The Adam Warlock hype

I was waiting to open featureds desperately, just to be able to test him. He’s a great champ, BUT

There are a lot of problems with the way he works. He’s quite rewarding if you manage to keep the counter up, but that’s not the problem. The biggest problem is the TAUNT. That taunt is so so weak and unreliable, on top of the fact that it’s a debuff. It’s very easy to get caught dashing in and getting hit by a special in your face, because you need to stay aggressive. The AI will sometimes pretent like it’s going passive and roght as you dash in it will special intercept. Kt1 was theorizing a potential improvement for this, making the taunt passive and stackable, but also short duration. That would offer more safety for sure.

Another thing I wanted to mention is the lack of safety nets. This is fine, you’ll definetly die if you get caught but it’s ok, since he’s meant to be risky, atleast the numbers are good.

R3 no suicides

The sp1 stun, while a nice addition, I think it’s way too short for competitive content, where there’s limber. It would be nice if its duration could not be changed, neither up nor down, that way it’ll be way more consistent.
His utility is basically being an autoblock counter and a true damage dealer. Apart from that he doesn’t have too much, except for the 60 second insinerate shock coldsnap immunity, which can come in handy.
Overall I’d say be careful if you rank this champion up, since he is really not easy to maneauver snd very stressful, if you have to deal with a node it’ll be very hard to maintain the counter… the more stressful the matchup the lesser his damage is aswell, since you’ll want to go for an sp1 to keep up the buffs instead of the ideal sp3 that gives you the most damage.
I would highly highly appreciate some quality of life improvements for him, otherwhise he’ll disappear from the interest of people so fast as soon as Gladiator comes out…

Any thoughts? Do you think he’ll stay relevant the way he is now?

Comments

BitterSteel

I personally think Adam is designed around a high skill playstyle to balance him. Herc is the opposite of this, he’s an absolutely easy play style with ridiculous damage.

Adam has not quite as much damage, but close, and he’s balanced by quite a high skill ask when you’re playing him.

His rebalancing is soon, so I’m not saying he’s necessarily 100% fine and doesn’t need attention. But I will just say he is *supposed* to be tricky to use and not for everyone.

He has some AI reliance I guess, but I think the AI reliance really shows in a player that just picked him up and thinks “he’s unblockable and has a taunt - this is gonna be easy”. The unblockable and the taunt are tools for a practiced Adam warlock player to make him work, they’re not meant to be instant manipulation that makes every fight easy

You have a few other tools to make his whole kit work

- the pod
- Striker
- Throwing a special
- Unblockable
- Taunt

Adam is all about you vs the AI and what they do. If you pick up Adam and think it’ll be easy, then he’s a very AI reliant champion. It’ll lead to a ton of times where you shout at the opponent “why didn’t you throw that”. But when you practice more and more, it becomes “ok, the AI has done X. What tool do I use right now”.

I saw this video just now that inspired me to make this post, because it really made it clear my thoughts on Adam after testing him for a good while. It’s a really well put together one on how to use Adam to minimise AI reliance - to the point where you should, in the vast majority of matches, finish your sovereignty counter

https://youtu.be/OGHpxnAonY4?si=h8PeOPZ-gY68QJaU

I definitely have a couple things I could see Adam needing tweaking, but I don’t think he needs an infuriate instead of a taunt which I saw here - I actually think that hurts, because his unblockable is meant for passive opponents, and an infuriate is less likely to make the AI throw a special than a taunt is.

DLL put it very well: “If it was an infuriate, a lot of the places where the AI currently throws a special as soon as you stop comboing them would turn into a dash and then a special, and whoops... Your timer is gone.”

Adam doesn’t care about passive opponents because of his unblockable, he doesn’t need an infuriate in my opinion.

I wouldn’t mind seeing his sp1 stun elongated - or at least immune to limber reduction, at the moment it can be very difficult to use it to chain attacks in BGs especially. And I wouldn’t be against ideas of reducing opponent combat power rate while hitting the pod (though in my experience like 99% of the time when you sp2 - the opponent throws a special back at you)

Overall, I’m a big fan of Adam. I think he’s a champ that isn’t going to click with everyone right away unfortunately and does require a fair bit of time to use him right, and manipulate and react to the AI instead of allowing the AI to manipulate you.

ItsClobberinTime

I personally think Adam is designed around a high skill playstyle to balance him. Herc is the opposite of this, he’s an absolutely easy play style with ridiculous damage.

Adam has not quite as much damage, but close, and he’s balanced by quite a high skill ask when you’re playing him.

His rebalancing is soon, so I’m not saying he’s necessarily 100% fine and doesn’t need attention. But I will just say he is *supposed* to be tricky to use and not for everyone.

He has some AI reliance I guess, but I think the AI reliance really shows in a player that just picked him up and thinks “he’s unblockable and has a taunt - this is gonna be easy”. The unblockable and the taunt are tools for a practiced Adam warlock player to make him work, they’re not meant to be instant manipulation that makes every fight easy

You have a few other tools to make his whole kit work

- the pod
- Striker
- Throwing a special
- Unblockable
- Taunt

Adam is all about you vs the AI and what they do. If you pick up Adam and think it’ll be easy, then he’s a very AI reliant champion. It’ll lead to a ton of times where you shout at the opponent “why didn’t you throw that”. But when you practice more and more, it becomes “ok, the AI has done X. What tool do I use right now”.

I saw this video just now that inspired me to make this post, because it really made it clear my thoughts on Adam after testing him for a good while. It’s a really well put together one on how to use Adam to minimise AI reliance - to the point where you should, in the vast majority of matches, finish your sovereignty counter

https://youtu.be/OGHpxnAonY4?si=h8PeOPZ-gY68QJaU

I definitely have a couple things I could see Adam needing tweaking, but I don’t think he needs an infuriate instead of a taunt which I saw here - I actually think that hurts, because his unblockable is meant for passive opponents, and an infuriate is less likely to make the AI throw a special than a taunt is.

DLL put it very well: “If it was an infuriate, a lot of the places where the AI currently throws a special as soon as you stop comboing them would turn into a dash and then a special, and whoops... Your timer is gone.”

Adam doesn’t care about passive opponents because of his unblockable, he doesn’t need an infuriate in my opinion.

I wouldn’t mind seeing his sp1 stun elongated - or at least immune to limber reduction, at the moment it can be very difficult to use it to chain attacks in BGs especially. And I wouldn’t be against ideas of reducing opponent combat power rate while hitting the pod (though in my experience like 99% of the time when you sp2 - the opponent throws a special back at you)

Overall, I’m a big fan of Adam. I think he’s a champ that isn’t going to click with everyone right away unfortunately and does require a fair bit of time to use him right, and manipulate and react to the AI instead of allowing the AI to manipulate you.

That was me, the reason I mentioned infuriate is because I've had many situations where I'm playing normally, AI is cooperating and then all of a sudden it decides to dash back and block, then when I dash in (to break their block so I don't lose my sovereignty counter) it either intercepts me with a light or steps back again and then punishes my dash. I have a video of this happening but I don't know how to post videos lol.
What exactly can you do there? If the AI is already blocking and my sovereignty counter is about to expire, the AI shouldn't be intercepting me when I dash in cause then that's just a lose situation for me no matter what, how can you even play around that (you can only use your pod once)🤷‍♂️

BitterSteel

I personally think Adam is designed around a high skill playstyle to balance him. Herc is the opposite of this, he’s an absolutely easy play style with ridiculous damage.

Adam has not quite as much damage, but close, and he’s balanced by quite a high skill ask when you’re playing him.

His rebalancing is soon, so I’m not saying he’s necessarily 100% fine and doesn’t need attention. But I will just say he is *supposed* to be tricky to use and not for everyone.

He has some AI reliance I guess, but I think the AI reliance really shows in a player that just picked him up and thinks “he’s unblockable and has a taunt - this is gonna be easy”. The unblockable and the taunt are tools for a practiced Adam warlock player to make him work, they’re not meant to be instant manipulation that makes every fight easy

You have a few other tools to make his whole kit work

- the pod
- Striker
- Throwing a special
- Unblockable
- Taunt

Adam is all about you vs the AI and what they do. If you pick up Adam and think it’ll be easy, then he’s a very AI reliant champion. It’ll lead to a ton of times where you shout at the opponent “why didn’t you throw that”. But when you practice more and more, it becomes “ok, the AI has done X. What tool do I use right now”.

I saw this video just now that inspired me to make this post, because it really made it clear my thoughts on Adam after testing him for a good while. It’s a really well put together one on how to use Adam to minimise AI reliance - to the point where you should, in the vast majority of matches, finish your sovereignty counter

https://youtu.be/OGHpxnAonY4?si=h8PeOPZ-gY68QJaU

I definitely have a couple things I could see Adam needing tweaking, but I don’t think he needs an infuriate instead of a taunt which I saw here - I actually think that hurts, because his unblockable is meant for passive opponents, and an infuriate is less likely to make the AI throw a special than a taunt is.

DLL put it very well: “If it was an infuriate, a lot of the places where the AI currently throws a special as soon as you stop comboing them would turn into a dash and then a special, and whoops... Your timer is gone.”

Adam doesn’t care about passive opponents because of his unblockable, he doesn’t need an infuriate in my opinion.

I wouldn’t mind seeing his sp1 stun elongated - or at least immune to limber reduction, at the moment it can be very difficult to use it to chain attacks in BGs especially. And I wouldn’t be against ideas of reducing opponent combat power rate while hitting the pod (though in my experience like 99% of the time when you sp2 - the opponent throws a special back at you)

Overall, I’m a big fan of Adam. I think he’s a champ that isn’t going to click with everyone right away unfortunately and does require a fair bit of time to use him right, and manipulate and react to the AI instead of allowing the AI to manipulate you.
That was me, the reason I mentioned infuriate is because I've had many situations where I'm playing normally, AI is cooperating and then all of a sudden it decides to dash back and block, then when I dash in (to break their block so I don't lose my sovereignty counter) it either intercepts me with a light or steps back again and then punishes my dash. I have a video of this happening but I don't know how to post videos lol.
What exactly can you do there? If the AI is already blocking and my sovereignty counter is about to expire, the AI shouldn't be intercepting me when I dash in cause then that's just a lose situation for me no matter what, how can you even play around that (you can only use your pod once)🤷‍♂️

So I can’t be absolutely sure without seeing the video (if you’d like to upload it to YouTube then you could share a link there, you can upload directly from a mobile device on the app), or could send it to me on Line or discord if that helps!) but I think that’s one of 3 things

- you didn’t get an opponent to the wall safely or quickly enough. Where they can’t side step you anymore. But it’s not always AI permitted to have them against a wall, so moving onto the next
- where you’ve dashed a little too early at the opponent when they start blocking, sometimes you have to be sure. It can be tempting to rush things with Adam, because he’s on a strict timer, but rushing things leads to side steps and intercepts
- If it’s neither of the other two, I think it just gets chalked up to the risk of playing Adam, and you reset and go again with the timer. It’s not awful to lose his counter, especially outside of BGs where time doesn’t matter. Maybe next time you have a striker or more specials to go for

Another tangential thing it could be, is more of an issue with the AI than an issue with Adam. Recently (noticeably since the last update) the AI has sucked, and I think a lot of people have experienced it. I’m torn between mentioning this, because on one hand, I don’t think Adam necessarily needs to be fixed to deal with an AI issue that may well be fixed soon. But also, who knows if it will be fixed soon. But I’ve noticed more annoying habits of the AI it wasn’t doing before that make Adam more irritating to play if you’re relying on AI to help you out.

Having said all of that, I went now to do an Adam R3 vs LoL star lord and try out the method that I posted above, and I got 6 mins without losing my sovereignty counter once (ok, I did accidentally parry when star lord evaded - but I mean because of AI issues)

I don’t know if the screenshot proves much, but if needed I could record a vid and show you.

And the thing is, when you play Adam right, the AI just has very little opportunity to screw you over, the sp2 takes up so much space that it usually corners them, the striker and sp1 chains don’t allow the AI to mess you up then. If you get caught in the open, grab an opening with the pod! I honestly just think that aside from some times when inevitably things will go wrong, Adam feels like a pretty complete champ to me.

ItsClobberinTime

I personally think Adam is designed around a high skill playstyle to balance him. Herc is the opposite of this, he’s an absolutely easy play style with ridiculous damage.

Adam has not quite as much damage, but close, and he’s balanced by quite a high skill ask when you’re playing him.

His rebalancing is soon, so I’m not saying he’s necessarily 100% fine and doesn’t need attention. But I will just say he is *supposed* to be tricky to use and not for everyone.

He has some AI reliance I guess, but I think the AI reliance really shows in a player that just picked him up and thinks “he’s unblockable and has a taunt - this is gonna be easy”. The unblockable and the taunt are tools for a practiced Adam warlock player to make him work, they’re not meant to be instant manipulation that makes every fight easy

You have a few other tools to make his whole kit work

- the pod
- Striker
- Throwing a special
- Unblockable
- Taunt

Adam is all about you vs the AI and what they do. If you pick up Adam and think it’ll be easy, then he’s a very AI reliant champion. It’ll lead to a ton of times where you shout at the opponent “why didn’t you throw that”. But when you practice more and more, it becomes “ok, the AI has done X. What tool do I use right now”.

I saw this video just now that inspired me to make this post, because it really made it clear my thoughts on Adam after testing him for a good while. It’s a really well put together one on how to use Adam to minimise AI reliance - to the point where you should, in the vast majority of matches, finish your sovereignty counter

https://youtu.be/OGHpxnAonY4?si=h8PeOPZ-gY68QJaU

I definitely have a couple things I could see Adam needing tweaking, but I don’t think he needs an infuriate instead of a taunt which I saw here - I actually think that hurts, because his unblockable is meant for passive opponents, and an infuriate is less likely to make the AI throw a special than a taunt is.

DLL put it very well: “If it was an infuriate, a lot of the places where the AI currently throws a special as soon as you stop comboing them would turn into a dash and then a special, and whoops... Your timer is gone.”

Adam doesn’t care about passive opponents because of his unblockable, he doesn’t need an infuriate in my opinion.

I wouldn’t mind seeing his sp1 stun elongated - or at least immune to limber reduction, at the moment it can be very difficult to use it to chain attacks in BGs especially. And I wouldn’t be against ideas of reducing opponent combat power rate while hitting the pod (though in my experience like 99% of the time when you sp2 - the opponent throws a special back at you)

Overall, I’m a big fan of Adam. I think he’s a champ that isn’t going to click with everyone right away unfortunately and does require a fair bit of time to use him right, and manipulate and react to the AI instead of allowing the AI to manipulate you.
That was me, the reason I mentioned infuriate is because I've had many situations where I'm playing normally, AI is cooperating and then all of a sudden it decides to dash back and block, then when I dash in (to break their block so I don't lose my sovereignty counter) it either intercepts me with a light or steps back again and then punishes my dash. I have a video of this happening but I don't know how to post videos lol.
What exactly can you do there? If the AI is already blocking and my sovereignty counter is about to expire, the AI shouldn't be intercepting me when I dash in cause then that's just a lose situation for me no matter what, how can you even play around that (you can only use your pod once)🤷‍♂️
So I can’t be absolutely sure without seeing the video (if you’d like to upload it to YouTube then you could share a link there, you can upload directly from a mobile device on the app), or could send it to me on Line or discord if that helps!) but I think that’s one of 3 things

- you didn’t get an opponent to the wall safely or quickly enough. Where they can’t side step you anymore. But it’s not always AI permitted to have them against a wall, so moving onto the next
- where you’ve dashed a little too early at the opponent when they start blocking, sometimes you have to be sure. It can be tempting to rush things with Adam, because he’s on a strict timer, but rushing things leads to side steps and intercepts
- If it’s neither of the other two, I think it just gets chalked up to the risk of playing Adam, and you reset and go again with the timer. It’s not awful to lose his counter, especially outside of BGs where time doesn’t matter. Maybe next time you have a striker or more specials to go for

Another tangential thing it could be, is more of an issue with the AI than an issue with Adam. Recently (noticeably since the last update) the AI has sucked, and I think a lot of people have experienced it. I’m torn between mentioning this, because on one hand, I don’t think Adam necessarily needs to be fixed to deal with an AI issue that may well be fixed soon. But also, who knows if it will be fixed soon. But I’ve noticed more annoying habits of the AI it wasn’t doing before that make Adam more irritating to play if you’re relying on AI to help you out.

Having said all of that, I went now to do an Adam R3 vs LoL star lord and try out the method that I posted above, and I got 6 mins without losing my sovereignty counter once (ok, I did accidentally parry when star lord evaded - but I mean because of AI issues)

I don’t know if the screenshot proves much, but if needed I could record a vid and show you.

And the thing is, when you play Adam right, the AI just has very little opportunity to screw you over, the sp2 takes up so much space that it usually corners them, the striker and sp1 chains don’t allow the AI to mess you up then. If you get caught in the open, grab an opening with the pod! I honestly just think that aside from some times when inevitably things will go wrong, Adam feels like a pretty complete champ to me.

Now that you mention it, it does seem I dashed in a bit early, my timer was pretty close to half but not quite there yet so I guess that's probably a bit too early. Mistakes like those would be on the player indeed but I still think he needs some small tweaks, we should have a little more time to react and make decisions (especially because we can't parry and if we don't react fast enough we lose all the ramp up). I don't doubt that there are players out there who can react pretty fast and have zero issues with him currently but those players are probably not the majority of the playerbase. I also don't think Adam is at Quake or Tigra level to justify such a high skill ceiling.
I will be playing him the same way Nagase showcased him since it seems way safer but regardless, I hope he can get some small tweaks here and there.

SecondSkriller

@BitterSteel your points definetly do make sense, I also do want it to just be a stronger taunt and not infuriate. I’ve been playing a lot of him and I can tell you for sure that while the tools you mentioned can be used to not lose the counter, the opponent is definetly way too inconsistent at the moment. I’ve been testing him in BrutalDLX, where there’s actual nodes that can influence the fight and I noticed how terrible the taunt is, especially against Vision, who has a close range sp2. He will not throw it if you leave his range and I have gotten special intercepted so many times. The other times he just doesn’t use it and I either lose my counter or I activate pod, which makes him dash in and get stunned, which again also results in a net loss. The taunt is way too weak and unreliable for how squishy Adam is. I’m not even going to talk about his horrible block proficiency…

SecondSkriller

I also want to show you this. This death resulted from being hit in the pod by SW’s sp1 when I was at 30% hp. The whole special damage will register before you start regening, so this is another huge flaw of the pod in more serious content. And mind you this pod was the one after the sp2, so it’s not like I could have avoided it…

SecondSkriller

Update: after watching the Nagase video I tried to "safe" Adam rotation and while it works in cookie cutter matchups, in more complicated matchups I always ALWAYS lose my counter because they refuse to throw a special attack, especially close range special champs. Long range special champs are way more trigger happy. Just make the taunt stronger is all I’m saying and make it so I can’t get stunned while in the pod dammit