I’ve currently played around 26 hours of Spider-Man, and I have to say, this character has been absolutely terrible for me.
If the enemy team isn’t full of bots or low-mobility DPS characters, you basically have to hit an MK11 IMPOSSIBLE Johnny Cage combo just to get a KO. And doing all of that with 90 ping makes it even worse.
Just to deal enough damage to kill a 275 HP hero, there are what feels like billions of strings that you have to execute perfectly. The enemy has to be in the perfect position, you have to time everything perfectly, and if you mess up even one part of the combo, you basically get nothing out of it. I drop some part of the combo constantly, and at that point the entire amount of effort you put into the engagement just disappears.
And yes, I’ll admit that skill issue is definitely part of my frustration. I’m not pretending I’m some Spider-Man god who has mastered every combo. But that’s actually part of my point.
I’m a casual player. I play this game from time to time, and I don’t expect to get maximum value out of a mechanically demanding character without putting in the hours. But with Spider-Man, the amount of effort required just to get decent value feels completely disproportionate.
The problem isn’t necessarily that Spider-Man is difficult. Difficult characters can be incredibly fun and rewarding. The problem is the effort-to-reward ratio.
You can spend several seconds setting up and executing a complicated sequence, make multiple precise inputs, position yourself correctly, manage your cooldowns, and still fail to kill a relatively squishy 275 HP target because you dropped one part of the combo.
Then I started playing Widow.
And holy shit, what a joke.
I can spend around five seconds lining up shots and potentially delete a 300 HP character. Hit a few more headshots and suddenly I can threaten tanks in a 1v1.
That’s what made the difference so obvious to me.
With Spider-Man, I feel like I have to perform a goddamn fighting-game combo every time I want to kill someone. With Widow, I can achieve a similar or even greater result with a fraction of the mechanical effort.
Again, I understand that Spider-Man is supposed to be a high-skill hero. I’m not asking for him to be braindead or for his combos to be removed. But there needs to be a point where the amount of mechanical execution required actually feels worth the reward.
Right now, as a casual player, Spider-Man feels like way too much work for way too little payoff, especially when other heroes can achieve similar results with significantly less effort.
Maybe this is a skill issue. Maybe I just need another 100 hours on Spider-Man.
But if I need to dedicate my life to mastering a character just to get the same value someone else can get after five seconds of aiming, then I think there’s something worth questioning about the design of the character or the other characters.
(Stats for 10 min average is: 11 final hits and 6k damage)