I have zero relation to Spitfire, I know shes from the UK team of heroes, shes a human bit by a vampyr and that gave her super speed...makes no sense, that's about it so unfortunately I got no comic rant for this character which I otherwise like to do. Except that her powers makes no sense.
She has heightened healing etc by becoming some kind of mutate vampyr, but why super speed? It makes even less sense after the years of all other kind of vampyr stories in the same universe.
See back then as she is a very old character, it made more sense when no other character had a similar story. But for example what comes to my mind is the Jubilee story-line when she becomes a vampyr. And the whole vampyr x men story. After this Jubilee and Wolverine had a limited adventure series where he is to teach her to control her bloodlust which had some excellent parts when they also interacted with X-23(Laura - Daughter/clone of wolverine). But she never developed super speed, no one of the vampyr has it, Wolverine did not develop it when he was temporarily a vampyr etc. Sure they are all faster then normal humans but they are far from a speedster powers. Spitfire was a louse kind of explanation back 60+ years ago. But now its way worse with several vampyr stories, Blade, Morbius etc. I found very illogical, quite the plot hole kind of character. I know that she is supposed to be some kind of science / vampyr fusion but it just meh.
Gameplay wise that definitely shows, she is just Quicksilver + power creep. I am not a big fan of the word power creep, but she is the definition of power creep. She is almost exactly like him, just better in all regards. She is very none unique because of this.
However, she is very good in the actual game, QS was always a top character and obviously than she is a top character +. So while he has become less and less prominent instead of buffing him they gave him tits and put him in a yellow dress.
I really do think it shows that the designers of the game had not much to work with, in their defence. Because she have had so little story over decades, I can imagine their meeting.
Well here is a female Quicksilver,,,,and shes like fast and so on....Well she is also a vampyr.
Not much to work with and they ended up with the expected result of Quicksilver + a vampyr thingy. But also than extremely clear power creep, its QS + Vampire healing + 2 in power. // End of Review we know what she is.
Passive:
First of all she has the exact passive that defines Quicksilver. Which is that she takes 2 turns instead of 1 turn each round. And she also goes first each game (its something like a 95% chance to go first).
Because of this she just like QS. Is great in PvP, always going first is amazing and while her power is not so high in PvE (but going first there is broken for perfect score) as she does 2 weak attacks. But in PvP with great stat boost she instead does massive damage.
(I did this exact math example for QS like 3 years ago)
So if another character does 1x damage per turn. She does 0.75 damage x 2 per turn. That's 1.5x damage per turn in total. Way better freaaking 50% more damage. And that is how its compared to mediocre character, because character like Iron Patriot does 3x damage turn 1. Hes clearly higher on the damage aspect.
But yeah she does way more damage than most characters, and having a full pvp set for damage of course makes that X huge.
She is one of the most played character right now and its this passive(and I suppose her concept of doing 2 turns in general) that makes it work.
She is also of course a Scrapper, because she literally is just Quicksilver gender bendered. And is of course horrible for any infiltrator as then she can hit them 4 times in their face.
And all her moves are stealth(just like QS,,jesus christ) and having stealth is by far the best on tacticians because than they are just immune to infiltrators. But scrappers are second best for it, as both are triggered heavily on attacking in single target, so being able to always go in safely and attack the opponents infiltrator is huge. And shes does 4 straight punches on them, where QS does 1 single - aoe, 1 single - aoe. He does more total damage but she does more damage to 1 target and for the kind of team she is played in that is actually a lot better. Much easier to finish 1 person of and that helps her other moves especially assassination move.
But it does not end on this.
She also has offensive coordination!
That is really, really good. It works exactly like the classic avengers offensive, meaning that anyone in her team or herself can follow up on allies attack. Of course this further empowers her massive damage to single target, she also does 2 turns per round that is more trigger chances and she goes first so you might easily kill someone.
This is extremely broken, a classic team was just Quicksilver + Psylocke, where Psylocke would start with the coordination passive(and before this just vanilla QS + PSY in season 3-4 was the best team as well, even with no coordination ) this would mean QS attacks first and have a chance to trigger allies and 1 enemy could be killed turn 1.
Well Spitfire has that by herself, its a very clear reason why she is such a good character for hyper aggressive teams.
This 2 passives together are, I will not say the best character self combo, but its top 5 at least. Because while Ares has both offence and defence coordination, that does not matter when you always go first.
And then she also has health regen. This is crappy passive, she just gains very low max health each turn And she likely has very low max health, its almost completely indifferent but its better then nothing and she already has I arguably the best passive double turn, but its more like double turn is the whole character just like with QS so hard to call it a "passive" in the same sense. But she has that and offensive coordination, great combo, so the little extra health really has nothing to do with her other abilities but is still there and maybe it will win a game or 2.
Overall she has amazing passives. I can say right away that shes a 10/10 power character and if she did not have the health per turn she would stil be 10/10. (And no she wont be a 11/10 with it as she does have glaring weakness so the 10/10 is only in the correct teams and those team do make the healing worthless).
Abilities:
She has stealth on all her moves, which kinda like having a passive +. This is very important not just for the scrapper but for her third ability.
Her first move is a single target attack, that has a chance for disoriented, same with her second ability. Shes so fast or something that people get confused.
You do not want to start with this ability unless if they have an infiltrator. It does not do that much, it does some damage, maybe it disoriented them, which is a good debuff. Then it also give her a stack buff, that increase attack and defence just like QS has,,,,,,yes wow so original, well QS is better as he gains accuracy over defence which increase damage and as they are both uber damage oriented that way better. But she stil gains attack which is by far the important stat.
So you want to invest time in building up that somewhat and spread around the disoriented. Its a decent move and often isoed with bleeding as that will stack with her 2 and ultimate.
Her second ability is the money start move.
This is the typical move that many character has that you always start with, even against many infiltrator teams this can be the better start.
It does terrible damage, but its a very simple good debuff. I will say that it would probably actually suck if it cost 1 whole turn for her. But she can use this and then attack with her first ability or even sometimes the ultimate right away. It makes it really nasty.
What it does is that it sets up open wound which bleeding 1-3 + random chance for ravaged (x2 on bleeding) that is just really good dot damage for an AoE attack that cannot be blocked. It also does tenderize which is like w.e some lower defence. But it can also disoriented. Bleeding on all is very good start.
You wanna stat with bleeding and then do 1 to stack up.
Her basic plan goes like this 2-1-1-4, 4(ultimate) exploits bleeding from 2, but also consumes the stack gathered from using 1. Great simple way to kil of almost any characters.
Ultimate(s):
She is ridiculous strong, becasue its like she has fucking 2 ultimate. I mean honestly WTF. She has the 4 as a finisher ultimate that does HUGE damage and its super easy set up as she does 2 turns per round against some players just going 2-4 can be a kill. Especially if the team helps her with coordination.
But then she has the assassin ultimate of Electra, X-23 etc Where you simply kill someone at 20% or lower life. That is a typical ULTIMATE. So yeah she has 2 dam ultimate. 1 that is good after set up and 1 that can finish of anyone.
The 4 is pretty simple, it just an exploiter. Bleeding exploit is great as it can stack over 1, using this one late with 5 stack and it does insane damage on bleeding 3 targets. It also triggers the bleeding stacks for some extra damage...
However, its her 3 ability, the assassination move that's her best move.
Its literally just X-23 classic kill move but BETTER.
Its Stealth(X-23 / as War got this - that's the suit + move) having stealth on it was what made Electra trump X-23, that was her "power creep". Now we get this third women with it, that has stealth + 1 more move before, to lower their health + better effect afterwards.
Assassination moves are strong moves as they kill a target for sure, they are preventing resurrect effects. And back then when it was a new thing it actually only was effective versus the Agent as Phoenix got nerfed and the agent with resurrect kinda faded out. But now! NOW that is super important to have. In this meta for last 4-5 seasons healing preventing and 100% death is extremely important. So she has that just like the Ultimate for other characters.
Note: That's the only thing their ultimate does(and War is a top character), but Spitfire has it way better
Excluding that she can first take 1 turn to lower their health making it easier to trigger. She gains FULL LIFE.
Not just some life, no no. Full HP and Stamina, and uses her stamina a lot and is extra weak versus straining etc, so gaining stamina can be the game changer. For me a Spitfire in defence getting this off can be the wining move just because she goes form 10% stamina to 100% stamina.
Even without gaining anything afterwards fatal blow + stealth its great. And having freaking full hp its so, so good in PvP.
Lets not forget she can combine these moves.
Have full stacks, do 4 to almost kill someone in a 2v1, than eat them and go back to full hp. Broken, so broken.
Verdict:
She is easily 10/10 for offensive teams, this is still her big drawback. While she does insane damage and can heal herself she also does damage, she goes first sure and can trigger coordination etc. She is the best character in the game for Lucky pvp AI starts that just kills 1 enemy right away. But her problem is still that she has zero utility outside of damage or boosting te damage of the team.
She is 10/10 clearly, but the team has to be aggressive. The team with her is almost always full on attack stat and low on the defence, this makes them auto lose versus heavy defence teams and versus ethereal plane, diamond blocks, life drain(agent), w.e all those kind of super passive that makes you damage immune so to speak.
I found her interesting in this meta, sure she the best for aggressive oriented teams, but those teams SUCKS. They really do suck a lot, for a long time. I do think as I wrote in the recap that for example Cloak and Dagger + Spitfire is a nightmare because they both have so insane damage and then CD survives and shit kills you so easily. Other than that or getting lucky at start she will lose.
Because in the end she is so, so. Weak versus 1 character. And that's the Agent!
In general she takes on almost everyone with like 9-1 or 10-0 Which his amazing but, and that is a big but. She 0-10 versus the agent. The by far most popular Bruiser style agents just heal themself on her and she cannot even damage them and her kind of teams are so weak vers life drain Agents in general it does not help that she actively heals the agent more.
Taking 2 turns and doing to low damage to go over the Bruiser iso + signpost use, interestingly makes her have amazing overall win ratio character to character but she is countered by the mandatory character in the game. Not only does she not damage the agent he will drain her stamina faster as she takes 2 turns and than she cannot anything and it does not help that she is also weak versus Angrir, or for example yesterdays review Baron Mordo, both of them further removing stamina. (Obviously the team I talked about yesterday with that exact combo - BM+Angrir + Drainer Agent, is a 1000% win versus a Spitfire team).
In het end she is playable absolutely, she is great in AI Defence becasue she is one of those lucky type that can win right away. ( I wrote an article about just that a few years back and she is just QS+2, so she is one of the top AI characters in general). But she is hard countered by the agent, so I would not recommend using her. Still shes a 10/10, sure she so not a 10/10 versus the current meta, but in general she is possible the strongest offensive hero, so its hard not to say that she is top tier.
Doing what she is intended to do, pure damage she the best.
