So I am probably gonna refer to Death as Iceman.
And this is also true for X-23, Laura as War. And why I can say right away shes the best alt suit of the 3. Famine is also better but not 100% as with War.
And before I go into each specific alt suit. I wanted it on the record that I really, really dislike the characters they gave Horsemen suits, why not give it to some of the classic Apocalypse Horseman? Angel already had his but they are many more which would make more sense then these 3.
While Beast desperately needed a buff, when I head he was getting an alt suit for this special operation. I was thinking "ah hes getting the Dark Beast look" the alternative version of Beast who is Evil from the Age of Apocalypse marvel universe (AoA, Earth-295) that made no sense to me that they give him the Pestilence suit over a Dark Beast suit. Well yes, the Dark Beast would require less work to just dye him black but at least it would suit the storyline better to. They have Suger Man so why not Dark Beast joining in for this special operation of marvel avengers alliance.
Pestilence:
This is the alt I was hoping for
Like I said at the start, Laura is the one whit a clear cut better abilities. Beast or Pestilence, is 2 different characters. He got the most changes and he is not clearly 100% better. He is better no doubt, but I mean he does lose some of his abilities. Were Iceman as Death also losses his ultimate for another one(I am not on 9 with him yet but the Iceman looks better then Death), in beast case is a lot of new character feel to it with some of his old moves left.
So were Angel and his Archangel(Death/new apocalypse form) form its all new abilities making him a completely different character all together. Pestilence is a a mix of improved older abilities and 2 new abilities. So he will spot a his one place in the tier list for example but hes is also very similar.
If Playdom had notjust severely nerfed Pestilence then I would say, never take Beast. But right now its that Pestilence has 2 improved ability over Beast, and one other ability and he cant use his second ability in PvP...its just completely useless.
The second ability is really good and was definitely what made him be viable. But Playdom nerfed it to be 3 turn cooldown from the start....they claim this was to make it easier in PvE....but I would believe its the classic. Release a character "overpowered" and then nerf as soon as enough people have bought him(now I would buy him regardless for the better pvp bonus of Tactician>Generalist) but to me it looks like a classic cheap trick from a game developer.
Anyway the result is that Pestilence is not so great. Because his second ability is the best he got, At Mountain of Madness which gives all enemies both mind control and Fumbling + its sbutitle so he cant get countered etc.
It also combos with the Teast Passive Catch-22. Which is that Beast gains increased attack when he dont attacks. And yes I am writing Beast here to be deliberately confusing. Beast has this passive and Pestilence as well. But without having the second ability. There is no way Pestilence is ever gonna have a use of Catch-22.
The way Beast Utilize Catch-22 is with his second ability War and Peace. Pestilence clearly got a vastly improved version of War and Peace in, At the Mountain of Madness. Not in all situations but generally, funny enough is that War and Peace is better the less enemies are left and with a whooping 3 turns start cooldown its clear that War and Peace will in many cases be better to have after those 3 turns has passed. Its also ofc better to have it then nothing. And as I mentioned thats the why you use Catch-22.
Right now there is no point not doing anything with Pestilence to get the passive effect. That's less damage then attacking with the first or his ultimate ability.
The thing with Pestilence is that his third ability is pretty much shit in defence AI. Its horrible there is no way in hell the AI will use that efficiently. You give the enemy Iso contagion which they can spread back much smarter then the AI. Sure Pestilence do have the reduction of dot passive but it also gives a lot of debuffs and many players use Sheppard staff you wont win much with that.
The good thing with Pestilence is the his 2 improved abilities, one does more damage the otehr one adds in nanoplauge which is definitely a good debuff.
Pestilence strength really lies in his passives, the first one both slam backs dots and debuffs to the enemies, and as mentioned reduces damage taken.
But the best is Paradise lost his second new passive that removes the ability to remove debuffs and dots. This passive clearly really hard counter some support characters like for example Rescue and then combine with this nanoplauge attack(which also his is primary attack,counters with it etc). Thats gonna completely remove her from the game. This is same for Angel and so on.
MOST IMPORTANTLY::: it overrides scroll of angolob. Its like the only thing in the game right now that the scroll cant remove. And of course then he can also prevents the Agent from healing with the cube with his nanoplauge, hes one of the few characters in the game that really can mess with the current Agent meta items.
At first glance, he definitely counters scroll of angolob. But -_- when the game turns a litlle longer like turn 4. Because of his own ability of spreading decease. A cube player will instantly kill him and his allies with the atomic smasher. Also of course other paragon/opportunity characters completely devastates a Pestilence for the most time. But especially the Agent.
Bottom line is that Pestilence is not very good, if he still had the second ability. Then he could be something because not being able to remove mind control especially made it strong. Right now its just to spam AoE attacks against him and his team dies faster thanks to him.
Another issue that a lot of people seems to put themself in are playing Pestilence(this is true regardless of the second ability). With a redundant team mates like Famine. Famine passive is basically a shitty version of Pestilence combining her with him does nothing really. There is some other weird Pestilence team going around. The much more reasonable teams with him are either exploiters or heavy dot/debuff characters and of course a character like Satana were you actually gain stats from his iso contagion.
What is really important to pick up here is that he performs very bad in defence is much easier to spread it back the AI will not do this stuff correctly.
Famine:
This would be a more reasonable Famine. Rouge Famine is just her abilities in the comics..
Famine is Rouges new form then. She is better but not by much.
However, first of all she has 2 different passive and hone passive both her suits got.
So first she got Scarcity which is like Rescue but instead of removing a debuff she removes a buff from the opponent team at random. (OK old Recuse, because they were stupid enough to nerf Rescue of all characters now she got 70% to do this LoL).
Thats a pretty bad passive. It does not give much. Most support characters throws a big number of buffs out there getting the most valuable one is low chance and other teams with low number of buffs often then have buffs who has a little effect for them removing that dont mean much. And of course many characters and the agent has buffs that are passive and regains up again fast like the war buff.
The second passive she has is different depending on her suit. First of all Playdom did a mistake here. Somehow they should show it on her which passive she got. She now has 2 different generalist suits with different passive then there is no way of telling which one it is. Yes you can mouse over here. But it should be some faster indication.
Anyway. You either get the Blaster, that she crits all the time and ignore defense or the infiltrator which gives 30% more damage and counter.
The infiltrator is much stronger.
Update: By playing more games I have now seen in one game were scroll of angolob in both cases has been able to remove her passive(counter one) and the next game not. Playdom mix between using the blue/green/gray box of passive/buff thing etc. Its wierd I dont know waht they have intended with this passive but as its onyl the first 2 turns I think it should be removale.
SideNoteUpdate: War is even better then what I thought she was at first, especially her Snikt can completely ruin it for an agent and thats even when the AI uses her. She turns of both cube and scrolls. Even if Famine cant lose her passive, War is regardless much better. And Pestilence got a much better passive then Famine(so still War-Pestilence-Famine).
But honestly they are both pretty bad. They have the same weird passive system like Kitty Pride for example. At first glance it might look like Famine got a Grey Widow passive. Absolutely not.
This passive is a buff like WW2 and so on. SO it can be removed. If the Agent then starts she/he will likely just remove it right away. Or any other character with removal/soulfire etc.
Its really bad passive it will be very likely be removed in one turn.
Both her passive are shit.
However, all her moves are better. And Rouge recently got nerfed, well her nerf was more on the turns she could take. Its clearly(to me at least) that old Rouge is better then current Famine. Old Rouge had the potential to dish out really high damage fast in some situations. Famine just reduces the enemies stats pretty much.
Famine is better then Rouge, no questions. She got the + passive of removal. And the other passive which will likely be removed but it still there.
Then all her abilities will debuff the enemies more. While doing the same damage so shes better. But not extremely much better.
First one gets wither which is an indifferent boost.
Her second ability gets the biggest boost as it gains disadvantage the "unique" debuff of Domino.
I really like this with Famine. This is how Rouge should have been from the start.
Absorb class now takes away the enemies class and give it to Famine instead of just giving Rogue the class.
That's very nice.
Absorb class also has reduced potential which is an overall reduction in stats not very good. It do stacks up. And her third ability also have this.
So really, her first and her third ability they are better but not very significant better.
Actually her third ability does less damage as Famine. The others do the same.
Then her ultimate now debuffs with prevent random abilities. Which is like.....Agent Cube its very limited and not very useful.
Summarized of Famine:
Better then Rouge, with some added debuffs most noticeable with her second ability Absorb class.
More Passive, but they don't do much but better then nothing.
War:
I can almost give them this there are not many good War candidates but there still playable character that has been war like Havok. (They could also gone with the path of making another alt suit to Hulk, give him the War suit...and the same passive like world war hulk. Because that would be creative.)
So Pestilence is interesting but has already been nerfed so not much hope there. Famine is better but not enough to really make a difference.
War on the other hand is sick. She is just better and better. She boring as hell. Famine has streaks of boredom but it feels right that she now also reduces other people. Famine is more like, this is how Rouge should have been in the first place.
War is X-23 with just purely increased abilities.
They all deal the same damage but with more effects and she got a good passive.
Laura was already a good character a top character. I am not saying that she is obviously number 1 now. its more like this, if she was 60, 40 against X. She is now at least 65 35 kinda like that clearly he is top top character now.
Some people now say, "Oh X-23 is finally playable" but thats just bullshit she always been very very good. I got adamantium with her and Emma Frost 2 season in a row. Then I got tired of using that team. Season 7 and 8 I think it was.
War is just better then. One that thing right away that War does much better is tactually AI defence. Which is a big thing because its hard to get any good AI characters. I am not saying shes the best with the AI but War Vs X-23 has a huge advantage. But I take it in order of abilities.
Her first ability as War now actually adds in an unique debuff Blind Rage. Which makes the person be unable to use defense actions or use buff abilities. That is really good against some characters. Its just really unnecessary for War to have this but she does. And on her primary attack. The base of htsi attack is a classic bleed+ ravage, shred if they cannot bleed. Thats a good base move. So now it has Blind Rage and also it has pain(take more damage) not a very good debuff but better.
War's second ability is were I get really existed. The way you should play Laura is pretty much just spanming Blades of Rage. When she does this move she can trigger her berserker on everyone and then she does her primary attack(Snikt) on everyone. This does not happen all the time but its kinda what you are aiming for when playing her. Then after that you get everyone down a lot you finish someone of with the third ability.
This is because the third is set up by the bleeding effect. But with War, it is set up even better.
As war got pain on this move as well you can stack up at least 2 pain + 2 bleeding on one target most of the time to later easily kill of.
But what is actually really good with War version of Blades of Rages is that it now has Ravaged. This means that for sure you will give everyone bleeding + the ravage debuff. This helps out greatly if she does not extend her attacks. This helps out any other bleeding team mate(she has 2 main bleed combos in Wolverine and Sabretooth).
War third ability is not much better. Its the same thing but added in paragon exploit. While this as mentioned is her finishing move as it also has high critical and exploit bleed. So obviously now it has the chance to deal even more damage. But then someone else has to set it up for War. Its more situational based on team synergy and turn order etc. But of course its better and with the right things going its really easy to kill someone with this ability.
Ok so I started out saying AI WAR GOOD. the reason why is her ultimate.
There is only one thing added to the ultimate but it makes the AI so much better with it. And that is Stealth. As X-23 has an assassin ability the AI is stupid and try to use it on enemy X with 20% hp. But then enemy Y has protect and the result is that X-23 does like 1% damage to Y. Now this ability is pretty much exactly like Elektra's ultimate. And in this case the AI will hit X instead.Its of course better when you control it to. The AI cant screw it up at least.
Its also interacts with the trigger scent the debuff she puts on them making the tank her attacks which is a huge drawback when you want to assassinate well not when its stealthy. This is quite the improvement.
Personally when I play with X-23 there are many times I just use Blades of Rages even when someone will die from Assassinate as I then can deal more AoE damage and later finish them all with for example Emma then. So I cant say its an amazing buff attack wise. But defence wise for the AI oh yes its vastly improved.
We have not looked into War's extra passive. Mainly because shes boring and more boring. I can see the work flow at Playdom, they put some intern on this character. He want to take a break and drink some coffee. So hes like". mmm aaa I just add in pain on her stuff, mmm some more ravaged thats kinda bleeding right,,, the ultimate well I guess I can just copy Elektras, Elektra was already a copy of X-23 so. Good I am not really in the mood for this right now what the hell should I give her ultimate. The other got some new stuff but I just dont care for X-23.. nma ..a I know her name is War right. I just give her the War passive. Great work complete".
That's pretty much how they do every character. So she got the world war hulk/war axe passive. Which is one of the strongest passive in the game. Boosting attack is by far better then boosting defence etc. War boost it more then the strength buff. And like with waraxe and hulk if removed this will be increased again when attacked etc. Were For example with Thor he has recast the strength buff. And it also boosts Accuracy increasing Cit chance(and lowering miss chance but you will miss anyway tx to passive like the cube).
Its a very strong passive and works good with War both as she is a high damage dealer and as she can survive for a long time and take damage she can get into this sitoutatiuon where she is in a 1v1 and then she will gain the stacks.
Boring and uncreative but a great passive.
The biggest issue I have with it is using waraxe is a staple for my Agent so I hav a hard time thinking on what I would replace it with.
If you don't have waraxe, which i hope most has getting War is really a no-brainer. (Note The bruiser suit--- the scrapper suit I see no use for pvp stat wise it gives a worse stats and War is still about spamming the AoE attack to start with. Enrage is better her stealth attack is a horrible first attack followed by snikt so no value for a scrapper there).
Summarize of Horseman of Apocalypse:
War>Famine>Pestilence.
War as Bruiser
Famine as Infiltrator Generalist
Pestilence as Tactician (both better stats and he got a stealth attack so thats great as a tactician and pointless as an Infiltrator)
If you have a lot of CP I would say Pestilence first for the bonus. Famine is bottom she is not fantastic strong and gives no change to your pvp bonus.
