How do you handle Bishop-Gritty in 4* land?

AlexR

It's difficult enough as a 4* player who lacks a useable Bishop (mine is 1/1/1) to counter GRocket/Kitty aka Gritty, but I've managed to climb on Grittys enough to get the Magik cover from Sim. (Medusa/Kraven/Iceman. Kraven and Medusa do damage control until Iceman can stun Kitty forever. It's not pretty, but it kinda works most of the time. Talking about severly undercovered Kitty, btw. I'm auto-skipping any too well-covered ones.)

Anyway-- so, Gritty's bad enough. But more and more teams are starting to have Bishop. Bishop on his own or Bishop/XFDP are already annoying too, but I can Vulture/G4mora my way around them. Stun stun stun. Mostly workable.

But what in the world am I supposed to do against Gritty+Bishop teams? They're starting to multiply, there's already lots more than last season and I have no idea how to beat that. I can't Kraven that, because Bishop. And without Kraven'ing that, I don't have enough time to stun things before Kitty gets out of hand. This is my roster, btw. Help appreciated.

tl;dr: title. how do you handle Bishop-Gritty as a 4* player?

ammenell

i like hunting low level gritty teams, because bishop, gamora and rocket handle them easily. 

but if there is bishop on the enemy team I skip. too much headache. 

KGB

You might have gotten more responses if you posted this in the Help forum.

Looking at who you have champed on your roster, I'd say your best bet is Gamora/ME Hulk/America.

Make sure Hulk is set to make 2 swaps per turn *and* do maximum tile destruction on turn 1. Boost 1 AP in all colors so America generates Crits immediately. Ideally order America in the middle slot so her critical tile is placed *before* Hulks swap in case it doesn't match immediately when placed.

The goal here is to cause so much board shake (initial from ME Hulk that can destroy Rockets strikes, then from 2 potential matches per turn from Hulks swaps and finally from America generating critical tiles on turn 2) that you get rid of 4+ strikes by turn 3 or so and Kitty is then useless.

Gamora is there to stun Bishop (you can use Iceman too if you prefer) although Bishop shouldn't jump in front much (you are targeting Kitty first) unless a critical from America pushes across the damage theshold (not sure it will or not).

KGB

AlexR

Yeah, I really wasn't thinking about where to best post this to until I had already posted it. So, first, thanks for the response! Appreciated!

MEHulk/America is a neat idea against Gritty-- I don't normally run them against Kitty, but it doesn't do too badly in getting rid of the special tiles. huh. Nice!

But... yeah, unfortunately, America skewers herself on Bishop. Her crit tiles do 3k (even a black 4-match+crit is still 1k+ which is over the damage threshold, too), and once she really starts getting going, she does 4k damage per turn. I just tried this on a non-Gritty Bishop team (GRocket/Medusa/Bishop) and she started making 3k crit tiles before I even got 6 blue AP, even without any boosts (thanks to MEHulk cascades).

In fact, she's kinda digging her own grave vs Bishop, because once her crit tile triggers Bishop, he jumps in front and then she passively punches him in the face and he punches back. It's both hilarious and really suicide-y on both sides.

AlexR

Okay, I drew my last Bl4de today, making him champable. Switching my BH to Bishop, since you apparently need Bishop in the current meta really badly. It's gonna be a while until my 1/1/1 Bishop is up to standards, but he should make some progress via BHs when I pull for Hela next week.

SymmeTrey

OP doesn't have the characters to do this, but, Dazzler/Rocket/Nico would be my recommended team to hit Bishop/Gritty in 4* land.

Try to get Dazzler in front by making a match, make sure to target Bishop, and when they hit you, Dazzler's stuns Bishop and removes several enemy strikes. Nico buffs your own tiles like a poor man's Kitty and can even true heal herself.

Nico is nice in this combo because she will keep your initial damage low enough to not trigger Bishop for a couple of turns (as opposed to 5-star match damage from Kitty), but, once Nico gets a head of steam, the strikes still get pretty beefy. I relied on her heavily in 4-star land.

You can still run Kitty/Rocket/Dazzler, but, it's harder to get Dazzler in front as Dazzler will likely only tank black with Kitty in the mix and Kitty's match damage might trigger Bishop earlier. For 5-star players, Gritty/Dazzler might be viable, but, for 4-star I would use Nico instead.

KGB

AlexR said:

Okay, I drew my last Bl4de today, making him champable. Switching my BH to Bishop, since you apparently need Bishop in the current meta really badly. It's gonna be a while until my 1/1/1 Bishop is up to standards, but he should make some progress via BHs when I pull for Hela next week.

You don't need Bishop for climbing. You just need him as a defensive deterrent. I finished Shield Sim on Sunday and saw the wall of Bishop/Gritty teams starting around 1800 like you did.

I have a deeper roster so I used Xpool/Peggy/Bishop to wreck those teams (Peggy stuns enemy Bishop/Kitty on turn 2 or 3) and GrockMorDusa teams for the last 200 points.

Once I hit 2000 for the Magik cover I stopped and went unshielded for the last 12 hours of the season. In that time I racked up 6 defensive wins and only 5 losses (for 80 points total). So Bishop is a highly effective deterrent on defense but he's not great for climbing (I used GrockMorDusa to go from 0-1800 without using a single health pack and only 25 fights).

KGB

AlexR

SymmeTrey said:

OP doesn't have the characters to do this, but, Dazzler/Rocket/Nico would be my recommended team to hit Bishop/Gritty in 4* land.

Try to get Dazzler in front by making a match, make sure to target Bishop, and when they hit you, Dazzler's stuns Bishop and removes several enemy strikes. Nico buffs your own tiles like a poor man's Kitty and can even true heal herself.

Nico is nice in this combo because she will keep your initial damage low enough to not trigger Bishop for a couple of turns (as opposed to 5-star match damage from Kitty), but, once Nico gets a head of steam, the strikes still get pretty beefy. I relied on her heavily in 4-star land.

You can still run Kitty/Rocket/Dazzler, but, it's harder to get Dazzler in front as Dazzler will likely only tank black with Kitty in the mix and Kitty's match damage might trigger Bishop earlier. For 5-star players, Gritty/Dazzler might be viable, but, for 4-star I would use Nico instead.

Nice, I like that! 

And yeah, sadly don't have her champed. Then again, since it sounds like Dazzler is mainly there for tile removal & stun, I'll at least try if it works with my half-covered Dazzler.

KGB said:

AlexR said:

Okay, I drew my last Bl4de today, making him champable. Switching my BH to Bishop, since you apparently need Bishop in the current meta really badly. It's gonna be a while until my 1/1/1 Bishop is up to standards, but he should make some progress via BHs when I pull for Hela next week.

You don't need Bishop for climbing. You just need him as a defensive deterrent. I finished Shield Sim on Sunday and saw the wall of Bishop/Gritty teams starting around 1800 like you did.

I have a deeper roster so I used Xpool/Peggy/Bishop to wreck those teams (Peggy stuns enemy Bishop/Kitty on turn 2 or 3) and GrockMorDusa teams for the last 200 points.

Once I hit 2000 for the Magik cover I stopped and went unshielded for the last 12 hours of the season. In that time I racked up 6 defensive wins and only 5 losses (for 80 points total). So Bishop is a highly effective deterrent on defense but he's not great for climbing (I used GrockMorDusa to go from 0-1800 without using a single health pack and only 25 fights).

KGB

And this, the bolded part, is the crux of it. The deterrent Bishop-Gritty wall at 1800. I have zero problems climbing up to that point (and yeah, sure don't need Bishop for that), but I need to deal with this Bishop-Gritty wall for the last 200 pts somehow. That is the problem. I need a reliable answer to that. And the most common answer I see seems to be "just bring your own Bishop".

AlexR

Interestingly, there was somehow actually less BishopGritty in Sim this month than last month. I just walked to 2k in Sim. Didn't even get to try any of my so far collected anti- Bishop/Gritty suggestions, because I couldn't find one below 1700 pts to test and I didn't need to hit one above that. Maybe next season; will report back if so.

tiomono

AlexR said:

SymmeTrey said:

OP doesn't have the characters to do this, but, Dazzler/Rocket/Nico would be my recommended team to hit Bishop/Gritty in 4* land.

Try to get Dazzler in front by making a match, make sure to target Bishop, and when they hit you, Dazzler's stuns Bishop and removes several enemy strikes. Nico buffs your own tiles like a poor man's Kitty and can even true heal herself.

Nico is nice in this combo because she will keep your initial damage low enough to not trigger Bishop for a couple of turns (as opposed to 5-star match damage from Kitty), but, once Nico gets a head of steam, the strikes still get pretty beefy. I relied on her heavily in 4-star land.

You can still run Kitty/Rocket/Dazzler, but, it's harder to get Dazzler in front as Dazzler will likely only tank black with Kitty in the mix and Kitty's match damage might trigger Bishop earlier. For 5-star players, Gritty/Dazzler might be viable, but, for 4-star I would use Nico instead.

Nice, I like that! 

And yeah, sadly don't have her champed. Then again, since it sounds like Dazzler is mainly there for tile removal & stun, I'll at least try if it works with my half-covered Dazzler.

KGB said:

AlexR said:

Okay, I drew my last Bl4de today, making him champable. Switching my BH to Bishop, since you apparently need Bishop in the current meta really badly. It's gonna be a while until my 1/1/1 Bishop is up to standards, but he should make some progress via BHs when I pull for Hela next week.

You don't need Bishop for climbing. You just need him as a defensive deterrent. I finished Shield Sim on Sunday and saw the wall of Bishop/Gritty teams starting around 1800 like you did.

I have a deeper roster so I used Xpool/Peggy/Bishop to wreck those teams (Peggy stuns enemy Bishop/Kitty on turn 2 or 3) and GrockMorDusa teams for the last 200 points.

Once I hit 2000 for the Magik cover I stopped and went unshielded for the last 12 hours of the season. In that time I racked up 6 defensive wins and only 5 losses (for 80 points total). So Bishop is a highly effective deterrent on defense but he's not great for climbing (I used GrockMorDusa to go from 0-1800 without using a single health pack and only 25 fights).

KGB

And this, the bolded part, is the crux of it. The deterrent Bishop-Gritty wall at 1800. I have zero problems climbing up to that point (and yeah, sure don't need Bishop for that), but I need to deal with this Bishop-Gritty wall for the last 200 pts somehow. That is the problem. I need a reliable answer to that. And the most common answer I see seems to be "just bring your own Bishop".

But below the quote you highlighted he also says he just used grockmordusa to go from 0-1800 with 0 health packs and used grockmordusa for his last 200 points.

He used xpool/peggy/bishop specifically for gritty/bishop teams but that team was not his go to team.

Any time a character or combo dominates it gets frustrating. That being said the current dominating teams can all be beat by multiple options. Which actually is good for the game. You do not need bishop to beat bishop. In the right team your own bishop can make it easier, but there are other options.

AlexR

tiomono said:

But below the quote you highlighted he also says he just used grockmordusa to go from 0-1800 with 0 health packs and used grockmordusa for his last 200 points.

He used xpool/peggy/bishop specifically for gritty/bishop teams but that team was not his go to team.

I omitted that part because I didn't find it relevant. Again, I don't have a problem climbing in Sim otherwise. I can go from 0-1800 without problems. And once I get up there, beating Bishop in isolation isn't that difficult and I can even mostly deal with GRocket/undercovered Kitty.

The problem I do have is this specific team--- Bishop/Gritty and I am looking for solutions to beat them reliably. I'm not here to complain about the meta. I'm trying to find something I can use to deal with this team.

tiomono said:

Any time a character or combo dominates it gets frustrating. That being said the current dominating teams can all be beat by multiple options. Which actually is good for the game. You do not need bishop to beat bishop. In the right team your own bishop can make it easier, but there are other options.

Great! If you have suggestions, I'm happily listening! I really appreciate the Dazzler solution because that looks rad (and still intend to try it with my undercovered one) and am trying to build up my own Bishop, but you will notice that both teams mentioned so far use characters I only have undercovered (Dazzler) or have no access to at all (Bishop, although he's progressed to 2/3/2 in the meantime). So, would absolutely appreciate more options in this thread! Yes please!

tiomono

I would try medusa, gamora, me hulk. Hulk may clear a few tiles on his initial move. Prioritize blue so you can get gamora stun train rolling. Any strikes you can clear while chasing blue can help speed you up. Stun kitty to stop the buffs. If medusa damage gets high enough to trigger bishop stun him.

You want max points in hulks shuffle and gamora stun (so she stuns 2 enemies). And start with blue boosts. Hopefully with both medusa and gamora tossing out specials you can stay ahead of kitty purple.

AlexR

Okay, I went on a Bishop/Gritty hunt today to experiment around and won my first Bishop/Gritty encounters!

First, I did try out my undercovered Dazzler-- and she really surprised me by how well the Dazzler-Bishop initial interaction works, even with a lvl 150 Dazzler. She reliably stuns Bishop for 4 turns at battle start and survives it, too. It's predictably not a solution for me currently, since my Dazzler is too undercovered/too low level to help bring the fight home from there, but I was pretty impressed that the stun part of it already worked on Bishop like a charm. Nice, will keep in mind.

tiomono said:

I would try medusa, gamora, me hulk. Hulk may clear a few tiles on his initial move. Prioritize blue so you can get gamora stun train rolling. Any strikes you can clear while chasing blue can help speed you up. Stun kitty to stop the buffs. If medusa damage gets high enough to trigger bishop stun him.

You want max points in hulks shuffle and gamora stun (so she stuns 2 enemies). And start with blue boosts. Hopefully with both medusa and gamora tossing out specials you can stay ahead of kitty purple.

This worked reliably! Out of 4 attempts, I only had 1 close call (cascade on G4mora at the start; she survived with ~400 health-- Medusa managed to heal her up from there after a few rounds) and won all of them. Didn't start with boosts, but did the rest. Got both a lucky, a medium and 2 blue-starved boards for my experiments.
On a blue-starved board, it can be a bit dice-y if MEHulk hasn't managed to let you match the strike tiles --but between Medusa sometimes generating blue from matching strike tiles and MEHulk's tile swap, you have a surprisingly good chance of getting yourself unstuck. And since a Kitty/GRocket/Bishop team doesn't have room for Medusa on it, matching the strike tiles is a lot less annoying than in a standard Kitty/GRocket/Medusa team. I thought I'd run into problems with bringing too little damage with this team, but actually that wasn't an issue.

If possible, it's safest to avoid matching Medusa's tile before Kitty is stunned, since Kitty's purple below @5 is actually reliant on you having s/p/a tiles. No s/p/a tiles, and her purple stays silent and Medusa's cd can poke her in peace. (Didn't realise that -- was a nice surprise!)

So, thank you so much! That helped lots! That's exactly what I wanted/needed. Next season, I will be able to climb that Bishop-Gritty wall instead of trying to skip around it, heh.

tiomono

Your welcome. I'm solidly in 5* land so pretty much every kitty I see also destroys countdowns. I would keep an eye on that when you pick which gritty bishop teams to hit. 

Bishop is a very good defensive deterrent, but beatable. I think he is actually more dangerous for 5* rosters since typically the best way to fight him is with slow chip damage to his teammates (which 5*'s cannot do) or stunning him. He goes down very fast vs 5*'s but does a decent chunk of damage and generates tons of blue really quick.

AlexR

Yeah, absolutely I always check how well covered a Kitty is before I hit her team, because there's some unleveled fully covered ones around that I have no business tangling with. The only purple @5 Kitty I'd attempt to tackle would be a 1/5/1 Kitty.

Can def imagine that Bishop is generally worse in 5* land since your 5* match damage is alreadyin danger of triggering his passive. In 4* land, it's not that difficult to play around Bishop if he's by himself; Vulture/G4mora is usually a safe bet. The problem when he's paired up with Kitty/GRocket is that those two punish waiting and Bishop punishes acting too fast and either is deadly, which was where my problem come from.

ThaRoadWarrior

As an alternative to Rocket/Dazzler, you could also try Valkyrie/Dazzler, maybe with Medusa in that third spot. Dazzler eats a hit, valkyrie makes strikes, dazzler does the thing, and anybody that matches the free friendly specials gives you back health via medusa. And they keep coming as long as there are yellows on the board and someone is tanking for valkyrie (given OPs roster that should be everyone) as opposed to the fixed-sum strikes you get out of 4ocket.

Ares76

Tried an new team for the first time and won with it. And that is what matters against Bishop/Gritty-teams, ain't it?

Was going against 375 level (3/3/3) Kitty, 284 level Grocket and 275 Bishop.

I went into the macht with GE Doom level 255 (1/1/1), C4rol Danvers level 293 (5/5/3) and G4mora level 289 (5/35) and brought 2 blue AP and 2 black AP with me.

Those are three chars that a lot of people have at similiar levels, GE Doom is still in latest tokens so you can easily chase after him.

GE Doom is the key to victory. You have to tank with him from the beginning until he removes all the strike tiles with his death. As he overlaps 2 colors with Gamora and Carol that part was not diffcult - he tanked with blue/black/yellow/purple and Team-Ups. I was doing matches against Kitty so Bishop didn't get overclocked. What I didn't realize until I was into the match was that both teams had yellow as their strongest color which means Carol's energy manipulation would trigger when the enemy matches yellow tiles.

I was prioritzing blue and black matches while GE Doom was still alive but should have better matched away the yellow first.

But it didn't matter as energy manipulation only triggered once and Bishop only generated 5 blue AP.

GE Doom lasted 4 matches until the enemy's strikes were too strong...and that is when the match sudenly turns into your favor.

It's two (C4rol & G4mora) against three (Bishop, Kitty & Gr4cket) from here on but the odds are on your side without Gr4ckets stike tiles.

From now on you can do matches against Bishop and get the last blue, black and yellow AP to finish the match very quickly.

I stunned Kitty all the time with G4amora's blue so that she didn't destroy my special tiles with her purple. I one-shotted Bishop with a combination of C4rol's black&yellow, then one-shotted Gr4cket with another black&yellow. Thus the strike and attack tiles from G4mora were improved by Carol. Kitty went down a few matches later. On her own against C4rol and G4mora she stands no chance.

Will definitely try this team more in the future. Even leveling up GE Doom a bit wouldn't hurt. If he stays alive one more turn it's three more blue/black AP for you before the real match begins.

ThaRoadWarrior

This has been my primary use for GE Doom so far as well. Even though mine is 4/2/4, I still have him at 255 so that he gets killed easily. Ghost Rider: Robbie Reyes (my only champ 5) still tanks black over him, so I have to hope for there to be yellow and blue matches for the 2 turns it takes him to get slain.

AlexR

ThaRoadWarrior said:

As an alternative to Rocket/Dazzler, you could also try Valkyrie/Dazzler, maybe with Medusa in that third spot. Dazzler eats a hit, valkyrie makes strikes, dazzler does the thing, and anybody that matches the free friendly specials gives you back health via medusa. And they keep coming as long as there are yellows on the board and someone is tanking for valkyrie (given OPs roster that should be everyone) as opposed to the fixed-sum strikes you get out of 4ocket.

 Valk/Dazzler is a neat combo -- I don't think I'm really in a position to use that yet either because at that point I'm taking 2 under-covered lvl 150 characters against a team of champed 4* + Kitty. Fairly sure that's not going to end well for me, lol. Dazzler's stun works undercovered, but both would be incredibly squishy and do pathetic damage. Medusa would essentially have to solo the actual "killing the enemy team" part -- But GRocket has some serious drawbacks in that team (limited strike tiles, very slow actives that don't contribute that much), so replacing them with someone else who can get the same job done and is overall more useful sounds good to me. Also, Valk looks way fun to play, can't wait to have her useable. Good suggestion, noted for later.

(Also, I appreciate all working suggestions in here. Pretty sure I'm not the only one who was having trouble with Gritty/Bishop, so discussing and collecting various counter teams totally helps in general. )

Ares76 said:

Tried an new team for the first time and won with it. And that is what matters against Bishop/Gritty-teams, ain't it?

Absolutely! GE Doom sounds like a great help like this! Paired with 4*s, he should quite naturally tank, which works perfectly here.

I am a bit surprised you went C4rol/G4mora rather than Vulture/G4mora which seems less dice-y to me-- you aren't in danger of C4rol's energy manipulation triggering Bishop, nor do you have to protect tiles as much and you can pretty much keep Kitty (or Bishop, choose as necessary) stunned forever once you get going. However, Doom feeding yellow&black does seem perfect for C4rol, yeah-- nice finding, that!

I'm still waiting for the next 5* to be revealed before I decide if I want to pull more for Doom or save my small hoard for the new batch. Would sure be nice to get some more Doom covers.

ThaRoadWarrior

I tried Thing/Vulture/Invisible Woman against a very high level Gritty/Bishop team in simulator, and it worked out very well. The gimmick here is that Invisible Woman's blue can lock not only the strikes, but also Kitty's repeater. Once you've locked down the repeater, it won't walk around or create another. So when the match started, I lucked out with a black Match-4 that triggered Bishop, which triggered Thing to make a bunch of defends. I put Vulture up, got the blue to lock a bunch of tiles, then Thing's green randomly chose a 4X4 block that took out all the rest of them (your mileage may vary on that lol). Unfortunately Bishop wasn't dead enough, so he killed thing. But by then, I'd been able to get IW invisible, and keep Vulture in the air. It wasn't overly quick, and i came out with a dead thing, half-health vulture, and nearly full health IW, but it was a 460-ish Kitty, and near max-champ bishop and rockets on the other end.

firethorne

By abandoning PvP as part of the game that I bother looking at.