Best Of

I don't know how this went unnoticed by the community but why did he get a nerf alongside his buff? I'm sure that not many people used him before but even fans of him like grassmcoc didn't mention the nerf to his debuff potency from the sig ability. Basically Anti-venom used to gain up to %50 personal debuff potency scaling with his combo meter up to 50 hits but this got swapped with a passive exacerbate which is permanent with no way of losing the progress. The problem is that this passive effect grants up to a %25 debuff potency down from %50 which is actually a huge deal for a utility champion like Anti-venom. It doesn't put the constraint of keeping up your combo meter which is nice but this was not really necessary as it didn't make it that much more stressful to play him and personally wasn't considered an issue. I honestly don't get why such an important part of his sig ability got nerfed for an ease of use change when it wasn't a problem to begin with. Hearing some kind of clarification or a justification of this decision would be nice.

I also don't see the appeal of going for the sp3 rotation since the buff changes nothing for that scenario. To illustrate with an example, suppose that I'm taking Anti-venom for an evade matchup. I'll stack at least 3 decelerates first and then go for the extra damage. I have 2 options, I either go sp3 for the big stack of furies or straight into an sp2 for quicker damage. Let's assume that I choose the first option, here's how it would turn out:

+I get my debuffs stacked and go for the fat furies.
+Since I needed decelerates asap I probably have them stacked first so my most recent debuffs will either be spectre or disorient.
+In this case when I go for the sp2 with max debuffs I lose all decelerates and keep the disorients/spectres.

So what happened? I lost my main utility for the fight and traded it all for damage like how I used to before the buff.

Such indifference probably won't occur with the sp2 spam though since you'll most likely have 4 of the same debuff stacked and nothing else which would allow you to keep 2 of the debuffs you had priorotized. Although not a perfect fix this will definitely come in handy and I wouldn't have expected the core flaw of the champion to be erased altogether anyway. Aside from these 2 main concerns I appreciate the buff though I don't see them as such major changes as people are making it out to be.

One last thing I'd like to say to those excited for him from the rebirth event is that Anti-venom didn't become a decent champion overnight and the buffs are not as substantial as you think they are. We tend to hype big batches of 7 star releases a bit too much as seen with the same type of event from last year. Keep realistic expectations, not every ok champion will become an absolute powerhouse with a stat focus/higher numbers/minor buffs. I personally don't think much has changed with Anti-venom, he is still mainly a utility champion and not a hard-hitter. If you didn't enjoy or use him before the buff you probably still won't. You're obviously free to give him a try if you never did and see how it works though