One thing I can say right away about this season is that everyone is playing Thor.
However, most people do Thor + Mystic shroud to prevent him from losing his stacks right??? This is so wrong, Thor wont lose the stacks from removal anyway I don't get why everyone runs Mystic with him. It does very little. Only good thing with it is that it protects from Magneto magnetize.
Furthermore, Mystic is pretty shitty. It does prevent debuffs but if you have for example a shield on everyone + mystic and the opponent uses Scroll of Angolob they will remove both Mystic and the shield...ye its pretty bad.
Lastly before we leave the Thor discussion for now, Iron Patriot does more damage and the 3 radiation dots does more safe damage, so I don't get why people take Thor. Thor got no tricks, he dont have any evasion or any debuffs so he does very poorly in defence.
Ok now I want to talk about the 2 newest PvP characters(Bishop and Spiral), was a long time ago I went over a double PvP but as I couldn't play the game before Playdom fixed the start of the pvp battles, my Bishop had to wait for a while.
Bishop
Anyway I hate Bishop since what he did to Hope so----- My judgment might be a little clouded. But, before the Messiah storyline, he was one of my favorite X-man(is it X-man's, X-men?) so it kind of balance it out.
Gameplay wise hes pretty bad but on the same time I really like him.
The thing is he got great passive so initially you think Bishop would be good but hes moves are really bad. They are just pure damage.
He got a remodel of Havok's old passive I guess, which makes him tank energy/elemental based attacks. I means its good coherency with his comic powers and it makes him a good Brusier as Bruisers weakness is generally from Blaster with Energy attacks or Elemental attacks(he also takes reduced damage from psychic attacks).
In Tank sense hes pretty good but he only protect at random like Wolverine. So in many teams that is kind of lacking, if he always tanked those attacks he would be better overall. However, I will note that just with Wolverine he got a nasty synergy as then its one of those typical tank team were one ore more characters might protect so it can be hard to focus on target.
His ultimate is also a strong self heal, making him a stronger Brusier in that sense.
Well the issue for PvP is of course that,,, tanking in general is really bad. People run removal or have character like Loki(next article) who can apply cornered(removing protection), common characters are as awlays still Emma Frost(as she is still so dam good) and Phoenix etc with Psychic attacks, even do Bishop take less damage from them he cant protect his allies.
And this is a big issue with Bishop because except his tanking abilities his really lack lusting. He do have high damage output if he gets to absorb energy, I just wanna say I really like his Design because of this when I think on his comic appearance right and animation appearances etc.
He really works great, just like he should he jumps in front of allies to absorb enemy attacks and can then dish out huge damage back to the attacker. So he is really nice designed really. But gameplay wise in how the Meta of the game is. Hes pretty useless.
Pure damage is horrible if you don't have huge attack bonuses and even then its preferred to have AoE attack with nasty debuffs.
Bishop do change abilities and gain 4 new ones etc when he take damage and so on. Its cool and it make sense, its true to Bishop but he his energy attacks are 100% pure damage, while his tech attacks have useless debuffs like Lock on, which often is very indifferent to the damage. Obsolete tech as well is often useless only on Agent can this make a difference. His ultimate do have weak point so its his only good attack but it instead has a very low attack damage.
9/10 - From a Design perspective to the comics, but if you want a like a pvp score its more like 3-4/10.
Spiral
Spiral is on the other hand is a pretty strong character in PvP.
While her dance moves makes a little sense, I know she was a stage dancer in the start of Uncanny-Force(vol2) as its one of my favorite Marvel series but it feels kind of forced.
Anyway, gamewise she like Scarlet Witch has a solid % chance to avoid all attacks, which of course makers her a solid afk character. She also counters the attack, and the counter is different based on her current dance stance, she also like Ms.marvel gain a turn if she does this. And to top it of she still does her infiltrator counter if she has the class bonus.
This is a really good passive, and the counter its very, very strong. Overall the different unlock moves Spiral has are all strong(and hard to explain as its a lot of them) her first, second and ultimate attack changes her third attack and that also changes her counter as the counter is what the third attack is currently(which is decided be her current dance).
She also got the coolest sounding buff in the game - "Babe with Power".
Spiral is actually a strong support character, her first version of her third move Macabre Fandango, gives everyone in her team a chance for the 4 standard buffs(rising up skill) while she debuffs the enemies with the reverse(pressure point) this make her strong with character who have buff based abilities like Wonder Man, while it also empowers the damage of exploiters like Captain Britain.
The other dances also buffs and debuffs all characters, the strongest I would say is the third version. Which has Buildup for the whole team, granting allies buffs like Terrasing boost(hp reg),force field(shield) and more. While it set damage over time effects on all enemies and it includes strong Dots like Soulfire which also will remove their buffs and deathfrost(also damage stamina per turn).
To emphasize on how this works(because she is kinda weird) she will counter with this dance move. And its a 20% chance to happen(which as always is higher in defence.....) its actually very strong. Also like many other characters dodging increase the chance of this to trigger. So if you play Spiral with for example the Cube like I do, she gains a 40% chance to avoid anything and when avoiding with the cube the game will trigger that as a dance evade(yes...this is how the game works, same with Ms.Marvel etc) and makes her really dangerous.
Her other moves are not so great but her primary attack(first one) has deadly crits and high critical chance so it does decent high damage(it is also bugged and ignores shields, last time I played with her at least). Her second move has depower, not a big deal but it as actually a very strong attack. The base damage of it is very high and it is stealth so it can be used to finish of enemies. Its look lack lusting but the pure damage of a stealth move can be good.
Her ultimate on the other hand is a stun attack and not much more not so great. It do put on exhaust to so she counters Tactician hard(which is a common class) so its ok. But stunning anyone is so hard in the meta.
The thing is, her second move is strong. And this is the Dance to get Dance Magic Dance, which is the strongest Dance stance. So she is very easy to maneuver in the battle. You start by depowering and dealing high damage to your target and she gains the for most causes best dance.
Spiral is also strong in the meta with all the tactician and a lot of tanks and as I mentioned she becomes pretty broken with the cube and other evasion. She then also has strong synergies with some Brusiers like mentioned Cap B, Wonderman but also Hercules. Heimdall, Juggernaut,Colossus and for example with some suits too like Cap A and Iron Fist.
Shes a very reliable character and the best PvP reward in a a while. (Domino looks to be really good as well with similar Passive to Spiral)
8/10 I like the design of Spiral and her worthiness in the game but I do feel she could have some Mojo/tech/magic related abilities more then dance moves, I feel its weird move set she has I guess.
Moon Knight
OK Tl:dr Moon Knight is bad. Especially in Afk defence battles.
I have only seen him like twice but its a horrible idea to use him.
Not even in theory does he work fine in afk, while Mockingbird at least can optimally change into the perfect class you face. Moon Knight at random change class.....
I found playing with Moon Knight purely aggravating, same in PvE. While like with Bishop the character design make sense, hes insane with multiply personalties gameplay wise its horrible.
The player cant determine what he will change into and sometimes he change into a class who only has a weakness in the current situation.
Moon Knight starts out as a Generalist and will change into, Scrapper(wolverine personality), Tactician(Captain America) or Infiltrator(Spider-man)
Then he changes to someone else at random in the start of turns.
His moves set is not as all like Punisher, who gains new moves per class( I would say a fair comparison is that Moon knight is a bad version of Punisher well or a bad version of Mockingbird) my Moon Knight is level 12 and its really purely for the PvP bonus.
Because he don't even change into a class in an intelligent way. You can face 3 Bruisers and he changes into a Scrapper.....or you can face 3 Blasters where a Tactician would be good to have he changes into a Tactician himself for no real reason.
Then all his moves are bad too, hes only redeeming quality is that his counter is his third move which has stun and deals high damage for being a primary move. But, stun in the Pvp meta...is so outdated, everyone plays with Relentless(stun immune iso) or/and Mystic Shroud most people both, so the chance of stunning someone is very low, but in theory its a good move at least.
Well Moon Knight do deal very high damage,,,,,after a while. Just like with Black Bolt he has to gain stacks to deal more damage this stacks are gained when allies take damage(so its pretty much exactly like Black Bolt).
This of course also makes Moon Knight have the same weakness of how useless this is in PvP. As the games are quick, he wont gain enough retribution to make an impact before the battle is over. Unless you do a full super high defence oriented team, but as I have mentioned in other articles that means you wont win fast in attack which means less points so not a good plan.
And as Moon Knight changes classes, and the AI is stupid using him in afk is suicidal.
2/10.
The thing is Moonknight would work well coherent with his comic likeness if he worked like Mockingbird swapping class that suit him and then the player could control it(this is also true for Taskmaster.....), something in that direction hes pretty much unplayable now.
