I don't have a 5 or 6* version of him so take my testing of my r3 4* for what it is, but I found him to be super tanky vs. ROL Winter Soldier. He has about 9K health but it still took WS 30+ hits to knock him down. To put that into perspective, I tried to just let Winter Soldier dunk on my r3 6* Professor X until he died, and that took 47 hits. That's insane. Those taunts are really putting in some damage-mitigating work if you manage to keep them up throughout the fight.
The problem is that it isn't really a lot of fun to constantly heavy the opponent, and he doesn't have a heavy that's suitable for intercepting which makes him very reliant on his ability to stun his opponent. This is where I'm starting to question some decisions. His whole sig ability revolves around either spamming heavy attacks or placing taunts on champions that would shrug them off. That works great when you're fighting ROL Winter Soldier - it was easy to land four heavy attacks in order to place three taunts and then gain that power gain buff - but then I tried him out against my 5* Kingpin and I got absolutely crushed. I was trying to get those taunts in order to get that power gain, but since Kingpin was just shrugging off my stuns it was a daunting task.
The inability to reliably place taunts on those types of opponents is made all the worse by the fact that those are the champs that are most likely to suddenly break your stun and wail into you with either a combo or a special attack, meaning that the damage reduction would be the most helpful vs those champions. It's as if his sig ability was designed to give him a leg-up vs shrug-off champions, with nothing else in his kit making him a viable counter for those fights.
I think he would be improved immensely by having something along the lines of Apocalypse's anti-purification mechanic. That would make him a terrific counter to so many of those annoying shrug-off champions. However, now he just gets crushed.
In the end, I'm very impressed with him at points and very unimpressed at others. It's difficult to get a real grip on him since I can't take him into any real content since, again, all of my testing was done with a low-ranked 4*. He's still one of my most-wanted champions due to his synergy with Nick Fury, and I'm really happy that he'll no longer just be dead weight on any suicide-running team. Hopefully I can pull a higher-rated version soon and test him out more.
Comments
The problem is that it isn't really a lot of fun to constantly heavy the opponent, and he doesn't have a heavy that's suitable for intercepting which makes him very reliant on his ability to stun his opponent. This is where I'm starting to question some decisions. His whole sig ability revolves around either spamming heavy attacks or placing taunts on champions that would shrug them off. That works great when you're fighting ROL Winter Soldier - it was easy to land four heavy attacks in order to place three taunts and then gain that power gain buff - but then I tried him out against my 5* Kingpin and I got absolutely crushed. I was trying to get those taunts in order to get that power gain, but since Kingpin was just shrugging off my stuns it was a daunting task.
The inability to reliably place taunts on those types of opponents is made all the worse by the fact that those are the champs that are most likely to suddenly break your stun and wail into you with either a combo or a special attack, meaning that the damage reduction would be the most helpful vs those champions. It's as if his sig ability was designed to give him a leg-up vs shrug-off champions, with nothing else in his kit making him a viable counter for those fights.
I think he would be improved immensely by having something along the lines of Apocalypse's anti-purification mechanic. That would make him a terrific counter to so many of those annoying shrug-off champions. However, now he just gets crushed.
In the end, I'm very impressed with him at points and very unimpressed at others. It's difficult to get a real grip on him since I can't take him into any real content since, again, all of my testing was done with a low-ranked 4*. He's still one of my most-wanted champions due to his synergy with Nick Fury, and I'm really happy that he'll no longer just be dead weight on any suicide-running team. Hopefully I can pull a higher-rated version soon and test him out more.