FIXER
I have never been a huge fan of fixer but I did like the Thunderbolts especially the later years, until the end I guess which involved a time paradox with just Fixer.
In the end of Thunderbolts (vol 1 - the real Thunderbolts not the surprisingly bad version that Red Hulk gathered) the bolts are going through time, and in the end meets their old self when they were still fully evil.
Anyway, it ends by Fixer accidentally killing himself...which to not cause a time paradox they have Fixer takes his younger self place. Which clearly should cause a paradox right away as he knows all future events for like the next 15 years. But ok let say he place his part exactly like his younger self would.
Fixer is like 35 years old or something. So he would take his younger self place of I guess 5 years or so in marvel comic years. Then he would do exactly the same stuff until he would have to kill his other younger self in the next back in time event.
This would lead him to be 40 years old in the next iteration and then this would go on. Clearly people would notice he is way to old in some iteration and eventually he would die from old age not being able to relive the last years again. I haven't read anything with Fixer since the end of the series but I haven't seen him in any other comic since then so I guess that is what is currently canon with him. Clearly this will create a time paradox, such a stupid plan. The only redeeming quality of it is that Fixer never did anything important in the comic so I guess him being dead 5 years to early don't make much difference
Game wise, when looking at Fixer its hard not to compare him to Emma Frost. Emma with her mental tap e.i massive attack based on enemy life that has to be set up. Fixer is kinda similar with his mines.
I could also make a long, overly long argument why all characters should be compared to the top character in any type of game. Just in general there will also be a over the top character in a 100+ character game, I mean sure I sometimes go a little hard on Playdom but its obviously near impossible to balance a game with so many characters. When a game has like over 20 or so characters there will always be a few at the top and a few at the bottom which are useless and a huge middle. The more characters/factions/races the bigger the difference. Then of course this game is really imbalanced as well.
Anyway, Fixer damage aspect is very similar then to Emmas primarily broken ass attack. And its a really strong one. My Fixer almost always insta kills people with 1 blast mine. Unless if they are maxed out thank characters. Same in PvE for that matter he just instantly kills most bosses.
Fixer do however lands in the undefined middle of strength He is clearly a lot better then the bottom tier of characters just having such a powerful attack. But his problem is that; he don't have much more.
First of all his mines are not as effective as Emma. She can debuff someone and they will attack the same turn and take 50% of their life lost. While Fixer has to first mine someone then attack them himself. Which means it takes 1 turn to set up. Of course this can be made easier with extra turns mainly trough usages of the agent but also with other characters.
However, comparing that to Emma, with the same type of support Emma can instead then debuff 2 people and take away 50% life of both, facing a blaster she can get her bonus tactician turn and mental tap all 3. That's still a lot better then what Fixer will do. Well, Fixer deals more damage then 50% so he is not all bad.
The positive aspect of Fixer is that his mines cant be removed. So hes actually quite stronger then Emma in that aspect. His mines also ignore stuff like Mystic shroud so they can be used right away. So there is actually games were Fixer > Emma in the massive bomb attack.
His problem is that its the only thing he has. Emma also got her super good AoE attack that goes through everything and always deal great damage and its good for picking of characters. Her buff and passive is one of the best in game and her self passive is also extremely good. Fixer instead got an absolutely useless ultimate, its truly epically shitty.
Then he don't have more moves....
I have written about this before with several character and with League of Legends characters and its the same kind of bad design.
Here's a character with 3 classes, so he got 12 moves right? Well ok he changes class with one button,,,,,which is actually quite stupid as there that can use abilities over their recharge so no need for limiting of 1 of his buttons, except laziness I guess.
So OK he got 9 abilities over 4. Well not exactly, all his abilities are just a slightly different one for the different classes. He got a shield on each class as an ultimate each of them bad. It just really bad design its like he have 9 really badly designed abilities instead of having 4 good designed abilities. Which is a classic problem for this type of character design.
All the shields are shit they only protect him and its only the infiltrator version that is barely any good(makes him not be countered attacked), if they had covered his team like Magneto it would be another story. It makes no sense why they don't.
Then his mines as mentioned are not triggered by the enemy moving but by Fixer attacking them. The + of this is in his pure damage as it means his first attack will trigger the mine over and over again after placing it once on them.
But it also means he arguably don't have even have 3 moves per class its 2!
He could have had 1 - place mine, After mine placed this move turns into detonate. Like many other character has.
I would say he got like 2 move per class but as each move is the same of the classes he ends up with 2 moves.
No joke, such lazy design.
Gameplay wise this means he is utterly bad. The thing is that his tactician min e and infiltrator mine are absolutely utterly much weaker then the blaster version. THERE IS NEVER a reason to use the mines of the other 2 classes.
And as mentioned the shield is only barely good in infiltrator Hes extremely, extremely limited.
Also having to be blaster and use an AoE attack to trigger is mine is obviously bad as it will trigger all the tacticians extra turn, it is still worth to for the amazing damage but its clearly a drawback.
The only other good thing with him except his mine (blaster suit) is his passive. Its quite good actually in PvP.
He got 2 passives, one is a typical - immunity to X number of stuff, in his case what is interesting is that he is immune to obsolete tech so he can always use his abilities. Which is kinda weird as Fixer was never in the front of tech but w.e. That defensive passive is ok, its no Cosmic power like Emma but decent.
His other passive is on the other hand really strong. Strong but limited, when he dies he will explode like many of the annoying blaster enemies in PvE dealing high damage (if you have good attack power at least) to the enemy team.
So that is what Fixer does pretty much. He deals high damage with his mines and then deal high damage when he dies. Overall he does pretty well because he just purely does very high damage. But he got no tricks up his sleeves, yes can use other mines but their damage is a joke and never worth over doing high damage with blaster mines. He works good also as his blaster class + his aggressive nature works perfect with a class cannon build. Playing fixer there is no reason too fear death, as he explodes so its much better just going for full damage build which will makes his mines stronger and of course makes his suicide even stronger.
He is not a fantastic character but he is very straight forward and he will beat a lot of characters.
His weakness is tanks - they can protect his aoe attack so he cant trigger the mines this means he has to mine the tanks first , i.e he is very straight forward. (So this is really bad vs Tactician tanks like Captain America, Red Hulk etc). In this situation Emma is much better.
He is also limited with no real variation to strategy the other mines are not perform good enough and his shields are shit.
Actually a last point I should make is how the shields are also disjoint with his passive. Hes a character that wants to die first, only protecting himself is really stupid and shields are based on the characters max health, he should absolutely be aimed toward dealing damage so going with high hp and defense etc also makes no sense, overall hes just not very coherent design.
