Following the Leader: the good, the bad, and what can be better
Squidopus
Member Posts: 526 ★★★
Brief foreword: all of the following fight images were taken in the latest update, in which the Leader’s green door is bugged and significantly smaller than it should be. Leader should be a bit better and easier once it’s fixed, but I’m not quite sure by how much. Take the images with just a bit of salt. Also, lots of yapping ahead. You have been warned.
As the proud owner of a maxed 6* Leader basically since he released, I wanted to make a bit of a defense against the Leader slander amongst the community. Before you get your pitchforks out (I know you all have them ready), I’m not advocating that Leader is perfect as is and we shouldn’t buff him. I simply think the community has been far too dismissive of a champion that is capable of quite a lot and far too quick to dump him in the “useless trash” category. So let’s talk about what he can do and where he excels, plus where he struggles and how he can be improved.
THE GOOD
• Regen and Power reversal
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Leader is built with access to wither and spectre debuffs that grant -200% regen and ability power rate (-300% regen rate if you run despair, which you should). This gives Leader great control over those abilities, including the ability to reap constant damage from the opponent’s willpower mastery in bgs and war. It’s also incredibly easy to access: just throw a bunch of light attack combos. You can gain a significant portion of the benefit extremely quickly and you don’t need specials to activate or maintain it, useful advantages over the likes of Sandman and Void.
• Constant aggression
The green door makes all opponents more aggressive the closer they are to it. I shouldn’t need to mention that this is a great bit of extra fight control that, unlike the above bullet, is pretty much always useful. It’s a constant passive effect, so the opponent has no real way of preventing or punishing it either. Leader is a champion that really wants to be constantly backdraft light intercepting (Abs man players will be familiar with Leader’s gameplay) so this really makes that loop far more consistent. Also nice for fights where you need aggressive AI (Enchantress anyone?)
• Bulk and steadfast
Leader has decent health and armor rating, some base energy resistance and poison immunity, and a massive block proficiency (I can’t easily confirm it but I assume it’s top 20 at least). It’s so high, in fact, that Leader has perfect blocks when he parries any attack so long as the opponent has no block penetration. Combined with the inequity mastery (you should be running this for far more than just Leader) and his protection passives, Leader becomes quite tanky once he starts stacking his debuffs. In addition, a duped Leader gains an indefinite steadfast passive while the opponent has enough of his personal debuffs, letting you block unblockable attacks. This works against ALL unblockable attacks, including basics, which is a very good bonus compared to most champs who can only block unblockable specials. Normally this kicks in at 12 debuffs, which is manageable but not necessarily guaranteed 100% uptime. Against mystics though? Only 4 debuffs, which you can maintain in your sleep.
“WTF is an unblockable” -Leader probably.
• Severe debuffs
A bit more niche, but Leader’s access to debuffs which completely ignore purify and cleanse attempts is quite valuable. Any mystics placed on nodes like tenacity or ebb and flow to stop typical science counters are no hindrance to Leader. This also makes him workable against a decent amount of skills, though you still must watch out for things like tranquilize and debuff duration reduction.
• Degen damage
Not incredible damage (we’ll talk about it in a bit) but degen damage is still nice since it’s direct damage with few resists and no immunities. Opponents cannot wall out Leader with armor and resistances alone, and few champions can directly weaken his damage.
With his main advantages out of the way and their obvious applications, here’s some specific matchups Leader excels in that you might not have known about.
• Aarkus: usually shuts down most science champs due to his sig purify, leaving power control locked behind nullifying his power gain buffs and a select few mystics with passive ability power rate modification. Leader has no such issues thanks to his severe debuffs and can tank the coldsnap damage more comfortably than you might think. I took a r2 7* Aarkus on a war path with sadist (25% attack per debuff on him) and ebb and flow: intercept. I cleared the fight in ~40 seconds and only 20% health loss. Anything with way less attack boosts than that should be peanuts.
• Bishop: fun fact, power dissolve deals damage when power is lost for ANY reason other than special activation, not just ability power reversal. For example, it’d theoretically deal damage if Leader had some form of power drain/burn/steal. Bishop does not consume power on special activation, and instead removes the corresponding power after the special finishes. This is not special activation, so you know what that means:
80k damage for the crime of throwing a sp2. You can maintain the power dissolve basically indefinitely. Have fun.
• Killmonger: triggers a bunch of power gain when inflicted with a debuff. Leader reverses power gain and can convert it into damage. You do the math. Keeping his power low means you don’t have to deal with reverberation damage either.
THE BAD
The damage. It’s just the damage. We all knew this was the problem. But is it quite as bad as people are led to believe?
Well first of all, yeah sort of. A fight against ROL CM takes over 2 minutes for a max 6*, which is just plainly not good. That time could be shaved down a fair bit (the second degen debuff overkilled so I could have thrown the sp3 sooner, ROL AI is wonky on a good day even with Leader’s green door, and the current bug doesn’t help) but even if you’re being very generous that fight time is not hitting 90 seconds or less.
With that said, in war contexts 2 minutes is more than enough leeway to secure kills; Leader’s damage only becomes a problem against the final boss node’s massive healthpool. In war Leader can also abuse opponents with willpower and mystic dispersion masteries to clean up fights quicker, and with the plethora of regen/power gain nodes there I think war is clearly where Leader shines best.
The current saga meta is also a good time for Leader, despite what you might expect. Although you can’t reverse regen, controlling it and just going for sp3 degens is still quite viable. Leader inflicts enough debuffs that he has absolutely no issues maintaining the tactic heal block (which is more than some others can claim), plus his withers allow you to fully shut down the power gain rather than simply reducing it. His severe debuffs are icing on the cake, meaning a lot of the anti-debuff nodes that give other tactic champs a hard time are inconsequential for Leader (just watch out for debuff immunity like mighty charge or right back at it, which does stop Leader’s debuffs).
There’s also the obvious note that it’s Leader’s generic sp3 degen damage that’s the problem. If there’s heavy regen and power gain to reverse, Leader ends things quickly. 20 seconds against ROLverine is impressively quick, although unsurprising.
Finally, Leader’s sp3 rotation and damage isn’t completely godawful for bgs, just subpar. If the opponent isn’t too beefy Leader isn’t often in danger of failing to kill, he’ll just do it slowly. Here’s a few bg matches in the current GC meta, which keep in mind has indomitable so no heal reversal damage. All these fights are maxed 6*s or a r2 7*, where I simply went to sp3 and threw it when the green door was about to close (these fights would probably be quicker if I went for power dissolve, I only went sp3 to demonstrate Leader’s generic damage output):
I’m not saying these are good times, I’m saying they’re not unsalvageable. I feel like based on talks here that there’s a sizable contingent of players that unironically think Leader would time out against lower rank opponents with 50% health left or something, that’s very much not true without a lot going against you.
WHAT’S TO BE DONE?
The obvious: buff his damage. The question is how. To make things clear out the gate, I don’t think any damage buff should focus on a bgs timeframe; Leader’s general damage being behind sp3 means he’s simply not built for general bgs stomping and no buff that doesn’t dramatically alter his kit will change that, nor should it. His bgs usage will always be as a scalpel to remove some key threats or to thrive in specific metas rather than a generic bgs god like Hulkling. However, there is one thing you can do to make him a bit less bad in bgs specifically: make his sp3 degen shorter (same damage obviously).
Someone like Gorr is often similarly reliant on sp3 to close bg fights, but his advantage is that the raw hit damage of his sp3 WILL kill them as soon as he hits that button and the animation finishes. Leader isn’t like that because his damage is in the form of a degen debuff after the sp3, one that takes a whole 14 seconds to deal its full damage, a big time drain on an already disadvantaged playstyle. If it simply dealt that same damage over, say, only 4 seconds Leader could perhaps be more assured that after his sp3 his victory is in short order.
With that out of the way, more generically Leader just needs his degens or furies bumped up and he’d be genuinely great. Perhaps asking for 1 sp3 to be sufficient to take out a ROL healthpool might be a bit much given Leader’s more of a control champ than a damage nuke, but it should be more threatening for the 50-60 seconds of setup. Something like a flat 0.5% boost to his furies (1.5% potency currently) and a slight bump to his degen potency would probably be enough to achieve that, where a single sp3 might not bring down a ROL champ but would leave them very low. Of course I wouldn’t say no to more, but I think Leader has enough going for him elsewhere that he doesn’t NEED a whole lot, just wants.
Now for some more fun buffs that I don’t think Leader needs but could be fun if they added one or two of them:
• Steadfast triggers at 10 debuffs instead of 12 against non-mystics to make it more reliable.
• Increased protection potency (say 1.5% per debuff instead of 1%) to better leverage Leader’s bulk.
• Personal debuffs are paused during the opponent’s specials (debuff maintenance is easier against longer specials).
• Power dissolve deals damage when the opponent WOULD lose power (i.e. it deals damage if the opponent has reversed power gain but is already at 0 power and can’t lose any more).
• And the pipe dream buff that isn’t in the scope of the buff program but I think would be really neat: a self-root mechanic. We’ve only had it on Rintrah so far, and I think Leader could really benefit from it. Something like Dragon man’s sp1 can push you far from the door and by the time you push him back he’ll throw it again. A self-root could deny the opponent that ground and Leader’s bulk and impressive blocking capabilities means he won’t be too bothered by any forced block chip it entails.
So that’s basically it. Leader could use some tune ups to fix a glaring weak point, but people are really overlooking a champ with genuinely great groundwork and a flaw that is honestly not as bad as people think. There’s a lot you can do with Leader if you work with him, and hopefully Kabam will give him the bump he needs for people to truly see that. If you’re interested in becoming a disciple of the Leader and have questions I’m happy to oblige because as you can clearly tell I like yapping. And if you have him, give him an honest go and see if you’re interested in what he offers.
As the proud owner of a maxed 6* Leader basically since he released, I wanted to make a bit of a defense against the Leader slander amongst the community. Before you get your pitchforks out (I know you all have them ready), I’m not advocating that Leader is perfect as is and we shouldn’t buff him. I simply think the community has been far too dismissive of a champion that is capable of quite a lot and far too quick to dump him in the “useless trash” category. So let’s talk about what he can do and where he excels, plus where he struggles and how he can be improved.
THE GOOD
• Regen and Power reversal
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Leader is built with access to wither and spectre debuffs that grant -200% regen and ability power rate (-300% regen rate if you run despair, which you should). This gives Leader great control over those abilities, including the ability to reap constant damage from the opponent’s willpower mastery in bgs and war. It’s also incredibly easy to access: just throw a bunch of light attack combos. You can gain a significant portion of the benefit extremely quickly and you don’t need specials to activate or maintain it, useful advantages over the likes of Sandman and Void.
• Constant aggression
The green door makes all opponents more aggressive the closer they are to it. I shouldn’t need to mention that this is a great bit of extra fight control that, unlike the above bullet, is pretty much always useful. It’s a constant passive effect, so the opponent has no real way of preventing or punishing it either. Leader is a champion that really wants to be constantly backdraft light intercepting (Abs man players will be familiar with Leader’s gameplay) so this really makes that loop far more consistent. Also nice for fights where you need aggressive AI (Enchantress anyone?)
• Bulk and steadfast
Leader has decent health and armor rating, some base energy resistance and poison immunity, and a massive block proficiency (I can’t easily confirm it but I assume it’s top 20 at least). It’s so high, in fact, that Leader has perfect blocks when he parries any attack so long as the opponent has no block penetration. Combined with the inequity mastery (you should be running this for far more than just Leader) and his protection passives, Leader becomes quite tanky once he starts stacking his debuffs. In addition, a duped Leader gains an indefinite steadfast passive while the opponent has enough of his personal debuffs, letting you block unblockable attacks. This works against ALL unblockable attacks, including basics, which is a very good bonus compared to most champs who can only block unblockable specials. Normally this kicks in at 12 debuffs, which is manageable but not necessarily guaranteed 100% uptime. Against mystics though? Only 4 debuffs, which you can maintain in your sleep.
“WTF is an unblockable” -Leader probably.
• Severe debuffs
A bit more niche, but Leader’s access to debuffs which completely ignore purify and cleanse attempts is quite valuable. Any mystics placed on nodes like tenacity or ebb and flow to stop typical science counters are no hindrance to Leader. This also makes him workable against a decent amount of skills, though you still must watch out for things like tranquilize and debuff duration reduction.
• Degen damage
Not incredible damage (we’ll talk about it in a bit) but degen damage is still nice since it’s direct damage with few resists and no immunities. Opponents cannot wall out Leader with armor and resistances alone, and few champions can directly weaken his damage.
With his main advantages out of the way and their obvious applications, here’s some specific matchups Leader excels in that you might not have known about.
• Aarkus: usually shuts down most science champs due to his sig purify, leaving power control locked behind nullifying his power gain buffs and a select few mystics with passive ability power rate modification. Leader has no such issues thanks to his severe debuffs and can tank the coldsnap damage more comfortably than you might think. I took a r2 7* Aarkus on a war path with sadist (25% attack per debuff on him) and ebb and flow: intercept. I cleared the fight in ~40 seconds and only 20% health loss. Anything with way less attack boosts than that should be peanuts.
• Bishop: fun fact, power dissolve deals damage when power is lost for ANY reason other than special activation, not just ability power reversal. For example, it’d theoretically deal damage if Leader had some form of power drain/burn/steal. Bishop does not consume power on special activation, and instead removes the corresponding power after the special finishes. This is not special activation, so you know what that means:
80k damage for the crime of throwing a sp2. You can maintain the power dissolve basically indefinitely. Have fun.
• Killmonger: triggers a bunch of power gain when inflicted with a debuff. Leader reverses power gain and can convert it into damage. You do the math. Keeping his power low means you don’t have to deal with reverberation damage either.
THE BAD
The damage. It’s just the damage. We all knew this was the problem. But is it quite as bad as people are led to believe?
Well first of all, yeah sort of. A fight against ROL CM takes over 2 minutes for a max 6*, which is just plainly not good. That time could be shaved down a fair bit (the second degen debuff overkilled so I could have thrown the sp3 sooner, ROL AI is wonky on a good day even with Leader’s green door, and the current bug doesn’t help) but even if you’re being very generous that fight time is not hitting 90 seconds or less.
With that said, in war contexts 2 minutes is more than enough leeway to secure kills; Leader’s damage only becomes a problem against the final boss node’s massive healthpool. In war Leader can also abuse opponents with willpower and mystic dispersion masteries to clean up fights quicker, and with the plethora of regen/power gain nodes there I think war is clearly where Leader shines best.
The current saga meta is also a good time for Leader, despite what you might expect. Although you can’t reverse regen, controlling it and just going for sp3 degens is still quite viable. Leader inflicts enough debuffs that he has absolutely no issues maintaining the tactic heal block (which is more than some others can claim), plus his withers allow you to fully shut down the power gain rather than simply reducing it. His severe debuffs are icing on the cake, meaning a lot of the anti-debuff nodes that give other tactic champs a hard time are inconsequential for Leader (just watch out for debuff immunity like mighty charge or right back at it, which does stop Leader’s debuffs).
There’s also the obvious note that it’s Leader’s generic sp3 degen damage that’s the problem. If there’s heavy regen and power gain to reverse, Leader ends things quickly. 20 seconds against ROLverine is impressively quick, although unsurprising.
Finally, Leader’s sp3 rotation and damage isn’t completely godawful for bgs, just subpar. If the opponent isn’t too beefy Leader isn’t often in danger of failing to kill, he’ll just do it slowly. Here’s a few bg matches in the current GC meta, which keep in mind has indomitable so no heal reversal damage. All these fights are maxed 6*s or a r2 7*, where I simply went to sp3 and threw it when the green door was about to close (these fights would probably be quicker if I went for power dissolve, I only went sp3 to demonstrate Leader’s generic damage output):
I’m not saying these are good times, I’m saying they’re not unsalvageable. I feel like based on talks here that there’s a sizable contingent of players that unironically think Leader would time out against lower rank opponents with 50% health left or something, that’s very much not true without a lot going against you.
WHAT’S TO BE DONE?
The obvious: buff his damage. The question is how. To make things clear out the gate, I don’t think any damage buff should focus on a bgs timeframe; Leader’s general damage being behind sp3 means he’s simply not built for general bgs stomping and no buff that doesn’t dramatically alter his kit will change that, nor should it. His bgs usage will always be as a scalpel to remove some key threats or to thrive in specific metas rather than a generic bgs god like Hulkling. However, there is one thing you can do to make him a bit less bad in bgs specifically: make his sp3 degen shorter (same damage obviously).
Someone like Gorr is often similarly reliant on sp3 to close bg fights, but his advantage is that the raw hit damage of his sp3 WILL kill them as soon as he hits that button and the animation finishes. Leader isn’t like that because his damage is in the form of a degen debuff after the sp3, one that takes a whole 14 seconds to deal its full damage, a big time drain on an already disadvantaged playstyle. If it simply dealt that same damage over, say, only 4 seconds Leader could perhaps be more assured that after his sp3 his victory is in short order.
With that out of the way, more generically Leader just needs his degens or furies bumped up and he’d be genuinely great. Perhaps asking for 1 sp3 to be sufficient to take out a ROL healthpool might be a bit much given Leader’s more of a control champ than a damage nuke, but it should be more threatening for the 50-60 seconds of setup. Something like a flat 0.5% boost to his furies (1.5% potency currently) and a slight bump to his degen potency would probably be enough to achieve that, where a single sp3 might not bring down a ROL champ but would leave them very low. Of course I wouldn’t say no to more, but I think Leader has enough going for him elsewhere that he doesn’t NEED a whole lot, just wants.
Now for some more fun buffs that I don’t think Leader needs but could be fun if they added one or two of them:
• Steadfast triggers at 10 debuffs instead of 12 against non-mystics to make it more reliable.
• Increased protection potency (say 1.5% per debuff instead of 1%) to better leverage Leader’s bulk.
• Personal debuffs are paused during the opponent’s specials (debuff maintenance is easier against longer specials).
• Power dissolve deals damage when the opponent WOULD lose power (i.e. it deals damage if the opponent has reversed power gain but is already at 0 power and can’t lose any more).
• And the pipe dream buff that isn’t in the scope of the buff program but I think would be really neat: a self-root mechanic. We’ve only had it on Rintrah so far, and I think Leader could really benefit from it. Something like Dragon man’s sp1 can push you far from the door and by the time you push him back he’ll throw it again. A self-root could deny the opponent that ground and Leader’s bulk and impressive blocking capabilities means he won’t be too bothered by any forced block chip it entails.
So that’s basically it. Leader could use some tune ups to fix a glaring weak point, but people are really overlooking a champ with genuinely great groundwork and a flaw that is honestly not as bad as people think. There’s a lot you can do with Leader if you work with him, and hopefully Kabam will give him the bump he needs for people to truly see that. If you’re interested in becoming a disciple of the Leader and have questions I’m happy to oblige because as you can clearly tell I like yapping. And if you have him, give him an honest go and see if you’re interested in what he offers.
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Comments
Watching him melt Scarlet Witch and Hyperion with power dissolves was pretty enjoyable.
Prediction: "Leader is hitting all his targets, and we have no plans to re-balance him..."
Good album
• Leader’s viability as an attacker in PVP modes isn’t predicated on the opponent not running a mastery that has no indication it’s active until it triggers and screws you over, as several people have complained about with Nefaria (unfazed).
• Nefaria is very reliant on inflicting energy build up debuffs for him to consume and fuel his abilities, so purify and cleanse is a massive weak point. Leader doesn’t care about these things.
• Leader has access to proper ability power gain reversal, which can make him a more reliable method of shutting down defenders. There’s a difference between something like Nefaria significantly hindering Killmonger’s power gain and Leader just straight up denying Killmonger the ability to throw specials after a bit of setup.
• For how much I hear people complain about Kabam overusing unblockable everywhere, Leader’s steadfast should really be a huge selling point but barely anyone acknowledges it. Leader is basically immune to unblockable against mystics and can often maintain it against other classes as well, which Nefaria can’t offer.
Leader has other things going for him, but those are the big ones. Perhaps it’s just me, but I also just find Leader far easier and more fun to play than Nefaria. From my testing with a 4* from arena, Nefaria is quite reliant on his energy vulnerability to juice his damage and I’m finding it really hard to trigger in a majority of fights. The evade counterattack has too short range to hit after a special unless you’re very close to the opponent and you don’t have the time to manually punish specials after evading. Trying to get it to work against any projectile special has been very frustrating for me, whereas with Leader I just backdraft intercept and throw specials and win. TLDR, Nefaria isn’t the objectively upgraded Leader in anything besides raw damage.