How Niche is Falcon?

Falcon is awesome, his is my favourite of the new buffs. Don’t get me wrong I love magneto, but his playstyle is heavy and repeat, not as fun for me as using full combos and blasting the opponent with whatever special suits the match up like falcon does. Not to mention his fun way of ramping up the damage with the permanent passive crit buffs. Falcon is FUN. I took him to r2 as a 6* duped the day of the buff and never looked back. I’m even considering r3 over my stealth Spidey dupe, even if he isn’t objectively better I’m having more fun with falcon!

I only wish he had a way to gain the crit damage passive outside of evade. Some ideas of what he needs have been tossed around and I disagree with the idea of when any ability fails gain a crit passive, as this would make him overpowered and not what kabam intended with him. Think about how many abilities can fail (domino cough cough), he would be gaining crit damage in every single fight which isn’t what he was designed for.

I like that he was intended as a niche utility counter (evade) that you bring in to tough content to support your main team when he’s necessary but I wish he wasn’t as niche as he currently is. So how niche is he?

There are 19 evade champions, out of 187 playable champions this is very niche. To put it into context, let’s consider two other widely considered niche champions are human torch and Sym supreme. Torch needing energy/mystic champs, Sym needing buffs.

There are 18 mystic champs, 11 other champions who deal energy damage on basic, 41 other champions who deal energy damage on specials (admittedly not always viable) plus a handful of regen champs for reversal. There are a whole lot of ways to build smoulder with torch or for a relatively niche champ to be useful. Even saying a quarter of the champs who use specials to build smoulder are viable, ones like cable, invisible woman, Aegon, apocalypse, captain marvel etc, that’s still 39 champions torch is viable for.

Sym supreme, needs a fairly consistent buff to be viable. If he can nullify one buff between cycles then he’s pretty damn good. There are 56 non-bleed Immune champs who consistently get buffs. Against all of them he can cycle special 3s and bleed them out. Again, a niche champ with a wide scope of use.

Not to mention for Sym there are a vast array of nodes that inflict buffs on defenders. A tough act 6 path with a 10% chance of fury per hit could be the difference between using Sym and someone else, a node like feats of power let’s him theoretically take down nearly every champ in the game. Nodes with regen let torch shine, nodes like clap back transforms torch into a world beater.

Falcon however, has can’t touch this, mesmerise or mix master, along with abyss and labyrinth nodes of course. These are fairly rare nodes, compared to those that offer buffs to champions. Other than that he is stuck to his 19 evade champs, and some, like the daredevils, don’t even trigger his crit damage since he doesn’t prevent them from evading. You have to throw an sp1 into his block to get any crit damage passive. Elsa bloodstone is another, you don’t even get her evade on block, so the only way to trigger passive crit would be a well timed block. Hard to force. Moonknight is only evading for a portion of the month. Not practical. That takes his niche ability even more niche. 15 champs or two nodes is barely enough.

So, how to get falcon a bit more in line with other niche champs. I would like to see him get crit damage when autoblock and/or miss fails to trigger. It’s in the same vein as other champions with true strike how evade and autoblock sometime are countered hand in hand. And I think it retains the balance of niche for falcon, while not limiting him to the handful of evade champs.

With 6 champions who autoblock, 8 who inflict falter or miss (one of whom is dark hawk, who autoblocks too, and others like ghost or silver surfer with a small window of miss), adding 12 more champions who falcon can gain critical damage from is not game breaking and it still retains his niche counter status.

The ratio of champions that Torch:Sym:Falcon counter is 39:56:15. If miss and autoblock gave falcon crit passive then it would take this ratio to 39:56:27. To me, not game breaking.

And I know what a few people might say, falcon still shuts down ability accuracy for champions like korg, or thing. And yes, I concede, it’s a fair point. Which is why I still like falcon and would consider ranking him up. I am making this post not because I don’t like falcon, or I won’t use him because of it, but because I think he would be a more well rounded champion because of it. Why take falcon against korg if you have omega? Why take falcon against dark hawk if you have quake or torch? Falcon just isn’t going to be used outside of evade champions, because he isn’t good *enough* for the other fights.

Not to mention that while Falcon is currently a champion who is very useful for evade, he’s not the best. Because of this, most people wouldn’t consider bringing him over ghost, Nick, or stealth Spidey . The only ways to make falcon be brought above them, is either to make him so insanely over powered against evade, which would be game breaking, or to widen his very balanced utility to include other abilities. I think blocking autoblock (excuse the pun) and miss is very much in line with what Kabam intended for him while making him more desirable and more balanced in the wider scope of the game.

TL:DR, falcon is a niche champ, he is too niche. He covers less than what other niche champs (like Sym supreme and torch) do. He should get more of a range for what he counters and benefits from.