IN DEPTH REVIEW OF EVERY 2020 CHAMPION - PART 2/4
Sungj
Member Posts: 2,113 ★★★★★
Since champions in the second quarter are better and more complex than champs from the first quarter this review ended up extra long so I hope you guys are in for a good read
Sorcerer Supreme - Sorcerer Supreme was my first rank 3 six star champ and she's slowly been surpassing my expectations further and further. I took SS to rank 3 without ever really playing her, I completed Abyss pulled a mystic Cat and just took her up right away for thronebreaker. I'm not gonna lie at first I was kind of disappointed, her rotation felt a bit awkward and the damage was noticeably underwhelming for what I expected from a rank 3 champ. Then I learned how to play her and all of what I just said before went out the window.
SS is an absolute utility toolkit of a champion. She can put a slow debuff on the opponent through any special and quite easily have 100% uptime on it completely countering any evade and unstoppable effects. She deals energy damage instead on physical making her solid for tricky Korg fights and high physical resistance nodes. She has huge energy resistance at her base, it's exactly the same amount of resistance as Havok. This makes her viable for so many matchups you wouldn't necessarily think to use her for; Icemen, Magiks, 100% shock and incinerate nodes, I've even found success using her against energy adoption nodes and I don't even run willpower which would make the energy resistance even more valuable in those matchups since you're lowering their potency and healing from it.
Even with reduced base powergain from hits, through Ikonn's blessing she actually gains power per second noticeably faster than the average champion allowing you to really chain together Sp2s. She has a decent nullify effect on her SP1 allowing you to control trickier buff matchups like Hyperion, Medusa and Annhilus and really take advantage of Mystic dispersion against buff heavy champs like venom and red skull.
All of those pros and I haven't even touched on her arguably best piece of utility which is her Blessing of Resolve or her Armor blessing. This blessing does so much even though it's the least offensively powerful blessing. She gains a ton of armor and 30% perfect block chance so while the blessing is active you can land seven hit combos. Once you store the blessing as a rune she regens any damage she takes from block hits, 75% at base and with the recovery mastery you can even heal from taking blocked hits. She can feel unkillable if you play well.
This is so good in so many matchups, you can just block and tank all of dormammus hits and specials so you don't have to trigger dex, tricky to evade specials you can just tank, 6.2 champion is almost a joke if you have Sorcerer Supreme. It makes her very sustainable, I didn't even know she had somewhat low base health because she's always been so tanky in quests through this ability. It also gives you a very small regen around 2% base health and that seems insignificant but if you're activating it every time you throw a special it can really keep you topped up on long questing lanes.
On top of all that utility I just went through she can hit super hard. Her damage exceeded my expectation completely. Against ROL Captain Marvel I can consistently take her down in under 70 hits with around 1:30 seconds of fight time. That's well above average and so much better than one could reasonably expect from what most people see as just a utility champion.
So yeah if you couldn't tell I'm a big big fan of Sorceror Supreme but this being as objective of a review as possible I have to go through some of her cons. First off, Sorceror Supreme requires a lot of skill and knowledge to play to her peak potential. Managing her blessings, her accelerated power gain, what runes you have stored, heavy spacing to switch blessings when needed. It's a lot to keep track of so she's definitely not a champ that you can pull out of the bag and use effectively.
She's also not the best nullifier, her aura from her sp1 can do well to lock down certain fights but you have to be right next to the opponent for the aura to work and the aura doesn't strip buffs right away so tricky buffs that stack quickly SS won't be able to deal with as effectively. It also gimps her damage output as a lot of her damage comes from her quickly cycling sp2s and sp3s. That ties into I guess what you could call Sorcerer Supreme's main con. To access all of her utility she does need to sacrifice a lot of her damage from her Ferocity Blessing. This weakness however is mitigated in that if you get to an SP3 you can permanently store the Ferocity blessing so you can from then on use all of her utility while still inflicting her big armor breaks. Her damage is also somewhat enhanced by synergies, they aren't needed for her to still hit hard but for the really big burst damage off her specials you'd want at least the Sym Supreme synergy and the Hulkbuster synergy helps.
This is already getting too long, quickly to her sig ability. It's not necessary at all but it does slightly increase her damage and the increased AA adds utility allowing her to counter dominos and nodes that inflict disorient. It's the perfect not necessary but nice to have type Awakened ability. I firmly believe Sorcerer Supreme is currently tied as the second best mystic in game with Claire only behind Doom
Overall Rating - 9/10
Storm Pyramid X - This is the weird point where I'm not sure how to rate this champion. At base Storm Pyramid X was underwhelming compared to expectations but still a solid champ. She has a good amount utility; her sp1 has a coldsnap that you can have 100% uptime on which is great allowing you to counter tricky evade fights. I think a lot of people forget Storm also has relevant immunities. Based on which tempest you choose at pre-fight she gains coldsnap and frost bite immunities or shock immunity so she can counter energy adoption nodes, emp mod and icemen.
She has a unique ability to passively stun the opponent if they shrug off your stuns. This is really useful against masochism, kingpin, if you're a really skilled player paired with her coldsnap immunity she can actually do pretty well against Vision Aarkus. As with every energy attack champion she's a good option for Korg fights.
What really disappointed most people is Storm's damage output. She turned out to be more of a utility champion than a big damage dealer. One of the main reasons for this is her very poor base crit rating, for a champ that relies so much on big crits off her SP2's I don't know why kabam decided to gimp her crit rate so much. It really makes her less fun to play and most of the time just unsatisfying. Her damage is actually pretty below average in terms of what we expect good champs to have nowadays, a rank 5 often takes over 3:30 seconds of fight time if not longer to finish ROL bosses if the crit RNG doesn't go in your favor which is pretty regular.
This is where the wrench that is Apocalypse and Prof X is thrown in when trying to rate mutant champions. With just the Apoc Synergy her damage goes from meh to good but as a horsemen it goes from good to actually amazing. Throw a ramped prof X in there and she reaches above Sunspot and Havok levels of special damage easily. Just as a horse man, with the utility she has and now the amazing damage she'd quite comfortably be an 8/10. However as good as Apocalypse is you're not going to want to use 3 full team spots just to use Storm Pyramid X very often at all. I still can't ignore the potential she has though so I'll rate her a bit higher than at base just keep in mind as a horseman she is much much stronger.
Overall Rating - 6.5/10
Black Widow Deadly Origins - Some love her, some hate her but no one can seem to agree on how good BWDO actually is. So starting with the pros. BWDO is a straight damage kind of champion. Once you can nail down her playstyle, become good at intercepting with her, her shocks will absolutely nuke down even the largest health pools in the game. Rol Winter soldier can be taken down in under 1:45 seconds of fight time. LOL Red Hulk absolutely beasted in under 4 minutes.
Her damage is also primarily based off shocks which is advantageous against nodes like safeguard, not may champs in game are immune to shock and there aren't as many shock immunity nodes as there are bleed and poison immunity nodes. She has other useful bits of utility, she has a safeguard against miss abilities. When caused to miss she will evade and flashbang off the opponent's next attack so you can play her more freely against Guilly 2099.She's a top option for Cav monthly quests, she can stack up the ten fury effect in like 20 combos which ramps her damage so fast.
Now to the cons. BWDO is a very strange champion to me because large parts of her abilities seem almost useless. Her whole sabotage mechanic, it isn't really good defensively and I've yet to see someone make it work offensively over her more simple sp2 shock damage rotation. Sabotage debuffs lower opponents AA by 20% and you get those by activating your personal evade effects that come off the sp1, miss counters or the red guardian synergy. So to stack the debuffs to a more powerful AA reduction effect you're going to need to throw multiple sp1's and that simply isn't really viable for matchups where AA reduction is going to be needed. This also really hinders her damage output which is most of her kit.
This renders her sig ability almost useless since you're seldom going to get use out of the sabotages and the Sig is all about making the sabotages more powerful. 99% of the time you're going to be better off just cycling her shock damage and sp2s. She also is lacking in relevant utility, she has a few things that will be useful but not a lot that gives her a wide breadth of potentially great matchups. She's also surprisingly hard to play well, you need to time intercepts well to activate widow's insight and stack it without losing it so if you aren't on point with your intercept her damage will suffer a lot.
All in all, she's definitely an above average champion. A pretty good generalist that isn't as held back as other debuff reliant champion given shock immunity is still pretty rare in the game. I know lots of people think she's underrated and I agree to a certain extent, her damage is better than people give her credit for but like with squirrel girl her lack of utility hold her back.
Overall Rating - 6.5/10
Red Guardian - Kabam definitely did better in the second quarter in terms of champ design and Red Guardian is no exception. Another super versatile science champion with what is currently, utility completely unique to him. I guess that's a good starting point then, Red Guardian at base is unable to gain buffs including the precision off of dexterity. This is such a cool and unique ability that I truly believe will only get stronger and more applicable as time goes on. This makes Red guardian great for EMP Mod, Dormammu, Mojo, Pilfer, buffet, spite, mystic dispersion in war and so much more.
Slow is arguably the most powerful debuff in the game and Red Guardian after a sp1 can easily keep 100% uptime on a slow debuff completely countering evade and unstoppable effects. He gains perfect block chance based on his stacks of Durability allowing extended combos off parries. 7 and sometimes even 8 hit combos. He can also block unblockable attacks if his shield is active which is surprisingly useful in fights like the Collector, Heimdall's Sp2 and paired with his slow makes him very strong for aspect of war.
He has smaller pieces of utility like his trauma dealing bursts of physical damage helping him power through safeguard and other damage caps. He has 25% increase powergain when suffering from a slow which will often be 100% of the time so that helps Red Guardian cycle his sp2s.
He is chock full of utility but he has a good amount of burst damage as well. If you can play aggressively and keep up trauma and your other debuffs you can get most opponents down in a couple sp2s.
With all that utility Red Guardian is definitely not without his weaknesses. He is one of the more parry dependent champions in the game. He needs to be super aggressive to keep up his shorter debuffs and without parry stuns to get your heavies off the debuffs can fall off prematurely very often. His damage also has a hard cap in terms of reach. After a couple sp2s his shield will take super long to repair so for long fights he won't have good damage at all. He's isn't great for LOL and abyss even though his utility would be useful in certain fights there.
His last glaring weakness is his dependency on his sig ability. He needs to be awakened and ideally high sig or he really is a significantly worse champion. You can't keep up and build up durability, his debuffs are nearly impossible to consistently refresh, he's even harder to use in fights where you can't be fully aggressive. Still with those weaknesses I believe Red Guardian's utility will have a lot of longevity. Even with his damage limitations 6* further ranked Red Guardians will be amazing for a long time.
Overall Rating - 8/10
Tigra - In terms of pure champion design Tigra might be the most well designed champion of the year. Her kit and animations blend together in such a complementary way really enabling a playstyle that's almost ghost/quake esque. Playing Tigra properly is unlike how you play any other champion. Her heavy has I believe the most reach out of any champion's heavy in the game which allows her to find openings and intercepts other champs simply cant. This spacing gives Tigra a control over fights that makes her so much better than even her abilities would make her out to be and allows her to be extra aggressive in her playstyle.
Her abilities as a whole are really quite simple. She applies neutralizes on hits that completely lock the opponent out of gaining buffs. She absolutely locks down, Hyperions, Juggernauts, Medusa, she can even solo super stacked rank 3 6* thing bosses not having to worry about his unstoppable. She also can quickly stack ruptures on the opponent which deal physical damage in short bursts.
She misses non-contact hits of specials while charging her heavy kinda like a limited version of Ghost's phasing mechanic. This is great and only becoming more valuable as kabam seems insistent on adding champions with insane special attacks as of late. Tigra can just miss them all and retaliate back with her insane heavy reach. She is a top option for this AQ cycle's Apocalypse boss which has been likely the toughest AQ boss to date and a skilled Tigra player makes short work of it.
She is also potentially a top mystic damage dealer. Her absolute peak, rank 3 as a six star with suicides can run through all of ROL in 13 minutes. That's actually insane and makes her more than a good generalist for path cleaning and since she does have so much reach off her heavy she isn't as dependent on parries taking less chip damage and can play around stun immunity.
In terms of weaknesses, she doesn't really have a glaring weakness. Everything she does she does consistently, she has great damage, all the utility she has is very relevant in today's end game content. I however don't think she has the ceiling champs like Ghost and Quake have. This is simply because what she does is not as encompassing nor exclusive to Tigra. What I mean by that is everything Tigra does there are other champions that do it just as well, her utility isn't as encompassing and she doesn't lock down as many matchups as a champion like quake.
That's by no means a knock on Tigra, she's still a top tier champion that will only get better with time. I think as more people pull her and learn how to play her in more matchups, I said SS and Claire are the seconds best mystics in the game but Tigra definitely has potential to surpass them. I don't think enough gameplay is out there yet to say that but she's still one of the best champs of 2020.
Finally her sig, another nice to have but not necessary. She starts the fight with her 2 senses active which increases her damage and powergain. Good to burst down fights and makes her playstyle more smooth but not needed.
Overall Rating - 9/10
Hit-Monkey - I've played a lot of Hit-monkey personally. He was supposed to be everything that Moleman wasn't, a true skill Corvus. Does he meet that level of hype? Honestly not really. Don't get me wrong Hit Monkey is a very solid champion but I think he's been a little overhyped thanks to earlier gameplay videos from youtubers like Lagacy.
A seeming pattern with most 2020 skill champs, Hit-Monkey is a damage focused Champion that's a little lacking in utility. His damage however is really good. That part of his kit hasn't been overhyped. His guaranteed crit makes his damage very consistent and even doing combos without guaranteed crits to build up to his sp2 faster his base crit rate is really high so you're not losing on any damage. Guaranteed crits besides just being good for damage bypasses a lot of resistances and armour as well so he can work for 90% resistance/ armor nodes.
His Primal rage mode allows you to ignore armour and resistances completely as well as having a chance to inflict a pretty powerful 40% AAR disorient on hit. His other mode Assassins' cunning gives him chances t0 crit bleed as well as completely countering evade. His crit bleeds have increased chance to occur based on amount of crits landed in assassins' cunning so they are very consistent. Hit-Monkey's damage isn't really RNG based like Domino's which is good.
Now his cons again, kind of sounding like a broken record is Hit-Monkey's lack of reliable utility. Unlike squirrel girl and BWDO Hit-Monkey does have utility that you will find useful often. Mostly his evade counter when in Assasins cunning. The big problem with this is you can't have 100% uptime on this effect. If you can stun the opponent this is fine since you can get right back into the mode after it ends but if the Evade champ is stun immune you're going to have a really hard time landing three crits in a row consistently to activate Assassins cunning.
He does have ways to enhance his utility through his sp3, this can allow you to pause his modes so you have a lot longer uptime on his evade counter, his disorients, even a miss counter off his sp1. But if you really need to counter those mechanics you aren't going to want to wait till you can throw an sp3 to get that utility. You'd just want to bring in a champ that can counter those effects more readily.
His biggest weakness in my opinion is his low base block proficiency and low base health pool. Having to land 3 hit combos to get guaranteed crits, Hit-Monkey has to do a lot of parrying and blocking to play aggressively. This paired with his low base defensive stats means he's going to take a ton of chip damage. Kind of like Cull Obsidian syndrome, this simply makes him less viable in end game content where attack values are climbing higher and higher. So Hit monkey hits very hard and I did find uses for him in Act 6 exploration but he has weaknesses that decrease his overall value and don't think these weaknesses were highlighted very much in the initial hype run he had on release.
Overall Rating - 7.5/10
Sorcerer Supreme - Sorcerer Supreme was my first rank 3 six star champ and she's slowly been surpassing my expectations further and further. I took SS to rank 3 without ever really playing her, I completed Abyss pulled a mystic Cat and just took her up right away for thronebreaker. I'm not gonna lie at first I was kind of disappointed, her rotation felt a bit awkward and the damage was noticeably underwhelming for what I expected from a rank 3 champ. Then I learned how to play her and all of what I just said before went out the window.
SS is an absolute utility toolkit of a champion. She can put a slow debuff on the opponent through any special and quite easily have 100% uptime on it completely countering any evade and unstoppable effects. She deals energy damage instead on physical making her solid for tricky Korg fights and high physical resistance nodes. She has huge energy resistance at her base, it's exactly the same amount of resistance as Havok. This makes her viable for so many matchups you wouldn't necessarily think to use her for; Icemen, Magiks, 100% shock and incinerate nodes, I've even found success using her against energy adoption nodes and I don't even run willpower which would make the energy resistance even more valuable in those matchups since you're lowering their potency and healing from it.
Even with reduced base powergain from hits, through Ikonn's blessing she actually gains power per second noticeably faster than the average champion allowing you to really chain together Sp2s. She has a decent nullify effect on her SP1 allowing you to control trickier buff matchups like Hyperion, Medusa and Annhilus and really take advantage of Mystic dispersion against buff heavy champs like venom and red skull.
All of those pros and I haven't even touched on her arguably best piece of utility which is her Blessing of Resolve or her Armor blessing. This blessing does so much even though it's the least offensively powerful blessing. She gains a ton of armor and 30% perfect block chance so while the blessing is active you can land seven hit combos. Once you store the blessing as a rune she regens any damage she takes from block hits, 75% at base and with the recovery mastery you can even heal from taking blocked hits. She can feel unkillable if you play well.
This is so good in so many matchups, you can just block and tank all of dormammus hits and specials so you don't have to trigger dex, tricky to evade specials you can just tank, 6.2 champion is almost a joke if you have Sorcerer Supreme. It makes her very sustainable, I didn't even know she had somewhat low base health because she's always been so tanky in quests through this ability. It also gives you a very small regen around 2% base health and that seems insignificant but if you're activating it every time you throw a special it can really keep you topped up on long questing lanes.
On top of all that utility I just went through she can hit super hard. Her damage exceeded my expectation completely. Against ROL Captain Marvel I can consistently take her down in under 70 hits with around 1:30 seconds of fight time. That's well above average and so much better than one could reasonably expect from what most people see as just a utility champion.
So yeah if you couldn't tell I'm a big big fan of Sorceror Supreme but this being as objective of a review as possible I have to go through some of her cons. First off, Sorceror Supreme requires a lot of skill and knowledge to play to her peak potential. Managing her blessings, her accelerated power gain, what runes you have stored, heavy spacing to switch blessings when needed. It's a lot to keep track of so she's definitely not a champ that you can pull out of the bag and use effectively.
She's also not the best nullifier, her aura from her sp1 can do well to lock down certain fights but you have to be right next to the opponent for the aura to work and the aura doesn't strip buffs right away so tricky buffs that stack quickly SS won't be able to deal with as effectively. It also gimps her damage output as a lot of her damage comes from her quickly cycling sp2s and sp3s. That ties into I guess what you could call Sorcerer Supreme's main con. To access all of her utility she does need to sacrifice a lot of her damage from her Ferocity Blessing. This weakness however is mitigated in that if you get to an SP3 you can permanently store the Ferocity blessing so you can from then on use all of her utility while still inflicting her big armor breaks. Her damage is also somewhat enhanced by synergies, they aren't needed for her to still hit hard but for the really big burst damage off her specials you'd want at least the Sym Supreme synergy and the Hulkbuster synergy helps.
This is already getting too long, quickly to her sig ability. It's not necessary at all but it does slightly increase her damage and the increased AA adds utility allowing her to counter dominos and nodes that inflict disorient. It's the perfect not necessary but nice to have type Awakened ability. I firmly believe Sorcerer Supreme is currently tied as the second best mystic in game with Claire only behind Doom
Overall Rating - 9/10
Storm Pyramid X - This is the weird point where I'm not sure how to rate this champion. At base Storm Pyramid X was underwhelming compared to expectations but still a solid champ. She has a good amount utility; her sp1 has a coldsnap that you can have 100% uptime on which is great allowing you to counter tricky evade fights. I think a lot of people forget Storm also has relevant immunities. Based on which tempest you choose at pre-fight she gains coldsnap and frost bite immunities or shock immunity so she can counter energy adoption nodes, emp mod and icemen.
She has a unique ability to passively stun the opponent if they shrug off your stuns. This is really useful against masochism, kingpin, if you're a really skilled player paired with her coldsnap immunity she can actually do pretty well against Vision Aarkus. As with every energy attack champion she's a good option for Korg fights.
What really disappointed most people is Storm's damage output. She turned out to be more of a utility champion than a big damage dealer. One of the main reasons for this is her very poor base crit rating, for a champ that relies so much on big crits off her SP2's I don't know why kabam decided to gimp her crit rate so much. It really makes her less fun to play and most of the time just unsatisfying. Her damage is actually pretty below average in terms of what we expect good champs to have nowadays, a rank 5 often takes over 3:30 seconds of fight time if not longer to finish ROL bosses if the crit RNG doesn't go in your favor which is pretty regular.
This is where the wrench that is Apocalypse and Prof X is thrown in when trying to rate mutant champions. With just the Apoc Synergy her damage goes from meh to good but as a horsemen it goes from good to actually amazing. Throw a ramped prof X in there and she reaches above Sunspot and Havok levels of special damage easily. Just as a horse man, with the utility she has and now the amazing damage she'd quite comfortably be an 8/10. However as good as Apocalypse is you're not going to want to use 3 full team spots just to use Storm Pyramid X very often at all. I still can't ignore the potential she has though so I'll rate her a bit higher than at base just keep in mind as a horseman she is much much stronger.
Overall Rating - 6.5/10
Black Widow Deadly Origins - Some love her, some hate her but no one can seem to agree on how good BWDO actually is. So starting with the pros. BWDO is a straight damage kind of champion. Once you can nail down her playstyle, become good at intercepting with her, her shocks will absolutely nuke down even the largest health pools in the game. Rol Winter soldier can be taken down in under 1:45 seconds of fight time. LOL Red Hulk absolutely beasted in under 4 minutes.
Her damage is also primarily based off shocks which is advantageous against nodes like safeguard, not may champs in game are immune to shock and there aren't as many shock immunity nodes as there are bleed and poison immunity nodes. She has other useful bits of utility, she has a safeguard against miss abilities. When caused to miss she will evade and flashbang off the opponent's next attack so you can play her more freely against Guilly 2099.She's a top option for Cav monthly quests, she can stack up the ten fury effect in like 20 combos which ramps her damage so fast.
Now to the cons. BWDO is a very strange champion to me because large parts of her abilities seem almost useless. Her whole sabotage mechanic, it isn't really good defensively and I've yet to see someone make it work offensively over her more simple sp2 shock damage rotation. Sabotage debuffs lower opponents AA by 20% and you get those by activating your personal evade effects that come off the sp1, miss counters or the red guardian synergy. So to stack the debuffs to a more powerful AA reduction effect you're going to need to throw multiple sp1's and that simply isn't really viable for matchups where AA reduction is going to be needed. This also really hinders her damage output which is most of her kit.
This renders her sig ability almost useless since you're seldom going to get use out of the sabotages and the Sig is all about making the sabotages more powerful. 99% of the time you're going to be better off just cycling her shock damage and sp2s. She also is lacking in relevant utility, she has a few things that will be useful but not a lot that gives her a wide breadth of potentially great matchups. She's also surprisingly hard to play well, you need to time intercepts well to activate widow's insight and stack it without losing it so if you aren't on point with your intercept her damage will suffer a lot.
All in all, she's definitely an above average champion. A pretty good generalist that isn't as held back as other debuff reliant champion given shock immunity is still pretty rare in the game. I know lots of people think she's underrated and I agree to a certain extent, her damage is better than people give her credit for but like with squirrel girl her lack of utility hold her back.
Overall Rating - 6.5/10
Red Guardian - Kabam definitely did better in the second quarter in terms of champ design and Red Guardian is no exception. Another super versatile science champion with what is currently, utility completely unique to him. I guess that's a good starting point then, Red Guardian at base is unable to gain buffs including the precision off of dexterity. This is such a cool and unique ability that I truly believe will only get stronger and more applicable as time goes on. This makes Red guardian great for EMP Mod, Dormammu, Mojo, Pilfer, buffet, spite, mystic dispersion in war and so much more.
Slow is arguably the most powerful debuff in the game and Red Guardian after a sp1 can easily keep 100% uptime on a slow debuff completely countering evade and unstoppable effects. He gains perfect block chance based on his stacks of Durability allowing extended combos off parries. 7 and sometimes even 8 hit combos. He can also block unblockable attacks if his shield is active which is surprisingly useful in fights like the Collector, Heimdall's Sp2 and paired with his slow makes him very strong for aspect of war.
He has smaller pieces of utility like his trauma dealing bursts of physical damage helping him power through safeguard and other damage caps. He has 25% increase powergain when suffering from a slow which will often be 100% of the time so that helps Red Guardian cycle his sp2s.
He is chock full of utility but he has a good amount of burst damage as well. If you can play aggressively and keep up trauma and your other debuffs you can get most opponents down in a couple sp2s.
With all that utility Red Guardian is definitely not without his weaknesses. He is one of the more parry dependent champions in the game. He needs to be super aggressive to keep up his shorter debuffs and without parry stuns to get your heavies off the debuffs can fall off prematurely very often. His damage also has a hard cap in terms of reach. After a couple sp2s his shield will take super long to repair so for long fights he won't have good damage at all. He's isn't great for LOL and abyss even though his utility would be useful in certain fights there.
His last glaring weakness is his dependency on his sig ability. He needs to be awakened and ideally high sig or he really is a significantly worse champion. You can't keep up and build up durability, his debuffs are nearly impossible to consistently refresh, he's even harder to use in fights where you can't be fully aggressive. Still with those weaknesses I believe Red Guardian's utility will have a lot of longevity. Even with his damage limitations 6* further ranked Red Guardians will be amazing for a long time.
Overall Rating - 8/10
Tigra - In terms of pure champion design Tigra might be the most well designed champion of the year. Her kit and animations blend together in such a complementary way really enabling a playstyle that's almost ghost/quake esque. Playing Tigra properly is unlike how you play any other champion. Her heavy has I believe the most reach out of any champion's heavy in the game which allows her to find openings and intercepts other champs simply cant. This spacing gives Tigra a control over fights that makes her so much better than even her abilities would make her out to be and allows her to be extra aggressive in her playstyle.
Her abilities as a whole are really quite simple. She applies neutralizes on hits that completely lock the opponent out of gaining buffs. She absolutely locks down, Hyperions, Juggernauts, Medusa, she can even solo super stacked rank 3 6* thing bosses not having to worry about his unstoppable. She also can quickly stack ruptures on the opponent which deal physical damage in short bursts.
She misses non-contact hits of specials while charging her heavy kinda like a limited version of Ghost's phasing mechanic. This is great and only becoming more valuable as kabam seems insistent on adding champions with insane special attacks as of late. Tigra can just miss them all and retaliate back with her insane heavy reach. She is a top option for this AQ cycle's Apocalypse boss which has been likely the toughest AQ boss to date and a skilled Tigra player makes short work of it.
She is also potentially a top mystic damage dealer. Her absolute peak, rank 3 as a six star with suicides can run through all of ROL in 13 minutes. That's actually insane and makes her more than a good generalist for path cleaning and since she does have so much reach off her heavy she isn't as dependent on parries taking less chip damage and can play around stun immunity.
In terms of weaknesses, she doesn't really have a glaring weakness. Everything she does she does consistently, she has great damage, all the utility she has is very relevant in today's end game content. I however don't think she has the ceiling champs like Ghost and Quake have. This is simply because what she does is not as encompassing nor exclusive to Tigra. What I mean by that is everything Tigra does there are other champions that do it just as well, her utility isn't as encompassing and she doesn't lock down as many matchups as a champion like quake.
That's by no means a knock on Tigra, she's still a top tier champion that will only get better with time. I think as more people pull her and learn how to play her in more matchups, I said SS and Claire are the seconds best mystics in the game but Tigra definitely has potential to surpass them. I don't think enough gameplay is out there yet to say that but she's still one of the best champs of 2020.
Finally her sig, another nice to have but not necessary. She starts the fight with her 2 senses active which increases her damage and powergain. Good to burst down fights and makes her playstyle more smooth but not needed.
Overall Rating - 9/10
Hit-Monkey - I've played a lot of Hit-monkey personally. He was supposed to be everything that Moleman wasn't, a true skill Corvus. Does he meet that level of hype? Honestly not really. Don't get me wrong Hit Monkey is a very solid champion but I think he's been a little overhyped thanks to earlier gameplay videos from youtubers like Lagacy.
A seeming pattern with most 2020 skill champs, Hit-Monkey is a damage focused Champion that's a little lacking in utility. His damage however is really good. That part of his kit hasn't been overhyped. His guaranteed crit makes his damage very consistent and even doing combos without guaranteed crits to build up to his sp2 faster his base crit rate is really high so you're not losing on any damage. Guaranteed crits besides just being good for damage bypasses a lot of resistances and armour as well so he can work for 90% resistance/ armor nodes.
His Primal rage mode allows you to ignore armour and resistances completely as well as having a chance to inflict a pretty powerful 40% AAR disorient on hit. His other mode Assassins' cunning gives him chances t0 crit bleed as well as completely countering evade. His crit bleeds have increased chance to occur based on amount of crits landed in assassins' cunning so they are very consistent. Hit-Monkey's damage isn't really RNG based like Domino's which is good.
Now his cons again, kind of sounding like a broken record is Hit-Monkey's lack of reliable utility. Unlike squirrel girl and BWDO Hit-Monkey does have utility that you will find useful often. Mostly his evade counter when in Assasins cunning. The big problem with this is you can't have 100% uptime on this effect. If you can stun the opponent this is fine since you can get right back into the mode after it ends but if the Evade champ is stun immune you're going to have a really hard time landing three crits in a row consistently to activate Assassins cunning.
He does have ways to enhance his utility through his sp3, this can allow you to pause his modes so you have a lot longer uptime on his evade counter, his disorients, even a miss counter off his sp1. But if you really need to counter those mechanics you aren't going to want to wait till you can throw an sp3 to get that utility. You'd just want to bring in a champ that can counter those effects more readily.
His biggest weakness in my opinion is his low base block proficiency and low base health pool. Having to land 3 hit combos to get guaranteed crits, Hit-Monkey has to do a lot of parrying and blocking to play aggressively. This paired with his low base defensive stats means he's going to take a ton of chip damage. Kind of like Cull Obsidian syndrome, this simply makes him less viable in end game content where attack values are climbing higher and higher. So Hit monkey hits very hard and I did find uses for him in Act 6 exploration but he has weaknesses that decrease his overall value and don't think these weaknesses were highlighted very much in the initial hype run he had on release.
Overall Rating - 7.5/10
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Although Storm X actually has pretty great damage output. My R5 with suicides can kill Captain Marvel in about 3:00. It’s by no means at the top of the damage scale, but it’s high enough to make her feel like she blows through things
I achieve this by using an SP3 rotation. As you correctly pointed out her crit rate sucks. A lot. So instead of leaving yourself at the mercy of RNG, SP3’s offer high guaranteed damage. The first SP3 hits for about 60k, but as long as you play aggressively each subsequent SP3, with suicides I should mention, hits for about 160-170k consistently.
With Apoc and Prof X, I’ve gotten an over 300k SP3
So for example, if the opponent is to regenerate when you strike the opponent and sabotage is active, you have a 20% chance that the regen won’t proc. If you have intercepted or countered a heavy or special attack and both Widow’s Insight and Sabotage is going then it’s 70% + 20% reduction. Then the damage burst for not activating the regen is enhanced by her sig ability every time something fails to proc.
Against champs that armor up, regen, etc when you strike them, those buffs fail and you rack up extra damage with just about every hit. It’s every hit because when I do it I keep widow’s insight going.
BWDO is a high skill based champ. If you’re not good at intercept and evade mechanics you can’t maximize her. But Tigra is arguably also a high skill based champ that has similar mechanics.
Eat your heart out, Doom and Nebs