This discussion was created from comments split from: New Character - ***** Apocalypse (Classic) *****.
Bishop is a “check” for all of these and more.
Check and check.
Agree with the first part (players asking for a nerf) which is what we see with Bishop. Disagree wholeheartedly with Thor being the last Gambit. He’s not even close. Most don’t even rank him as the best in his tier (I do, by the way). The fact that he has peers on his level (Kitty, Okoye, Beta) means Thor is nowhere near Gambit who was clearly in a league all his own. Thor isn’t close to that.
Bishop checked almost all the boxes, except for:
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mirror matches because there are 5* players who defeat Bishop teams using non-Bishop teams before Apocalypse is out.
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passive ap gains. his passive ap gain is conditional because it triggers upon certain damage value being met, instead of triggering every turn regardless of match damage value. You could argue Gambit’s passive ap gain is conditional because he locks out his teammates from using purple and red active powers.
With Apocalypse, players have one more tool to deal with a few current metas. He can help to diversify the opponents that 5* players see in PvPs in the future. Apocalypse + X-Men / BRB should be as easy to beat as Thorokoye, except for their high hp.
What set Gambit apart are his passive ap gains and random enemy ap destruction every turn. Thor fulfills part one. I do agree that Thor can’t stand alone like Gambit did. He’s the closest passive ap machine that Gambit is. Bishop works only in 5* realm. In 4* and below tier, almost all characters eat him alive.
see bold.
@Daredevil217
i won’t say that Thor is a liability on defence. When he was released he had a good health pool and 2 good nukes. No one would say he is bad on defence.
I think it’s more correct to say that Thor bring nothing to defence. His best ability, 50% passive ap generation can be circumvented.
Contrast with Kitty, BRB, PX, they have solid defence because of their passive.
Gambit could be beaten by non-mirror teams too. Many people reported it in the Nerf debate threads. Just the BEST counter for both characters (pre-Apoc) is/was mirror.
I don’t remember reading this, but it has been almost two years since his last nerf.
There’s something wrong with the quote button, so I will bold my reply from here onwards.
Gambit’s AP gain was conditional on his repeater lasting and Thor’s at being half-health (nullifying it on defense).
I was referring to pre-nerf Gambit. That’s the weak link about Thor defensively, but offensively and based on speed, he’s still the top. It’s difficult to top Thor in this aspect.
There was a lot that made Gambit a monster beyond those two things. I believe v1 Gambit didn’t even destroy AP and just generated it. Yet he was “nerfed” because he was too powerful. His high damage per AP on red, overwriting all specials on purple, dual AP gen (passive black and destroying charged tiles on red) made him a one stop shop. I still maintain that Bish is the closest thing we’ve seen to Gambit in the 5* tier (I’ll concede that point for sure). Thor is amazing on offense but a liability on defense. With this new wave of destruction coming through, playing against Thor isn’t much worse than a surfer or Black Suit team. Compared to the likes of Beta/Kitty/Bishop/Carbage/Professor/Apocalypse/iHulk/WorthyHawk/etc.
Gen 1 Gambit was 0/0/5 build paired with Spider-Gwen and The Thing (not 100% sure if it’s him). Gen 2 was tweaked with ap destruction. Gen 3 was the true nerf that we have today after over 50? pages of debates. I can’t remember the old red damage value but I do remember that the damage value is really high for 7 red ap. Purple rendered all special tiles useless. If Bishop was a 5*, he would probably be useless because the threshold will be pretty high. Agree about Thor being weak on defense and the rest of current meta being more difficult to defeat.
The 0/0/5 build of Gambit was for the 3* version.
Yeah it totally answered the unasked question: Would you give up a third of your team for 5-6 free AP per turn.
Yes, yes you would. Is there a reason PVE teams with goon feeders are obscene? Yes, yes there is.