Absorbing Man - How Critical is the Non-Stunned Heavy Chain ? (BG’s Purposes)

For starters, the champ is a superb champ , (utility, sustainability, tankiness, damage etc). My only complaint is that for a champ that relies on punishing heavies with your heavies / lights, that his heavy and light dont have that good reach.

I’m fine with light intercepting , though i am leaning against this as the AI tends to turtle up and be passive. I can light interrupt heavies as well, but the light animation he has doesn’t have as much reach to be able to reliably land on the foe depending on the enemys heavy animation. It would’ve been great if he had reach like future antmans for instance or infuriate like Herc.

All in all, I’m still not as deterred from the rankup from this as I can just aim for light backdrafting and maybe throwing in some additional hits before dexing back to make the AI more aggressive.

My bigger issue boils down to the heavy animation, and specifically landing it without the stun/parry to get bigger crit boost on his sp1 or sp2. For some champions heavies/special, its really easy and you just dex back and launch the heavy. Some require throwing a light in before , and while this works for the most part, it can still be risky as the enemy might have enough time to recover from their heavy and attack you. Some champs have heavies that are even more difficult because they for example happen to quickly like captain america (classic/civil war) or just push themselves too far back like green goblin.

My question is, for Battlegrounds purposes, how critical is that second larger crit boost that only is attainable from a nonstunned heavy chain?

Timing is everything in BG’s and if the specials are hard to heavy punish , you’d have to rely on punishing their heavy. So one issue could be if the enemy just takes long to throw their heavy (black uru form from the sp1 here can be useful to mitigate the block damage), but nevertheless is is just better to go for the parry and then heavy into the special?

One possible scenario I can see is if the enemy does not throw their heavy as easily (and their specials are hard to punish), if you end up reaching an sp3 from 5/5 MD by waiting too long for the heavy.

So would it be better to just stun them and heavy into special with the lesser crit bonus or try baiting out a non stun heavy for the better crit bonus even if it means you reaching the sp3 from how long it takes?

Currently my absorbing man is r3, and he’s a really fun champ to play, i just want to make sure im getting the most use of the larger crit bonus from the heavies before I r4. Though the r4 might compensate for just heavying while theyre stunned.

Comments

Gogeta91199

The first thing you need to know about absman is you need to do light ‘punishes’ and not just light intercepts.
Secondly absman is tanky af and you can easily block attacks and force the defender to throw their heavies and then you can punish their heavies with ease.
Thirdly about your question, the stun heavy into sp verses heavy w/o stun into sp makes a lil difference of about 4-5s max( unless you’re fighting a regen champ like absman or sassy which will slighty increase your fight time more)

CyborgNinja135

Mine is R4 and parry-heavy then cancelling into special works great for BGs sized healthpools. A R3 shouldn't have any problems unless it's a defender with a particularly large healthpool like Sasquatch. If you want the full crit boost, then you should probably get more comfortable with throwing a light to get closer before throwing the heavy to punish the heavy/special. It's not that risky once you get the hang of it. Against champs with quick heavies or attacks that push them too far then just play it safe and parry heavy. There's always gonna be a few champs you're not too comfortable fighting due to their animations so it's fine to take it slow in those cases. You could always equip a relic and throw your heavy while the enemy is stunned from the striker since that stun does not count for his abilities and you will get the full crit bonus.

Regarding your complaints about the short heavy and light attacks reach, I think they're perfectly fine. It just takes a while to get used to them. Don't be afraid to throw multiple lights in order to punish a heavy attack. Many champions don't move forward a lot and you'll have to compensate for being farther from them after dashing back. Even while fighting someone with a quick heavy animation you'll still be able to land the light punish since a lot of recovery animations are quite lengthy.

Polygon

Mine is R4 and parry-heavy then cancelling into special works great for BGs sized healthpools. A R3 shouldn't have any problems unless it's a defender with a particularly large healthpool like Sasquatch. If you want the full crit boost, then you should probably get more comfortable with throwing a light to get closer before throwing the heavy to punish the heavy/special. It's not that risky once you get the hang of it. Against champs with quick heavies or attacks that push them too far then just play it safe and parry heavy. There's always gonna be a few champs you're not too comfortable fighting due to their animations so it's fine to take it slow in those cases. You could always equip a relic and throw your heavy while the enemy is stunned from the striker since that stun does not count for his abilities and you will get the full crit bonus.

Regarding your complaints about the short heavy and light attacks reach, I think they're perfectly fine. It just takes a while to get used to them. Don't be afraid to throw multiple lights in order to punish a heavy attack. Many champions don't move forward a lot and you'll have to compensate for being farther from them after dashing back. Even while fighting someone with a quick heavy animation you'll still be able to land the light punish since a lot of recovery animations are quite lengthy.

Thanks for the detailed response. Going to r4 him.