Who is the Dominant Degeneration Denier?
Wicket329
Member Posts: 3,443 ★★★★★
Recently pulled Mr. Negative and Spider-Ham as 6* champs. Will likely take them both up eventually, but for now I’m deciding which to r3. Neither is duped. Don’t run suicides and my other Science r3s are Mr. Fantastic, Torch, Miles, and Spidey2099.
Both of these champs are really cool and stuffed to the gills with unique utility. I think I’m most interested in their ability to reduce or ignore degeneration damage, so any insight on that is appreciated. Like, does it work against nodes like Starburst, Icarus, Flare, etc.?
Both of these champs are really cool and stuffed to the gills with unique utility. I think I’m most interested in their ability to reduce or ignore degeneration damage, so any insight on that is appreciated. Like, does it work against nodes like Starburst, Icarus, Flare, etc.?
Post edited by Kabam Porthos on
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So, seven stacks is enough for 105% degeneration resistance.
I'd suggest Ham is better at countering degeneration. Not sure how their other abilities stack up.
I've found keeping Ham's degen resistance up really hard and another thing is there's no way for Ham to start with the the resistance.
Mr Negative on the other hard with Mr. Fantastic pre fight can start with 120% degen resistance and keep it for the whole fight as long as you keep knocking down the defender every 15 seconds.
I actually can't say who's better, Ham or Negative, because I don't have a spider-ham ranked up to see how practical hovering around 7-10 spider-nonsense is and I want to be objective. I do think it seems pretty easy, just heavy when he gets to 9 or 10, but I suppose in some situations that may not be possible.
I can however, talk about what Mr Negative does well, and what he doesn't do well, and anyone weighing up the two options can make their own mind up.
If it's worth anything, Karate Mike did say in his Mr Negative rank up video that he thought Mr Negative's degen counter was better, and he has a rank 3 awakened Spam who I believe he uses quite a lot. He said Spam mitigates it but it's not the most reliable thing in the game. But at the end of the day, I suppose that's just one player's opinion.
Also, as another poster pointed out, Miles synergy allows Ham to reset to +3 nonsense than he usually would have. So if we're allowing synergies/other champs then I would say Mr Fantastic has 6 pre fights, so depending on how many fights you need degen resistance for, you can get a permanent (as long as you knock them down) 40% resistance per debuff. If you only need it for one fight, go for 3 pre fights and never worry about degen, or you could put 1 per fight of a path and get a consistent 40% resistance. Add in resonate mastery and you've got an extra debuff that will have a great up time. But we'll ignore synergies for the most part.
Where I would say Mr Negative has the edge is with his healing. Based on the little I know, I think Spam has better mitigation, but Mr Negative has an incredible heal which means it's ok if his mitigation isn't as consistent. My Sig 200 regens 544 per tick and there aren't many degenerations that can get above that when you have 1 or 2 debuffs on the opponent, and obviously none in the game that can touch you with 3.
For a degen to net damage you, with 0 debuffs clearly it would have to do 544 damage. To damage you with 1 debuff, it would have to do 908 damage per tick on base, reduced to 544.8 with 40% resistance. To damage you with 2 debuffs, it would have to do 2721 per tick, reduced to 544.2 with 80% resistance. I don't think there are many degens in the game that can overcome Negative with 80% resistance, and clearly none when he has 120% resistance.
Another benefit of this heal, is actually using it to heal. In many situations, Mr Negative can use this resistance to his advantage, something Spam can't do. While Spam is stuck trying to stop the damage, Mr Negative can go into a fight that you know you can regen from at 1% health and regenerate back up. Take starburst for example, Mr Negative can go in at 1 Hp and you will have a permanent 544 per tick regeneration. You'll be back up to full health in about 30 seconds. That's pretty crazy, and a definite pro that Mr Negative has over Spam. Or go for no retreat, drop an Sp2 and then purposely dash back twice to get a burst of health. Using Sp1 to apply exhuastion, your evade mechanic to apply delirium and Sp2 to apply petrify and degeneration, along with resonate can easily keep uptime on 2 or 3 debuffs, at the very least 1.
One smaller pro that Negative has is against Mystic degeneration champs, just his kit makes him slightly more built to counter the major degen champs. For Mojo, dashing back can remove your buffs, meaning they don't get nullified or expire, so you don't have to face that degen. And for Ebony Maw, he can't nullify you, so you never have to face that degen. As long as you don't miss Maw, but that's something Spam has to avoid as well. Based on Dormammu's text, Mr Negative should counter him as well, since it says "expire" but Negative's dash back to remove buffs unfortunately can degen you. Also with the petrify countering pesky mystic dispersion/other power gain, also his dash back and removing buffs not counting to mystic dispersion, I'd say Negative seems like the stronger option to bring to most mystic degeneration match ups.
And the last pro, Negative doesn't need a ramp up to access his resistance. A parry gives 40% resistance, running resonate gives an extra 40% right from the start (or close to it, a 16% chance means every 6th or 7th hit will apply a weakness). An Sp1 gives the last 40%, so you can get to 100% resistance within a bar of power. I believe Spider Ham's nonsense needs the opponent to be above a bar of power to build, so if they keep throwing their specials, it could be a little tougher to get the resistance in the first place.
Onto the cons, I don't want to seem too biased... Obviously any scenario that reduces or blocks out healing is going to be a pain, and without the healing you'll have to rely on mitigation alone, so you'd definitely want a Mr fantastic if you're using him for a larger damage Degen without access to healing. Heal block, spectre, heal prevention all that sort of stuff is bad.
Despair can hurt you a bit, but there aren't many scenarios you have a lot of debuffs in war on you, and need the regen.
Stun immune can kinda mess with you a bit if you're using Mr fantastic, but I suppose same with Spam and controlling nonsense with a heavy attack. Debuff immune clearly is not a place you'd want to use Negative regardless of it being a degen matchup or not. I guess you wouldn't particularly want to use Spam there either, but there may be a niche scenario where you absolutely want a degen counter and they're debuff immune, so Spam would be better there, since his mitigation doesn't come from debuffs.
Also, never, ever, ever try Negative against Warlock. "Oh I could just regenerate against his dege-" No. No, no no no no no. When you start to try and regen while you're infected, so from willpower if he armour breaks you, his infections stops your healing, and then degens you. But it doesn't stop there. Since he's degenning you, Negative will try and regenerate, but wait, you're infected so he stops your healing, and degenerates you again. And over, and over, a cruel circle of degeneration and damage and regret. Stay clear of warlock...
As for what nodes/abilities each of them counter, they will counter the exact same instances. Anything that is labelled degeneration in the description. An important thing to note here is that some nodes may pop up as a call out in the fight as "Degenerating", but they won't heal you or get mitigated. That's because a few years ago, a lot of nodes that are today called direct damage, used to be actual degeneration damage. Like Bane, Life transfer, Dismay etc. When they were updated to be direct damage the call out in game was never changed alongside it.
And lastly, sig ability importance. As you may have gathered throughout, Mr Negative's sig is pretty important for degen countering. The design for Spam's degen counter was basically chucking everything at mitigation, but Negative has some countering in his regen as well as mitigation. I'd probably say, pulling it out of the air, but I think it's around 50/50 in regen's favour. If you made me pick only one part of Negative's degen counter to bring to a fight, I'd probably just about choose the regen as a guaranteed mitigation. Call it 52/48 in regen's favour, the dreaded ratio. So if we assume Spam and Negative are equally good at countering degen, then if you remove his regen, you've only got a champ that's about 50% as good as Spam.
Overall, I'd say if your Mr Negative is unduped, definitely go SpiderHam for degen countering. Also, if your Mr Negative is R2 I'd probably use Spam as well, since Negative's healing is based on health, being a rank lower is more of an impact to Negative, than Spam with his purely percentage based. Spam's mitigation is better from what I can tell. But if Negative is awakened, I think the combination of mitigation and healing, plus interactions with Mystic champs, and being able to net benefit from degen, where Spam can at best be unaffected, gives Negative a personal edge to me. I just don't think there are enough 2700 per tick degens in the game. I do really want a 6* Spam to try him out though, and see how practical I find him.
In any case, I hope this helps give people information on the two champs, and I'd love to hear from any Spam users (hopefully not just telling me I'm wrong) to continue the discussion!