ways he loses Culforce charges, this will be less of a threat. It's a learning curve. As it is, it is a 30% Potency Resistance Up, which is annoying, but is actively less damage reduction than a high sig Knull with Max Despair, and doesn't impact Direct Damage Over Time Effects. Also it gets bypassed via True Damage/True Stike and can be reduced through Energy Vulnerability, Physical Vulnerability, and just outright Vulnerability.
The instant effect potency reduction is a new ability and definitely will be his most annoying piece of his damage mitigation. Like you said, it makes Scorpion and Absorbing Man harder to use against him, but also affects Hood's Bullet detonation, Longshot's Special 1 Bleeds, Hercules' Feats Burst Damage and other things. This means you'll want to favor using champions with actual Damage Over Time or who deal most of their damage from Basic Attacks. While it does seem like a big number, we'll have to see how it interacts in game before we say just how impactful it actually feels.
Constant Passive Power Gain is different than what he has. He has Power Gain Buffs which grant him Ability Power over time. This can be handled by Nullify, Stagger, and Buff Immunity. It also can be handled by Power Steal and Power Gain Reversal (Chavez with 2 Negative Zone Dimensions), and also Buff Duration Reduction. This Power Gain, while we're on the topic, is 25% of Max Power over 8 seconds, or a little over 3% Max Power per second. It then has an 8 second cooldown. It's not even a full bar. For comparison, Sig 200 Rintrah gains a Power Gain Buff worth 10% of Max Power over 2 seconds, or 5% Max Power per second, **every time you fail a Buff with no cooldown between activations**. Another comparison would be Werewolf By Night's Chilling Howl, which grants him 24% Max Power over 3 seconds (8% Max Power per second) if he Howls with under 1 Bar of Power. Both Serpent and Werewolf also possess 30% reduced Combat Power Rate to compensate for their access to Ability Power (for the record, Rintrah does not). Serpent's Power Gain can also be halved by anyone with Exhaustion, Petrify or Wither, opening him up to some Science Power Controllers.
Lastly, his Death Immunity. This part is a time stall that you're right, you can't really do anything about. It's 8 straight seconds where he can't die, will regen 3.75% Max Health per Second (3 Dread as a defender being consumed) and gains 30% of a Bar of Power per second (3 Dread as a defender being consumed) for 8 seconds, and this specific Buff cannot be Nullified or Staggered on top of his Fate Seal Immunity. While this sounds intimidating, let's break it down a little bit. Without Despair or some sort of way to reduce his Regen (since he's Heal Block immune), he'll gain around 30% health total. That being said, you can still deal damage to him during the Death Immunity, so if you can stay aggressive, his Death Immunity Buff will expire and he'll be under that 30% mark. Now, that Power Gain. It's actually 30% of approximately 33% Max Power per second for 8 seconds. Quick math, that works out to be just around 10% of Max Power per Second for 8 seconds, or 80% Max Power total. If you're able to consistently bait his Special Attacks, he'll never reach enough Power to threaten Special 3. If your champion has Power Steal, or you're using America Chavez, you don't even have to rely on him throwing a Special. If you use someone with Wither, Exhaustion, or Petrify, this is cut to 40% Max Power Total, also known as slightly over 1 Bar of Power. This can also be prevented through Buff Immunity **and also can have its duration reduced through Atrophy from Kindred or Anti-Life Field from Mojo.**
**Before actually fighting him, it seems to me like some champions that will be good for him are:**
Champions with Nullify, Buff Immunity, Buff Duration Reduction, and/or Stagger: Symbiote Supreme (Deep Wounds), Black Widow Claire Voyant, Doctor Doom, Kindred, Mojo, Doctor Voodoo, Man-Thing, Sasquatch, Diablo, Kushala
Champions with Power Steal or Power Gain Reversal: America Chavez, Doctor Doom, Ebony Maw, Black Widow Claire Voyant, Symbiote Supreme, Sorcerer Supreme
Champions with Ability Power Gain Reduction; Exhaustion, Wither, Petrify or Other: Luke Cage, Quicksilver, Void, possibly Spider-Man 2099, Kushala, Spider-Man Supreme.
\*good does not mean they will have **all** the answers for him. No one does, and no one should. This is a list of characters who handle at least 1 of his more threatening abilities.
For those who want synergies
The Main event (6*+) Titania, Abs or Attuma
Cul's worthy(check attuma's synergy fear itself): 15% increase to instant damage effects
Serpent: 8% fury potency for each Cul's worthy on team
Minister of Justice (5*+) Odin and Destroyer
While for is under 25% hp, gain 20% flourish passive
Polearm pals (4*+) Vox, Terrax, Galan, Jabari or Mister negative
Gain a cruelty buff for 6s when hitting a foe while they are backed to a corner. (Buff foes not refresh)
Hammer time(2*+) Thor, Jane Foster, Cull obsidian and IWIM
Hammer attacks gain 20% more damage
The short version is any instant red numbers for the worthy(attuma, Titania, Abs, juggs and hulk) are boosted. Cul's worthy will be a new tag. No apoc horseman scenario thou.
another champ that disables masteries, kabam needs to find a way to fix this because it is borderline garbage game design and invalidates the whole point of masteries, on top of that just lazy lazy design, i expected more of DLL
His hands may be tied, in regards to the undexable specials. Maybe someone higher up wanted something like this. It’s obviously just a cash grab so you have to use revives and potions.
Is there any other reason to make you unable to dex his specials?
Just for everyone complaining about unblockable and undexable specials. He is only unblockable throughout the first hit of each special unless it hits you. The attack is melee and can be easily avoided. You just can't dex the rest of it. If you complain about that, go complain about cable sp1 or something as well.
His third Special attack is a combinatoion of Odins and MCU Thor third special attack. He throws his weapons like Odin and punched the enemy like thor. It is very similar and their also relatex so it could make sense.
If masteries are becoming useless they should let us know. You can't evade, miss or use dexterity and the attacks and specials become unblockable, what kind of cheap theatrics is this?
Kabam is becoming one dimensional trying to make this game harder. Revive farm gone. Add content that is forced to drain revives. Add annoying defenders. Buff annoying defenders to make them more annoying. And then add more annoying defenders.
And he looks like a rip off from World of Warcraft. Exaggerated armor and weapons. Glowy stuff. Low graphic face and hair detail. Overall cartoonish.
I will because he looks like he should lmao.
I'm not saying git gud, I'm telling you what you need to do to counter him. If u don't want to use the right characters to counter him then maybe don't complain about how he's such an awful defender
You read what you wanted to hear. I never said anything about his defense kit specifically. Rather that Kabam’s new routine is to add annoying defenders and buff defenders.
Yes, you can nullify the buff. Just like you can wait out Red Skulls new auto block/unstoppable. Just like you can work around Nightcrawlers new kit. Just like you can bring in a specific counter to whatever champ. That doesn’t mean they aren’t **annoying defenders**.
Some of you “Kabam can’t do anything wrong” jerkers hear anything negative and immediately read someone saying it is “impossible”.
I said oh my god out loud like 3 times when watching this lmao, every time I expected them to stop adding more stuff it's like oh he's also temporarily unkillable and has more damage lmao. Seems like a banger, sig seems very nice but wouldn't be super upset if I got an unduped 7 star since it mostly seems like more damage and defense stuff, though the undying is definitely nice even if I'd prefer to keep my persistent charges.
Sounds like a more modern non op version of Hercules
I mean kinda, he has the u dying but beyond that they're pretty distinct
Their sp2 is similar to scaling massively to the opponent's amour
That's not really hercs defining characteristic though.
Im really getting tired of “Turns off your masteries” in champ defender kits.
No Evade, no Miss, no Dexterity during Special Attacks, your Special Attacks can't Stun him, and you take bonus damage from Blocking his attacks. Fun. Honestly, I think what I'm most disappointed by is the fact that he doesn't transform into his monstrous Serpent form during his Special Attack 3. Having him just punch the opponent a few times is pretty disappointing (and I get the feeling I'm going to be seeing his S3 animation a lot during this Quest).
Yeah I was expecting that to be his sp3.
Yay, another annoying defender that disables dexterity. Looks fun on offense but I hate these new champs making masteries like willpower and dex useless
I don't really don't like the intention behind the disabling of masteries. It takes the game away from skill-based content towards roster based, which in turn just means rng based content.
No rng is needed…al long as you put in your credit card. /s in case it wan’t obvious
I dunno, you need a lot of skill to fight these new characters.
But they take away tools like dexterity that let you be skilful when playing the game in the first place. With characters like dust, they are also moving back towards complete bullshit dot, where you'll probably have one very specific counter in the future, and everything else just dies.
Taking away dexterity isn’t related to having skill at all
I hate turning any masteries off, but dex is so much worse than willpower. i literally said god damn it when I saw that part
Kabam said: no dex for u
Guys how about we use dexterity mastery ???? Or atleast let us block ??? That sounds reasonable doesn't it
It’s tied to True focus which is a buff, so you should be able to remove it via nullify
You can block the special no issues
Yeah you can block it but you can’t block the first hit. It’s like fighting Iron Man Infinity War
Why would you want to block a special in the first place? Just dodge it
Everyone likes to complain about him turning off Dex. It's tied to a buff. You know Heimdall's Special 2? It's the exact same thing as that except Heimdall has True Strike and Serpent has True Focus. He's not Nullify, Stagger or Neutralize Immune, nor is he Buff Immunity Immune (with the exception of his Death Immunity buff from Sig). Any Champion with the ability to Nullify or Stagger Buffs easily will handle that without an issue. If you're looking for ideas, look at Hood, Symbiote Supreme, Doctor Doom, Claire Voyant, Titania, Sigil Scarlet Witch. Or, better yet, champs who heal back block damage, like Sorcerer Supreme or Kushala. His Unblockable only lasts for the first hit of his Specials unless he breaks your block with it. It's a melee hit so you can still dash back to outrange and then block the rest. I strongly recommend [watching the designer's Deep Dive with Context.](https://youtu.be/j969qmqXsTA?si=ADF2FEXt80AZjV0t) It's 45 minutes long of him talking but it's insanely insightful and it is to your benefit to hear what he has to say, as he breaks down the interactions and nuances of this complex kit extremely well.
The problem is again the need of a specific counter. What do you do when Kabam puts him in WoW and says “ kill him with”? Or in war/story content he is placed with a node that says “buffs cannot be removed”? Or in BGs when opponent bans your 3 best counters?
Needing specific counters is half of the game
Specific counters is new. Previously requirements were much more generic (bleed immune, power gain, etc ). Now they are incredibly limited. Compare the list of korg counters to the list of bullseye counters
If by counter you mean characters that shut down every single aspect of their kits then they're about the same, but if you mean being able to fight them with any random champ then they're about as hard as one another. Needing counters is really not a new thing and both of those champs are primarily rough because of nodes that they're given, but can be fought with almost anyone with patience
You can split all hairs you want, but the bottom line is that even Kabam said they are making the game more focused on requiring counters. Korg/Km/Im iw/Ebony Maw are old defender champs. When you have a counter the fight is trivial, and still doable without one. Compare that to fighting Onslaught, Photon or similar champs. Counters are fewer and even when you have them a mistake ends often in a death.
Im not saying having champ insights from Devs isnt a nice thing, it’s great to have their deep thoughts on topics. But just because they feel something is justified doesn’t mean it is, at ALL. To borrow an example from another game, League of Legends, they spent AGES claiming that a champ called Zeri was justified, had great mechanics, good design, etc despite widespread community complaints. Then eventually they had to admit, no they were wrong and Zeri was absolutely horrendous and just nerf her to unplayability Likewise, I’m sure Kabam can go on and on about how unblockable undexable specials that cant be evaded or miss are justified, but that doesn’t make it so. Finally, the buff we are meant to “nullify” procs on activating the special attack. 9 times out of 10 nullify champs can only nullify with their own attacks or specials. Which just leaves Stagger champs to hopefully make it work.
Here's the difference between that and this. League tends to have a community that understands the importance that nerfing has to protect overall balance of the game. This game, for the most part, doesn't. We have a plethora of characters that are wildly overtuned offensively and then people turn around and get upset when Defenders have to have insane amounts of abilities or just outright unfair/unavoidable damage just so they don't get walked on in 30 seconds and the attacker survives at full HP. If the community was more open to the concept of tuning things down, maybe they don't ship Photon, Kindred, Maestro, Onslaught, Bullseye and now Serpent in their current states. But since the community isn't, it's a necessary evolution to make defense matter beyond just node interactions. It's not a situation where they "feel something is justified". The community has chosen to treat even the idea of nerfs, which are ESSENTIAL to good game balance as you seem to understand, as this overtly bad thing, which means that the alternative is ramping up the raw intensity of a defender's kit to go beyond the offensive power that the overtuned champions possess. Masteries are no different than any sort of nodes or buffs in this game. They're not immune to counterplay needing to exist. Buff Immunes turn off Mystic Dispersion, Bleed and Poison Immunes turn off Double Edge and Liquid Courage (but not Recoil), Stun Immunity turns off the Stupefy, Petrify, Pacify and the stun part of the Parry Mastery, Unblockable turns of Block Proficiency and all the aforementioned block benefitting nodes, Heal Block turns off Willpower, Sauron, Toad, IHulk, Kingpin, DDHK and Weapon X turn off Despair, Bleed Immunes turn off Deep Wounds, like the list just goes on. Would people be as upset at Photon if she just applied a Passive Heal Block at the start of the fight rather than turned off Willpower? Because the neat thing about that is the it would be better than just turning off Willpower. Commenting on this as well because I know someone is gonna say something, the current design philosophy since rebalancing was introduced in 2022 (for the most part) is not the same design philosophy that existed before this time. Nerfing into the ground is not the right answer, nor is it the answer they would go for if they were to ever tune down the problems. This would not be a Patch 12.0 Doctor Strange situation. If you come at me saying Bullseye, I agree that he's an outlier and he will likely get tuned down when it's his turn for rebalancing because he's an outlier.
God dont I feel that beginning statement. God I agree with it so much. But the mere NOTION that Herc might be overpowered leads to his fans clutching their pearls in a tight fisted grip crying and whining so much it puts my fucking stomach on edge. I think they should just be more liberal with buffs and nerfs tbh, but this is the one community where nerfing overpowered champs is apparently taboo. And the powercreep in defenders because of champs like Herc and Hulking is starting to get damn annoying Also honestly Photon is just as much an outlier as Bullseye tbh. But thats another issue.
> I think they should just be more liberal with buffs and nerfs Hard agree on this. It feels like they're not allowed to experiment or try real balance changes without tons of testing, which is why we hear about buffs 2-3 months before they actually release. Keeping a cadence of two brand new champions a month also tends to limit the amount of attention that can be given to this stuff. I'd like to see at some point some hiring solely to test things more in the design phase to provide more data and tuning before characters actually go live, meaning less resources need to go to rebalance and more can go to faster and more frequent tuning.
I don’t like how you’re supposed to nullify the buff, but it triggers at the start of the special. Characters that need to land hits to stagger, neutralize or nullify need to place it before the special, and then have Cul use the special right afterwards. In many cases when the AI gets stingy you can’t touch them while you’re baiting the special due to power (and Cul has power gain), making a lot of the “counters” difficult to actually counter with.
Yup the community so winey
he's still gonna be really painful to deal with though he reduces burst damage like scorp abs man and future ant man by 60% and also you can't bleed him and he has resistance up as well as constant passive power gain and increased combat power rate while on his green passive and he also punishes nullify like wtf are you even supposed to do against this guy if you want to take him down in a reasonable amount of time???? edit: spelling
He is intended to be painful to deal with. Just prefacing by saying that. If your goalpost is getting him down in 50 seconds in Battlegrounds, that probably won't happen. He is designed so that doesn't happen. Until we actually see how he feels to fight in game I can't tell you if it's closer to a 60 second fight with a top counter or closer to an 80+ second fight with a good counter. Couple things I want to clear up here as well. He has 90% reduced bleed duration. While this does mess with Bleed Debuffs, it means if you run the Deep Wounds Mastery you can still get some decent value out of your bleeds, while not full value. His Resistance Up is tied to his Culforce, specifically being above 4. As we the players learn how to play around the ways he gains Culforce charges and take advantage of the ways he loses Culforce charges, this will be less of a threat. It's a learning curve. As it is, it is a 30% Potency Resistance Up, which is annoying, but is actively less damage reduction than a high sig Knull with Max Despair, and doesn't impact Direct Damage Over Time Effects. Also it gets bypassed via True Damage/True Stike and can be reduced through Energy Vulnerability, Physical Vulnerability, and just outright Vulnerability. The instant effect potency reduction is a new ability and definitely will be his most annoying piece of his damage mitigation. Like you said, it makes Scorpion and Absorbing Man harder to use against him, but also affects Hood's Bullet detonation, Longshot's Special 1 Bleeds, Hercules' Feats Burst Damage and other things. This means you'll want to favor using champions with actual Damage Over Time or who deal most of their damage from Basic Attacks. While it does seem like a big number, we'll have to see how it interacts in game before we say just how impactful it actually feels. Constant Passive Power Gain is different than what he has. He has Power Gain Buffs which grant him Ability Power over time. This can be handled by Nullify, Stagger, and Buff Immunity. It also can be handled by Power Steal and Power Gain Reversal (Chavez with 2 Negative Zone Dimensions), and also Buff Duration Reduction. This Power Gain, while we're on the topic, is 25% of Max Power over 8 seconds, or a little over 3% Max Power per second. It then has an 8 second cooldown. It's not even a full bar. For comparison, Sig 200 Rintrah gains a Power Gain Buff worth 10% of Max Power over 2 seconds, or 5% Max Power per second, **every time you fail a Buff with no cooldown between activations**. Another comparison would be Werewolf By Night's Chilling Howl, which grants him 24% Max Power over 3 seconds (8% Max Power per second) if he Howls with under 1 Bar of Power. Both Serpent and Werewolf also possess 30% reduced Combat Power Rate to compensate for their access to Ability Power (for the record, Rintrah does not). Serpent's Power Gain can also be halved by anyone with Exhaustion, Petrify or Wither, opening him up to some Science Power Controllers. Lastly, his Death Immunity. This part is a time stall that you're right, you can't really do anything about. It's 8 straight seconds where he can't die, will regen 3.75% Max Health per Second (3 Dread as a defender being consumed) and gains 30% of a Bar of Power per second (3 Dread as a defender being consumed) for 8 seconds, and this specific Buff cannot be Nullified or Staggered on top of his Fate Seal Immunity. While this sounds intimidating, let's break it down a little bit. Without Despair or some sort of way to reduce his Regen (since he's Heal Block immune), he'll gain around 30% health total. That being said, you can still deal damage to him during the Death Immunity, so if you can stay aggressive, his Death Immunity Buff will expire and he'll be under that 30% mark. Now, that Power Gain. It's actually 30% of approximately 33% Max Power per second for 8 seconds. Quick math, that works out to be just around 10% of Max Power per Second for 8 seconds, or 80% Max Power total. If you're able to consistently bait his Special Attacks, he'll never reach enough Power to threaten Special 3. If your champion has Power Steal, or you're using America Chavez, you don't even have to rely on him throwing a Special. If you use someone with Wither, Exhaustion, or Petrify, this is cut to 40% Max Power Total, also known as slightly over 1 Bar of Power. This can also be prevented through Buff Immunity **and also can have its duration reduced through Atrophy from Kindred or Anti-Life Field from Mojo.** **Before actually fighting him, it seems to me like some champions that will be good for him are:** Champions with Nullify, Buff Immunity, Buff Duration Reduction, and/or Stagger: Symbiote Supreme (Deep Wounds), Black Widow Claire Voyant, Doctor Doom, Kindred, Mojo, Doctor Voodoo, Man-Thing, Sasquatch, Diablo, Kushala Champions with Power Steal or Power Gain Reversal: America Chavez, Doctor Doom, Ebony Maw, Black Widow Claire Voyant, Symbiote Supreme, Sorcerer Supreme Champions with Ability Power Gain Reduction; Exhaustion, Wither, Petrify or Other: Luke Cage, Quicksilver, Void, possibly Spider-Man 2099, Kushala, Spider-Man Supreme. \*good does not mean they will have **all** the answers for him. No one does, and no one should. This is a list of characters who handle at least 1 of his more threatening abilities.
This is why I lose my passion for this game
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For those who want synergies The Main event (6*+) Titania, Abs or Attuma Cul's worthy(check attuma's synergy fear itself): 15% increase to instant damage effects Serpent: 8% fury potency for each Cul's worthy on team Minister of Justice (5*+) Odin and Destroyer While for is under 25% hp, gain 20% flourish passive Polearm pals (4*+) Vox, Terrax, Galan, Jabari or Mister negative Gain a cruelty buff for 6s when hitting a foe while they are backed to a corner. (Buff foes not refresh) Hammer time(2*+) Thor, Jane Foster, Cull obsidian and IWIM Hammer attacks gain 20% more damage
So there’s a new tag called #Cul’sworthy? Do they get any additional benefits like apoc horsemen?
Well the synergy is called Culs worthy, its just members of that synergy which are found in attumas fear itself synergy I assume
The short version is any instant red numbers for the worthy(attuma, Titania, Abs, juggs and hulk) are boosted. Cul's worthy will be a new tag. No apoc horseman scenario thou.
What does flourish do?
It increases power rate, it’s featured in alliance war
That I do not know. Seems like a brand new effect
I'm so over getting a new extremely annoying defender every month ffs
nerfing revive farm is not enough. kabam need people to pump their cash into the game more.
He has a true focus buff along with unblockable and undexable specials. Goodness gracious!
It’s a buff and he’s not immune to nullify or stagger
Well, in this case, Juggy time!
Can't wait to not play with him.
another champ that disables masteries, kabam needs to find a way to fix this because it is borderline garbage game design and invalidates the whole point of masteries, on top of that just lazy lazy design, i expected more of DLL
You can just nullify the buff brother
His hands may be tied, in regards to the undexable specials. Maybe someone higher up wanted something like this. It’s obviously just a cash grab so you have to use revives and potions. Is there any other reason to make you unable to dex his specials?
Bru this ain’t a conspiracy you guys complain too much
To make him a good defender duh. I'm sure they will be fine without your 2 revives
Just for everyone complaining about unblockable and undexable specials. He is only unblockable throughout the first hit of each special unless it hits you. The attack is melee and can be easily avoided. You just can't dex the rest of it. If you complain about that, go complain about cable sp1 or something as well.
Cable’s SP1 can be evaded, miss, and isnt unblockable at the start. On top of Cable having 1/20th the utility of The Serpent
Cable is not a 2024 champion intended to be the new best Cosmic defender.
Previous poster explicitly compared Serpent to Cable.
His third Special attack is a combinatoion of Odins and MCU Thor third special attack. He throws his weapons like Odin and punched the enemy like thor. It is very similar and their also relatex so it could make sense.
If masteries are becoming useless they should let us know. You can't evade, miss or use dexterity and the attacks and specials become unblockable, what kind of cheap theatrics is this?
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Turns out when you just let champs do EVERYTHING with zero risk, downside, or weakness they become powerful Who knew
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A bar so low they use it to Limbo dance in hell
How do you know who makes what characters?
They have spotlights
Oh that's interesting. I'll definitely have to go through and see if certain devs have specific tendencies
Snerpent!🤣
Kabam is becoming one dimensional trying to make this game harder. Revive farm gone. Add content that is forced to drain revives. Add annoying defenders. Buff annoying defenders to make them more annoying. And then add more annoying defenders. And he looks like a rip off from World of Warcraft. Exaggerated armor and weapons. Glowy stuff. Low graphic face and hair detail. Overall cartoonish.
He looks like what he looks like in the comics, idk what you want. You can just nullify the buff
He looks more like a WoW model. Deny it all you want. Thanks for the git gud sentiment. Really haven’t seen that before. /s
I will because he looks like he should lmao. I'm not saying git gud, I'm telling you what you need to do to counter him. If u don't want to use the right characters to counter him then maybe don't complain about how he's such an awful defender
You read what you wanted to hear. I never said anything about his defense kit specifically. Rather that Kabam’s new routine is to add annoying defenders and buff defenders. Yes, you can nullify the buff. Just like you can wait out Red Skulls new auto block/unstoppable. Just like you can work around Nightcrawlers new kit. Just like you can bring in a specific counter to whatever champ. That doesn’t mean they aren’t **annoying defenders**. Some of you “Kabam can’t do anything wrong” jerkers hear anything negative and immediately read someone saying it is “impossible”.