Gwenpool - Champion Highlight & Review

Kabam is introducing Gwenpool into Marvel Contest of Champions. This character is an interesting amalgam of two popular characters in Marvel Comics - Gwen Stacy and Deadpool. On the contest she will belong to the Skill class and will be available via crystals and arenas starting January 5th.

BIO

Gwenpool was born as a result of the the popularity of the character Spider-Gwen. However, despite the name "Gwenpool", the character in fact has no relation to either Deadpool or Gwen Stacy. It has been revealed that her name is in fact "Gwen Poole", not Gwen Stacy, or even an alternate version of Gwen Stacy.

Through means yet to be revealed, Gwen Poole arrived to the Marvel Universe from what she claims to be "the real world." Unwilling to be an "extra," she went to a tailor for super-heroes and requested her own costume to stand out. The tailor (named Ronnie) complied, but misread Gwen's application form, and thought Gwen went by the alias of "Gwenpool".

Unlike other Marvel comic book characters, Gwenpool has no real superpowers, but has vast knowledge of the Marvel Universe from comic books in her universe, such as every secret identity of heroes and villains. Gwenpool's knowledge of the Marvel Universe and its unique, fictional nature makes her reckless and irresponsibly violent.

REVIEW

Gwenpool is a very interesting champion, with a quirky move set and a wacky arsenal. Kabam has actually paid attention to her body frame, giving her the build of a regular girl playing teenager, instead of an athletic build of some of the other champions. This alligns with her lore of being a regular comic book fan trapped in the Marvel Universe

Her primary weapons are her katana, allowing her a high chance to inflict bleed on her opponents during fights. While this would favor fights with opponents that bleed, it would make it harder for Gwenpool to defeat non-bleed opponents like Colossus, Vision or Ultron. Champions like Agent Venom, who can shrug off bleed debuffs, would also have an advantage over Gwenpool. Additionally Magneto's magnetize will take control of Gwen's blade's making his less vulnerable to her bleed attacks, giving him an advantage during the fight.

During her fights, Gwenpool has a small chance of inflicting a stun during fights. This stun would depend on the number of bleed stacks on that champion. You could really capitalize on this stun if you have the stupefy mastery enabled to prolong it.

Besides her bleed, she has other debuffs which are triggered during her Special Attacks - Incinerate, Ennervate and Armor break.

• Incinerate - Deals energy damage on the target while removing Perfect Block chance and reduces Block Proficiency while active.
• Ennervate - Prevents target from gaining Power 
• Armor Break - As it's name suggests, removes enemy armor buff, and causes armor reduction.

If you happen to pick up Gwenpool, your aim should be capitalizing on her bleed. Masteries like Deep Wounds and Assassin would greatly benefit her during her fights. Those using Gwenpool have to play offensively to capitalize on her various debuffs and bleed effects.


AVAILABILITY

The 3-Star and 4-Star variants of Gwenpool will be available through the arenas starting January 5th at 1PM EST. Those who want to attempt awakening her can do so starting January 9th.

You can also try your luck obtaining Gwenpool through the featured 'Ronnie Crystal' or attempt  the 5-Star variant of the champion for 15,000 5-Star shards through the 'Pink Ghost Crystal'.

CHAMPION SPOTLIGHT

Base Stats & Abilities

*All stats based on 4 Star, Rank 5, Level 50, Signature Level 99

• Health: 14596
• Attack: 1216
• Max PI: 
• Without Signature: 3576
• With Signature (99): 4418

Basic Abilities: Bleed, Ennervate, Incinerate, Armor Break

Basic Attacks:

• 25% chance to inflict Bleed, dealing 70% of your Attack as direct damage over 5 seconds.
• 3% chance to Stun per Bleed active on target, lasting for 0.75 seconds.

Heavy Attacks:

• If the target isn’t Bleeding when the last strike hits, it has a 50% chance to cause Bleed, doing 70% of Gwen’s attack over 5 seconds.
• If the target is already Bleeding, the attack instead gains a 100% chance to convert 1 existing Bleed to cause 450% of Gwen’s attack as direct damage, over 23 seconds.

Special 1: Slice, Slice, Bang! – Swords and guns! What more could you ask for?

• 100% chance to Incinerate the target, dealing 98% of your Attack as Energy Damage for 14 seconds. This effect also removes Perfect Block chance and reduces Block Proficiency by 50% while active.
• When this effect expires, it has a 100% chance to consume 1 Bleed off the opponent to re-apply itself.

Special 2: Down, Set, Boom! – Explosives strapped on a football, and kicked right at your opponent’s face! Catch!

• 100% chance to Enervate the target, preventing them from gaining Power when struck for 6 seconds.
• When this effect expires, it has a 100% chance to consume 1 Bleed off the opponent to re-apply itself.

Special 3: Watch This! – In the immortal words of anyone about to do something really cool, that in no way could go horribly wrong!

• 100% chance to Armor Break, removing enemy Armor and applying a 115% Armor reduction for 14 seconds.
• When this effect expires, it has a 100% chance to consume 1 Bleed off the opponent to re-apply itself.

Signature Ability – Plot Armor: Gwenpool's read enough comics to know that the main character doesn’t die, preventing her from losing more than 65% of her current health per hit from Special Attacks. She also reduces her opponent’s Defensive Ability Accuracy, based on her current combo count.

Synergy Bonuses

• Howard the Duck – Friends – (+6% Armor) 
• Spider-Man (Miles Morales) – Teammates – (+5% Perfect Block Chance) 
• Deadpool or Deadpool (X-Force) – Idol – (+4% Attack and Health) 
• Thor (Jane Foster) – Enemy – (+7% Critical Hit Rate) 

Recommended Masteries

• Deep Wounds: This one is a bit of a given. A lot of Gwenpool’s damage comes from her Bleed abilities. Increasing the duration, especially of the shorter bleeds, greatly increases the chance one will be active to refresh one of the Special Attack debuffs.
• Stupify: Gwen’s on hit stuns are quite short. Adding stupify greatly increases the window you have to react to them, easily allowing her to land safe Heavy Attacks to convert to those nasty long bleeds.
• Assassin or Despair: Both have the potential to be brutally effective in the correct situation. A Gwenpool with the 30% Offensive Ability accuracy bonus from Assassin makes for a truly terrifying finisher. Whereas the Healing reduction from Despair combined with her many many debuffs has the potential to make Wolverine cry.

Match-Ups

Strong Match-Ups

• Yellowjacket: Yellowjacket is great at punishing Champions that want or need to throw lots of Special Attacks. Gwenpool specializes in carefully timed special attacks. She can then sustain them by making her opponents Bleed so she doesn’t need to throw them nearly as often. She also has class advantage for the cherry on top.
• Doctor Strange: Counterspell what? Doctor Strange is fantastic at Nullifying effects off his opponents, but Gwenpool doesn’t have any, and he has no way to clear the Debuffs and Bleeds that she will stack up on him. Even the vaunted Fate Seal won’t help him in this fight!
• Juggernaut: Juggernaut is big and tanky, and sometimes Unstoppable. It’s when he’s Unstoppable that he’s really scary, but to chunk through that Health bar you’ve got to hit him a lot, which gives him a lot of power. Gwenpool’s Enervate solves this beautifully. Land a Special 2 and make sure you keep a couple of bleeds active on him so it can refresh, and hammer away on him fearlessly!

Weak Match-Ups

• Magneto: Gwenpool relies on swords to make her opponents bleed, and swords are metal. Magneto’s Magnetism ability makes Gwenpool’s life hard! Lowering the chance to trigger all of her abilities leaves her bag of tricks looking awfully empty, and if he also happens to have the Mutagenesis mastery for the flat Bleed Duration reduction, then look out!
• Colossus: Colossus is a Bleed Immune Champion and also happens to have class advantage. Just incase you happened to miss the theme, Gwenpool is powered by Bleeds and Colossus just says “No!”. 
• Agent Venom: Agent Venom has the ability to shrug off any debuffs applied to him. Gwenpool really needs those debuffs to stick around. Now this isn’t quite as hard a counter as straight up Bleed Immune Champions but he makes up for this by affecting all of her debuffs, not just Bleed.

sources: Kabam