Weekly Champion Reviews #1 - Spider-Ham

So, I’ll go ahead and start this off by saying that I tried to do this last year. It didn’t go so well, I got one done (CMM) and got tired and never got around to doling a second. If you want to read that one, here’s the link: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/244496/the-unofficial-captain-marvel-movie-guide#latest

But now onto the topic at hand, and what I’ll be talking about, which is a complete in depth review of Spider-Ham.

(all statistics based on 6*r3)

Abilities

Spider-Nonsense - It starts at 0 and then increases as the opponent has more and more power, and caps out at 10. Once you get to 10, then you can’t gain any more for 6.5 seconds, and after that it’ll reset to 0 (3 against mystics). At any point, you can throw a heavy attack and lose 2 spider-nonsense. To be honest, not once do I think about using a heavy to lose 2 of them, because it just throws off his playstyle. While the spider-nonsense has no impact on his damage, it does wonders for his utility. I’ll go ahead and post a screenshots from his abilities, as it’s pretty much self-explanatory

The degen potency reduction is AMAZING. For nodes like brute force, bane, and even abilities like Mojo and Dorm’s degen, you can pretty much focus on your nonsense count and ignore the damage completely. On offense, the evade doesn’t do too much. If you happen to mess up there’s always a chance that it saves you, but you’re never going to intentionally use it.

Porker Poppers - These seem simple, but they get very, very complicated. He’s got a flat 50% chance to place one that lasts for 9 seconds on all medium attacks, and it’s increased by 25% when the opponent is stunned or when he is unblockable. When the opponent activates a special, every popper that triggers has an 8.5% chance to re-activate for every spider-nonsense (maximum of 85%). Also, if the opponent has more power, then they deal more passive damage. For every popper that gets activated, it’s stored in a little grey icon that looks like this:

This becomes very important later.

Special Attacks

Special 1 - Pauses all poppers on the opponent and places a taunt for 7 seconds. This is great, because if the poppers are almost expiring and you need the opponent to throw a special, just pop a SP1

Special 2 - Unblockable if you’ve got a taint on the opponent. Places 3 poppers on the opponent and sets the nonsense to 10. I’ll tell you what, I hate using this one. If you’re past a bar of power, just save for SP3.

Special 3 - Remember those grey icons I brought up earlier? They’re in use here. Just gonna post a screenshot:

Basically, this is where you end his ramp-up. If you’re gonna use it, get yourself up to 25 of the non-active poppers and 10 nonsense, that maximizes the damage.

Synergies

I’m only gonna list synergies that I would consider using a spot on:

Fourth Wall Crawler w/ Gwenpool, Platpool, Goldpool, and Squirrel Girl - This one increases popper duration by 20%. I mean it’s nice to have, but not necessarily too helpful. If the opponent has reduced debuff duration, you’re not going to be using Hammy to start with, so don’t try and bring this synergy and use him.

Saturday Morning Cartoons w/ Mojo -
This one is SUPER interesting. For each nonsense, you’re already reducing opponent special damage by 5% (max if 50%). You multiply that by 2, what do you get? That’s right, 100% special attack damage reduction. Now I haven’t personally used this one but I have to test it out more to verify that.


Playstyle

Mediums, Mediums, Mediums. Honestly throwing light attacks just give the opponent unnecessary power. Your goal is to stack power stings and bring the damage. Once you’re up about 15-ish, start building to SP3 and throw it once you’re at 25+. Use the SP1 if needed, as the pause and the taunt are great.

Summary

Basically, he is a burst damage attacker as well as a great defender who’s got hidden utility. One thing I need to add is that I would always pick him in battlegrounds. He’s great as both an attacker and a defender.

Please let me know if you want to see any Spider-Ham gameplay, as I could use some more things to do in the game. Hope this helped anyone who is considering ranking him up!