10.8 Update Recap - Marvel Television's Daredevil: Born Again

Introduction

A street-level Daredevil update has been anticipated for a long while, and having it be a tie-in update with Daredevil's reintroduction into the MCU in its most anticipated show in a while seems a recipe for a hit. However those "in the know" were skeptical about yet another Speed Male Human Hero protagonist MCU update with some other Combat/Speed Males thrown in.

Netmarble has to know this too and yet does absolutely nothing to change PvE modes to favour very prolific character types. As a result we have yet another MCU flop update (which used to guarantee at least the main character was meta), this time combined with a mediocre seasonal midmonth (which also used to guarantee a very powerful meta character).

Speaking of seasonals, this update could not have come at a worse time for Defenders fans - the Brave New World update's midmonths adding comic uniforms for Cap-related supporting characters would have been a great blueprint for expanding this Daredevil update into a full Defenders one. But with the April Fools seasonal forcing its way into the main midmonth we ended up only getting Elektra. If you were an optimist you could say they were holding Defenders back for another main update, but based on past trends this is most unlikely.

• Characters

  Characters

  Born Again

  Kingpin [Marvel Television's Daredevil: Born Again]

  Kingpin [Marvel Television's Daredevil: Born Again]

  Vincent arrives in Marvel Future Fight in grand fashion as he joins Hulk and Ock as roughly-similar-scoring Combat Villains for ABX/L. Much like his bid for mayor he is in many ways the strongest candidate: he scores high with no Team-Up Collections (Ock has 1, Hulk now has 2 with the new Defenders Collection), making him easier for newer players. He is also more proc-friendly than Ock and doesn't scale off HP like Hulk.

  On the downside, a lot of players would already have those two characters built, and Kingpin doesn't outperform either of them enough to make it worth doubling up. Still huge to have 3 equally good Native Tier-1 options for the same content with various upsides and downsides. It would be very cool if they felt like doing this for any other common class of characters (e.g. Speed Human Male and Speed Human Female, see below).

  Crescent [B-Girl Crew]

  Crescent [B-Girl Crew]

  The Crescent Classic is being very weak (especially compared to the other two OCs, Luna and Sharon) but the first Combat Female to have a modern kit, essentially forcing her way into a usually short-lived spot in the meta. The uniform does get props for changing her accumulation to offensive and modernising her skills with the great animations and residual damage we have come to expect from a seasonal uniform.

  But considering she is not eligible for any ABL days, it could have easily made her much stronger, e.g. on par with Summer Psylocke and Luna, to make her more useful in general gamemodes and more worth the paywall unlock + $20 seasonal price tag. Why they keep making this specific OC consistently weak is beyond me. The aging up is a nice touch though and a clever excuse to do it with Ancient One for the April Fools theme.

  Mid-land Circle

  Punisher [Marvel Television's Daredevil: Born Again]

  Punisher [Marvel Television's Daredevil: Born Again]

  An okay WBL-focused character (as being Combat Male Hero limits ABX/L usefulness), but hampered significantly by weird skills that make a pretty fun but not very effective rotation. Sadly it feels a little restricted by the TV show theme as they couldn't go too crazy with his animations.

  Not the worst upgrade if you're a fan, but also is not any better than Venom, so not a wise choice for non-fans. Venom also naturally has better prospects for future uniforms as Symbiotes have been a favoured bunch by Netmarble in the past few years.

  Elektra [Elektra]

  Elektra [Elektra]

  Not that good in either PvE or PvP but kind of okay enough to escape the bad section. Definite missed opportunity to not make her the replacement for Spider-Gwen as F2P Luna substitute, but expectations were not high for a "2nd midmonth" T4, and for good reason as the past few have stunk! (Fury, Magik, Apocalypse, Doom, Echo, the only exception being Gwenpool.)

  Good for fans of the character as it makes her playable and proc-friendly, eligible for a ton of ABX/L days so you'll get to use her a lot, and has a rare two iframe ignore skills that give her some PvP uniqueness. For most players though, she's obviously a skip.

  Ancient One [The Monk of Kamar-Taj]

  Ancient One [The Monk of Kamar-Taj]

  A gender-switch support uniform with some stunning animations sounds good on paper. In reality there is not much use for a Blast Human Hero of either gender, and he lacks the proc-friendliness to make him satisfying to play in PvE (which is all you'd want from a support T4, since they won't be meta). Especially annoying as his skill animations could easily be made to be proc-friendly by adding a slight delay to the hits on residual skills but they hate the players.

  Might be somewhat worth it if he'll help you in certain WBL stages. If you don't have Mysterio he also fits nicely in ABX as a Doctor Strange support, allowing you to use the co-op button which somehow makes up for the gap in support passives. Other than that, another skippable seasonal uniform.

  Well, you can't mask that ass

  Daredevil [Marvel Television's Daredevil: Born Again]

  Daredevil [Marvel Television's Daredevil: Born Again]

  Daredevil is far too popular of a character to be updated as infrequently as he has been, and gets updated far too infrequently to get a uniform as bad as this. For context, he got his previous uniform and Tier-3 almost 3 years after the first Tier-3 was added, and has only now gotten Tier-4 almost another 3 years after Tier-4 was added. (Though this may have been due to a scrapped Defenders update shortly after Tier-3 was added, and the delays to Daredevil: Born Again's release date. Still no excuse!)

  Excellent character model and idle animation aside (compare the new one to the [Devil of Hell's Kitchen] uniform ingame), the skills and rotation feel like a minor update to the previous [Fall From Grace] uniform from March 2021, not the full kit revamp he should have gotten for a uniform over 4 years later. In gameplay he is essentially unusable in both PvP and PvE. At least the season 2 uniform is only a year away but why would they do it like this.

  White Tiger [Marvel Television's Daredevil: Born Again]

  White Tiger [Marvel Television's Daredevil: Born Again]

  A non-T4 character with no supports is automatically dead in the water. A big missed opportunity to not add a general support passive to this uniform (could throw in a dedicated leadership for Daredevil for update synergy) as there is currently no Combat Male Hero general support.

  Misty Knight

  Misty Knight

  There is not too much to say about these no-uni Transcends, Cold Damage lead for Luna in WBL is nice. However instead of pairing her with White Tiger they should have waited for a proper Defenders update to add Colleen Wing and have them Transcended together as Daughters of the Dragon. Or if they had to do it this update, White Tiger fits better with Black Cat and Hellcat. Worst of three worlds!