New Character - Namor (Phoenix Five) 5*

entrailbucket

@WhiteBomber said:

@fight4thedream said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@GrimSkald said:

@entrailbucket said:

@dianetics said:
You all are splitting hairs here.
Mephisto and Namor are A tier characters that fill their own niches and are very good at it.
Agatha is a clear S tier support.
Between the 3 it’s going to be the best LL store we have seen. Since every character is either pick 1 or 2 for a number of teams.

Ever is a very long time. I'm pretty sure Gambit and Thor were in the same legendary store. Also weren't m'Thor and Chasm in at the same time?

I keep a list. You're right -- Gambit and GladiaThor were in the same Legendary Pool - but on either side of them were Daredevil (thematically perfect but woefully underpowered even from the start,) and Archangel (absolutely sucked until his boost, now is about B tier.) MThor and Chasm were released back-to-back, yes, and on either side of them are Kamala Khan (deceptively decent, but only decent,) and She-Hulk (just plain doesn't work well, tbh.) IIRC I did go down to zero on the first, but haven't really leveled Kamala since then, she's 486. Possibly She-Hulk too, she's 493 and I've never favorited her either.

Skimming through the list, I really don't see any that stand out as all three being really solid. Even SW/Colossus, a once-standby, are bookended with Cyclops and Knull, both of whom I would say are under-powered.

Maybe Wong-Kang-Magik? Magik might be high B-tier...

I guess it remains to be seen then!

The Thor/Gambit and m'Thor/Chasm groups may have lacked viable 3rds, but managed to define the metagame for very long periods. Will the current 3 have the same impact?

I find it difficult to believe, simply because those other pools pushed the power level so hard. The current 3 are definitely solid, but who are they replacing? The characters folks use now are so strong that it'll be hard to power creep them. Are any of these 3 strong enough to push out one of the current staples?

To be fair, Thor didn't become meta until Gambit got his nerf. Prior to that he was so OP no one else mattered much. After Gambit got his nerf then Thorkoye started their reign. At the time of his release he wasn't considered anywhere near what Gambit, Chasm or MThor were at theirs.

KGB

Exactly!!!

It's almost impossible to figure out how good, or -- related, but not exactly the same -- how meta-defining a set of Latest are at release time. It depends on a whole lot of different factors.

It's also important to keep in mind that Okoye came later down the line. I have always wondered what the meta would have looked like if they hadn't nerfed Gambit with Okoye and Thor being a thing.

And on that note, I went all in on Nova, Agatha, Mephisto. I think Nova has a lot of potential if the dev team decides to flesh out the CD meta more dramatically and his skillset seems more interesting to me than Namor.

I guess my main issue with Namor is that I don't really see where I would use him non-boosted. Sure, he is great with MThor but she has a lot of dance partners and I don't see Namor cracking the top 5. There is Shang-Chi, Riri, Agatha, Polaris, Colossus. You can make an argument about him replacing Colossus in that top 5 list but I value Colossus's damage reduction and defensive potential especially with Fantasticar.

I see people talk about him potentially getting rid of invisibility tiles but is that really a big issue for MThor teams? I honestly don't know since I don't run MThor much in PvP but opponent teams with MThor seem to get my by invisibility tiles without much sweat.

He makes a good third wheel for PvE teams with MThor/Shang-chi but then there's also America Chavez and Agatha whose abilities seem more reliable.

And if you aren't running him with MThor, who else are you going to pair him with? I saw Agent Venom mentioned which is cool and if that is something that works well, I'm here for it. I would like to say Gladiator Thor but the defense on that team would just be atrocious.

So I'm still sitting on the fence on whether I want to invest heavily in him. On the other hand, I love the 3* Rivals Namor. There is a lot of crazy fun time potential there.

"And if you aren't running him with MThor, who else are you going to pair him with?"
Agatha5, Karnack, Shangchi, Northstar etc. If we're being honest with ourselves though, the 3star is already better than the 5. I like them both.

I think you guys are having different discussions here, and it's the classic discrepancy in character evaluation where both sides are right, they're just evaluating on a different axis.

"Namor is good" and "Namor is never the best option when unboosted" are not contradictory at all.

dianetics

@WhiteBomber said:
"And if you aren't running him with MThor, who else are you going to pair him with?"
Agatha5, Karnack, Shangchi, Northstar etc. If we're being honest with ourselves though, the 3star is already better than the 5. I like them both.

Shh don't let the cat out of the bag.

entrailbucket

Seems like all the cover swaps got processed...I fought a bunch of 672 Namors in the last event.

He's pretty bad on defense, in case anybody was wondering about that. He has a ton of health, for some reason, but his black was the only ability I had to worry about, and it's negated by Leapfrog.

His green and red fired quite a bit but don't seem dangerous -- really, they just helped me by blowing up opposing Leapfrog tiles.

WhiteBomber

Yeah, out of Agatha, Mephisto and this guy, Mephisto is the only one I would have to change up strategy for. All great on offense at least.

The team damage on Namors red is kind of embarrassing. Maybe they plan on releasing some stronger, low health airborne characters.

entrailbucket

@WhiteBomber said:
Yeah, out of Agatha, Mephisto and this guy, Mephisto is the only one I would have to change up strategy for. All great on offense at least.

The team damage on Namors red is kind of embarrassing. Maybe they plan on releasing some stronger, low health airborne characters.

Yep, and to be clear, I've not really used him on offense at all. He's not high level enough to be useful for me, so I can't speak to that at all.

GrimSkald

@entrailbucket said:

@WhiteBomber said:
Yeah, out of Agatha, Mephisto and this guy, Mephisto is the only one I would have to change up strategy for. All great on offense at least.

The team damage on Namors red is kind of embarrassing. Maybe they plan on releasing some stronger, low health airborne characters.

Yep, and to be clear, I've not really used him on offense at all. He's not high level enough to be useful for me, so I can't speak to that at all.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it - I've been using him (I've got him in the high 460s so not bad,) and I basically only fire the red if I can finish the fight (pretty rare, it's like 8k boosted?) or when it's down to 3 AP.

dianetics

I'm running him with Agatha and halfthor right now and its pretty wild. There is so much board destruction and a lot of damage really fast. I'm getting his green and red off a lot and its not particularly slow either.
His black hits like a truck once he gets a lot of Emporers Wrath charges. With this team it is not uncommon to see 90-100 charges after a few rounds. Agatha's purple is a nice bonus too.
Really fun and a nice change of pace.