u/ren_except_funnier

For context: I already have Adam lorded. However, barring a few matches here and there, I never got to play him much. I think the last season I GENUINELY played him was... Season 4? So it's been some months

My friend recently lorded Ultron and thought it would be really fun for us to go on a champion grind. Just straight Ultron and Adam until we both achieved perfection.

It's been a few seasons, and I know full well how the Ultron team up works. Question is: how much has el niño dorado changed? Is there anything I should know or is he relatively the same as he was

What's up, it's the funniest merc with a (healing!) mouth, maybe you've seen me, maybe you haven't idfk I don't know how often you're on here. Aaaand people have been really hard on stratpool lately. Like. Entire seasons-worth of lately. And it got me thinking... Why?

His single target healing is decent, he enables brawl and dive and can even reliably keep a team that's spread out alive if you time the spinning head properly. The only change he actually needs is his team healing in ultimate imo, outside of that he's extremely balanced and useful, stat farm allegations be damned.

But then I got to thinking...

Who do DPS players gravitate to when picking a healer?

It's not Adam, mantis or Ultron, strategists designed with DPS in mind.

It might be cnd but you all know the story, they'll run out, try and use cloak, explode and never touch her again.

They never try and pick up main healers, eugh, too much responsibility.

So that leads them to one option... Healpool. They go in, play him like a DPS, and absolutely run it down.

Feel free to argue with me in the replies I don't care, but from my experience??? Healpool is one of the best healers if you can use him properly, to the point where I genuinely think you can get away with solo healing on him if you cycle cooldowns properly under the right team comp. He problem is bums always pick him up thinking they're actually doing something when in reality??? They're tarnishing my good name

I mean as long as you can aim the hood is genuinely just so versatile and satisfying 😭 I was right about the hood needing some time to find his crowd bc it has been breezy like a Sunday afternoon

I'm 5 hours deep into his gameplay and I promise y'all, all these content creators are smokin straight boof. The hood released in an extremely balanced spot.

Pros!

- Overdrive mode pops on its own, which I think is a good thing. Unlike Mr. Fantastic, he gains energy extremely fast as long as you cycle cooldowns

- Rapid damage, sustained pressure and lots of cover fire potential

- Two (3 if you count the Wanda team up) escapes, both of which help you build energy really fast

- The ult as a whole is peak. I know people are mad it's not a one shot but the shielding + wall breaking it provides is more than worth the damage trade-off

Cons...

- Low self-sustain. Once you burn his cooldowns, unless you have overdrive to delay the inevitable, you're cooked.

- A pitiful life steal. I'm not expecting him to shoot back up to full health that'd be cheap, but at least up the overshield gain if not the life steal conversion rate

- 10 second cooldown for, like, every ability. Cycling cooldowns is very important.

- Zero burst damage, barring his ult. Imo I think this is the part that people are trying to say when talking about the Hood. He doesn't do poor damage, it's just that none of that damage is burst damage. Unless your attacks are coordinated with someone else, you're GOING to feel like you're not doing much.

He's balanced. People just need to get used to him, they'll see.

Fun fact: unless they're far away, aim a little to the right in closer encounters. His bullets leave directly from the gun, so 6/10 if you have your cursor directly on top of someone and they're close up, your bullets will just whiz past their side.

EDIT: I now have him centurion and I can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, bro might genuinely be the best tank I've played 😭 I no longer give af if the community agrees this is my favorite drop since deadpool

FUCK EVERYTHING ELSE GOING ON (barring the hood) I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR SMTH LIKE THIS

TS MEANS SOMETHING TO ME

If Guang² won't give us buffs, legendaries, or anything remotely close to what Luna Snow has been blessed with, they could at LEAST give us Danger as a playable bot. Ultron can FINALLY have someone to relate to on the roster that isn't some goody-two-shoes 'ganic lover (Adam)

I'm convinced g² GENUINELY regrets adding Ultron to the game. I don't even need to tell y'all why, turn on the tv it doesn't matter what channel

Lemme start by saying I flex between all roles, but typically I tank. I can dive, front line, brawl, poke I can do it all. I also want to point out that I have never touched cnd; their gameplay loop, similar to the likes of Invis and Luna, is disastrously boring to me.

Cnd is the most unhealthy support in this game dude. I've always kinda thought this. Ever since that buff that gave her bubble 60 initial healing on top of super fast regen, playing into her has already been hellish especially when diving. Hellish, but not impossible. After you bait out bubble and fade, all she can do is hope to God the blind can stop you which, usually, it won't.

That ice team up made it impossible to play into a GOOD cnd.

Not even good. An average cnd.

She has 3 cooldowns she can cycle whenever she feels like, especially since on each ability the cooldown starts as soon as it's cast, with zero cast time. Mind you, even Luna's snowball has a half a second cast time. Mantis sleep has cast time. Legit the only way you can reliably kill a cnd is by bursting them down, and even then those abilities will save her if she feels even moderately threatened.

I'm not asking cnd to be shot dead. Hell that's the last thing I want. Cnd since season 0 has always been baby's first strategist, and that's okay! Kits are allowed to be simple yet effective, just look at The Thing. But at LEAST nerf the Luna team up. There's absolutely no logical reason that it should:

1.) Invincibility

2.) lots of regen + allowing her to be healed while frozen

3.) aoe healing

4.) contest point

That last part irritates me the most.

Tbh they can keep the invincibility and aoe heal, but they either need to reduce the regen she receives or take away regen altogether since she can still be healed while frozen. And for the love of God, remove her ability to contest with it. If Jeff can't contest while swimming, and hulk can't contest while transforming, she shouldn't contest while frozen.

It also just feels like the security they get from these abilities is making them play riskier, which as a whole is just not good for fights. I had a cnd push in front of me while I was playing strange just to get absolutely nuked. This was a champion mind you 😭

Idk, everyone's heard this before but as someone who isn't a content creator, this is probably my only way of putting my takes out there 🫩

TLDR: ban cnd until I no longer have to strategize around 3 separate escape cooldowns. It's not healthy for the game. I'm not asking cnd to be shot in the back of both of their heads, but every character needs SOME margin for error, and it's a margin you just don't see anymore with them

I wanna preface by saying I don't want to outright eliminate the slam down ultimate. It has its own niche, and especially with the rocket team up, it's genuinely able to make plays. However, we can all agree that at base, the damage is lacking. It's bad at making space when the healers are competent, it struggles to kill for the same reason, gamma squids shut everything down, etc it's just not a good time.

But I propose, as the enhanced team up for Clobberin' R&D...

The Lash.

In the Moba, Deadlock (closed beta), the lash has an ultimate that if you've played/seen deadlock, you've seen a hundred times before. He majestic leaps into the air, bells chime, you hear the words "YOU'RE MINE 😎😎", and everyone within a certain radius around him are grabbed, dragged to him, and thrown a considerable distance away while all bunched up together, leaving them vulnerable to follow up attacks by you and your team alike.

I truly don't see why Reed couldn't have something similar.

Spring him into the air, let him highlight the characters he wants to coil around with both of his arms stretching to encircle the foes, bring them up, and throw them down with percentage based damage of roughly 50%, base damage of say... 75-100.

This not only makes CRD more viable as an enhanced option, but gives reed an ultimate designed around play making. Healers will struggle to out heal it unless they're already ulting/it's a good way to force out those ultimates. Environmental kills are possible as well, the main spot I'm thinking of is that bridge at the end of Manhattan that Angela loves flinging people from.

But yeah. While I believe his base ult absolutely needs a buff, I think this rework, whether it's tied to CRD or not, would add something new, refreshing, and in-line with the shifting of the meta. But, if you think I'm wrong, I'd love a good peer reed-view 🙂‍↕️💕 this is under discussion after all

Doing placement matches, work had me unable to comp in s8 so I ended in diamond 3, at plat 1 now

Majority of this match I was solo tanking, cooling tensions between my team bc "no heals" "nothing's dying" etc, stopping ults, absorbing as much damage as humanly possible. I don't even play mag all the time but this game singlehandedly made me want to become an absolutely absurd mag main. (At least when dp isn't taken)

But yeah. The stats probably aren't impressive much but I feel like I popped off for a pool main

Making helpool canon, giving me explosions that auto track AND SWORDS WITH EXPLOSIVE AOE?! I need to become real good friends with a hela one trick 🤤🤤 just for a season

The Gambit team up is good too, that's extra movement on tankpool perfect for engaging and disengaging. This + the gun buffs means the pool is finally open for the summer 🤤💕🦄

I'm a little upset over cyclops.

Please tell me if this is a skill diff or something.

I love playing tankpool, had since he dropped. I was there for the buffs and the nerfs, and found most of them understandable. Less speed when shooting in dpiya? Sure, I'll have trouble bursting them down now. No animation cancel? Fine, I'll play bro how he's meant to be played. But I've played qp, practice, and comp in diamond placement matches and y'all... The gun nerfs/gun ult nerf have killed him.

Can't burst anything down. Mediocre at range. Gun ult is literally a waste now no matter who you use it on. Swords have always been lackluster. Sword ult is good for stalling/forcing a team to move back for 5 seconds, and not much else.

Everything in his kit is now either A.) Done better by other tanks, B.) Done better by DPS/supports (COUGH COUGH HITSCAN), or C.) hard countered by too much.

Don't get me wrong a good tankpool can still make this work, y'know squeak out a win, and it's not like I'm asking to absolutely run lobbies. But shit. Give us SOMETHING. Maybe upgraded hijinks give you overshield per bounce, maybe headshots do the same. Maybe bouncing on an ally's head gives them overshield (since they only give tankpool ONE anyway.) Maybe an upgraded plushie makes enemies inside it vulnerable to play into the whole "using the shield to secure kills" thing.

You can't take the majority of his kill potential but leave his shoddy survivability and alright movement as is. It's just not right. Atp healpool and dpspool offer more to the team. 😔

TLDR: The nerfs we're not necessary and didn't come with a compensation buff, so tankpool effectively got shot in the back of the head. I'm a flex player, I play all 3 pools, but tank was actually the one I'm always most excited to play. Now, I'm better off either getting on dinosaur or Thor again.