Patch 5.5 Changes EVERYTHING, Supports Need NERFS and DELETE Gambit FT TeamCaptain & GallusOW

In this episode of the pod hosts ‪@coach_mills‬ and ‪@CaptainCoach‬ sit down with special guests ‪@TeamCaptain001‬ and ‪@GallusOW‬ to talk patch 5.5 and game balance

What is Clear Comms Podcast?

A Marvel Rivals Podcast hosted by Coach Mills and CaptainCoach, two creator and educators for Marvel Rivals. We discuss all things Rivals including META, balance and the future of development. We will often debate controversial topics that surround the game and plan to bring on many exciting guests from pros to devs!!!

Coach Mills (00:00.996)
What's up guys and welcome to a brand new clear comps podcast today we're joined by two special guests returning guests team captain and gallus. Thank you guys so much for coming. What's up guys.

TeamCaptain (00:11.702)
Nothing much. Chillin'. Chillin'.

Gallus (00:14.242)
Yeah, not much. Hot day today.

Coach Mills (00:14.33)
Yeah, we're all over the world here. Nice, nice.

CaptainCoach (00:19.29)
We're going global, Coach Mills.

Coach Mills (00:21.582)
Going global, going global. We got Scotland, we got Australia, Texas, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I still don't. still don't. I don't. You know, there's America and then there's the rest. You know what saying? No, anyways, let's talk about season five as a whole, but also patch 5.5. We got...

CaptainCoach (00:27.23)
You got it right this time. Last time team captain was on we didn't know what the flag man. We thought it was Swiss. We thought it was New Zealand.

TeamCaptain (00:31.97)
Was it a Wales or

Gallus (00:34.574)
Yeah

Coach Mills (00:48.812)
Some nerfs, and let's talk about the nerfs first. A lot of them were really light. I wanna start off with you, team captain. How do you feel about just the very subtle nerfs to some of the characters? Small ultimate nerfs, charge rate nerfs, small HP nerfs to characters like Emma, characters like Penny, characters like Daredevil. How do you feel about they didn't really do any dramatic changes?

TeamCaptain (01:11.84)
It seems like the way they want to go with the balance is they don't want to over nerf any character but they are very willing to over buff characters. I think they're just trying to find an in between of like try to keep characters powerful and not like completely gutting them. So like Sylot got a nerf to her ult, you saw Gambit and Invis they got nerfs to their ult charge and I feel like

they just don't want to completely take them out of the meta or make them unusable.

CaptainCoach (01:46.862)
Why do you think that is?

TeamCaptain (01:49.91)
I think it's because they have like a design philosophy of like if everyone's broken no one is, I think that's what they're trying to do but like me personally I don't think it's a good way to go and my fear is, this is a fear that's been developing for a long period of time, is that they keep buffing the weaknesses of every character and that makes it so they become less unique. So for example

like buffing Groot so he's CC immune when he has his wall near. That was one of the things that you could punish Groot for, if he was out of position, if you could like pull him in then Groot was killable but now he seems to be like just a walking army on his own and he's very hard to deal with. Whereas like strange, his glaring weakness is still the fact that he's weak to CC and displacement. I feel like they should keep those kind of design elements within characters kits because

encourages counter flip play for the players.

Coach Mills (02:51.44)
Do you think it's a good thing or a bad thing though? so I mean obviously you think it's a bad thing but you, one of the things that can happen if characters are, you know, there's too many counter matchups, right? There's certain characters that always beat other characters. We could end up in like, I mean you played a lot of Overwatch, the rock paper scissors, right? So what do you think that balance is between, like we can have it to where, you know, if Wolverine's in the game, you can't play Groot or we can give Groot tools to where he's not completely hard counted by.

TeamCaptain (03:10.254)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Mills (03:21.092)
those effects. Where's that balance? Where's it too far? Because you think they're kind of crossing that line. But is that are you OK with like people just need to swap to counter or what do you think?

TeamCaptain (03:32.258)
My opinion is that you don't have to buff their weaknesses, just make it what they're good at better if you feel like they're lacking in that area. So like Groot, instead of buffing his CC immunity, they could have just done something with his poke or with his walls and I feel like buffing around his ability to take space around his walls would have been smarter than just making it so no characters can do anything to him if he's near that other wall. Now

I think the change would have been fine if he had to have LOS within the wall but the fact that he can just place it like out of sight makes it an issue.

CaptainCoach (04:09.412)
Mm.

Coach Mills (04:10.244)
Right.

CaptainCoach (04:12.654)
Galas, when team captain said when everybody's OP, no one is, you made a very, very strong face. And I held onto that question for a while because I wanted to know what was going through your head there? Like why?

Gallus (04:20.366)
you

Gallus (04:25.514)
It's just, like, I agree that I think that they're doing it, they're balancing for that. But it's just something, it's something I've heard repeated again and again and again. And to me, it's just this, it's this phrase that people think sounds nice. And that's as far as they think about it. Because it just like, it's a hero shooter, but you can't have, you can't have Hulk and I don't know, like rocket.

in the same game and try to make these equally broken and have that be a successful task. It just doesn't seem like it. It's like a non-starter to me. I just don't see it. constantly buffing stuff like team captain's talking about. It's just like, how is this doing anything other than further entrenching heroes into what we were picking them for or their existing strengths or whatever. It's like if they add unstoppable to Groot,

When I'm looking at the roster, I'm probably still picking the same heroes against him just less now. Like, okay, you can't Wolverine tackle him. You can't Bucky hook him, but we're still relying on probably Phoenix, I guess Bucky spam because it's that good. Heroes like Moon Knight. I'm just thinking of like Central Park Defense at this point when he's tucking the wall behind, you know, cover or anything like that. Yeah, man, it just...

Every time someone says, if everything's broken, no one is. Like, I'm just...

CaptainCoach (05:56.954)
Hehehe.

Gallus (05:58.306)
Like bro! Like I've heard this so many times and it's just like they never say anything past that. It's like okay, why do you mean that? It's like yeah, well if this guy's broken I could just play this guy. Like that's the problem. Like if you can just swap, like this is a problem they're accelerating. If you have to swap against this person because their matchup against you is now so so ingrained and so like immovable. Like what they're doing with the thing, right?

Coach Mills (06:00.848)
So you see, do you

CaptainCoach (06:09.272)
Yeah, I think there needs to... Yeah.

Gallus (06:27.68)
It's like he's been shoehorned into this like dive counterpick. So if you're on something that the thing is good against, get off the hero is the option. Like it's not like they introduced wiggle room for his worst matchups or made the thing able to walk past five meters without cover. No.

CaptainCoach (06:41.827)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (06:47.16)
Yeah, I feel like the best comp to pick into thing is just like, don't even pick a tank, just pick like three range damage poke and like, he can't play the game. you actually, like I haven't really seen it too much yet, but yeah, I think if you move too far down that road where it's like, everything's really, really strong, I think in some ways it takes the skill element out of the game because then you're just really relying on those broken mechanics rather than actually outplaying people like case in point support alts, like obviously like very strong.

Gallus (06:54.327)
Yeah

CaptainCoach (07:15.908)
You pretty much, a lot of games are just decided by who messes up their alt, right? And if it comes down to something that like, you want it to come down to something that takes more skill than just like pressing a button at the right time, I feel like.

TeamCaptain (07:29.005)
Can I add upon that? One of those things was the fact that like if you were trying to kill an invisible woman, if you could catch her after she went invisible then she was vulnerable and that was the skill, it was catching her during the double jump and trying to predict where she would go but now even if you do that she just places a shield and then sustains anyway. I think things like that is the issue is that you're just making it so there's less counterplay, there's less things to do in the neutral.

Coach Mills (07:31.055)
Yeah, yeah.

CaptainCoach (07:52.494)
Yeah. Right.

TeamCaptain (07:58.828)
without just always being involved and that's my concern.

Gallus (08:00.952)
Yeah, exactly. can argue that it's actually like, worse for the Invis players as well. It's like, how do you tell a good Invis player from a bad one now after that change? Because there was the prediction element of her having to essentially use that Invis before getting jumped. And that's been removed as like an important dynamic in her kit. Like, because now she can just press the fire and forget shield.

CaptainCoach (08:26.008)
Yeah, so she gets like a second method of self healing. And then that was like the only real window you had was when she was like, okay, now she's in viz, let's kill her team while she just heals up and see when she comes out, right? That mini games kind of like gone now. Like in viz are tankier than like actual tanks in some ways. Like if you don't burst them out.

TeamCaptain (08:44.109)
It would at least incentivise the Envas to play near teammates but no, she's not really incentivised to do that because she can just place the shield wherever, you know.

Coach Mills (08:44.112)
Well that's one of the things I-

CaptainCoach (08:49.796)
Right.

That's a really good point.

Coach Mills (08:52.688)
I don't know how many of y'all have played any Thor this season or tried to play Thor, but I think the change they did to Thor, that buff is actually one of the ones I actually like. Because to me, it adds skill expression to the character, it adds options. It is a buff, but it's one that has more depth to it. As opposed to now Invis can put a shield on herself. Where is the skill expression there? Like you said, there's no outplay there. So I think when they buff characters, or when Groot's a wall behind a... His wall behind a wall, he can't be CC'd.

There's no skill expression there. think buffs should have some amount of skill expression, but they should try to do that as much as possible rather than press button, now you get more value than you did before. I think that's super uninteresting and creates these stale gameplay loops that you're talking about.

TeamCaptain (09:37.728)
I just wanted to comment on the Thor change. That Thor change has made the character like 10 times more fun. I was playing Thor just before the podcast and I had 10 out of 10 placements won on my account. The character is so good now. It's actually so good. I have a clip where I was kidnapping a mag five times like on a loop. He just couldn't escape. I just kept looping him back around again. It was so funny.

Coach Mills (09:44.112)
It is so funny.

Coach Mills (09:50.64)
You can bully mags, it's actually crazy fun. It's actually still fun.

CaptainCoach (09:51.374)
Damn.

Coach Mills (10:00.203)
Hahaha!

Gallus (10:05.09)
Yeah, this guy's a Wolverine player by the way, so he would love to change.

CaptainCoach (10:07.482)
Ahahaha

TeamCaptain (10:09.633)
No, they keep adding all these kidnapping characters. It's so great. I love it.

CaptainCoach (10:14.542)
Yeah, you do play lot of kids. You play Angela. What do you think about Angela right now? Kind of slipping under the radar. Really? Wow.

TeamCaptain (10:18.689)
Honestly I think Thor is the better Angela right now, yes, yes, he has a better neutral, I think his kidnapping is stronger because you can do it every second and

Coach Mills (10:22.284)
Really?

Gallus (10:30.894)
You

Coach Mills (10:31.664)
Just not stuck. Have you you tried that Wolverine change the old change on the wall? I haven't even seen anyone try it.

Gallus (10:33.378)
He actually can, bro, that's ridiculous.

TeamCaptain (10:35.125)
Yeah, you can't.

Yeah so a fun thing you can do with that is on certain maps you can actually mark like the edge of a wall that's on a cliff and just suicide everyone off the point. So like for example you know at Arako first point there's the massive pit, you can Wolverine ult their entire team into the pit from the point.

Coach Mills (10:56.293)
Don't.

Gallus (10:59.852)
Ha ha ha!

That's gross. I had thoughts about the thought change actually. Something that was a head scratcher for me about it is it seems like a return to, I guess what he was incentivized to do before they tried to rework him. Which is like to me, if I was trying to be charitable about them reworking him in the first place, it was that they decided that...

CaptainCoach (11:05.678)
With the-

CaptainCoach (11:20.353)
Hmm.

Gallus (11:29.578)
Either he didn't have a place in Brawl's because they'd introduced the thing in Emma and they thought Thor was just never gonna shine. So they wanted to move him in another direction or that they found the kidnapping to be completely unacceptable. And now he's back there, but they've sort of half thrown out the entire hammer system to begin with. I don't, like I'm not a hundred percent on what they're trying to do with him.

CaptainCoach (11:42.746)
Hehehe.

Coach Mills (11:49.168)
Yeah, I mean, yeah, someone who's played Thor since the beginning, they had no idea what they were doing with the rework. I'm not going to lie to you. It made no sense. Like, absolutely none. The whole change that they did, they've basically reverted or changed a lot of it because when they did that change, then they had to change it to where now you cancel, like you cancel Awakening early, you get some Thor Force back because it felt super clunky, which almost effectively turns it back to like the original version just with slightly more uptime.

TeamCaptain (11:56.204)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (12:18.531)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (12:18.884)
And they could have replicated the same result just by giving him more uptime on his abilities. So they just basically just did like a really weird, a roundabout balance. Like it just didn't make sense. don't necessarily, you know, I just don't think that they maybe have anyone that's like a Thor main on their staff that like grinds the character consistently. I have no, yeah. Louis Snowman's yeah. No, but I, and I actually mean that cause the changes really don't make any sense to me. Like they never did.

TeamCaptain (12:37.645)
They're all poke players.

CaptainCoach (12:40.995)
Yeah, they are.

Coach Mills (12:47.47)
They still don't. mean, I think he's kind of finally ended up in a good spot, but they had to like, they reworked him, then they buffed him, then they buffed him again, and now they added it to, like, we finally got here and we just didn't need to do all this. We just didn't need to.

TeamCaptain (12:59.405)
You know what's missing from the power fantasy for Thor? It's the hammer throw, like when I throw the hammer I want to like throw it through everyone and pull it back towards like back through everyone. Why does it bounce off one person and come back? I feel like that's just so like, it feels dumb.

Coach Mills (13:11.532)
How does it go through?

CaptainCoach (13:13.562)
It's such a unsatisfying ab- it's like so boring, it's just like used for cancels, it's- that's been my number one critique of Thor, is make it so you can do some cool thing like in the movies, you know, like-

Coach Mills (13:15.632)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

TeamCaptain (13:24.844)
Yeah.

Gallus (13:33.838)
And that's crazy to me because when they first buffed that it was like, reading the patch notes is like, is this actually good now, bro? It's like, no, no.

TeamCaptain (13:34.261)
I feel like it got buffed.

Coach Mills (13:41.43)
Yeah. I wish he could cancel it midair and just like maybe take half his ult charge back or something like that if he didn't commit to it. Something like that. But you you pop it because the problem is like you pop you pop it and if you bait out a defensive ult, then you slam down and then die. It happens all the time. Like it mostly it feels win more.

CaptainCoach (13:53.978)
Yeah, I like that.

TeamCaptain (14:00.663)
Yeah.

Gallus (14:00.984)
That's right.

CaptainCoach (14:02.424)
I should do that with Penny ult too, feel like, low key. I feel like her ult lasts way too long. feel like being able to, that's one change I actually proposed a couple of seasons ago, just like let her cancel her ult and then get some of the charge back because it, have it be like almost like more of like a toggle where you use it when you need it sort of thing. Like I thought that could have been something cool on her, just to make her like more offensive minded. Cause I feel like part of the reason like Penny's win rate is so high is just cause you just pick her on defense on like two, two or three maps and you just can't play anything.

you have to play like a specific thing into her to, you know, I don't know. I feel like Penny's OP. I'm just kind of changing the subject here, but.

TeamCaptain (14:35.467)
Yes.

she the strength of Penny really is the fact that she just makes it so you can't play like half the characters in the game.

Gallus (14:38.743)
He

CaptainCoach (14:44.312)
Yeah, I just wanted to hear your guys' thoughts on it, because we talked a lot about it last week before we get to on the rogue, kind of just hitting all the tanks right now. Do we think Penny is OP? No?

Coach Mills (14:51.022)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (14:55.069)
No, not OP but she's just highly like, yeah I agree with that but I don't think, she's not overpowered in terms of like, okay she's like meta defining but she's like overpowered in the way that she just forces the entire game to be played around the penny so like a good example of this would be Widowmaker on Overwatch, Widow would not be OP sometimes but

Coach Mills (14:57.424)
Get out, get out, get get out,

CaptainCoach (14:59.554)
She's up against what I play. That's for damn sure.

Gallus (15:04.142)
Yeah, bro.

Coach Mills (15:22.831)
Always OP, but.

TeamCaptain (15:23.211)
The strength of Widow is that she just completely changed the way the game was played and everyone on the enemy team had to play around the Widow pick. Same thing with Penny, like everyone has to play around the fact that the Penny's in play so if you're like a Hulk player, you're not playing Hulk, it's unplayable, you're not having a good time. So that's the strength of Penny in my opinion.

CaptainCoach (15:42.426)
So going back to what you said then before, where you feel like they should just focus on buffing characters in a way that they only do what they do good. You would argue that they should not give more offensive power to Penny so that she could be played on more maps and maybe take some of her defensive power away. Because they doubled down on it and gave her even more with the shielding and healing her team. What are your views on that with Penny in particular? Do you feel that way about her? Because she's very defensive. And I think most people would say that her win rate's so high because you

pick her on defense. So do you think they should go that route or keep her the way she is and just like she's gonna be high win rate?

TeamCaptain (16:13.687)
Mm-hmm.

TeamCaptain (16:17.323)
I think the reason why our run rate so high is because of the randomness of the fucking like penny mines, like sometimes the penny mines will just kill your entire bank coin and then you're like okay what just happened, let's reset and then it happens again and then like everyone's just tilted because they're like we're dying to a penny this is so dumb and then the game's over before you know it. I feel like that's

Coach Mills (16:28.528)
You

Gallus (16:32.982)
Okay.

Coach Mills (16:39.408)
you

CaptainCoach (16:39.8)
I've found that playing against the same Penny main multiple times in a row is very helpful. I tend to do better every time, you know.

TeamCaptain (16:44.875)
Yes, they do the same stuff, the same lineups, the same spots, you do become better depending on who plays it for sure.

CaptainCoach (16:54.202)
Alright, what about you guys? Do you think they should push her more towards like an offense? No? Okay.

Gallus (17:00.118)
No, God, I have a lot to say about this hero, bro. Like, before she got like her first buff, I think like when they, was it before or after? Maybe it was when they added the second nest with the team up. She already had that win rate that was a complete artifact. It was like, she's at like 59 % or something. And it was like a head scratcher. Like, why is this happening? Yeah, and then they buffer again and then they buffer again and.

Coach Mills (17:19.984)
Yeah, it's like 65 with the team up. Yeah, it's crazy.

CaptainCoach (17:22.648)
It's a, yeah, it's crazy.

Gallus (17:26.548)
Every single one of the buffs makes her better on first point defense. And where is everyone playing her? Like this hero is like say what you will about the penny specialist, but this hero is really simple in that if you pick her up where this hero was bad, you know instantly because someone shoots you and you die. Like this hero can't be used anywhere other than in cover where she has time to set up. So people just play her on defense. Everyone knows you play her on defense. That's kind of it.

and then they go ahead and like last patch, nerf her by 50 HP. Where does that make it worse? When she's not in cover? Like, what are we doing, bro? Like if anything, you could argue that that's gonna increase the win rate, like as it is, because people are just gonna play her on first point defense and they get an even harder slap in the face when they're not doing that. So all the numbers are just gonna be where she's good. Like.

CaptainCoach (17:55.886)
Yeah. All right.

CaptainCoach (18:07.866)
Mm-hmm

CaptainCoach (18:14.115)
Yeah.

Yeah, just, feel like there's a bit of inconsistency a lot of the times like, like with Gambit and Viz, their ult charge got nerfed by basically nothing. They're still some of the best healers in the game. Whereas like, I don't know. I feel like their, their philosophy on like, like you said, nerfing stuff. I don't know really where I'm going with this. Did you just want to go to like Rogue here?

Coach Mills (18:43.076)
Well, yeah, well, real quick, let me add on something and then I want to talk about the buffs, too. But but yeah, like it to me, it just seems strange how they just gave some characters like just inconsequential nerfs like 50 HP on Penny. Like, what does that actually do? It doesn't even do anything. So I don't actually is that supposed to be symbolic? Like, is it supposed people supposed to read that and say, wow, I'm going to stop playing Penny now because you nerfed her 50 HP. I don't really understand the reasoning for it.

Like, I wish they would give a little bit more detailed reasoning for why they do certain changes or maybe they'll, you know, they tell us maybe tease a little bit about what changes they're going to give in the future. Hey, we see that Penny has a high win rate. We're going to give her a small nerf here and maybe larger nerfs in 6.0. Like, that would be cool to know a little bit instead of them just randomly nerfing her and something that doesn't matter at all and then not saying anything about it in general. But I did want to talk really quickly. I want to hear your opinions about the

the characters that were buffed kind of massively, think Torch, Ultron and Luna, those are the three that actually did get buffs. What do you all think about that? What's your feelings on those three buffs and how they affect the game right now?

you can start as all team captain.

TeamCaptain (19:56.265)
So with, I'll start with Ultron okay, Ultron they decided to give him two drones and I was thinking okay this is going to be problematic but sure let's try it out but then they also gave him an entirely new thing where whoever he buffs with the drones which used to just give them shields, gives him 10 % damage boost and 20 % move speed and then I'm thinking

why didn't he just do one or the other and then tested to see if that made him strong? Why give him all this at once? Because now he's just became like a permaban character, he's obviously just overpowered because of that change and he's actually stronger than he was when he was meta. So I'm very confused about the support design philosophy, I think the support design philosophy is going in a very crazy direction.

Very crazy direction and you can even see that's the case when you look at the top 500 leaderboard. Who's in that? It's all support players, everyone in that leaderboard is playing support. Even the DPS players are playing support because they have to and Ultron has just became another triple support pick like Jeff the Shark was in season 4.5 and I think he just enables a lot to happen when it comes to like DPS going on flak.

put a drone on your tank, put a drone on your DPS, damage boost them, they go in, just insta burst everyone and then he's just flying in the sky like god just looking down on everyone and he's practically unkillable because his Mantis is constantly healing him, his Invis is shielding him and then what do you do, really what do you do against that?

Gallus (21:34.28)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (21:36.304)
I

CaptainCoach (21:40.472)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (21:43.896)
Yeah, there's not a lot of counterplay. There's really...

TeamCaptain (21:46.605)
just match it, that's the counter play, you just match it and I understand that Ultron is not a very favourable pick in low ranks because they don't really understand how to take advantage of it and they don't really like playing triple support but in high elo it is very problematic and I think the character low key needs a slight rework, it doesn't have to be massive, it just needs to be something where they decide do we give this character a lot of damage or do we give him a lot of sustain and like

utility to enable his team. I think you need to choose between them because you can't have both. If you have both then that's just what you get. You get a flying demon.

Coach Mills (22:26.562)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (22:28.09)
I will say as an Ultron, the two drones does feel nicer. It gives you more options. Whereas before, like if you give them one drone, but maybe it healed more, I think that kind of limits the amount of strategies you can do, but maybe, you know, I think they have to make a choice. I feel like the two drones definitely makes them more playable for like the average Ultron, but I mean, obviously, yeah, in higher rank, he's a lot better. Galas, you think like, what kind of counterplay do you think they could add to make Ultron?

Like, does he need a full rework? Or?

Gallus (23:01.426)
I've always been a fan of reworking him, but like, he's a weird one. Like adding two drones is an immediate erasure of where this hero needs to make his decisions meaningfully. Like, okay, if you can just Venn diagram your entire team, this is what they're doing the change for. And I think, you know, whatever happens to him in high ranks is a consequence and maybe they'd look at it later. But it's like, was the number one ask for change, I guess by average people, because...

CaptainCoach (23:16.634)
Mm.

Gallus (23:29.206)
average players say, well, this guy doesn't heal enough, so don't play him. And in that way, I agree with that, but there are ways to go about that that doesn't break the hero at his, you know, skill ceiling or which is, you know, say what you will about his skill ceiling, but you know, even in high ranks, it's just, you know, drone the right people and use the right click at generally the right time and your damage boost speed boosting to absolute insane heroes. One of them could be daredevil and...

CaptainCoach (23:52.623)
Yeah.

Gallus (23:58.466)
You know, like I've been a fan of, oddly enough, I quite like the Iron Man team up basically because this hero sort of always broke when he was in triple support because you'd have the utility and he'd do like too much damage essentially or enable flyers. And when using the Iron Man team up, you are making a choice to sacrifice your ability to deal damage for time. And if you do it at the wrong time, you're punished.

CaptainCoach (24:22.618)
Hmm.

Gallus (24:24.418)
and it makes you better at something new, which is also what the average players are asking for. And it's not that good. Like I really like that team up because it's something that you can use to limit him at the ceiling and give the average players kind of what they want out of the hero.

CaptainCoach (24:42.074)
Yeah, I mean, I got big reason he's like an issue on triple support, which before we stop talking about Ultron, I did want to ask you guys, do you think he's pickable now on double support? First of all, right now. Ultron.

Coach Mills (24:42.094)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (24:53.132)
you can you can play him

Coach Mills (24:54.434)
I mean, pick a ball. You could certainly pick them.

CaptainCoach (24:56.442)
I feel like you can pick Ultron at double support and win most of your games, honestly.

TeamCaptain (25:00.852)
You know what's really good? Ultron Rocket, that actually goes crazy, I'm not even joking, people have been pointing that and it is pretty impressive.

CaptainCoach (25:09.912)
Yeah, I that was getting picked in MRC, like already before that. I want to say Crazy Raccoons, I want to say. Might have been someone they played against, but they played Ultron Rocket. they would win with it occasionally. And that was before all these crazy buffs. So.

TeamCaptain (25:14.664)
MRCO

Gallus (25:27.682)
Damn. Yeah, like, yeah, I've seen it a couple of times, just like the Ultron in double support. It's just I think now with the two drones and like the damage boost and the speed boosts, it's it's gone past that point of the space you will get out of that. Effectively, effectively functions as another support anyway. Like so. Yeah, yeah, you get more healing out of two drones, I guess. But like you you just have this like omnipresence and you control so much of the map.

that it's like the effective damage coming into your team is just less.

CaptainCoach (26:02.936)
Yeah, he just gets-

TeamCaptain (26:03.254)
You guys are Overwatch heads right? You guys get Overwatch? You know what it's like? It's like if they gave Zenyatta 2 Harmony Orbs but instead of having like the skill of placing discords your right click just gives everyone the damage to deal damage to whoever they want so there's like zero thought process at all.

CaptainCoach (26:05.945)
What's that?

Gallus (26:06.307)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (26:06.416)
wait I-

Coach Mills (26:21.04)
Right, yo, yo.

Gallus (26:26.754)
And you can fly and have a speed boost for yourself if you mess up with where you're positioning.

TeamCaptain (26:32.246)
That gives you shields and your right quick gives you shields.

Coach Mills (26:32.386)
Yeah, it's...

CaptainCoach (26:36.644)
Okay, so what about Torch then? Torch, Ultron, Meta again. Torch buffs. Is he in a good spot? I feel like he's kind of has to play closer range now to get maximum damage. I do see Torch is playing a bit more aggressively because they changed his damage fall off to 20 meters now, I believe, instead of 30. So he has to be a little closer, but he does more damage now. Do we think, I think that was a change in the right direction. curious to hear your thoughts.

TeamCaptain (26:56.288)
Yes. Yep.

TeamCaptain (27:04.682)
My thoughts are that Torch is definitely good now but I don't like what they buffed. Now hear me out, I think the thing that makes Torch fun is using the prisons to like control space and also to use the slam. I think the slam and the right clicks is the most fun part of the kit, the most boring part is the shotgun. I wish they had buffed them more around that rather than just turning them into like a hitscan basically.

CaptainCoach (27:11.898)
Mmm.

TeamCaptain (27:34.411)
because they'd basically tighten the spread so much that his primary fire is less of a shotgun and is more of a tiny little cone thing. It's kinda like Blade's gun if people use Blade where it all goes to the one place at a certain point. I don't really think it makes the character feel fun. The fun part was like flying around super fast, diving in, going super aggressive on their backline.

I feel like you could do that without making him feel oppressive or OP. One of the ways that could do that would be removing the shields on the slam but yeah I think he's good but I don't really like the way they change them personally.

Coach Mills (28:18.66)
Makes sense. I think I'm on the... I don't really understand exactly what they're doing around Torch and Ultron and some of these Flyers, because I feel like we just left a Flyer meta and it felt like they tried really hard to get us out of it, and then now they're kind of dangerously trying to bring us back into it or drag us back into it. And one of the things they literally said in their patch notes is that when the Flyers were not meta, it opened up meta diversity, because there's like a lot of characters that don't interact with Flyers very well.

And then they go and just buff them again and make them still good at what they were doing before. So I don't, I just don't understand. It's like they, they're like changing their mind or they just want things to be different for different sake. I don't really understand why.

CaptainCoach (28:57.562)
I

I think Torch is fine. I think that the changes they did kind of, I get what you're saying, Team Kat, but I do like the idea of making some flyers have to play closer up. And that was one of the big things I said was you don't have to worry about the lack of counter play with flyers if they don't do as much damage from farther away. So they actually have to come up close to be lethal to get kills on people. So I kind of like what they did. I just think the reason Torch is kind of a little too strong right now is mainly just cause of Ultron, like a result of Ultron.

Coach Mills (29:04.558)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (29:30.702)
and Triple Heel stuff, that's just my opinion. I'd be curious to hear Mike's Above You thoughts on it. that's just where I'm at with Torch. What about Luna though, guys? Luna, she's kind of crazy now. yeah, yeah, Torch. Sure, sure.

Gallus (29:38.894)
True.

Gallus (29:43.182)
Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I got some stuff to say about you as well. Like I'm not sure if I disagree with Team Captain because it sounds like you're also you're also saying like you're saying both that the fun part of the kit is kind of the more keep away stuff I guess like using the prisons and the slam but also diving in going in their back line as well like part of that's the shotgun I think the shotguns I agree with you partially on the shotgun

Coach Mills (29:44.912)
Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait

Gallus (30:12.11)
I think if they wanted to incentivize him being closer, you could probably actually argue that they increase the damage of the shotgun harder and even increase the spread, or even give him more shields when he slams in and move him even harder towards being up close. Out of all the patch, I thought the torch changes were good, and then I got to Ultron and I'm like, they did it at the same time, because I wanted to see where torch would land.

CaptainCoach (30:38.476)
Yeah, I felt the exact same way.

TeamCaptain (30:39.414)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (30:41.488)
I could see that, yeah.

Gallus (30:41.858)
Yeah. But I thought like out of all the changes, this was like the most thoughtful to me because of how un-interactive flyers are, they have actively gone and taken one of the flyers and said, this guy needs to play closer. that's like just incentivizing them to be closer instead of being like, let's give everyone a flight meter. Everyone ends up standing on the ground or whatever, like some hard rework to flyers. That's a really good change. And it's also like cheap to implement.

TeamCaptain (30:41.984)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (31:11.152)
They probably could have gone a little harder on it, though. They probably could have gone a little harder on it because I don't think they I mean, it does incentivize you for being close, but they could have definitely done more because I think it's only what was the change? It was like it starts at 45 meters instead of 65 meters or something like that. Yeah. I mean, I think they should have made it really short. Like if you want him to be incentivized from getting close, you could make him, you know, maybe affected from 10 meters or less. But then maybe you give them like, you know.

Gallus (31:11.36)
And I just had a question mark. I mean, yeah.

CaptainCoach (31:26.714)
30 to 20. It's pretty short.

Gallus (31:28.578)
Yeah. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (31:33.743)
Mmm.

Coach Mills (31:40.686)
an extra slam or something. think people love slamming in and flying around. I would probably give him like legit, like maybe slightly less damage on the slams, give him two charges on a slam and then make it so he's only 10 meters, you know, 10 meter range. So he's like.

CaptainCoach (31:40.728)
Is that fun though? Would that like feel good?

So it would, interesting.

CaptainCoach (31:57.05)
Yeah, I mean, he would have more of a clear-cut identity. Right.

Coach Mills (31:59.76)
Because he's not sitting up here all game like this is what people don't want they they want if he's down here Like if a torch kills me five feet away from me, that's okay Yeah, that's I had a chance to fight back and I fucked up or he outplayed me But if he if he slowly kills me in a place that I can't interact with him, that's what people just hate I think that's what people hate about Ultron too and triple support just feels like you're not interacting like

CaptainCoach (32:21.914)
It's also why Iron Man is probably one of the more balanced flyers, I would say, is because his beam is like his main damage. So he has to be, it's like pretty obvious with it, but...

Gallus (32:30.584)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (32:30.762)
His damage is also honest because Iron Man can't just one tap you randomly with a shotgun. Like it's just a constant amount of damage or just like little bursts of damage from his like projectiles which doesn't feel as oppressive. Yeah.

Coach Mills (32:36.186)
Yeah.

Gallus (32:37.358)
Yeah.

Gallus (32:45.24)
Yeah, and his mobility is not as good as well. So like if he messes up, like he will get punished harder than the others.

Coach Mills (32:50.128)
Yeah. Okay, I guess the last thing is Luna. How do you feel about Luna? What's y'all's take on it? Maybe Luna is a little under the radar because she's still not as broken as Invis. I think most people would probably agree, but...

TeamCaptain (33:06.87)
Okay, so.

Coach Mills (33:07.065)
Any strong thoughts?

CaptainCoach (33:08.314)
Let's just recap what she got here. So Luna has now a snowflake for herself that gives her 10 % damage and healing, and then 10 % of the healing she does applies to herself. So she can basically patty cake with tanks now almost. She doesn't even need another healer. She gets a decent amount of passive healing just by going where she wants. I've seen dive Lunas. It's crazy. And it's worked. It's worked.

TeamCaptain (33:31.211)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (33:32.229)
Yeah

CaptainCoach (33:35.203)
Galas, do you want to go or? Yeah, or she does. She liked two taps. It's crazy.

Gallus (33:36.802)
That hero is a DPS bro. they, they buffer. going to, it's going to break at some point.

Yeah, yeah, you don't usually go into a whole lot of, I'm sorry, support players, a whole lot of Lunars that can aim well. But I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It is like a little bit true, though.

CaptainCoach (33:51.48)
BOOM!

CaptainCoach (33:58.383)
Luna's deceptively hard to play. Like I've tried her. I'm like, yeah, okay. You got to aim on her. get it. But her freeze now is basically just like point and click. Like it's instant. It's insane.

Gallus (34:05.534)
Yeah, I mean, in a way, it's great. It's like she has a skill ceiling, bro. Like that's nice to see on the roll, at least. It's hard to talk about her without literally bringing up every support. It's like season five happens, they drop Gambit. Let's be honest, you know, they dropped a guy with nine tools in his kit and, you know, they also wanted him to be meta. And what do you do with that when you compare him to some other supports who literally just don't have as much?

TeamCaptain (34:06.24)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (34:17.219)
Yeah.

Gallus (34:30.23)
as many tools, so they're gonna have to start adding tools or start buffing parts of the kit that weren't designed to be so strong. And then they start breaking in ways that they didn't expect. Look, I think the stuff like, it's another erasure of some method of counterplay for the back lines as well. I don't know, I might circle back on it. I wanna hear what team captain has to say about it as well, yeah.

CaptainCoach (34:57.518)
They even said on the patch though, so like, we're sorry. We know we're over buffing her, but you know, we released Gambit, so we gotta make them all equal. Gambit SOP gave him an excuse to buff the other supports. It's kind of what I feel like happened. It's like, well, Luna's clearly underperforming compared to Gambit. know, compared to Gambit and Inviz.

TeamCaptain (35:01.633)
Yeah.

Classic.

Gallus (35:16.717)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (35:17.296)
Yeah, I think this might be her, I think this is arguably Luna's strongest state. You might still say that like 12 second ultimates may be a little stronger, but I think like, especially in the neutral, I think this is probably Luna's strongest state and she's not even a top like two support, which is insane by the way.

CaptainCoach (35:33.976)
Right. It's insane. They're doing leapfrog on the support. like, you get above. Okay, well now we got to put this one even further. They just keep going. They won't stop. I don't know what it is.

Coach Mills (35:45.818)
What do you think team captain?

TeamCaptain (35:48.525)
Okay so like instead of bringing the other supports down to Luna they decided let's bring Luna up as well and I think that's just a crazy thing to do considering the circumstances. The Snowflake, okay sure whatever right that's what I was thinking at first when I first heard about it and then I heard they slapped 10 % damage boost on it and I'm thinking where did that come from?

CaptainCoach (36:13.358)
Yeah, just why not?

TeamCaptain (36:16.268)
That was never even an identity for the snowflake in the first place. Like if you give a snowflake to your DPS are they getting 10 % damage boost? No. Why is she getting 10 % damage boost for giving it to herself? Where did that come from?

CaptainCoach (36:25.954)
What? They could have just added it to her numbers too. It's like, remember to snowflake? Like, what we incentivizing low rank players? Like, I forget to use this OP ability. So I'm using snowflake for buff instead of just something. It's insane. It's madness. I just can't believe what like, what they were thinking. I crashed out when I read those patch notes.

Coach Mills (36:29.21)
No, no, they're-

TeamCaptain (36:30.965)
Yes!

TeamCaptain (36:34.568)
It's just... It's so random.

TeamCaptain (36:44.396)
And it was already dumb to give her a self snowflake because it's just unnecessary, it removes counterplay, she's supposed to be diveable in some sort of way and then also they gave her the faster snowball. Now the faster snowball removes so much cool stuff that you could do before to counterplay the Luna so when I was blade one tricking like crazy for an entire season I used to be able to like react deflect it and that's like a short timing.

Now it's impossible unless you actually predict the future. Which is super annoying. You've got understand, deflecting on cap was already nigh impossible against good players. I was playing into Xype and this guy would just be turned around and he'd cast a snowball behind so you couldn't see her hands and then throw it back and then it's like shit and I'm frozen. Now you don't even have to do that. You don't have to do that.

Gallus (37:15.758)
Yep.

CaptainCoach (37:16.92)
Yeah, you got to precast.

Gallus (37:34.03)
You

CaptainCoach (37:35.16)
Yeah, that's a really good point. It takes away like a little mini game. One of the big reasons I like the combat in Marvel Rivals is because everything has a cast time of roughly like half a second ish for a lot of alts. pretty much every alt's interruptible if you like do it frame perfect. And yeah, there's just like one less cool interaction kind of just removed from the game because I guess Luna needed buffs. was too hard, I guess.

Coach Mills (37:35.801)
Yeah

Coach Mills (37:56.634)
But I think my... you go on, on. Okay, well, I was gonna say my... Because I'm trying to remember back in Overwatch and why, like, the backline fights, like... Because I loved playing Ana as, like, as a support in Overwatch. And I remember the backline fights, they felt intense, they didn't feel unwinnable, and I feel like they felt fair from, like, both sides. But the difference, in my opinion, is, like, Ana had single-use things. Like, she had a nade that could do damage or heal herself in a single instance. She had a sleep that could do something in a single instance.

Gallus (37:58.51)
It's like, it's a... You go Mills, sorry.

Coach Mills (38:26.714)
versus self snowflake or like putting a shield on yourself, that's consistent value. That's like constantly being given to you the entire engagement. It's not like as Ana, if you fucked up your nade or you fucked up your sleep, you're dead. Like that's it. It was a single instance. And I think like we need more single instance skillshots or single instance form of sustain, not nonstop forms of sustain, which is what we have like across the entire roster and supports. Like.

CaptainCoach (38:45.998)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (38:49.483)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (38:53.57)
Yeah, having a cooldown to defensive utility, think is really important in a game like this, because you're pretty much just eliminating neutral at that point even further, right? Tracking cooldowns isn't... You don't really track cooldowns against Enviz. You're just... mean, they're always up and she's always healing, right? It's like...

Coach Mills (38:58.104)
Right, because then they have to time it.

Coach Mills (39:03.706)
Yeah

Coach Mills (39:10.448)
Yeah, yeah. if the Ana used her nade aggressively, then she wouldn't have it defensively for like a long time. And that was like an important dynamic. But like, still, she could still technically count, like if she hit the sleep dart, she could like counterplay it to build up her cooldowns back. But it was, there was windows. yeah, like exactly like you said, there's no, there's literally zero windows. It's literally, you need not, the only way to burst through an invis is you need nonstop pressure.

TeamCaptain (39:13.184)
Well that's a-

CaptainCoach (39:19.385)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (39:37.678)
like constant repetitive pressure from multiple people because it's just consistent. All of it is just consistent. The snowflake is just all nonstop healing. The shield is constantly healing everyone around it. Even like stuff like Totem, I think is is like it just lasts. It's not like a flash. It's like constantly on until you break it. Like these are just consistent sustains. And I think that it reduces the skill. It reduces the timing. It reduces the counterplay. I just I think that that's like the wrong direction for a lot of these backlots, to be honest.

CaptainCoach (39:38.072)
Yeah, everybody or like a damage reduced

TeamCaptain (40:06.016)
I feel like the game should work like a flow chart so like if Luna misses snowball then you go down to the next part which is does Luna get peeled or does Luna not get peeled and then she dies or she survives, if she hits the snowball then she gets peeled or kills, it should work like that but now it's like Luna misses snowball, now she sells snowflakes, takes the 1v1, does she have the aim to do it and then she might win. Whereas like there's

CaptainCoach (40:32.378)
Yeah, that's...

Coach Mills (40:33.11)
Gallus (40:33.996)
Yeah, it's just like, like to build on that, like it's also like for any Lunar players out there, it's also like not that simple as well. It's like, I don't think anyone's saying they want the hero to hinge around this one skillshot that I guess for the average player is hard to hit. And a lot of the time you don't get to do it, but you want to play your hero, right? It's not, it's the flow chart isn't just that, right? It's like if Lunar doesn't hit the snowball, right?

TeamCaptain (40:37.344)
Yeah, go ahead.

Coach Mills (40:37.872)
Okay.

Gallus (41:02.016)
was she in a position where she was considering maybe she might not hit the snowball and she's able to get her sprint up and get out. every interaction like that and stuff like, even though if you consider her current state now, the freeze is just better and faster. Like something has been lost by making it faster because stuff like having a long windup or a hard to hit skills shot and that also creating some sort of mini game of counterplay creates this well of depth that

CaptainCoach (41:08.964)
Right.

Gallus (41:31.466)
artificially is making like hundreds of potential hours of depth and stuff that just pulls people in and really gets them enjoying learning the character. And that doesn't have to be something that you just erase so that they just get to feel good or whatever. They can start actually like writing the skill curve and stuff like that. And every player can be pulled into that. They don't have to erase that. And that can be good for everyone in the player base.

Like not just because, died on Luna once and that felt bad.

CaptainCoach (42:00.794)
Yeah, because then you could look at like other parts of her kit and maybe do something like, I don't know, whatever, sky's the limit. I totally agree. do we think we're pushing more towards, I mean, obviously Triple Heal is really good. And I forgot I wanted to ask you, team captain, about Blade right now. I really wanted your thoughts on Blade and where you think he's at with all these healers being so good. And then Gallus, I'm going to ask you about Fantastic after that. So.

Coach Mills (42:28.217)
Okay. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (42:28.92)
Just get that ready in the back. So where are we feeling? You said Blade, team captain, was kind of OP last time. That was like two or three buffs ago last time you were on here. Do we still feel the same way?

TeamCaptain (42:42.219)
I think Blade has the potential to be Groot, but the meta right now does not favour him at all. And I think that's just because of how prevalent Groot is. I don't know if you guys know about this, but they actually like, I don't know if it's a bug or a shadow nerf, but any character that's CC immune you can't anti-heal. So like before you used to be able to kill Luna through ult.

CaptainCoach (42:51.459)
name.

TeamCaptain (43:10.091)
but now you can't because she's CC immune and that applies to Gru if he has his big wall up you can't put that anti-heal on him with your shotgun which is obviously just a buff against Blade but

CaptainCoach (43:20.026)
Is it because the boop is tied to the C the boop is the healing reducing and they're like tied to the same

Coach Mills (43:20.662)
I don't know why they did that, by the way.

TeamCaptain (43:23.443)
I don't know. No because the ult also doesn't apply anti-heal.

Coach Mills (43:27.792)
It has to be because of Gambit is the reason they had they did that because they just were afraid of everything being antsy'd all the time, but I don't really understand why.

CaptainCoach (43:29.646)
Huh.

CaptainCoach (43:36.046)
That's a pretty big nerf. That's a pretty big nerf.

Gallus (43:36.728)
Yeah, fear of Anti is kind of wild considering how delicate they are with Blade and then they just dropped Gambit in the state he was.

TeamCaptain (43:44.695)
yes, I don't understand like it's so funny I've been like ever since Blade came out they were like giving him one sword damage per buff or some dumb ass shit like that and then you'd look at like Invis and then she's got like a full page of buffs and then you're like what?

Coach Mills (43:44.951)
Yeah, yeah.

CaptainCoach (43:54.362)
They did that like a couple times.

Coach Mills (43:55.246)
Yeah, yeah, because it was it was actually so funny because the last time you were on the pod, this was right after Daredevil was released and they added like the anti on Namor and the the anti on venom. And you said that you didn't like how they were creating, you know, similarities in characters kits and they didn't have like certain effects that were specifically for heroes. You thought that Blade should have the right, right. He had that specific that specific effect. And I think it's funny that like soon after that,

CaptainCoach (44:00.865)
hahahaha

Gallus (44:01.397)
Hehehehe

TeamCaptain (44:18.294)
Well that made Braid unique.

Coach Mills (44:24.996)
They were like, fuck you, team captain. We're just going to release Gambit and he's going to have like every nonstop anti. They literally, yeah, I guess they just they they're like, no, no one gets a unique mechanic. I guess I don't that seems it feels like Blades should at least get the strongest version of it, right? Like the strongest version of empty. And he has like probably the weakest version of anti.

TeamCaptain (44:43.104)
He doesn't. That's the crazy part, yeah.

CaptainCoach (44:43.522)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's really sad. Okay, so when's a good time to pick him right now? Is there a good time? If it's not Triple Eagles.

TeamCaptain (44:53.534)
A good time to pick him is like if your team wants to play 2-2-2. I wouldn't play him as a solo DPS, he just doesn't have like enough presence. Like you'd rather just play Bucky or Psylocke or Phoenix and then you're just doing 10 times more to be honest. I think his poke isn't consistent like on the shotgun it's like...

CaptainCoach (45:13.274)
Is that because you follow up damage with the heal reduced to burst people out and so you need more damage?

TeamCaptain (45:22.386)
I can randomly just two tap someone and they're like what the fuck just happened to me or I could just like shoot someone multiple times and they're taking like no damage. He's more favored than Brawl. Yeah, yeah.

Gallus (45:31.778)
Yeah, well, yeah, you can just randomly miss like five times in a row. Yeah.

Coach Mills (45:32.834)
Yeah. I am Avenue said that there's just a ton of no regs on him. I don't know if you've experienced that, but that's what he said. He said it's like nonstop no regs.

TeamCaptain (45:41.814)
there's no rigs and there's something really weird that can happen where basically the bullet that initially comes out will hit and solo the shotgun pellets and you'll hit for like 240 damage. It's a very very very sweet spot, very sweet spot.

Coach Mills (45:55.466)
What the fuck? So it's like a less consistent, like old Roadhogs right click, right? A little bit. With Roadhogs right click, it felt like you could eventually get consistent with it, but it doesn't seem that way with Blade. It seems like it's just utter random.

Gallus (46:02.062)
Yeah

TeamCaptain (46:02.248)
Yes, exactly.

CaptainCoach (46:03.386)
Mmm.

CaptainCoach (46:12.324)
Do they spray out randomly? in re- like it's not the same animation every time? Is it actually like that? yeah, that- Okay. That'd be crazy if it wasn't. Alright, did you have any thoughts on Blade Galas? I figured I'd ask you about Mr. Fantastic if you didn't

TeamCaptain (46:16.798)
No, it's the same pattern I'm pretty sure. I'm almost certain that is... yeah.

Gallus (46:28.27)
yeah, yeah. I mean, just on blade, it's like as a, as a, a non blade player, it's like, I'd always hop in cause I'm interested in the hero. Like I, I love the, I, at least the idea of the hero, maybe not the execution so far, but, it felt like this last buff to the sword damage actually felt like now the sword to me is noticeable just a little bit. Like I'm like, this might, they might've reached a sweet spot.

For it like that. That's really like it for me the rest of it I got a lot of thoughts on blade and like his design and everything but like if you want to talk about fantastic

Coach Mills (47:06.352)
Yeah, because you play a lot of Fantastic, right? That's your main grinder. nice. Nice.

Gallus (47:08.322)
Yeah, yeah, I'm a fantastic man. I love that hero.

CaptainCoach (47:11.532)
I wanted to start this by saying, I think the changes kind of didn't really help him. I think he's about the same or maybe even a little worse. Which is like, I was getting burned at the stake for saying that when I was going over the patch notes last patch. I'm like, yeah, think he's kind of, he's gonna like take more percentage damage from people like Wolverine and Iron Fist. Obviously, but he's gonna be more healer reliant. I also didn't like, I know he gains the health and he keeps it. But when you use the,

Gallus (47:20.012)
Yes.

CaptainCoach (47:41.444)
the wall, now you don't maintain the bonus health anymore. So you can't do an instant cancel into a wall and maintain that. And also you can't stay into the range form. So I let you talk about it because that decaying shield just disappears immediately now. So you keep the health, but if you had lost that, I don't like it. I don't like the direct, so yeah, you don't like it either.

Gallus (47:57.324)
Yeah.

Gallus (48:08.29)
Yeah, yeah, I guess the question kind of is like, he can be healed in big mode is the big change really. And it's like, well, did he need more staying power when supported? Is that really like, why you have this hero or anything like, there are a lot of tanks for that. There are a lot of tanks that can do that. I think you're probably getting crucified over your opinions for the hero because average ranks have thought this hero is broken for a long time.

I think, to be honest, I'm kind of expecting his win rate to decline if they don't touch the hero because this kind of happened last time. He was considered... Yeah, yeah, he was... Yeah, he's under 50 % right now.

CaptainCoach (48:44.28)
He's under 50 % in Celestial Plus, which he was higher before the patch. He was like at 51 or 52. Yeah, I think. And Quackly.

Gallus (48:55.54)
cause cause I looked at this, it fluctuated a little bit cause I was, I was like really like, I don't want to like, I wanted to plant my flag on it. And then I held back on posting a video, like, you could actually say that at the skill ceiling, this hero is completely unchanged or worse. And then in the low ranks where he was creating issues for players that's been entrenched. So what was the purpose of this? Like some people actually think this hero has broken a good amount of them.

Like you get to like gold or something. They don't know what this hero does and they don't know what to do against him. And at the skill ceiling, every time he gets a buff, people are like, this hero is back. They don't know how he, they, they learn for like a month, like sort of fantastic rhythm or whatever. And then the range DPS players are back on their game and they absolutely destroy him and, and he falls down again. It's like, it wasn't no, no, no, no.

Coach Mills (49:24.161)
Hehehehehe

CaptainCoach (49:25.338)
I think his skill ceiling went down, I agree.

CaptainCoach (49:38.5)
Yeah, he's still, he's not good at the meta. sorry for talking over you. Yeah, poke, he gets destroyed by poke. I agree with you though, his skill ceiling is definitely lower now. Like he has less options and he's more reliant on healers to do stuff.

Coach Mills (49:43.504)
Yeah.

Gallus (49:50.791)
yeah, which is, which was bad for like the guy who walks around basically and has noodle arms and doesn't do a whole lot of damage. It's like, if you have less options and less flexibility in that state, then every time you're against someone with a gun, what do you do? You die and swap. basically that, that dynamic of the change they made where his big form is no longer bonus health and it's base health. The big argument I saw everyone making was now you get this burst heal.

in application because what they've incentivized you to do with it, because you can also turn into the fridge mode, like the block form from the big form, is that you need to hoard cool downs for this mode. And if you're transforming to heal, you are at the backend of an engagement. That's where you're getting value from this and you need to instant cancel and get out because you're out of cool downs. Like that's what's happening nine times out of 10. So it's removed wiggle room and against any hard matchup.

It's the same or worse because you would be incentivized to insta cancel your big mode and keep the bonus health to do more in your little form. And your little form is just worse now. Like that's what it was. It was a nerf to the little form and he didn't need to be better at what he was already good at. If he's getting heel slopped down main and he's stalling on cart, like the hero was already fantastic at that.

CaptainCoach (51:00.943)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (51:02.832)
What would be your buffs? If you could buff him in any way you wanted, how would you do it? Like to make him a little maybe deeper in that skill expression, stronger in high elo, but not busted in low elo. What would you do? What would be your big changes?

Gallus (51:14.414)
I wanted him to be more interesting or just have more options or skill expression at the ceiling, because if he was considered to be too good in low ranks, then exactly what you need to do is make changes that don't make him better there, which was why this was a bit of a head scratcher for me, because at his skill floor interactions, he goes big, runs down onto the objective, gets healed by a rocket, and now he's stronger in that situation. Right. So why did they why did they do that? Like I wanted

CaptainCoach (51:33.242)
Hmm.

Gallus (51:43.395)
When you grab two people with the grab, I wanted that to do more damage because what's the incentive to do that? You can apply the one second of CC that's probably only going to affect one hero because you can only really reliably grab dive tanks and apply it. That should do more damage because you're sacrificing the ability to pull someone towards your team and then boop them with another ability towards your team by grabbing two people. Like that should be something that's an interesting trade off and just, yeah.

CaptainCoach (52:06.275)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (52:09.984)
That ability is such a gimmick, like that choice, it's so gimmicky.

Gallus (52:13.206)
Like, yeah.

CaptainCoach (52:15.01)
Yeah, I find it odd because it's like, it's almost like they're encouraging you to play closer to your healers when the thing he's best at is just stalling out the enemy healers and just stalling and just being, like he can dive really well now. I feel like he's not that good at peeling. You're not supposed to peel on fantastic. I feel like that's probably where they should have gone with him. Like maybe make his shield on teammates do more or something. I,

Gallus (52:38.35)
That was my other thought is that, you know, if we consider, let's try not to make him better for average players or like low ranks to just make him just flat good, you know, if they wanted to give more shields for jumping to people, but not give him more to himself or even reduce a tiny bit for jumping to teammates on himself and give more, maybe that's something. like, think play style wise, like,

CaptainCoach (52:50.488)
Cause that's timing thing there.

Gallus (53:08.114)
there seems to be a reduction in creativity, but you are sort of doing the same stuff. So on this hero, you basically set up a slight off angle from your team, probably where players like Psylocke players want to be coming in because you have the stats to just threaten them. And on these angles, you also have that view to cleave everyone on the enemy team and build your fast ult. And you're in range to jump to a support, you know, if they...

suddenly get threatened by, you know, someone super fast. don't know, Star-Lord, maybe a Phoenix took a, took a spot somewhere, you know, whatever.

CaptainCoach (53:45.77)
When do you pick them? When's a good time to pick them now? Just for everyone watching.

Gallus (53:48.129)
I pick him everywhere, I actually really like Central Park defense on him, man. It's like the perfect range for everything, like what I just described. You can jump to all the angles people want to take. You're close enough to your team to help them. You have good vantage points on the enemy team to cleave all of them. Aside from that, it's just like if you're on longer range maps, just being more patient. Every cooldown you get forced out is less meter.

Coach Mills (53:49.904)
Run them down.

CaptainCoach (53:52.494)
Fantastic spammer.

CaptainCoach (54:15.299)
Yeah.

Gallus (54:17.75)
less mileage you have to walk basically. Yeah, yeah, I just pick them everywhere, Like I love the hero, but it does not work everywhere. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (54:22.084)
Coach Mills, we're

CaptainCoach (54:27.788)
Right. We're almost an hour in, we still haven't talked about Rogue yet. How much, are you guys good on time? Like, can we keep you a little bit?

Coach Mills (54:31.568)
Yeah, we need it too.

TeamCaptain (54:35.54)
I'm free forever. I'm chillin'.

Gallus (54:36.972)
Yeah, I'm good. I'm good, man.

Coach Mills (54:37.432)
Okay. All right. Three hour pod. All right. This is one hour done. But yeah, know that basically at least Captain Coach I and Team Captain, we've all been pretty much grinding Rogue. I mean, I've been sick for the past week, but when I did play with grinding Rogue, I want to hear you first, Team Captain. How do you feel about Rogue overall? How do you feel about her strength? How do you feel about her meta implications, her potential? What do you think?

CaptainCoach (54:37.56)
Okay, just making sure.

haha

TeamCaptain (55:01.516)
Okay I'm going start off and say she's so fun, the character is very fun, the kit feels good and I think the best thing is to look for fun I think and she doesn't feel unfun to play against, at least me personally, I don't think she's that oppressive to play against.

Coach Mills (55:05.611)
Agreed.

CaptainCoach (55:06.222)
Mm-hmm.

CaptainCoach (55:19.162)
She does his Hulk, she's another Hulk counter, but apart from that, yeah, you know.

TeamCaptain (55:22.476)
Yes, yes Hulk players are always getting shafted though. I think the character is OP as well and a lot of people will soon realise that she's actually busted and the reason why is because there is limitless possibilities in what you can do with this character like there's about 10 different plays that you can make with the ability to steal.

CaptainCoach (55:26.99)
Heheheheh, yeah.

Coach Mills (55:32.132)
Do? Okay, interesting.

TeamCaptain (55:52.063)
in one team fight, like for example let's say you're playing against like Groot, you got Adam, you got like a Spider-Man, you got like a Mantis right, I could grab the Groot, place this wall down behind him, I fall off the Groot, the Groot gets killed by my team right, that's one play. Another play is maybe they have an ult coming up, I can go in their backline, grab the Adam, dash back, Soulbound my entire team and save them from the ult, I can grab the Mantis, stun her,

insta stun her again and then my teammates just headshot her and kill her. There's like so much stuff that you can do with this character, it's actually insane and I was playing Rogue the entire day today and the amount of things that I did that I didn't realise was potentially possible was just crazy. I can't wait to see what people will do like two weeks from now with the character because I think she's got like such a high skill cap.

And the thing is, this is the best part of the character in my opinion. The more things that they add to the game, the more characters they add, the higher the skill cap is going to get for Rogue, because there's going to be more stuff that you can actually do with the character, which I think is very fun. It's cool for a tank to have that.

CaptainCoach (57:04.353)
I love rug.

Gallus (57:04.77)
Yeah, tank players need that as well. whatever they do with Rogue in the next couple of patches, like, Netties, please, like, just, just, like, keep that alive, that aspect of the kit, whatever, everything just, team captain just said, just like, keep that as part of the kit, especially the Vanguard players, a lot of them, like, have that, you know, self-sacrificing part of their personality. They need the depth. Just, just leave that as part of the kit. Don't let, you know, someone in Silver be like, I...

CaptainCoach (57:29.561)
Mmm.

Gallus (57:34.144)
I can't get anything done with her. I don't have a shield, et cetera. Just, yeah.

Coach Mills (57:38.83)
Yeah, because I think the whole there's a lot of the community that is like saying that she's like the worst character ever. I don't know where that even come from. Yeah, no, no, it's mostly like people on Reddit, like low-EVO players, I believe. Or maybe it's not. think it might not even be like deep like DPS players like trying to play her and like they don't know what's going on or like like like she's she's she definitely plays her setups are completely different from like almost any other tank.

CaptainCoach (57:46.627)
really? Really.

TeamCaptain (57:52.138)
I understand why they're saying that though, I understand, I completely get it.

Gallus (58:01.964)
She's not it. Yeah.

Coach Mills (58:07.204)
Like the tank that I would probably compare her the most to is maybe Thor, but even her setups are even like further...

CaptainCoach (58:11.652)
I would say she's actually pretty similar to Hulk. She has a lot of the same counters too.

Coach Mills (58:14.788)
I mean, well, yeah, think Hulk, Rogue and Thor are like the off tanks, quote unquote. We don't really have an off tank role, but they kind of feel that way.

TeamCaptain (58:15.049)
I agree.

CaptainCoach (58:20.836)
Sure.

There's definitely some matchups that are bad for her like thing Bucky still tough to deal with, but she has answers. Like she can still outplay matchups like that. And the cool thing about Rogue is you can kind of fight wherever you want. Like she can, you can dive with her, like, you know, grab a DPS, get that 20 % damage boost. You just dive their back line and then like they have to come back and be like, she has so many options. I do, I do think that her ultimate is really interesting. Curious to hear your guys' thoughts. Obviously if you pair Rogue and Gambit right now, that...

combo is insane. Like you just dive. Yeah, it's that you got to ban Gambit I think right now just because of that. I don't think Rogue is really that OP though on her own. I think she's like pretty balanced. She's definitely like on the strive. would say she's probably like A, maybe S like once people start to get good. Gambit Rogue is just like, yeah, there's there, what do do? What do you do against it?

TeamCaptain (58:55.34)
Post it. And send.

Gallus (58:56.579)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (58:56.943)
Yeah, yeah.

Gallus (59:15.0)
Doesn't it like constantly, the alt constantly proc the explosions?

CaptainCoach (59:19.16)
Yeah, then you drain their ults so they can't ul- so they have no counter. It's- it's- it's- I- I don't-

Coach Mills (59:19.588)
Yeah.

Gallus (59:21.442)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (59:22.586)
They can't counterplay, yeah.

TeamCaptain (59:24.758)
Wait are you guys not even talking about the team up? The team up is insanely busted. The team up is absolutely insane.

Gallus (59:27.722)
yeah bro! Dude! It's like double damage, like so much!

CaptainCoach (59:28.895)
yeah, that too. I have a big issue with that. Yeah.

Coach Mills (59:29.179)
well that too, that too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

TeamCaptain (59:34.848)
Yeah. And you heal your teammates. Anyone that goes in with you is getting constantly sustained by your punches. I think that is like, it has to be at least top three team, team ups in the game.

Coach Mills (59:34.884)
Yeah. Yeah.

Gallus (59:37.709)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (59:45.368)
I feel like you have so many options on this character. I love what they did with her. I guess it's our uppercut or uppercick or whatever where you're floating and then you get to reengage or disengage. It reminds me a lot of like Doomfist in a lot of ways where you're like you slam in, you can get some value, then you can uppercut and reengage or back out and you just have so much mobility options. It just feels really satisfying to be able to do all that. And then like y'all said, like with Gambit and Rogue, just think Gambit can help you kind of get

Gallus (59:46.252)
Yeah, it's insane.

CaptainCoach (59:54.382)
Great ability.

TeamCaptain (59:59.04)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:00:14.666)
a leg up on tempo for your ultimates as a team because you're building up a whole bunch of ultimates with it. And then her ult just lets you push them further behind. like the combination of the two characters, I think you can just have more ults like throughout the whole game, like more team fight wins, more like successful ult trades. Like the enemy team is going to have less ult overall. There's going to be a lot of times where like they don't get their ults in time to use them on this point. And then like

They get to use them in the next fight where it doesn't matter because you already took the objective, but y'all are building up another like non-interactable combo. it just like puts them always on this back foot I just think is so strong.

CaptainCoach (01:00:49.272)
Yeah, mean, if a support's used their ult, sometimes I'll just ult the tank if I think they're about to ult and just try to win that way. Wait, team captain, what's your favorite ability to steal? Curious. Yeah, maybe not what you think is the best, but your favorite. I personally just like taking the dash reset.

TeamCaptain (01:00:59.702)
Favourite belt to steal?

Coach Mills (01:01:05.68)
No, it's it's definitely spider-man, bro. You get to you get to uppercut You get to uppercut with you you get to fucking do some crazy combos. I like it a lot But I mean it's not as good

TeamCaptain (01:01:07.36)
What do you think?

CaptainCoach (01:01:09.562)
It's Byron's.

Gallus (01:01:10.702)
That one's actually really fun.

TeamCaptain (01:01:11.753)
Okay.

But... You know what I do when I'm playing against Spider-Man? This is all I do when I'm playing against Spider-Man. I did this to a guy today. I was playing a game of Rogue and I killed him three times. I just... I grabbed him and then I just instantly used the uppercut to kill him. I don't even use it anywhere else. You just down him then insta-uppercut him and dies. There's nothing that you can do as well if you grab them.

Coach Mills (01:01:30.382)
Yeah. But it's super fun taking that uppercut and running to a tank and like doing some crazy shit to them with the Spider-Man uppercut. It's just kind of fun, but probably not that good. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:01:33.657)
That's funny.

Gallus (01:01:34.574)
TeamCaptain (01:01:42.43)
It does let you do a lot of combos for sure.

CaptainCoach (01:01:43.31)
notice

Gallus (01:01:45.655)
The Daredevil steal is really fun. Cause you get the, you get the move speed and the damage resist or whatever. And if you take them out, you get the reset on that. Like as long as you have the ability so you can dash again. Like that one's, that one's like top three for fun for me.

TeamCaptain (01:01:48.27)
yeah, that one. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:01:59.395)
I gotta.

Coach Mills (01:01:59.902)
I think Gambit

TeamCaptain (01:02:01.707)
I think my favourite one is like hot take. Because I just grab her then freeze her and then kill her. It's so true. Gambit is very good as well.

Coach Mills (01:02:04.696)
the free. just to freeze. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's actually.

Gallus (01:02:07.266)
true.

CaptainCoach (01:02:12.729)
There's a-

Coach Mills (01:02:15.204)
Yeah, Gambit is busted because it's just the anti-air. Inviz is too good too actually with the pool.

CaptainCoach (01:02:15.502)
Gambit feels good. There's a.

yeah, I made a play with Invis where I pushed both their healers out of their own Invis ult and won a game because of that while our Punny was ulting. It's so, dude, it's so satisfying to make outplays on this character. It's so satisfying. Yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:02:22.261)
TeamCaptain (01:02:32.118)
Like there's so much you can do, it's insane, like your brain will expand playing this hero, I swear.

Coach Mills (01:02:37.309)
Hehehehehe

CaptainCoach (01:02:38.234)
Anything else with Rogue, team captain?

TeamCaptain (01:02:45.228)
Yeah, I have two, like a couple things that they could change to make the character better So one thing is that you know the right click punch that like lunges you forward I use that as a mobility tool. I don't use it for any other purposes the cooldown on it is pretty long as well six seconds and I think No, well it's good burst, but it's more I use it more for gap closer because people tend to like

Coach Mills (01:02:55.204)
Yep. Yep.

Gallus (01:02:56.322)
Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Coach Mills (01:02:58.584)
Yeah. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:03:05.101)
You don't use it for bursts? It's good burst damage if you absorb.

You use it to cancel after your second primary, right? Because it's like one, two, and then the third one comes really slow, so I usually do one, two...

Gallus (01:03:13.358)
Yeah, plus it's low cooldown, yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:03:17.832)
Yeah that one comes slow, I agree, but there's so many people that can just get away from you and I'm going to talk about what you were just talking about there. So basically what they were trying to do with it was, they were trying to make an empowered punch like Doomfist where you block damage and that amplifies the punch that you do after you block. But the problem is, is that it takes way too long to fill up that bar and by the time you filled up the bar you can no longer block. So...

CaptainCoach (01:03:35.418)
It's my favorite ability on her. I love it.

TeamCaptain (01:03:46.646)
they need to change the numbers on that or alternatively make the block longer and

CaptainCoach (01:03:51.61)
You just gotta int harder team captain. You just gotta take more damage, bro. I'd dive into their whole team and charge that bitch. I'm fucking, okay, what the hell, hit me! Dude, I play so recklessly. Yeah, dude.

Gallus (01:03:51.897)
Yeah, the ratio is off. Bro is not surviving that.

TeamCaptain (01:03:56.64)
Haha. yeah, if you-

Coach Mills (01:03:57.328)
You got it Yeah, right

TeamCaptain (01:04:01.933)
If you play against a Hawkeye you get it. Like Hawkeyes will give you straight away but like I don't know sometimes it takes too long. It takes too long.

Coach Mills (01:04:09.496)
Right, and then you need to use the punch to leave. you just can't stick around.

CaptainCoach (01:04:10.146)
I get you. They're definitely.

Gallus (01:04:12.462)
Yeah, I definitely haven't played as much of her as you guys probably. But yeah, it seems like, are you ever able to actually fully fill up the green bar? Like, yeah? Okay, yeah. Yeah, to me, it seemed like the ratio was just a little bit off.

CaptainCoach (01:04:21.464)
Yeah, yeah. What?

TeamCaptain (01:04:22.144)
Very rarely, in my opinion. In my opinion.

Coach Mills (01:04:24.888)
I don't know. Yeah, you're able to do it, Catholicist? I don't know.

CaptainCoach (01:04:29.39)
My KDA on Rogue isn't that high, I do do top damage like regularly on her. mean, I'm my Rogue account, I'm only up to GM one so far. I still don't, you know, I still haven't played in like the higher ranked games yet, but I'll get back to you on that. I play her, I dive really hard on her and I'm able to get out. I love using the kick to, you know, see if I want to keep going or just like fly out and then kick them as a running away. I use it as a disengage tool actually.

Gallus (01:04:36.888)
Damn.

Gallus (01:04:53.388)
the kick,

Gallus (01:04:58.51)
It's a really good decision tree ability, the kick. I think it's great.

Coach Mills (01:05:05.295)
No, I agree. Yeah. think, I think honestly they let's, let's put balance to the side for a second. But I think the past three, as far as player experience, the past three releases, Daredevil Gambit and Rogue have all been really great from the user's perspective. I think that they have been good kids that have dynamic skill expression that feel fun to play, maybe not fun to play against, but just as far as like living that hero fantasy, I think they they've done a great job. And I'm actually

CaptainCoach (01:05:20.442)
Mm.

Coach Mills (01:05:33.792)
It's definitely a step up from like Jean and Emma and some of these other characters that I vulture on and stuff like that.

TeamCaptain (01:05:37.983)
I agree.

CaptainCoach (01:05:39.458)
I was not expecting to like Rogue as much as I did. She's my number two, like easily. She's right up there with Hulk for me, which is like, that's saying something. She's great.

Coach Mills (01:05:43.812)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, because when Gambit came out, I thought I liked him so much. I was like, oh, man, I want to main this guy. But then Ro comes out and I actually like her better. That's crazy that they did that back to back. And then the last thing I kind of wanted to talk about as a group is that Daredevil or not Daredevil, freakin' Deadpool got announced. We're getting Deadpool, DPS, another hype release to kind of, you know, top off all these hype releases that we've had in a row. That's going to be a DPS. How do you all feel about the releases? Any any hopes for Deadpool? Any any any thoughts about it?

TeamCaptain (01:05:56.555)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:06:17.552)
I think that's gonna be a pretty big release for sure. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gallus (01:06:20.206)
Can I respond to you on the last three hero releases? I think, yeah, I agree with you on that. think Daredevil actually, I think his design gets limited by the state of balance in his kit. I think you don't make that many meaningful decisions on Daredevil currently because I think once you reach the skill floor, a lot of his gameplay is button mashing.

it's free to use the chain or the throw ability. So I don't think the choice between them is that meaningful either. I think they should differentiate those more whilst making some kind of a nerf, I think, to his current numbers. But, you know, in terms of the other two, I made a video talking about Gambit is that this should be probably a bit of a wake up call to the community. You know, they did it. I will say they did it in a brute force way, but they introduced a hero to the support roster who can

go off the main lane who can take interesting positions and make plays. And this is something that gets disincentivized from a lot of base heroes that wouldn't in other games because of the state of balance of damage being so high and healing being so high. If you break LOS or something, damage is a million. Unless you're a hero that is hypermobile or has these self-sufficiency tools, you need to be like hard engineered to walk away from your team in this game. And

That feeling people are getting from playing like Gambit, that's something that the game should be aiming for that they can achieve through balance for most of the cast.

Coach Mills (01:07:56.048)
Yeah, he kind of shined a light on the entire support role, think Gambit, because it's just how much better he is to play or feels to play and what he creates. I 100 percent agree. I also do agree with you about Daredevil, about that skill expression. just we I think a general theme of our this podcast is just like we just want more decisions that actually matter and not just decisions that we either like in Mr. Fantastic's case, just it's just like a relevant it's like an irrelevant ability you don't even really want to use.

or a decision that just ultimately you pick one, you pick the other, neither of them really matter. There's no like counterplay or decision making.

Gallus (01:08:34.114)
Yeah, think with Mr. Ref, you could just make the argument that he didn't need to be changed in the way that he was at all. I don't know what it really added, to be honest, to average players, players at the skill ceiling, whatever. Yeah, it just was unnecessary.

Coach Mills (01:08:48.452)
Was it just a change just to, I mean, I've been feeling that way about a lot of the changes though, the changes that just don't really make sense. Yeah, maybe it's similar to like the Thor change, which is just a change that just kind of feels circular. It doesn't really feel like it has a sense of direction. I would just love for them to talk more about why they do certain things. Like what's their intention? And then maybe a recap where they talk about maybe they had a certain intention and it didn't work out, so they're gonna change it or, know, instead of just.

Gallus (01:09:04.066)
Yeah, yeah.

Coach Mills (01:09:13.776)
I mean, I was especially frustrated with Psylocke for a while where she was like buffed and then nerfed and then buffed and then nerfed like four patches straight. They just and I don't really know why they don't not really explaining what what their vision is. Like, what's the goal? I would love to have that for sure.

Gallus (01:09:29.422)
Anything but nerfing the actual damage they buffed back down. Just give it a longer cooldown.

Coach Mills (01:09:31.984)
Or, yeah. But. No, no, no, yeah, yeah, Deadpool. Duelist, finally, we're getting another duelist. Yeah, I mean, he's I have I feel like they're going to do some fuckery, like with changing his role or something, I don't know.

CaptainCoach (01:09:38.104)
So Deadpool, did we talk about that?

Gallus (01:09:40.418)
Yeah, Deadpool.

CaptainCoach (01:09:45.378)
is it confirmed he's duelist?

Gallus (01:09:46.209)
Or are we?

CaptainCoach (01:09:53.658)
Really?

Gallus (01:09:53.963)
It would be, I feel like this is like, don't get your hopes up, but it would, it would be hilarious if it was like him doing a fourth wall thing where he put himself in DPS to piss people off. And then he's released and he's like a fan God like that would be so nice, but just don't.

TeamCaptain (01:09:58.006)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:10:07.691)
I can't, why? I'm with you guys? Cause why?

Coach Mills (01:10:10.736)
What?

TeamCaptain (01:10:12.553)
Why is he the only character that they've had in the menu before release? There has to be a reason why they've done that right?

Coach Mills (01:10:16.474)
Hehehehe

Yeah, yeah, I know. No, I think I think a random fucking there's gonna be a random ass Tuesday and he's just gonna be playable and ranked for no fucking reason. Like people are just gonna be able to select him like way before his release or something like that. People are like, wait, what the fuck? You can pick him in this game? Like that'd be that'd be the craziest shit ever.

Gallus (01:10:20.206)
Either it's like a new thing they do for hype.

Gallus (01:10:28.427)
Hahaha

Gallus (01:10:36.322)
That would actually be sick.

TeamCaptain (01:10:36.971)
You know what I wish they had done? They should have made it so in band phase you could pick Daredevil, or not Daredevil, Deadpool and just put him out and people would get so pissed. I wish you could do that. This deranged me.

Coach Mills (01:10:45.696)
yeah. They are.

CaptainCoach (01:10:46.906)
Ha ha ha

Gallus (01:10:47.221)
Yeah, yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:10:50.774)
Don't, they have the release date when you hover over them in the little hero screen, don't they? Okay, yeah. I think they're just doing it for marketing purposes. Daredevil's one of the most popular Marvel characters, right? So think they're just doing it to be like, oh, here he comes, get ready. Start playing over Christmas break. Yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:10:54.738)
Yes, they do.

Coach Mills (01:10:54.764)
Right, yeah, 16th. Allegedly.

Coach Mills (01:11:03.652)
Right. I got I I kind of have zero idea what is kids gonna look like at all. mean, they could go a million ways with him, to be honest with you. Like, is he going to be? yeah. The what? What's the what is it?

Gallus (01:11:09.112)
It's a good hype tool.

CaptainCoach (01:11:17.374)
I think he'll be DPS, maybe tank, maybe tank.

Gallus (01:11:17.902)
Have you seen the jokes about Blade?

Gallus (01:11:24.162)
can't wait for this guy with a gun and a sword who's gonna have some sort of self-healability. They handled the last one fantastically. Blade. They can't make Blade again.

Coach Mills (01:11:31.054)
No, hahaha.

CaptainCoach (01:11:35.482)
Wait, what are you talking about?

TeamCaptain (01:11:36.159)
You dead boy.

Coach Mills (01:11:37.535)
yeah, because he's just- he's just- yeah, he just does the same- Right. Right.

CaptainCoach (01:11:38.843)
I gotcha.

Gallus (01:11:42.7)
Yep. That looks like he might have some sort of self-res.

TeamCaptain (01:11:43.18)
You I'm hoping for? I'm hoping for... Yeah I think he'd probably have something similar to Wolverine, I could see that. But I'm hoping for him to have a kind of similar mechanic to Coke and Dagger where if you swap between the pistols or the swords you get different ability like cooldowns that you can use. Just so you can like switch up the playstyle depending on the weapon you choose. I think that'd be quite a fun mechanic.

CaptainCoach (01:11:47.704)
Yeah. Wolverine, yeah.

Coach Mills (01:12:01.712)
That'd be sick.

Coach Mills (01:12:05.519)
Alright.

CaptainCoach (01:12:06.97)
think they'd be cool too if they added some form of trick shotting or something where it's like he's doing moves and then you can line up like maybe, yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:12:13.099)
You what they could do? You know what I'm thinking of? Max Payne, like the slow mo where you're jumping to the side. He could do that. Yes. Cause that's like Freya on Overwatch. You could do like a similar thing with that but with Deadpool. I think it kind of fit the character as well.

Coach Mills (01:12:17.872)
shi- hehehehehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehhehheh

CaptainCoach (01:12:17.882)
Oh yeah, that would be fourth wall breaking too. Cause like if-

CaptainCoach (01:12:28.43)
We were talking last time where maybe he has something where he like, know, Nocturnal in League of Legends? Where the whole screen gets dark for everybody. Maybe he does something like that, but he like pops up on your screen or something and it's like cleaning your screen like, you can't see. That'd be annoying, but like something like really.

Gallus (01:12:33.741)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:12:41.084)
yeah, yeah.

Gallus (01:12:42.83)
That'd be annoying as hell.

Coach Mills (01:12:43.863)
It's like fucking in it wasn't smash where like there was an item you could grab and smash on the Wii it was like it was like a dog Yeah, the Nintendo is the fucking intend dogs, but it's like Deadpool like

TeamCaptain (01:12:49.035)
pop-it bro is the 10 dogs

CaptainCoach (01:12:51.386)
Ha ha ha

TeamCaptain (01:12:53.739)
Yeah, yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:12:54.916)
Well, even in Smash 2 when-

Gallus (01:12:55.298)
I do, I love the slow-mo idea so much, but I don't know if they'd be able to technically pull it off. And if that would just end up being busted OP, if he, if he could move normal speed and he slows the entire game down by like half, but maybe they do that with like, Quicksilver if they ever put them in the game. I don't know. Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:12:58.381)
Yeah, bullet time.

CaptainCoach (01:12:59.193)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:13:04.622)
Yeah

Coach Mills (01:13:09.026)
Yeah

TeamCaptain (01:13:14.807)
yeah, I could see that.

CaptainCoach (01:13:16.024)
Maybe, maybe they're showing him early because he's gonna be a special release too. Maybe he could play all three roles, you know, like he's something-

TeamCaptain (01:13:23.435)
He's like Spider-Man level character though, that's why they're showing him off early, let's be real. This is going to bring a lot of people back that are just casual and they just are fans of the universe. But I'm excited to see what they do with the kit. I was hoping that he would be a tank personally because I think it makes sense for the guy who just absorbs every bit of damage you can absorb to be a tank but he also fits DPS, I can't really be mad no matter which role they pick although

CaptainCoach (01:13:27.778)
Yeah, that's most likely. Yeah.

Gallus (01:13:28.589)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:13:53.375)
I do feel like Stratagist is a bit more out there compared to the other two.

CaptainCoach (01:13:56.44)
Yeah, I believe con- canonically Daredevil, I might be getting my heroes mixed up, but if he gets- even if he gets vaporized down to one atom, he can still regenerate. It's something like that, where he just- he's just like unkillable.

TeamCaptain (01:14:06.506)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:14:06.938)
Deadpool, yeah. Yeah, maybe they'll literally make him like unkillable in the game. Like he just slowly regenerates on like a puddle and until he's back, like he doesn't, you just can't kill him. He just, he's just fucking back. shit. Yeah, no.

CaptainCoach (01:14:14.262)
Yeah, that's... what, that's a really cool idea!

Gallus (01:14:15.406)
That's great.

TeamCaptain (01:14:18.239)
What if he can get like gold?

CaptainCoach (01:14:20.862)
Just running around with his little baby legs.

TeamCaptain (01:14:23.243)
Yeah.

Gallus (01:14:25.742)
Yeah, he needs stuff like that. Or he needs lines where he mocks you because you're not allowed to swap because he's going to come back to life. Stuff like that. Someone in my chat, someone in my chat, shout out to Tody had the idea is like he should take his own health bar and just like smack you with it. Like as an ability. Yeah, yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:14:28.525)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:14:35.866)
What if they got Ryan Reynolds?

Coach Mills (01:14:44.266)
it. But they could do all kinds of stuff with the fourth wall, actually, now that I'm thinking about it, like they could they could go. I want to see how absurd they go. Like, I have no idea just how absurd they're going to go with it. But yeah, no, I I don't know about yours. Like, I haven't really been streaming, but just in the videos I posted, I've actually seen like the biggest jump of viewership, you know, this as a five point five. Like, I think like maybe it's like a culmination of all the things they've done, but.

TeamCaptain (01:14:45.173)
That'd be sick.

Gallus (01:14:55.106)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:15:13.54)
I feel like the games in a really good state, like as far as content is concerned, like content is doing really well. And I think Deadpool is going to even put it even further. Like I think the game is in a really good spot. I don't know how y'all feel about the direction of the game, but just, you know, three back to back, like fairly good releases. And then now we're getting Deadpool, which is definitely going to be a mad hype release. I don't know. I just think the, like the hype's kind of swelling a little bit and the game's in a good spot.

TeamCaptain (01:15:37.59)
The way I see it is like as a content creator I am very grateful for like all the content that's getting pushed and I thank God every morning that I'm not a pro player in this game, like I would rather do anything else than go pro in this game now, I can't lie. So you know what, to all the pro players, kudos, but like ranked is not that bad and neither is doing content creation, that's kinda fun. I think the game is always getting something new.

Coach Mills (01:15:49.13)
hahahahah

Gallus (01:15:49.303)
Hahaha!

TeamCaptain (01:16:06.965)
so there's always something to talk about which I love, it's great.

Coach Mills (01:16:09.956)
Right, now I agree.

CaptainCoach (01:16:11.896)
I don't think the pro scene is going to be around much longer at this rate with how they're balancing the game. Just my opinion. I think this game is a fun game now.

Coach Mills (01:16:17.56)
I mean, I mean, with all the picks and bands they have, definitely they kind of brute force it to be like kind of reasonable just with, you know, four bands per team and the projects.

CaptainCoach (01:16:28.154)
That's the one thing, yeah. That's the one thing, yeah.

Gallus (01:16:31.906)
It's like a saving grace of it, honestly. To be honest, they monitor the band system or keep it up to scratch, maybe that will help a lot. there's already been a lot of teams pulling out or bigger orgs pulling out. That's only as much as I know though.

Coach Mills (01:16:34.254)
Right.

TeamCaptain (01:16:45.437)
Org's are pulling out, yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:16:47.918)
Three as of last week, but I might be more now.

Coach Mills (01:16:48.246)
Yeah, yeah, I think they just announced. I think they just announced something big or they're going to announce something big soon or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, I would. I would definitely want it. But yeah, no, I think the Eastport scene is going to be fine. It's just like Nettie's is just slow rolling everybody a little bit, which which is, you know, as long as they deliver, it's fine. But but yeah, anyways. OK, before we end at one last, just any hot take, if you have a hot take about the game or just, you know.

TeamCaptain (01:16:55.613)
I've heard some things but I don't know if I can talk about it.

Coach Mills (01:17:16.674)
anything you want to just throw out. Galis, you're kind of the king of hot takes. So you could cut it. Yeah, I think so. I think I think I think your content is like, like definitely like nonstop hot takes. I love it, though. I'm like addicted to watching all your. Yeah, it's Rage Made Short. I love it, Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:17:21.018)
Start recording.

Gallus (01:17:22.019)
Am I?

CaptainCoach (01:17:28.622)
I wanna be a, yeah, I wanna be in a gallus short.

TeamCaptain (01:17:30.077)
Ragebait shorts.

Gallus (01:17:32.462)
Thank you.

CaptainCoach (01:17:37.338)
I'll do like a crazy YouTube reaction be like, oh what the- that's not right, that's not right! You can't say that! Angry chatter! I'll get my pitch for here, got a fork here, here's my pitch for- get- No bad opinions! No bad- Alright, sorry, I uh- go ahead.

Gallus (01:17:45.774)
I do not sound like that, bro.

Gallus (01:17:54.799)
I wrote some stuff down the other day, but I want to see if the any of this a hot take

The hot take I would want to go with besides what I wrote, which is about like more current state of balance. People don't care about balance. They don't. I think when the average person engages in a discussion about balance, they are bringing in some anecdote about how they think something is fair because of the heroes they play. That's it. They don't care about the ecosystem of the game. And that's how pretty much every comment

on anything about balance goes. Especially as someone who makes primarily short form content, usually how people engage with short form content is that they are scrolling through emotions. That is like fundamentally the core of short form scrolling, which I guess is doing myself a disservice a lot of the time by sticking to short form. People do not care about balance in general.

I think they say they would like to care about it, but man, man, the game, like we need to be okay with nerfing stuff. Nerfing stuff does not ruin the game in any way. Like let's go for variety. Let's go for opening up the space as much as possible, make the game good for a long time. All right, like two weeks of novelty is cool or whatever, but you can do that by making changes, not by just making buffs happen. And it's okay to say that.

CaptainCoach (01:19:13.37)
As a person who care- sorry.

Gallus (01:19:36.16)
Maybe we shouldn't buff everything constantly. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:19:40.388)
I was just, was the internal timer for the TikTok was just ticking down in my head. I felt like we only had like five seconds left in the clip. I was trying to give you my toxic reaction. My bad, bro.

Coach Mills (01:19:49.312)
I... Yeah. Yeah.

Gallus (01:19:49.326)
Bro, most of my time editing is just cutting out. I say too much, like...

CaptainCoach (01:19:54.37)
You can just edit that part out though.

Coach Mills (01:19:59.626)
I, probably, yeah, you can, you can go, you can go.

TeamCaptain (01:20:00.621)
Have a go.

CaptainCoach (01:20:02.138)
I care about balance.

TeamCaptain (01:20:03.396)
I've got one hot take and two balance changes that I'd like to see. So my hot take is that low rank players are not affected by balance and they shouldn't care about it either. You guys down in low ranks, you got to understand that you probably don't understand the game so it doesn't matter what they change, the game's probably going to play the same and you're still going to lose to the characters that you struggle against because you need to build up

Coach Mills (01:20:07.107)
Okay, what's up?

Gallus (01:20:15.682)
Yes!

Gallus (01:20:25.645)
Yes.

TeamCaptain (01:20:30.44)
a fundamental understanding for it to actually matter to you. For us high rank players that understand the game, every single change that happens will impact the way the game is played because we have a fundamental understanding of how to play the game and how to take full advantage of everything that works in the game. So for example if Punisher's damage is changed by 1, what does that do for us? That makes it so that all the aim gods that play Punisher

can now delete us maybe by 2 bullets faster. What does that mean for you guys? It means that maybe randomly you'll be on 20 HP and Punisher will kill you because he's just flicking his mouse around you know. I think that a lot of the people who want balance in low ranks are mostly wanting it for selfish reasons such as their own character getting buffed but that won't make you better at the game, your character being stronger doesn't mean that you'll be better or stronger at the game.

It just means that the game might play a bit differently for your character but overall I think that high ranks are more affected by balanced patches than low ranks are. Like if I was playing any character I could climb to probably top 500, that's playing any character, I could do it on Skrull Witch, doesn't matter. I think that they should definitely think more about

the higher echelon and that could just be like diamond plus for balancing, it doesn't mean it has to be the highest 1 % players but like people down in bronze and what not, not really affected in my opinion, not really.

CaptainCoach (01:22:09.826)
God, low elo.

Coach Mills (01:22:09.882)
Right. Trying to change the rules of like basketball and you just like you're you know, you're playing at a high school level or something. It's like it doesn't make any fucking sense. Like you don't get to set the rules when you just don't understand the fundamentals. Right. At all.

Gallus (01:22:19.886)
Yeah.

Gallus (01:22:23.67)
I feel a lot of strong feelings for average players about balance changes, unless they're super drastic, like sweeping changes. You could definitely look at them as like, if people are saying this patch is doing this, et cetera, a lot of it can be intellectualizing, you know, changes or whatever. If you take a low rank thing player, he's like, my God, I'm so glad his slam lasts like five seconds and everyone they ever used it on died in two to three seconds. but they can go and say, I'm so glad they buffed the thing.

like you were getting the exact same effect you were getting last patch. It didn't do anything for you.

TeamCaptain (01:22:54.88)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:22:58.448)
I guess I'll throw my hot take in because it kind of piggybacked off of both of y'all's. Yeah, I just think I think this actually affects high elo players too, but I just think perception matters a lot more to people than balance just across the board. How people perceive how good a character is versus how actually good it is. And the way that I know that this is true is that we'll be sitting in a patch for a long time and certain characters will be getting banned and certain characters be getting picked. And then all of sudden there's a pro tournament that happens.

TeamCaptain (01:22:58.476)
Yup.

Coach Mills (01:23:27.466)
and the pros are actually just playing some different stuff. then, now all of sudden everyone's playing cap. all of a sudden, now everyone's playing X, Y, and Z. And it's like, everyone just like, it's almost like monkey see monkey do. They see what the patch notes is. They see what streamers say. They see what, you know, their perception of the changes are. But like a lot of people aren't really trying to like actively explore them themselves or make up their own mind on these things. They're just kind of like following the leader, so to speak, about...

let's just keep, let's just keep banning the same things. And I think high elo players and low elo players do the same thing a lot of times where they just kind of just follow the perception and they don't follow like what they actually feel or, you know, experiment.

CaptainCoach (01:23:53.466)
Hmm.

CaptainCoach (01:24:02.618)
Yeah, I feel like I could add on that. I got a hot take on myself. I think the higher rank you get, the less your individual skill matters relative to other players and the more your character selection matters. And I think that's a major issue with the game. I think that's the number one issue with the game is that the higher ranks you go, it actually becomes less skill-based in a lot of ways because of just the disparity between characters.

And like you said, team captain in lower ranks, it doesn't really matter. If you're just better, you can just run it down on anybody and just brute force your way to wins. Just run them with blade, shoot your shotgun. They just macro positioning. But the higher rank you go, you will have to start playing Ultron. Or else you're not going to get to those tippity top ranks unless you either got someone you're playing with or you're willing to fill when your team doesn't. And I think that's the number one thing holding this game back. And it's why I don't really think this game has a competitive future.

until that's addressed.

Gallus (01:24:59.374)
Power creep does that. Like that is something that power creep exacerbates. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:25:01.85)
Connor. Yeah, so I just play for fun. Now I just play what I want. Because I'm not willing to play Ultron when we only have two healers. And that's kind of the way I've been enjoying the game is just pretty much just not really doing the mag, even though mag. I feel like you want a mag on your team pretty much every game. He's just so good. And it grew, Emma. It's all the same tank. Cap is really good. just.

At a certain point, the characters I like to play will have their day in the sun, and I'm just kind of be happy when that happens. I'm kind of more playing in a casual capacity now, I would say, to be honest, just because that's how I view the game right now.

TeamCaptain (01:25:44.428)
Do you guys have season 6 patch note predictions for like any drastic character buffs or nerfs? I wanted to start off and just throw like two out, I think supports overall are going to get nothing, maybe a slap on the wrist for a couple and they're going to over buff Mantis and Adam, that's my prediction. Just with the way things are going it's going to happen, it's going to happen.

CaptainCoach (01:26:02.458)
Yeah

Gallus (01:26:02.542)
UGH!

Coach Mills (01:26:02.672)
You're probably right Invis gets a second jump or a third jump four charges of jump Well, they actually will do that. They're definitely gonna buff fucking Jeff I know they're gonna buff Jeff and they shouldn't fucking buff Jeff, but they're gonna buff Jeff like there's no way they don't buff Jeff

Gallus (01:26:06.286)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:26:07.503)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:26:13.717)
Cause I could literally, I could fix the support issue in one patch.

Gallus (01:26:21.886)
They seem to care about this difference between the supports. One of them can't just be some kind of main healer, right? And they would do that by like, let's give them a team up with someone who is. And okay, maybe we go down that path. It seems like they dropped that for a bit. And we're just like, okay, let's just buff everyone up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:26:29.412)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:26:37.711)
Thank

CaptainCoach (01:26:38.714)
I tell you, bro, they're leapfrogging. Those little squares, those little squares behind you on the right side, that's where support started. on the left, like they just like, buff, nerf, buff, buff, buff, buff, nerf, buff, buff, buff, buff, buff, buff,

Coach Mills (01:26:40.782)
Hehehe

Coach Mills (01:26:47.544)
Yeah, they're gonna un...

Gallus (01:26:49.432)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:26:50.493)
It's so easy to balance the supports as well, like as someone that's just played the game, you could play the patch for like an hour and you can instantly tell what you could do. For example, for Invis, what's the issue with Invis? Her pull or grasp, it comes off on a cooldown way too short and it's really oppressive to play against. Why can Wolverine have to wait 12 seconds to come in close and grab you when Invis can do it at any range basically on an 8 second cooldown?

she has the option to push you away or pull you in, that's just obviously a dumb design. And then Gamba.

Gallus (01:27:24.46)
Yeah, and if that's something you have to do to do it so frequently, does she need to have the self-shield if she can push you away that often?

Coach Mills (01:27:31.844)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:27:32.73)
Yeah, and then you compare it to like a new release. Like I personally think Rogue's cooldowns are actually like perfect. I think that's the exact sweet spot they need to be where it's like long enough to where if you save it all for like one burst window on somebody, you're paying a cost, which is like, okay, I'm not gonna be able to use my abilities to access the backline. I'm gonna be using them for damage. There's like a trade-off and you actually have to be strategic with it. Cause if they're up all the time, right? There's no strategy to that. If you have cooldowns are always.

TeamCaptain (01:27:33.215)
Yeah, exactly.

CaptainCoach (01:28:01.314)
like always just ticking up, you're just gonna keep using them, right? So there has to be a bit of like a time where it's, so it'll force you to use it at the right time or else you can just spam it. Cause there's no, there's no punishment for wasting a cool down. That should, that should, that should matter if you waste the key cool down.

Gallus (01:28:12.674)
Yeah. Yeah. She's a, she's a weird one because she's perceived as like, she's perceived by a lot of people as just a combo hero. So it's kind of weird. And I think players are struggling with the fact that if you're not comboing, there is way more nuance in this hero than in others or whatever. Like your positioning has to be a lot more surgical and stuff like that. It's like, if you use steel, that's a 25 second cooldown.

Coach Mills (01:28:13.328)
You know, you know what we need in season six?

Coach Mills (01:28:35.716)
Yeah, for sure.

Gallus (01:28:40.172)
So, you know, if you don't know what to do, if you're not cool down dumping one target, like this hero feels horrible. And that you could actually, you could make an argument and that is a drawback of the hero, but.

Coach Mills (01:28:55.408)
But yeah, I was gonna say that they need in season six, I think it's been too long, we need another squid, you know what saying? We need like a flame squid or some shit, right? Yeah. Yeah, lightning squid, Envy squid, I don't fucking know. Yeah, just, why not give him like five different ones? Like he can activate them all if he gets, know.

CaptainCoach (01:29:03.994)
Iron... Armored Squid, Iron Man.

TeamCaptain (01:29:04.822)
yeah yeah What squatter we getting though? What's your prediction?

Gallus (01:29:04.845)
Ha ha!

CaptainCoach (01:29:13.324)
Lightning squid squid game. Let's do a crossover with Nintendo Splatoon

TeamCaptain (01:29:14.281)
a wood squad with group.

Gallus (01:29:14.648)
We're just... Yeah.

Gallus (01:29:23.854)
Bro! giant squid from the PvE, like just the thousand health.

Coach Mills (01:29:24.304)
I don't fucking know do you know? Oh you want power creep? I'll show you part Yeah

CaptainCoach (01:29:25.784)
I want to see the squid just be the Splatoon character. Squid game. It's just the guy from squid game. Some Korean dude.

Coach Mills (01:29:34.724)
But

Gallus (01:29:36.599)
Hehehe

TeamCaptain (01:29:36.851)
I think Gambit kit is perfect but do you guys know what the issue is? It's mostly the alt right? And it's so easy to fix the alt. What would you guys do? I'm curious.

CaptainCoach (01:29:43.704)
Yeah, alt does everything. Remove the alt charge generation from it. That's got to go. That has got to go. That's absurd. No alt should make you generate alts quicker. What? Like, but.

Gallus (01:29:55.487)
He's a weird one.

TeamCaptain (01:29:57.245)
I think you just remove the healing. Remove the healing from the oen, balanced.

CaptainCoach (01:30:01.07)
I like that too. I actually like that too.

Gallus (01:30:03.67)
So something I think about is like Gambit seems like, bro, he was made sorta with that triple support in mind. And then they made adjustments to his kit to also make him like that two support slot. Like everything you would want out of other supports is also on his kit. So he just has a higher power budget. It's like when I hopped on this hero, I'm like, left clicks do insane healing. So why does he have all these tools and they're all this strong?

or I mean with the ult, right? It's like, we don't have a circle healing ult, right? But in application, what is this ultimate? You can cleanse hard stuns with it, right? So the reactive play of all the support ults is still there. What do you do? Everyone sits back, does nothing away, still someone messes up, right? And you have a gambit ult, you have a lunar ult, you're doing the same thing. Someone makes a play, you cancel it out, and then you rip all space away from the enemy team.

TeamCaptain (01:30:33.579)
Mm-hmm.

Gallus (01:30:57.006)
and his ult does exactly that in application. It's doing the exact same thing and it should have some differentiating factor, especially if it's generating ults, especially if it lets you play make like this. I agree with maybe reducing the healing to me, maybe removing the cleanse like.

TeamCaptain (01:31:12.139)
Why does he have two coins? Does that never made sense to

Gallus (01:31:15.296)
Yeah, it also feels like the base kit cleanse is almost like tacked onto his kit at that point because how punishing the card usage is. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:31:16.812)
I'm okay with that, personally.

Coach Mills (01:31:17.168)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:31:22.003)
Yes. Also like Mag Alt can eat the cleanse so then like the counter play is removed when you can just Alt to avoid that because like for example the most popular combo in high to low right now is Group Mag because Gambit can't cleanse with the cards but you can just cleanse with the Alt if he has the Alt so that's kind of counter play removed right?

CaptainCoach (01:31:32.506)
Gallus (01:31:44.62)
Yeah, Potential depth removed from his kit by doing that as well.

CaptainCoach (01:31:46.945)
I didn't know that.

CaptainCoach (01:31:52.344)
Yeah, I mean, think the number one problem with the game right now is Gambit Salt. That's the number one problem. That's the most meta-defining thing in all my games is which Gambit, you know, alt's better.

Coach Mills (01:32:00.74)
I he should just he should be being more. I mean, get gamma should be being banned more like people don't get banned. Can't it enough. They really don't. Yeah, that's why. But. It's cool, but I mean, he I just yeah, I bet you he's going to have like one of the highest ban rates ever in pro play. Like, there's no doubt in my mind that when the pro scene comes back around, it's just going to be perfect. Man, why would you not ban him unless you're just so confident that your team just plays the best version of triple? It's either.

TeamCaptain (01:32:01.524)
I love playing against RookieGamber, that's fun.

Gallus (01:32:04.257)
my.

CaptainCoach (01:32:04.344)
That's, think, Jesus Christ.

because everybody wants to play him. Everybody wants to play him on both teams, which is good. it's, you know, at least I, we have healers.

TeamCaptain (01:32:11.743)
He's fun.

Coach Mills (01:32:30.893)
Yeah, so those are like the two options. You need to either have like the best version of Triple possible and you're just better at it than any other team or you're banning Gambit every time. That's it.

Gallus (01:32:39.64)
Yeah, on Gambit as well, like, I just want to say this, like, the sheer value you get out of that ultimate is doing a disservice to the potential that this hero has for just like fun in their kit and everything. It was fun for the first month, everyone going around doing whatever, ults are coming out, my God, everyone needs to adjust their game sense at the average ranks, whatever. But people min-maxing the hero, his heal numbers are so high, kind of risky to waste cards that often unless you guys are doing like a hard engage.

CaptainCoach (01:32:40.122)
Yeah.

Gallus (01:33:09.538)
that's happening over coms, this hero being min-maxed is sitting back, not doing creative stuff when he's the guy designed with all this creativity in the kit. But because of the state of balance, like the incentive really is to be doing less and less on him over time. And that's really bad.

CaptainCoach (01:33:26.906)
I got an idea. What if you reduced his overall base healing, but maybe when he got a cleanse off, feel like he got an increase to his healing, like a burst, something like that, where it's like he gets rewarded for making proactive plays sort of thing? Because you spend cards for it, right? I don't play him. yeah, sure, sure.

TeamCaptain (01:33:43.756)
I can add upon that idea, I have an idea that I can add upon from that. What if like for example if you got a cleanse off with his cards it refunds one card or if you got a kill with the anti heal or with the explosion thing that he does that refunds a card but obviously like you give him like a something to take off that. I think the biggest issue with this kit outside of the alt is his self sustain.

CaptainCoach (01:34:01.934)
And then just lower his overall... Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:34:01.956)
That would be pretty cool. Yeah, you have to composite.

TeamCaptain (01:34:12.063)
why can he just give all of his health back with cooldowns? I don't get that. Like he has the card that heals him over time for one, then he has the slam that heals him, and then he has the dash that heals him, and then he has the dash plus slam that heals him. I think a good thing that you could do is make it so the dash doesn't heal him, only the slam heals him, and then it becomes balanced.

CaptainCoach (01:34:34.542)
Yeah, mean, kind of goes back to what you were saying. He doesn't really have an identity. His identity is just being the best at everything. Like, that's his identity.

Coach Mills (01:34:36.015)
Yeah.

Gallus (01:34:41.464)
Yeah, it should be like he should be this like, I mean, strategist because he had he has all these tools. So constantly like having like five decisions to make and three of them being the right one and two of them being the wrong one is like that. That is really good depth. And this this hero can like create so much lasting fun for everyone involved. Right. He doesn't need to be broken or P. And that actually can have the reverse effect and make that worse and less.

TeamCaptain (01:34:41.653)
Yeah, you're not wrong.

Coach Mills (01:34:50.715)
Ahem.

CaptainCoach (01:34:57.53)
Mm.

Coach Mills (01:35:02.96)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:35:11.216)
I mean, even in spite of all of his strengths, I still think he's more interactive to play against than Inviz and Ultron. I don't know if that's a hot take, but I don't think, like, I think if you're gonna have a best support in slot, I think Gambit is probably the best one that you could have as the best support in slot. Although, like, we can definitely tweak him down and Tuuk is power level down. He doesn't need to be leading the pack by such a large margin. But, you know.

TeamCaptain (01:35:29.182)
I agree with that.

Gallus (01:35:30.188)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:35:36.203)
I think Invis is genuinely one of the least fun characters to play against for most characters in the game, like that character is genuinely unfun to play against and I think they need to remove the slow from the shield, I don't know if you guys know this, if you walk through an Invis shield it slows you down, why is that a thing? They need to increase the cooldown of the boot.

CaptainCoach (01:35:45.306)
Yeah.

Gallus (01:35:52.525)
Yep.

Coach Mills (01:35:54.586)
Yeah. They added it forever ago when it was irrelevant and now it's fucking terrible. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:35:56.964)
to ground zoom.

Gallus (01:36:00.175)
There's some jank that's been on that shield or just maybe shields in general as well for a while because you notice it on MrFantastic but if you bounce close enough to an invis shield it eats the entire AOE of your ult and you lose the bounces and then you just land. It eats the whole circle, it's just this little thing, the whole circle is gone. Either side of the shield, whatever, if you land close enough to an invis shield you then land in the enemy team stuck in an animation.

TeamCaptain (01:36:14.304)
Yes, yep. Same thing with Wolverine, it kills your entire adult.

Coach Mills (01:36:17.085)
Yeah

CaptainCoach (01:36:26.766)
Ha ha ha.

Gallus (01:36:29.378)
You go back to 300-ish health and you die. Like, yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:36:32.822)
Instantly, yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:36:34.234)
What if, sorry, just go back to Gambit Alt one more thing. This is something we mentioned last week. Be curious to hear your thoughts. What if they keep all the effects of the alt, but you have to pick which one you get and maybe you could use it more. And then you could just click it twice to lock in which one. So you could, the Gambit, the Gambit. Oh, I didn't think of that. So you could, yeah, that's interesting too. That'd be a weird like little mini game you'd have to do like actually.

TeamCaptain (01:36:52.598)
Who's choosing? Is it the gambit, the player? Hmm.

Gallus (01:36:59.906)
That's interesting, yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:37:04.366)
Cause it's fun to like when you get all those buffs as that's

TeamCaptain (01:37:06.7)
I think the problem with it all is that they just slapped so many things on it, that's the biggest issue. It's like they didn't know what to do with it.

Coach Mills (01:37:07.043)
They can have it.

No, they, they, they can have it to where the effects start to wear off over time. Like, like the card, the card start, like less and less cards are flying around you into this, like, you know, just a few.

TeamCaptain (01:37:15.794)
Ooh, I like that. That's good.

TeamCaptain (01:37:20.864)
What if he needs to have 4 cards for the alt to be at its strongest state? So if he has his cards expired then the alt is not as strong.

CaptainCoach (01:37:26.656)
Or yeah, like maybe each card gives him an extra effect too or something like that. I just really liked the idea of like you being able to pick the effects because it gives him so many more choices to make. then.

Gallus (01:37:27.758)
Gallus (01:37:35.086)
I like that. Yeah. It's, it's like the, abilities where he like picks the healing or whatever, but, but like if you alt and then it's like spades shows up, you press it again. It's like hearts, press it again. It's like clubs or whatever. And each of these is like either it's a damage boost. choose a healing one. If it's a speed one, I don't know, like

CaptainCoach (01:37:40.002)
Yeah, it's like the same.

Coach Mills (01:37:40.825)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:37:45.688)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:37:53.24)
I mean, they could just give them two, you know, one that's defensive and one that's offensive, you know, instead of like, like, you know, because there's the two sides, you know, the heal and the damage. like we could.

TeamCaptain (01:38:01.943)
Well they could do that when you have everyone in your field of view and you have the selection, they could do it so you press right click or left click to choose defensive or offensive maybe.

Coach Mills (01:38:12.292)
Right, right. And it doesn't do both. doesn't it doesn't sustain. So like if you're using it to be on the front foot, you could still get counter-ulted and just get fucked up that way. Like they could start a little response and kill you. Or if you could use it defensively, then you're like sustaining from what they're doing. But you can't like sustain and then pivot like doing that thing like Gala said, where you're like wiping away their play and then pivoting into them and winning the fight anyways. Like you get to pick and choose those things reactive or proactive and not.

CaptainCoach (01:38:34.948)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:38:40.974)
both at the same time.

Gallus (01:38:42.434)
Yeah, I mean, the argument against that is that they've entrenched that so hard in the balance, like the skeleton of the game is that not having that currently is a non-starter. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:38:42.682)
Kind of hard to take away.

Coach Mills (01:38:46.51)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they didn't, they wouldn't need to do that before, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's, sometimes it's a little, I'm afraid that that's how it is with Invis Shield now. Like, are support players gonna lose their fucking mind if they take away the ability for her to shield herself? Because then now they're used to it. Now it's entrenched in their playstyle or whatever.

CaptainCoach (01:38:46.966)
Right, it's kind of hard to take that away.

TeamCaptain (01:39:06.124)
I feel like a small, like the thing is they're a very vocal minority I feel like, a lot of the support players that complain online are just a very vocal minority like the Redditors.

CaptainCoach (01:39:06.242)
Mmm.

Coach Mills (01:39:13.68)
I'm not gonna It's the Mercy Mafia. Mercy Mafia, right? Was it the Mercy Mafia? Okay. Yeah

CaptainCoach (01:39:17.018)
Yeah, we're not.

Zip in my mouth here.

TeamCaptain (01:39:20.967)
Mercy Mafia, yeah.

Gallus (01:39:22.638)
I mean, yeah, like shout out, shout out. I've seen quite a few of them. The envis mains out there who were like, she didn't need this buff and I play her a lot. I was like, thank you, bro. Yeah, yeah, actually like.

Coach Mills (01:39:30.468)
Respect. Respect, yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:39:31.69)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:39:34.704)
Right.

CaptainCoach (01:39:34.99)
Doing your part.

TeamCaptain (01:39:35.02)
Shoutout Desley, Desley was an avid Invis player in Hyaon, he's even saying that Invis is overtuned now. So there is a lot of Invis players that have a brain.

Coach Mills (01:39:42.8)
Yeah, I don't know who it is. I keep seeing this top 500 Invis that is just like on TikTok that just like hunts people and assassinate them in 1v1s. And they like they just don't lose any 1v1s. I'm like, are you fucking joking me?

Gallus (01:39:52.461)
Yeah

TeamCaptain (01:39:52.668)
I don't hear what talking about. They won, won everyone.

CaptainCoach (01:39:58.818)
I hate that. cause- cause she can do that! It's just, you get way more value just healing people, so it's like, she's-

Coach Mills (01:40:02.276)
Boy, if you get the jump on someone and they run away, you just pull them back and they can't do shit. Like they're just, it's over. It's fucking over. yeah, yeah. It's just fucking, it's literally over. Like if you have one get out of jail, like movement ability, the pool just counteracts letting you die. Like it.

Gallus (01:40:08.01)
Hahaha

TeamCaptain (01:40:09.445)
Have you seen the one with the iron fist? Where he's like, he tries to fight her? Yeah, yeah.

Gallus (01:40:12.533)
Yeah

TeamCaptain (01:40:23.104)
I find it crazy that people defend as well, like if an Iron Fist who's a character that's favoured at close range gets the jump on you, like at close range as a healer you should die right? Like I feel like that shouldn't be debatable.

Coach Mills (01:40:34.573)
Yeah, yeah It's but especially after like 15 seconds of engaging you but they start to lose after that long they lose the fight

CaptainCoach (01:40:36.122)
You're just, you're making me think of this, the flank.

CaptainCoach (01:40:44.044)
You just very

Gallus (01:40:44.206)
Arguably, you'd like there to be some skill matchup like we talked about with like the old Lunar Freeze. It's like, yeah, he gets the jump and he's in an advantage state, but there should be some like stuff going on. like, yeah, bro, like...

TeamCaptain (01:40:44.256)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:40:50.26)
Yes, of course.

CaptainCoach (01:40:50.648)
yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:40:55.226)
That's what I

TeamCaptain (01:40:55.712)
but they just beat them through stats, bigger numbers than Iron Fist has, which is not what it should be, for sure.

Gallus (01:41:00.918)
Yep. And if people are cheering for this, like, bro, there is going to be an opposite reaction and the devs might be forced to knee jerk in the other direction, right? It's like, okay, if the dive heroes can't do anything when they get to you, what are they going to do next patch? Do you think they're going to make them more lethal? So if they get the jump on you, you explode instantly before you can do something like.

TeamCaptain (01:41:11.092)
Yeah, and then what happens when... yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:41:16.228)
Bro.

TeamCaptain (01:41:16.492)
It's the pendulum, it's swinging.

CaptainCoach (01:41:22.81)
When you guys talk about that in Viz going in solo people on the backline, you gave me PTSD. I remember I had a flanked Luna in a two-healer comp. And she solo-ulted while diving the enemy team backline. I was so mad. I'm like, dude, why is our Luna solo-ulting by herself? She was literally by herself. She got two kills. She got two kills and got out. It's just insane. Right. Just abuse a-

Gallus (01:41:37.998)
you

TeamCaptain (01:41:43.894)
That's like Zen player stuff bro, that's what Zen players with the...

Coach Mills (01:41:45.584)
It is literally I love doing that shit as a bro. It's a safe shit

CaptainCoach (01:41:49.446)
ABUSING support, like abusing that role. Like, it's obnoxious, man. It's too much. I'm gonna go on strike. Peak.

Coach Mills (01:41:56.558)
That's the best. That's actually the best shit ever. It's the best shit ever.

Gallus (01:41:59.342)
Bro, this was something I wrote down because I didn't know if we were going to talk a whole lot about... Actually, there's too much to talk about. But I think like when the average player base starts using supports to the fullest extent or learn a bit more, like once support players start going on off angles, it's over, bro. These heroes are just better. They take better 1v1s. They have more in their kits. They have better ults.

CaptainCoach (01:42:20.804)
Pick four sports.

Gallus (01:42:26.382)
It's like once people start actually maxing out what they can do with these heroes, no one's having fun anymore and everyone is on the support heroes. This is where this leads. they, what the end is player is doing, more and more people are gonna start doing it, bro.

Coach Mills (01:42:36.976)
I want to know what the percentage of in like top 500. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the percentage is, but I'm pretty sure it's massively support dominated in the top 500, right? Like it's just like a ton of them.

TeamCaptain (01:42:48.492)
It's 80 %... Whoa! Guys, before we end anything, do you want to talk about the recent news? I don't know if you guys saw it. The player ZyPay got 5 of their accounts taken off the top 500 leaderboard today. I don't know if you saw that. Yes, ZyPay got 5 of their accounts removed.

Coach Mills (01:42:52.075)
I just want...

Coach Mills (01:42:58.222)
What's the recent news?

Coach Mills (01:43:07.556)
Wait, sci-fi? Sci-fi, dude?

Gallus (01:43:08.44)
I didn't see that.

Coach Mills (01:43:11.547)
Zyp- Is that happy?

TeamCaptain (01:43:13.91)
from the top 500 leaderboard, they were holding 6 spots in the top 10 and NetEase unlisted 5 of their accounts. So they're still the same SR but they're unlisted so they can't show up on the leaderboard.

Coach Mills (01:43:18.849)
it's, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wait, I just did a VOD review of that person. That person's the goat.

CaptainCoach (01:43:23.161)
Really?

CaptainCoach (01:43:30.458)
So they don't... I mean, top 500 was technically top 495.

Gallus (01:43:32.238)
They can't be on the leaderboard.

Coach Mills (01:43:38.608)
I mean, top 500 is most likely top 200, because I'm pretty sure most top 500 players have at least two. Yeah, exactly. The vast majority of them are alting. There's at least, you know...

TeamCaptain (01:43:42.238)
Yes, I had like three accounts in top 500, yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:43:43.262)
okay. Right, there you go.

CaptainCoach (01:43:50.446)
Right.

TeamCaptain (01:43:50.614)
But the thing is, they've only done it to him, so what does that mean?

Coach Mills (01:43:53.43)
Well, I mean he- he- cuz he has fucking six accounts in top ten, bro!

CaptainCoach (01:43:55.566)
is

TeamCaptain (01:43:56.51)
Yeah I understand that but the only reason why they did that was because a reddit post or a twitter post came up.

Coach Mills (01:44:00.577)
I mean, they yeah, they did the same shit. I mean, they kind of did the same shit to aimbot Calvin back in the day when he did that because he did the same stuff.

CaptainCoach (01:44:04.772)
Do you think that's maybe has something to do with anti-smurfing at all? Like their views on that? Cause you can report people.

TeamCaptain (01:44:11.189)
Well my tin foil hat wearing self, I was like they did it because they didn't want to show the community that supports were this broken. That's what I thought, cause top 10 was all support players.

Gallus (01:44:13.646)
You

CaptainCoach (01:44:18.106)
wow Wow

Coach Mills (01:44:19.92)
I mean I don't think it's well they did I remember they did they did bring him in for like the the playtest of rogue like early so maybe they were like maybe they were like hey we're gonna we're gonna deactivate five-year accounts but hey we'll bring you on you could try the hero out early no worries no hard feelings

CaptainCoach (01:44:26.778)
Probable.

TeamCaptain (01:44:31.967)
Did I guess?

CaptainCoach (01:44:41.37)
That's a bold accusation, man.

Coach Mills (01:44:46.36)
Now, I think that just on principle, don't... I think on principle, they just don't want, like...

TeamCaptain (01:44:47.303)
I think they're just straight like.

CaptainCoach (01:44:48.376)
The coverup, the coverup.

Did they make a statement? Did they say anything or did this just happen?

TeamCaptain (01:44:54.259)
No they haven't, they haven't, it just happened like overnight basically.

Gallus (01:44:57.934)
Well...

CaptainCoach (01:44:58.138)
We might have to push him on that. Hey, everybody watching the podcast, you know, let's start a riot. thought it was SIEF. Is that what saying? Zype. Okay. Well, there you go.

TeamCaptain (01:45:04.191)
Free zaipy Free zaipy He don't do nothing wrong

Coach Mills (01:45:10.783)
Yeah, isn't it sci-fi?

TeamCaptain (01:45:13.375)
That's Zyper, like Zyper. Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:45:17.218)
Zype? I'm saying his name entirely wrong this entire time. My bad. My bad.

Gallus (01:45:21.582)
I'm all for for like the integrity of the leaderboard like in a vacuum. It's like yeah. Yeah, just One account in top 500 sure I get it Doing doing it to one guy not say anything. I don't know I Don't know man It's it's okay to accept that stuff might be broken after you buff a lot of them that will happen Okay, so I hope it's not for those reasons

Coach Mills (01:45:50.158)
I mean, in his defense, he's had many accounts in the top 10 since the beginning of the game. So support's not uniquely broken this season. It's been broken every single time. He's just fucking nuts. He's just fucking nuts. Yeah, he's just the go. I'm pretty sure he would be top 10 on anything.

TeamCaptain (01:45:56.938)
Yes.

Gallus (01:46:00.528)
Hahaha!

TeamCaptain (01:46:02.357)
Here's the go.

CaptainCoach (01:46:08.343)
anything.

Coach Mills (01:46:10.296)
Not not not yeah, yeah. No, not a tank, not a tank, a supporter. was kidding. Yeah, they did. Holy tux. Jesus Christ. Now that I want I want them to just gig above brawlers one season like I just want like a thing, Mr. Fantastic meta one season like what would they even have to do to these fucking characters to make them that strong?

CaptainCoach (01:46:13.444)
Let's see it. Z-Zy-Zype. Thing only. Top 10. Let's go.

Gallus (01:46:19.566)
10 thing accounts in top 10 bro

CaptainCoach (01:46:24.778)
It's like one with each different skin. Yeah, I was like at the blue thing now go so hard

TeamCaptain (01:46:27.35)
I would respect that like crazy

Gallus (01:46:27.624)
CaptainCoach (01:46:37.526)
I love Thing right now. I know he started with Thing, but...

Coach Mills (01:46:39.588)
They would have to buff them so absurdly hard to make them like the best characters in the game. Like Mr. Fenn is double- is two- two- you or some shit like that. Right. Indestructible.

CaptainCoach (01:46:47.898)
By the way.

Gallus (01:46:48.142)
Things probably like some dumb, dumb like super high uptime on like self damage resist and like maybe more health. Mr. Ref is like, I don't even know, man.

CaptainCoach (01:46:55.226)
I forgot this, I forgot to mention this like new tech with thing. actually like, so thing used to be hard countered by Groot. that matchups kind of flipped now. Like I think it's actually like decently thing favored with, you know, a competent team. unless you're against heavy poke, he can survive. Like every time he punches Groot, he gets a hundred health shield. So every, every, every second it's and Groot can't really kite you. unless they, right. Like.

Gallus (01:47:09.745)
Yeah, he's a tank shredder now, right?

Gallus (01:47:16.236)
I'm

Coach Mills (01:47:16.848)
Let's just up that let's keep up in that number until it's just like he just doesn't die

Gallus (01:47:23.214)
You

CaptainCoach (01:47:23.81)
He can play into a lot more matchups. That's why I say like against thing you just play like don't even pick a tank. Just blow him up and he can't walk up like.

Coach Mills (01:47:29.744)
Can we give Thing like the unstoppable effect that Groot has when he has his wall? Like, why is Thing able to be grabbed by shit like Emma? Like, I feel like they should just make it so he just can't be CC'd at all. Like, just give him unstoppable.

TeamCaptain (01:47:45.277)
I feel like the Emma grab should be like kinda thought about more, isn't it so goofy when Emma grabs like Monster Hulk and just like slams him on the floor, that looks so dumb.

Gallus (01:47:52.226)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:47:53.136)
Wait you got a trigger cap to go to

CaptainCoach (01:47:55.13)
Uhhhh

Just like I felt my heart rate go up. I gotta take my pills, bro. I getting stressed out, I haven't played Hulk in like three or four days. It's nice. Like I've actually been a lot more positive and friendly I mean like I'm in the Bruce form and it's been rogue is It's so depressing

TeamCaptain (01:48:14.099)
he's getting no love, he's getting zero love, I want Hulk to get more love, he's such like a high skill hero with so much play potential and they've just done nothing with him it feels like.

Coach Mills (01:48:18.842)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:48:24.366)
Yeah, I got a lot of opinions on Hulk. I don't know if you guys want to hear my bitch in. I could be here for another hour and half. just like he at this point it gives power crap too hard. He you know you compare like Rogue to Hulk where I think they're I'd say Rogue is like a mix between Hulk and Iron Fist and the reason I say Iron Fist is because Iron Fist has like instant mobility. Even though his jumps are kind of like not the best for moving around he has a lot of them. They're instant.

Coach Mills (01:48:25.379)
style.

Gallus (01:48:30.21)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:48:53.284)
So if you get CC'd, you can immediately relocate or if you're about to get CC'd, you can immediately jump out of the way, right? With Hulk, has to, wait a second, to move so every time, I mean, obviously every Hulk player knows he's vulnerable to CC, but it's because you have to recharge your jump. So a lot of people are saying, just make it so you don't have to recharge your jump when you get CC'd. That's gonna look weird though. It'll look weird, like when you get pulled back and you just whoop, whoop, it's gonna look odd.

TeamCaptain (01:49:10.699)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Mills (01:49:13.744)
Right. You build it up and then you have it, right? Oh, just this. This is yeet out.

CaptainCoach (01:49:22.138)
I don't think you can do that. Plus I don't think it's very thematically, like, cause Hulk's kind of like bigger. So I would say like, either give him back his bubble shield so he's got that immunity longer or yeah, like at this point he needs some kind of CC immunity because the damage in the game is too high. But for anyone who like plays games, whenever the CC in a game is really high, the damage can't also be high or you have, also you have these like super toxic like ways to get kills. The more valuable,

CC is, the more valuable damage becomes. Or sorry, more prevalent CC is, the more valuable damage becomes. And right now we're just moving in that direction where it's just ramping up so high, Hulk just can't keep up. So he either needs some kind of CC immunity or some kind of way to take significantly less damage or else he will never be viable. That's where I'm at at this point. I've never called for Hulk buffs, but he needs them at this point, so.

Gallus (01:50:13.976)
could just like nerf Phoenix once could be a could be a fucking move like

Coach Mills (01:50:17.072)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:50:18.121)
Now let's give her more health.

CaptainCoach (01:50:18.522)
She's so broken now. I think she's like S++ right now, because you can't break her... thing.

TeamCaptain (01:50:26.079)
Talking about Phoenix Buff. Yeah, yeah.

Gallus (01:50:26.156)
What was the deal with that bro? People started focus firing it? we can't have that. Excuse me? Like what?

Coach Mills (01:50:32.516)
Yeah

CaptainCoach (01:50:32.622)
Yeah, you had something with a clear counterplay and it was like kind of hard to do but like if everybody does it you could it's like okay Let's just get rid of that like what are we doing?

TeamCaptain (01:50:33.365)
But the...

TeamCaptain (01:50:39.883)
So that makes their whole design philosophy make less sense because they are trying to balance for casuals right? But weren't casuals struggling more with the act of shooting the ult? So why would they buff the HP of the ult? I completely don't understand that buff at all. And now with Gamba ult it's impossible. Have you ever tried to kill Phoenix that has been gambed ulted in her ult? It's sped up, it's faster.

Coach Mills (01:50:54.99)
No, it made no sense.

Gallus (01:51:03.298)
No.

CaptainCoach (01:51:03.385)
I-

Wait, is it really?

Coach Mills (01:51:06.512)
Hehehehehe

TeamCaptain (01:51:06.795)
She gets speed boost from Mantis ult and Gambit ult. It's impossible to break it.

CaptainCoach (01:51:10.394)
I did not know that.

Gallus (01:51:11.662)
I usually just started running to hide last season for Phoenix Alt, so I didn't notice.

Coach Mills (01:51:15.248)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

CaptainCoach (01:51:16.398)
The... the... Yeah, it's... Block it. Yes!

TeamCaptain (01:51:16.959)
Yeah no one shoots it anymore. You know what I do? I just Face Tank it on tank. You either fly in front of it as Angela or as I did today on Rogue you can use your kick to go up towards it and block it as well. So if you're a tank player start doing that because no one is going to start breaking it, I'm not going to lie. That's the only option you have.

CaptainCoach (01:51:29.338)
Yeah, I did that once.

Coach Mills (01:51:33.514)
Yeah, you did.

CaptainCoach (01:51:35.034)
Yeah, the only reason I can think that they did that is they want it to be more rock, paper, scissors with alts. Because I think what was happening with Rocket, like they want Phoenix to be a clear counter to Rocket, think, because with Rocket all up, it's actually easier to break. So there's actually a window. I feel like, yeah, I feel like, I mean, you already.

Coach Mills (01:51:51.086)
That's yeah, it had it has to be because of rocket. Yeah, that's the only reason that I kind of thought it's but also why did they

Gallus (01:51:57.736)
Which is a shame. Like that, should it interact like that?

CaptainCoach (01:52:00.504)
You already couldn't break it when you had all melee team. Yeah, like they're just taking away a lot of skill, like counterplay ability. And it's just like really, it makes me sad. It makes me sad.

Gallus (01:52:15.566)
It's like a weird one with the alts like that, It's almost like with the introduction of Phoenix, they're trying to create some very base level of increased depth in like alt trades or whatever. But it's like, you use this, I use this, right? That was already there, but I guess there's technically an extra layer in that Phoenix uniquely interacts with deployables, But that comes at the cost of so much more depth in the neutral fight. And the neutral fight is what people...

Coach Mills (01:52:15.598)
It's a-

Gallus (01:52:43.406)
pick these games up for bro. It's like, Oh, I want to play Spider-Man not because of his old like it's because of what you do in between them, bro. Like the, the old, especially the old design in this game. Most of them are circles. Like it is not the best this game has to offer. So yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:52:49.081)
Yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:52:56.33)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:52:58.308)
What does it mean? I feel like it's rock, paper, scissors with alts and then support alts are just like nuclear bombs. They just beat everything. Obviously I'm gonna take that one.

Coach Mills (01:52:59.906)
Yeah.

Gallus (01:53:08.398)
Yeah, and that becomes like, either who uses their bomb second or whatever.

CaptainCoach (01:53:16.098)
Right, right, Like imagine if you gave Hulk like a loon-hawk. Like his own loon-hawk. It'd be so beat. Hulk had just like a mutant. Like it comes with him.

Gallus (01:53:20.622)
bro, I Deadpool to do some sort of circle of like anti-heal and he just makes fun of Luna's dance the whole time. That's what... Yeah. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:53:31.726)
That's, that's peak. That is good.

TeamCaptain (01:53:33.291)
That's pretty good, like that. That is good. 100 % anti-heal as well.

Coach Mills (01:53:37.918)
Yeah

Gallus (01:53:38.357)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (01:53:38.778)
Yeah, just so broken. that would be, honestly, I would love that. That's just something to hard counter that, but you know, we've been complaining about this for how many seasons now? I don't think it's changing.

Coach Mills (01:53:41.941)
I want... Yeah, just...

Coach Mills (01:53:52.278)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we, sorry.

Gallus (01:53:54.07)
Changes will come. They respond to some stuff. One of the only hotfixes they did was they hotfix nerfed Wolverine when he got that Phoenix team up. It's like the possibility is there, like, and they will respond to some stuff, even if a lot of the time it's not great. Like they put a 200 Ult charge nerf on Invis and Gambit, in my opinion, purely for optics of people who are like, something needs to be done about this. But you know,

If that's important to you and you know, you think the state of the game can be better, know, make it known.

Coach Mills (01:54:29.328)
I'm gonna hold out a lot of like judgment, I guess, until 6.0, because I feel like, I feel like 6.0, I mean, in 5.0, they did massive fucking changes, like insane changes. And then in 5.5, it's kind of eh. So maybe in 6.0, they do massive changes again, and we get, you know, actual nerfs and actual changes to characters, but we'll see. Who knows?

TeamCaptain (01:54:53.055)
I feel like the 0.5 seasons are always kind of lacklustre in terms of meta change. They tend to be very stagnant it seems.

Coach Mills (01:54:57.859)
Right.

Coach Mills (01:55:01.748)
probably just working on other stuff most likely and you know, fair.

Gallus (01:55:04.216)
mean, which is like almost like a head scratcher to me because there's a lot in this patch and a lot of them are like, you know, at least in this patch's case, they took a few like bottom of the barrel DPS and tried to bring them up a little bit at the very least.

Coach Mills (01:55:20.172)
Yeah, I mean, but like almost all the tank changes were just completely, I mean, irrelevant, besides Thor, maybe.

CaptainCoach (01:55:23.038)
I did forget about Wanda. I think Wanda's like, she's playable now. I think Wanda's decent, honestly. Do you guys play her at all? I don't play her. I just-

Coach Mills (01:55:31.898)
Delete that character.

TeamCaptain (01:55:32.075)
She's alright.

Who plays Wanda unironically though? Like she's so boring compared to like the rest of the cast.

Coach Mills (01:55:35.876)
No, no, never.

Gallus (01:55:39.466)
Hehehehe

Coach Mills (01:55:39.92)
Fucking

They need to rework that character. I'm a Wanda hater. I'm sorry. I just...

CaptainCoach (01:55:47.354)
Mmm.

Gallus (01:55:47.759)
She's a weird one. I don't think I was a big fan of what they did with her in this patch because I think it's just across the board good. If Wonders started becoming good at high ranks and it was through changes like this, what is this? A faster and easier to use stun that really frustrating to go into? like the... you like that one?

CaptainCoach (01:56:12.216)
That was, that was good. I liked that.

Coach Mills (01:56:15.024)
That's gonna be in the intro. Let's go.

TeamCaptain (01:56:15.679)
Yeah.

Gallus (01:56:17.933)
I can't!

CaptainCoach (01:56:19.194)
It's like your frame's skipping, like someone knocked your TV or something. Skipped.

TeamCaptain (01:56:19.307)
Haha

TeamCaptain (01:56:23.979)
Bro I'm getting PTSD from zombies if you were getting spawn trapped by that shit.

Gallus (01:56:27.91)
bro. Yeah. And it's that or it's like they they up the the pool speed of her ultimate. And to me, and like that's just going to terrorize low ranks and they hate her. Like this this hero is something that selects players out of the game by virtue of it being accessible. Right. It's like if you're if you're a bronze player, if you're a bronze player and you want to pick up. God, why am I using this example? Hella.

Coach Mills (01:56:28.601)
CaptainCoach (01:56:28.623)
Ha ha ha ha.

CaptainCoach (01:56:41.882)
That caught me off guard one time and I I got...

Coach Mills (01:56:44.227)
Yeah

TeamCaptain (01:56:45.013)
It's like Moira. Yeah.

Gallus (01:56:51.542)
Right. You're going to lose to Wander in bronze if you have bronze mechanics. Right. So you get selected out of something potentially more interesting and you're being forced onto auto-aim hero that's perceived as broken. it's don't don't do that. You know, so you can have more depth instead. You know, you can balance for both. It's possible. Yeah.

TeamCaptain (01:57:11.317)
I mean low rank players have been saying that Wanda is viable for the longest time like when I was going on Reddit and people were talking about dive they were like what is good against divers and they always say Scarlet Witch is good against divers you can easily pressure them out and I'm like...

Coach Mills (01:57:24.944)
Yeah, maybe if they fucking engage like like 45 seconds to try to go for one play You can definitely follow them around for 45 fucking seconds. Yeah, you'll kill them. Yeah

Gallus (01:57:32.654)
Maybe it's a bronze panther who misses one dash and stands there and dies.

TeamCaptain (01:57:33.003)
Yeah.

One business day for a kill.

CaptainCoach (01:57:37.145)
Guys.

Just stand away from your healers and press your ult and you'll peel them away with the pull that she has. That was a joke that you want to play that way. The first time I got hit by the Wondal, like the new Suck, I was doing my little fly thing on Angela and I didn't realize that it moved you in that fast. I actually got like pulled, it was like a horror movie. I was getting dragged. I actually died. Like I actually got hit by a Wondal, which it's like, I don't think that should really happen too much on.

anyone really. It's still pretty hard to land unless you have like a Groot or someone to pair with or Strange.

Coach Mills (01:58:11.332)
Hehehe

Coach Mills (01:58:16.872)
Yeah. Well, this is officially our longest podcast. actually it was chill. It was nice pod. We we we got for a whole two hours. I think it was a good convo. It was a good one. But but yeah, Galis tell people where to find you to support your content.

Gallus (01:58:34.03)
I am gallusow on YouTube and Twitch. Those are probably the main ones. You can find me. I stream Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, but that's OCE time, 6 PM. Yeah, I just want to say thank you so much for having me on. I really, really appreciate it. I absolutely love stuff like this. I've watched every podcast. yeah, yeah, really appreciate it. No, like people out there love stuff like this,

CaptainCoach (01:58:55.919)
hell yeah man, dope.

Gallus (01:59:01.132)
Yeah. So just like, keep up the good work and I really appreciate you inviting me on. Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:59:01.999)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:59:07.14)
Yeah, of course. Yeah, you're more than welcome to come on in another episode. We'll do a lot more of these in the future.

CaptainCoach (01:59:11.876)
Coach Mills, know, Gallus was on my team for the Basim tournament a couple months ago. was, yeah, he was our fill player. You filled for us. Came in clutch, man, super clutch.

Gallus (01:59:12.327)
I'd love to, yeah.

Coach Mills (01:59:17.358)
Gotcha.

Gallus (01:59:20.866)
Yeah, yeah. I was on C &D, like melee attacking all the Spidey One traits and stuff like that. I got pretty good at that.

Coach Mills (01:59:22.476)
No, no, it's actually fucking dope.

CaptainCoach (01:59:27.832)
Yeah, and we've been through some stuff, man. So hell yeah. Definitely pleasure to have you on, bro. This is first time I've actually gotten to sat down and talk to you. So definitely a pleasure.

Coach Mills (01:59:27.938)
nice, nice, nice.

Gallus (01:59:32.63)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:59:33.892)
Yeah, fuck yeah.

Gallus (01:59:38.511)
yeah, no, I've had a blast. It's been great to talk to all of you. Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:59:41.232)
It's good to talk to the man and not the rage baiter. I get to talk with the actual guy. No, I know, but those hooks, I think I ran into you once in the game and I was like, you're the rage baiter. And you're like, yeah, that's how you give views. I'm like, you're right. I need some TikTok tips, bro. My TikToks are slacking, bro.

CaptainCoach (01:59:45.466)
HAHAHAHA

Gallus (01:59:45.518)
I stand by like all of what I say bro.

Gallus (01:59:54.584)
Yeah, yeah.

Gallus (01:59:58.844)
I mean, it's tech, right?

CaptainCoach (01:59:59.652)
Well, it would be pleasure to have you on.

Gallus (02:00:06.467)
Well, I'm better at YouTube shorts now apparently, so... But I mean, sure, yeah.

Coach Mills (02:00:09.578)
Yeah, fuck, fuck yeah.

CaptainCoach (02:00:11.16)
I saw you got a couple with like over a million. That's, that's crazy. Like I think the BP one, I get recommended that one daily. Like the BP one where you talk about, which is like, no one plays BP right now, but it's just like, they want you to watch that. Like what, what makes BP balancers or how did it balance? It's something like that. But yeah, you're killing it, bro.

Coach Mills (02:00:14.426)
Yeah.

Gallus (02:00:18.936)
Yeah, yeah,

Gallus (02:00:26.86)
Yeah, It's like discussion stuff is doing really well for me on YouTube. And it's weird for me to say that because I make mostly shorts and you wouldn't expect that kind of, but people stick around for that more on YouTube I'm noticing. Yeah, yeah. Like heroes with those hardcore communities, stuff like BP, was a fun little like content investigation or whatever. Like I spent some streams, went over like car cats rework, gave my thoughts on it, stuff like that.

Coach Mills (02:00:29.464)
Responding to CardCat, yeah.

CaptainCoach (02:00:32.334)
Same. Yeah.

Gallus (02:00:56.506)
A lot of the frustrations people have with this hero, like the dynamic of other players interacting with it and it interacting with them, probably what needs to happen with them, blah, blah. Yeah, he's a bit of a lot of the symptoms of issues with the game are present in BP. And he was very, very stimulating to talk about. Yeah. Intellectually.

CaptainCoach (02:01:13.53)
Hmm.

CaptainCoach (02:01:17.626)
Yeah, mean, we'll definitely get you on again sometime, man. It was a pleasure having you.

Coach Mills (02:01:21.688)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And then team captain, tell people where to find you. Most people know you, but let us know.

Gallus (02:01:22.058)
I'd love to. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much.

CaptainCoach (02:01:25.337)
Hell yeah, man.

TeamCaptain (02:01:31.691)
You can find me on my YouTube channel Team Captain or my Twitch channel TeamCaptain001, that's with the 001, it's not the guy with the Rock Lee profile picture, just make sure you get that right. I'm currently pushing for rank 1 Rogue, I'm currently ranked 2 Rogue in the world and I should maybe have it by the time this is done recording. You coming for me? Good luck.

Coach Mills (02:01:41.936)
Right.

CaptainCoach (02:01:55.18)
I'm coming for you, team captain. I'm top 12 right now. My account's still going up.

Coach Mills (02:01:55.536)
Oh no, he will. He will. He will, he will. This episode will be out in three days is when this episode will get posted. So you have three days. Lock in. Let's go. Let's fucking go.

TeamCaptain (02:02:03.871)
Three days, I get it tomorrow. So rank one rogue by the time this is posted.

CaptainCoach (02:02:05.758)
Someone told me there's no way I could be ranked too rogue because I might count only GM one right now, but someone did tell me I was ranked too and I lost two games. They said I was still top 12, but am I?

Gallus (02:02:16.952)
Yeah, cool.

TeamCaptain (02:02:17.375)
The rank 6 Rogue is a GM1 player, currently.

CaptainCoach (02:02:21.74)
OK, so there you go. Yes, I'm GM1 right now. And I'd smurfed it up, so I have like 70 MVPs. I had a lot of losses grinding up. It was actually pretty tough. But yeah, I'm coming for you, man. We'll see.

TeamCaptain (02:02:34.059)
We'll see.

Coach Mills (02:02:35.374)
All right, all right. Well, hey, thank you all guys for coming on. I really appreciate you all coming on and yeah, definitely get you on in a future podcast, but see you later. Peace, peace. Bye bye.