How do you counter Bishop?

HoundofShadow · April 2019

R4G has AoE. So, that's something to look out for if you are banking on Howard to win the match.

ThaRoadWarrior · April 2019

I unironically love that we are seriously proposing Howard The Duck as a counter to the current pvp meta. For that matter, if there were a reliable enough purple battery you could also use Spider-Ham to do it.

Sadly my own Howard is 5/3/5 with 9 saved at lvl 131, way down in my "when i find the iso..." block of characters, and even Bishop is at 4/3/5 with 1 saved, though he is at 209. Many of the 4* suggestions here are in that block of covered, but unchamped 4*s on my roster (XFDP, Iceman, Prowler).

Has anyone tried Bishop/Invisible Woman to lock the strikes? It's something of a dangerous game to not just remove them, but Force Bubbles only costs 8 blue AP. In fact, I wonder if New Reed/IW/Thing isn't also finally a contender to counter this team? I still need to champ IW, or I'd give it a test.

jtsings · April 2019

I certainly can't comment for 5* MMR but my anti-Bishop team has always been Iceman and Vulture (and it's a really solid team against anyone else as well). Pairing these two with 4* Thanos seems like it could be a very solid counter to Gritty and Bishop. You have 2 powers: Vultures' Blue and Thanos' Green, that can destroy the remaining strike tiles that Thanos doesn't destroy (which Vulture gladly provides the AP every time he goes airborne). And if Kitty or Grocket gets their countdown tile on the board Vulture can take them out of play with some careful planning. Really the only thing you have to worry about is Grocket firing his Blue power in an unreachable corner. Thanos is certainly going to be my bonus hero, once he's recruitable, because he seems to be a good answer to some of the Grocket teams I've seem in PVP and Simulator.

ThaRoadWarrior · April 2019

I agree, I'm pretty hype for Th4nos as a Gritty counter - particularly since one of the big challenges faced by GRRR is running out of green for Hell Ride to nibble. I think Rogue/Th4nos/GRRR might be my team at that point. I'm still going to leave my BH on Chavez until she gets to 360 though (311); I need a second 5* that's actually viable as soon as I can get one.

jp1 · April 2019

Even under leveled Thanos was pulling enough of my strikes off the board that AI matches we’re dealing with the rest easily. He is so effective that I had to switch my team up before I even made 300 points.

Very accurate counter. Now, where is the simple 1 character neuter for Okoye/Thor? They are easy enough to deal with using Kitty/Rocket, but what if Thanos is on their team as well?

ThaRoadWarrior · April 2019

Hela certainly neuters Ghost Rider with that passive that sucks out enemy green. It's possible she is effective against Thor teams, but I'm not sure since I don't have a good thor to see if I lose on offense, or a good hela (just got my first cover today) to chase them down. I wonder if some kind of Reverse-Okoye character who stacks damage resistance with AP that you could use with Quake to absorb that incoming damage would do it?

I feel like we've been seeing light-touch attempts at defending against Thor-koye that haven't really worked on the last few 5* releases.

· Fi5k's black damage negation is too expensive - if it were passive it might have had a chance to do something against those Thor cascades, though it doesn't save you from power damage. He also has some mis-implemented AP reduction capability
· Doom has 2 different kinds of heal, the true heal being based on colors Okoye tanks and one that Thor chases, and has a minor ap steal attached (is this working? I feel like it may not be because i rarely see Doom in the wild). He also has that special tile remove on death to counter Gritty teams, which is fine to a point I guess. Maybe Doom/Lumbercap is intended to be that team? Take your low-health doom in and get him killed, then revive him with Lumbercap?
· Danver5 - I can't really tell what this concept was supposed to be - she seems more like she's supposed to synergize with Thor than counter him which is fine I guess
· Hela - seems like a solid offense partner to both current meta teams, not sure how she'll work on defense against them

jp1 · April 2019

I have a champed GE Doom. I can assure you he isn’t an effective counter. I like him more than most, but if he was designed to handle Thor/Okoye...it was a major fail.

I’m thinking I could try Okoye/JJ/Medusa as a counter.

BoyWonder1914 · April 2019

Coming back after taking some time off the game, I'm quite shocked to see how highly Bishop is regarded. Mine is 0/1/1 at the moment, but I don't recall him really being anything all that special when I got to use a fully covered one for PVE TU nodes or even his SHIELD Training. But looking at his skill set, I'm realizing this is because mine wasn't strong enough.

I'm not going to be facing Gritty teams anytime soon, unless they just have an unchamped Kitty that they've leveled enough to be a threat. Is he honestly that big of a threat as his own character though? Or is it just that the Gritty strikes make his jump-ins deadly if you've got strikes out or using 5-star match damage - in which case he's jumping in front and stunning for every little match you make? Definitely wasn't expecting some of the veterans I see in this thread being stumped by a 4-star character.

jp1 · April 2019

He is quite good, but I stand by the assertion that he needs to be boosted or paired with Kitty/Rocket or Okoye to be that much of a deterrent.

The cascades issue may be true, but then you are facing him using Thor for that to be happening so early or so often. If he isn’t paired with 5s you probably shouldn’t be seeing him in your queue if you are using Thor/Okoye.

I don’t think he is unbeatable as much as he is just punishing, and people don’t want to eat the health packs. Like I said though, if you are climbing with Bishop you have to eat them too. Unless you climb and then throw him out on defense.

I’m interested to see how this all looks when champed Thanos enters the mix quickly negating those boosts and feeding Thor.

Dormammu · April 2019

BoyWonder1914 said:

Is he honestly that big of a threat as his own character though?

It's 5-star teams that have the most issue with him. They do enough standard match damage to trigger his passive blue generation, giving him a 4-turn stun as soon as turn one depending on how many instances of damage you're doing.

ThaRoadWarrior · April 2019

Dormammu said:

BoyWonder1914 said:

Is he honestly that big of a threat as his own character though?

It's 5-star teams that have the most issue with him. They do enough standard match damage to trigger his passive blue generation, giving him a 4-turn stun as soon as turn one depending on how many instances of damage you're doing.

And tacking on to that, 4* solutions aren't as viable because the levels involved in the teams he shows up on are generally very high.

BoyWonder1914 · April 2019

Never thought I'd actually find myself happy that I've got a fully covered Black Suit Spidey when I'm ready to pull the trigger on 5* land. I appreciate the insight fellas.

ThaRoadWarrior · April 2019

I just took my GRRR(5/3/5 lvl 452)/Bishop (4/3/5 lvl 209)/IW (3/5/5 lvl 152) up against a typical 75pt gritty/G4mora team to see what happens. My bishop was dead by my second turn, but I'd also been able to clear 3 strikes via matches in that time. I had enough blue to fire Force Bubbles, and it locked the remaining strikes for long enough that Ghost Rider was able to get to work and kill everyone. GRRR had 18k hit points out of 58k left, and IW had full health (7410/7410) with Bishop totally dead. So not overly sustainable, but might be good to have in the back pocket for getting some of those last few matches done to reach some goal.

Next up I found a Gritty/Bishop team with the following levels:
Kitty: 420
Bishop: 282
4ocket: 303

Total team wipe for me by turn 6. My bishop was dead by opponent turn 1, so I didn't get enough blue to ever fire off Force Bubbles, and after that GRRR was dead, and it was over.

Polares · April 2019

I find it incredible that a 4 is forcing people with 5 rosters to use 4s to counter him. This alone speaks volumes of the mistakes Devs have made with broken passives, and how stupid and useless is 5 land. In the end PvP is HORRIBLE right now, people now has to endure it, not have fun with it. PvP is not worth it.

Spudgutter · April 2019

Polares said:

I find it incredible that a 4 is forcing people with 5 rosters to use 4s to counter him. This alone speaks volumes of the mistakes Devs have made with broken passives, and how stupid and useless is 5 land. In the end PvP is HORRIBLE right now, people now has to endure it, not have fun with it. PvP is not worth it.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree. If you want to change it to say it is "horrible for me(you)" then that is another matter. But i don't find it is that bad at all.

Anyone who has bumped heads with me in the past about pvp will tell you that i am all for inclusion and leveling of the playing field. In fact, my general opinion for much of the game is that we want to make it so that more people can have fun when they play, so that more people play, so that the game is around longer, yadda yadda yadda.

So that is the long way of saying this is just fine. Giving transition players a chance to go higher than they have been before, getting them more rewards quicker, is better for all of us. If the sacrifice is that some of us vets have to use a little bit more of our roster, then so be it.

In rockets example earlier, he mentioned using halfthor. I didn't even need to finish reading because i knew how it would end. Because i have fallen victim to it myself several times.

It's now the opposite problem than what we had with gambit. Instead of needing to use the same character over and over in order to win(gambit), we have to actually *not* use our primary team(thor/okoye) instinctively, and find an alternative solution.

And even then, aren't we really only talking about Sim, because it is the only place we can choose a 3 person team? We really want them to try a "light touch" fix to a character so that us vets can get from 1700-2000 in sim easier? Really? We know how they fix characters. Majority of the time we stop using that person at all.

I have 8 million iso with really nothing to use it on. So i just use boosts every match, since it gives me a head start, makes the match a smidge quicker. And gives me something to spend the iso on.

I'm all for finding stuff to keep the game alive for us vets. Taking the nerf bat to a 4* doesn't seem like one of them, imo.

Polares · April 2019

Spudgutter said:

Polares said:

I find it incredible that a 4 is forcing people with 5 rosters to use 4s to counter him. This alone speaks volumes of the mistakes Devs have made with broken passives, and how stupid and useless is 5 land. In the end PvP is HORRIBLE right now, people now has to endure it, not have fun with it. PvP is not worth it.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree. If you want to change it to say it is "horrible for me(you)" then that is another matter. But i don't find it is that bad at all.

Anyone who has bumped heads with me in the past about pvp will tell you that i am all for inclusion and leveling of the playing field. In fact, my general opinion for much of the game is that we want to make it so that more people can have fun when they play, so that more people play, so that the game is around longer, yadda yadda yadda.

So that is the long way of saying this is just fine. Giving transition players a chance to go higher than they have been before, getting them more rewards quicker, is better for all of us. If the sacrifice is that some of us vets have to use a little bit more of our roster, then so be it.

In rockets example earlier, he mentioned using halfthor. I didn't even need to finish reading because i knew how it would end. Because i have fallen victim to it myself several times.

It's now the opposite problem than what we had with gambit. Instead of needing to use the same character over and over in order to win(gambit), we have to actually *not* use our primary team(thor/okoye) instinctively, and find an alternative solution.

And even then, aren't we really only talking about Sim, because it is the only place we can choose a 3 person team? We really want them to try a "light touch" fix to a character so that us vets can get from 1700-2000 in sim easier? Really? We know how they fix characters. Majority of the time we stop using that person at all.

I have 8 million iso with really nothing to use it on. So i just use boosts every match, since it gives me a head start, makes the match a smidge quicker. And gives me something to spend the iso on.

I'm all for finding stuff to keep the game alive for us vets. Taking the nerf bat to a 4* doesn't seem like one of them, imo.

What you are asking for are two completely different things. Inclusion and leveling the battlefield are all about good MMR, 4 players should not have to play against 5 players in PvP. Also, when 4s have a pretty high number of covers they become viable again (specially because they are buffed and 5s are not). All of this has nothing to do with Bishop. Any layer of play should be stronger than the previous one, this is what drives people to upgrade and keep progressing your roster. When 5 players start using 4 chars that are not even maxed to win fully leveled 5 teams, you can smell something wrong is happening.

What we are seeing here is a character that has some thresholds that are so low, that 5 match damage triggers it. THIS IS WRONG. And it is obvious is wrong because other 4s like DP or Thing dont have such a low threshold. People even keeps Bishop at low level so he triggers his passive easily. THIS IS BAD DESIGN (like when people was using Gambit with covers only in his purple).

Devs have created lately A LOT of passives that are way OP (you had Gambit, Thor, Bishop, Rocket, America C. etc.) as a way of motivating people. This was a mistake. It has been like this for a while, this is not new, this is why so many people talks about this game being just a match-simulator, without almost no strategy other than building a team, as most of the time you dont even need to fire powers to win, and you just lazily match tiles, without even looking at the color of those tiles!

Also, 5 chars designs have become super lazy. 4 chars are way more inventive now, which is extremely disappointing.

PS: And I dont have any problems facing Bishop myself, as I am an old player and I have BSSM fully maxed, so I dont have problems with him or Rocket, but they are both obviously broken (that is why so many people use them).

dkffiv · April 2019

Passives alone aren't the problem, it's the lack of counter play.

One of Bishops passives should be an active. Make his red active (like Colossus, damage portion can remain a passive) or have his damage to AP be the active. Modify his yellow so it isnt complete garbage.

I think Kittys tile buffing should also be a low ap active (can create a 1 turn repeater, just something that has a mild amount of counter play).

*Imagine if 4pool had a passive that made him jump out of the way if he was to receive x amount of damage which would most likely proc his other passive in turn.

randomhero1090 · April 2019

dkffiv said:

I think Kittys tile buffing should also be a low ap active (can create a 1 turn repeater, just something that has a mild amount of counter play).

Low AP, even 3 AP, would crush Kitty. 1 turn repeater would damper her abilities because you could match that repeater away. But, if you are matching repeaters away you aren't matching away strike tiles. So i'd have to play against that a bunch to see how much "weaker" it would be.

Gritty as a pair isn't that bad to take down IF you have a solid counter (BSSM, Thorokoye). You throw in Bishop and it's a whole other level of madness.

randomhero1090 · April 2019

@Polares I guess I see the 5s as the place where the meta SHOULD be changing and all 5s should have some sort of OP element to them. Cable and CM5 in particular could be absolute monsters with a couple small tweaks. Instead, they are useless in PVP. Sadly have both fully covered but in no rush to champ, because they won't get used. People will grind with whatever is FAST in PVE, and whatever is FAST and DEFENSIVE in PVP. Gritty is annoying, sometimes results in a wipe or severe damage, and can be very fast to grind with. Sadly there isn't enough variety right now besides Thorokoye and Gritty to grind with in PVP. I've got mixed emotions on Bishop. I think its great for 4* players that they have an OP toon who can help them take down the Grock/Gam/Dusa combos and the soft capped Grittys. But, should a 4* be able to literally shut down a 5* team? Yeah, I don't know.

ThaRoadWarrior · April 2019

We all view these characters through the lens of our own roster's ability to deal with it, and I know for me personally I got some champin' to do before I can really play around with more diverse 4* options. On the 5* front, the way I pull as I go means I'm probably waiting for a hard-counter to show up in Latest (or not) because there's not an obvious path for me to take my BSSM from 3/1/0 to useful anytime soon.

As somebody mentioned before, the sheer ubiquity of the team in simulator does feel a bit like the days of the 0/0/5 Gambit/Spider-Gwen/Thing teams. That team felt a lot like this one - if you couldn't stun Gambit by turn 2, you were going to lose. I used to like attacking that team just to see if I could do it (it wasn't often I could win).

In my mind, the "problem" isn't any one character in this team, it's the gestalt of this team being made up of a very strong duo in the form of Kitty/4ocket, and the addition of a very dangerous support character in Bishop. He's basically N4tasha with teeth. I'm really not seeing Bishop teams in featured character PVP - he doesn't replace Thor as an Okoye partner and obviously isn't adding anything to Kitty in the absence of 4ocket.

How do you counter Bishop?

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