10.7 Update Recap - Marvel Studios' Captain America: Brave New World

Introduction

The flow of horrible updates has been stemmed somewhat with our first MCU update of the year. Sadly the update seems to have matched the quality of this film: an uncharismatic Tier-4 for Sam Wilson, who remains a useless Speed Male Hero, and Red Hulk is inexplicably not given a Tier-4. The main appeals of this update are the two new characters, who both have some use, even if mostly for new players.

The mid-months for this update were nice though, adding comic-based uniforms for Cap-related characters. A trend that hopefully continues into the next update with Daredevil's supporting cast.

• Characters

  Characters

  New World Order

  Falcon (Joaquin Torres)

  Falcon (Joaquin Torres)

  A solid new character addition, and a free one at that. Some really nice skills and a decent rotation, great for new players.

  He also has a significant 60% Damage to Villains support for Falcon, which could come in handy if you're using Sam Wilson for WBL. As both share all their basic attributes though, you won't be using the Falcons in ABX/L.

  Winter Soldier [Revolution]

  Winter Soldier [Revolution]

  Very interesting choice for a uniform, as everyone was expecting a Tier-4 and uniform to come with the Thunderbolts* movie update. While he likely will still get a Thunderbolts uniform, this Revolution uniform has wisely changed him to Combat Villain to differentiate. It also adds some interest back to the Thunderbolts update, as the likely 2nd Tier-4 could go to Red Guardian or Taskmaster instead of the obvious Bucky pick.

  The uniform itself has some great animations (3rd skill especially) and is solid for PvE. However with Ock and Hulk already holding down 12m ABL scores, there's little reason to build Bucky if you already have one of these built.

  That being said it is actually fantastic that there are now 3 viable F2P Native Tier-1 options for the same ABX/L restrictions. The appeal of a game like this is that you can play with your favourite characters and there is absolutely no downside to having a bunch of viable options for the same content. Why not simply do this with every new Tier-4 and have them all be of similar strength to the top options with similar tags.

  This is an "unnecessary" uniform done right - mix up the tags, add a nice rotation, and make him actually good.

  Black Widow [Venomous]

  Black Widow [Venomous]

  This would have added some interest to the previous Symbiote update, but Widow's first post-T4 uniform is pretty nice nonetheless. There were some hopes that this would build on the previous uniform being a fantastic T4 striker, but sadly was not the case as Ghost Rider remains on top.

  The Venomous uniform is PvP based and pretty good at it - at least compared to other Native Tier-1 PvP uniforms which usually do not stack up to the NT2/NT3 meta. She is capable of taking out some of the top Timeline characters, making her a very nice early-game PvP option. Gaining the Symbiote tag also helps her receive Symbiote-specific supports, similar to Spidey's Symbiote Suit.

  PvE is improved but not spectacular, and didn't really need to be given that she obviously wasn't going to replace Luna, and Gwenpool has the F2P side on lock.

  B- Cinemascore

  Leader

  Leader

  The imponderable head relucantly ends up near the top due to the decent enough Lead and Support. A second Male Blast Villain support had been requested for a while as the missing ingredient preventing many Magnetos from hitting 12m ABL. This was no longer necessary after Zombie Strange raised the roof, not even requiring a 2nd support to outscore most other ABL metas.

  As a result, Leader feels like too little too late, and they also felt the need to make his supports relatively weak so that Strange wouldn't score ridiculously high with the added help. Still useful for newer accounts as a minor villain support, and while you wouldn't use him as a main, his animations are pretty good also.

  Red Hulk [Marvel Studios' Captain America: Brave New World]

  Red Hulk [Marvel Studios' Captain America: Brave New World]

  A baffling choice not to send Red Hulk directly to Tier-4 given that there was already precedent with Gladiator. Instead Netmarble has opted to make the film's main villain into a minor ABX/L support for Titan Hulk, despite a really unique rotation and high base damage.

  Although it is not proc friendly at all, the spammable 4th skill is very fun and a nice mechanic to bring back (initially being added for Rocket's GOTG3 uniform). Sadly similarly to Rocket, it will end up being completely irrelevant as Red Hulk is stuck at Lv.70 and not viable for any late-game PvE content.

  Missed opportunities aside, still a useful uniform that fills a gap for those who don't have Abomination for Combat Villain Male day.

  Nick Fury [Secret Avengers]

  Nick Fury [Secret Avengers]

  A uniform that got a lot of hype as a "must buy" or at the very least a "must T4" for the support value alone. A lot of this applies to Fury as a whole, even prior to this uniform: he's considered the "best support" on magnitude of passives alone.

  While true, people often fail to consider how often they will actually use a Speed Male Hero Human support - with Strange being the best No Restriction character at the moment, he has almost no use in ABX/L, leaving him for WBL and Zombie Survival only.

  With this in mind, the new uniform is a very incremental upgrade to his support passives, being overall skippable. The Tier-4 exists solely for WBL+ pushers and will be an instant buy for those players, while basically everyone else could do without. You can always make the argument that more T4-exclusive content may come in the future, even if just more WBL+ bosses, but there's little reason to Tier-4 preemptively like that.

  More of a minor thing but it is very annoying that this uniform also removes the Shock cancel on his 2nd skill (present with [The Marvels] uniform), and keeps the 5th skill's RNG cancel.

  More Reshoots Needed

  Captain America (Sam Wilson) [Marvel Studios' Captain America: Brave New World]

  Captain America (Sam Wilson) [Marvel Studios' Captain America: Brave New World]

  Quite a "nothing burger" of a Tier-4 and uniform, especially compared to the prior [Falcon and the Winter Soldier] uniform which was completely meta breaking for PvE at the time. The Speed Maleness of it all was always looming over this update and the marb has done nothing to alleviate these concerns.

  Decent damage but nowhere to use him, standard rotation, pretty standard visuals. This absolutely could have been an insane WBL uniform like Miles' ATSV uniform, encouraging people to build both Falcons. There is even precedent with the old uniform and MCU protagonist uniforms usually being very relevant. Sadly Sam feels like an afterthought in his own update - the changes to ABX/L cannot come soon enough.

  Absolutely mental that the set of tags that contains Marvel's most popular character (Spider-Man) as well as other very popular headlining characters (Ant-Man, Falcon, Hawkeye, Daredevil) has been completely useless for ABX/L for this long.

  Red She-Hulk

  Red She-Hulk

  Yet another Fire Damage lead gets the bump to WBL eligibility. Could be useful here and there, but there are already a ton of Fire Damage leads (including Red Hulk's from this update) and very few people have Red She-Hulk Tier-2 and above to make use of this.

• Black Dwarf & Ebony Maw WBL

  Black Dwarf & Ebony Maw WBL

  Sadly another boring stage, seemingly taking none of the criticism of the Corvus/Proxima fight into account. Would not be surprised if both bosses were made at once and staggered to stretch out the content.

  Follows the standard formula and is a bit too easy. Support Tier-4s would be a lot more appealing if the Legend+ fights were actually really interesting and fun to play/push - Black Swan was pretty good but these last two have been flops. Please don't make us suffer through "Supergiant & Thanos" or god forbid "Quicksilver & Scarlet Witch" and "Cable & Apocalypse" before we get another real WBL with an unlockable character.