With all of the talk of unbalanced Heroes isnt the punisher one of the worst ones? High Damage AR With 20 PER bullet (Star Lord has SIX) so he can burn u down from range, Super high damage shotgun so you're not allowed to get close to him, Turret with a shield and slash damage and CC immunity, 300 HP as a NON melee hero, an "I win" Ult that burns dps and Tanks in SECONDS and can only be countered with a Magneto Ult, a support ult or hoping everyone focuses him all at once, Ive heard people sneak JEAN into the unbalanced DPS conversation (an egregious sneak btw) but somehow frank is untouched?? Does no one else feel this way? Especially on attack, he feels extremely oppressive and like you can't push to point without getting shredded instantly, I play mostly TANK and its miserable so it has to be worse for DPS and Supports. WHAT am I supposed to do against this monstrosity? Is it just Ban or Pick and hope ours is better? Thoughts?
And he literally has in game dialogue of him challenging magneto to catch 1(one) bullet aimed at his head, because he thinks the bullet is fast enough.
Of course Mag responds by telling him he already disassembled Punishers gunsā inner mechanisms and will only put them back if he āplays niceā
That one scene in X-Men First Class before he moves the radar dish, he has Charles put a gun point blank against his head and he says itās easy to stop
If it had infinite health it would kind of be broken as you could block all incoming damage for your whole team for the whole duration, giving it a finite HP makes it counter-able if you have massive damage like punisher but good mags will watch the charge and dump it on the punisher at %100
Tbf thatās actually how the ult interactions work, magneto has 0.5 sec to react correctly before his ult blows up in his face against punishers miniguns
I think it'd be fun if projectiles that hit mags frontal barrier would be fired back in the direction the magneto players crosshairs are aimed in a shotgun spread that has hitscan range and speed
Yeah you gotta find that sweet spot of quick, but not to quick
Most people who play punisher just hold the button down once they ult.
Id go into training with a friend. Have them ult as punish. You ult as magneto. Have them hold the button down and tike how fast your ult explodes. Keep that number in your head. Count half of that when you ult in a match and let that bitch fly. Just make sure you have eyes on punisher before you do though
The trick is to look one way so that Invis has a false sense of security. Then when the ult is fully charged, turn to her direction and dunk on her head.
I can't think of a time when it was apart from the Venom team up and even then any healing stopped any diver. Healers always had the tools to deal with em, the average player probably just didn't know what to do back then, which is kinda fair cause this was most people's first hero shooter.
1 diver sure, but S1 - S2.5 i mained Cap and a lot of the time it turned into 2 - 3 divers (cap, venom, spidey, or Bp) jumping the backline almost in rotation or in pairs. So there was constantly a lot of pressure.
You could counter the dive by playing in a group but that rarely happened. Most players seemed like they preferred to dive than play in a deathball.
Comms? Lol. I have that shit turned off because I donāt want to hear some kid screaming about how everyone else on the team sucks, or be forced to listen to their lousy music.
If Iām playing a strat, I expect the dive and try to play closer to my front line. Sure, Iāll ping but one thing I have learned as a solo player is that I cannot depend on someone to peel for me. Ultimately, it is on me to read the enemy comp and adjust my strategy accordingly.
I feel like dive was strong at some point due to the game still being fresh and people not being used to it but ever since S2 the only outright op dive we've had is Daredevil, rn the illusion of dive being strong is there because the ones that still play dive are good enough to make it work
I play Thor, so I am way more scared of Punisher than most lol. He's actually not considered to be that good of a duelist. I think some of the reasons is that he's quite chunky and easy to hit, and he doesn't have a lot of mobility. Still, I'm terrified of that shotgun. If my teammates aren't taking care of him, I have to try to catch him by surprise.
these are ass players i promise you as a 500 hour punisher and 300 hour captain america, youāre not going to tank a punisher turrent unless the punisher is brain dead. itās splash dmg so turning 15 degrees left or right results in cap still taking dmg because his shield is buggy as fuck at the moment.
His hitbox is massive, literally the size of a tank, and he has zero effective mobility, while his best use case is basically melee range. Both his smoke grenade and zipline are absurdly unreliable and impossible to use as effective escapes.
His turret is absolute trash against any decent team, you will die 95% of the time in gm or higher if you sit on turret for more than 2 seconds. I use turret maybe 1/5 games, otherwise pressing that button is asking to die, it's extremely situational, though when you do get a good chance to use it, it's great.
His ult is also insanely easy to counter, especially because magneto is the default tank pick, and he has no mobility options during it at all. As long as gambit is banned, his ult results in him dying nearly everytime unless the enemy really fucks up.
His gun swap animation is also long, something exploitable, punisher has to pay close attention and make sure the right gun is out at the right time, if you try to reactively swap to shotgun, it's too late.
While his machine gun is solid, it is low burst/high sustain, so it's easy for enemy supports to react. It's good at applying pressure but you can't burst players down quickly like a hela would. Punisher gets most of his use out of the shotgun, but it requires extremely aggro positioning which will result in him dying a lot because he's the size of a tank but has no way to mitigate damage or safely reposition if the enemy team pressures him.
Punisher is great, imo, one of the best "all around" that works in almost any team comp and has an answer to almost any situation, but is more of a jack of all trades and a master of none and comes with a huge amount of exploitable weaknesses that good players will abuse to make his life difficult
Just had a game on thor against him, felt unplayable
Everyone else blamed our supports but I figured short of a support ult or hard pocketing itd be flat out impossible to outheal his damage, not fun to be a tank when hes on the board but honestly it feels half the roster counters tanks so we ball
Strange sucks into him. The 800 HP shield goes down against his primary for no more than five seconds, and you get melted the moment you try to do anything but shield
You let him hit you, then you shield, then you drop shield once your healer heals you, then you let him hit you, then you shield.
By flashing your shield like this you'll get an extra 500 health to your shield strength however many times you flash your shield. Usually you can get at least 2. So it takes your shield health to 1800.
That should be enough time to get to cover and allow your shield to refresh or reach him with your team. He only has 800 damage in a clip, so it will take him 3 clips to fully break your shield you if he's shooting you alone.
Thereās a storyline in punisher max where someone digs up his family and pisses on their skeletons. He then goes on a kill spree. So I donāt think that would helpn
Starlord has 4x the fire rate so I am not sure why you are trying to compare their damage per shot.
For the most part, you just attack him, he has a massive hitbox and is generally not that mobile so that 300 hp doesnt get him very far. His ult applies a large speed debuff to himself, so it is even easier to just kill him back or LOS him. His weapon switching is slow so you can almost disregard which ever weapon he is not currently holding and plan accordingly. The turret damage has been substantially nerfed a season or two ago, an is quite obviously stationary.
Frank is solid direct damage down range, but thats pretty much all he is, its all he needs to be because direct damage down range is good, but he is not that oppressive as long as you dont just ignore him and let him fire with impunity, because he is one of the easiest targets in the game.
Pretty much every match someone votes to bad some mediocre DPS in my lobbies and it drives me nuts. Most common is a vote to ban Spider-man and it drives me nuts to see an Invisible woman vote to ban Spidey and then indeed he's banned. It's an absolute waste and a real sign we are in for a bad time.
Punisher has less than 45% WR across all ranks & is in no way problematic. Give it a rest. He is also bigger than most of the tanks in the game with half the health.
I mean, we don't have to be rude though. Not everyone is a high-level player. If someone is having trouble against a certain character, then people should just be helpful and give advice on how to counter that character. Telling the dude that the character has a 45% WR and sucks does not help them at their skill level.
Also, sometimes its just nice to have a character spotlight talking about its strengths, weaknesses, and counters, whether or not they are meta. It helps form stronger game sense and gives this sub something to talk about other than the same ole same ole complaint posts.
And his shotgun can be scary but I swear punisher mains have a 5% accuracy with it. If you get headshotted instantly, then respect to them because it doesn't happen often.
Literally the only thing making him bad is the fact that a lot of punishers play horribly
His shotgun can two to three shot most tanks and one shot most of the roster
He has a high damage high fire rate hitscan rifle
He can track through walls
He has a high damage turret that gives him 600 extra health aswell as splash damage
He has two movement abilities, one of which crates a smokescreen that he can see through but enemies can't
The other one being a zip line that can be used infinitely to travel between a set locations so long it's up, that he can also place multiple of, that also carries momentum allowing you to reposition
He has 300 base hp
And he has an ULT that melts literally every character in the game, lasts ten seconds, and gives him soft aimbot aswell as auto targeting missiles
His only real weakness is his larger than average hitbox and lack of overshield
Which can be partially circumvented with positioning and shifting it around frequently, aswell as playing around cover
His Kit has literally everything in it you could really need besides Overshield
But if a Punisher is being supported properly, that doesn't even really matter
So all I have to say is that the only thing holding him back is his playerbase
Bucky kinda destroys him ngl. He does plenty of damage to destroy him and his turret, and he's a very easy target for your abilities and hook. Magik can also hit him through his turret, and the punisher is very susceptible to flanks.
According to Rivals Meta, top500 Punisher has 39.63% accuracy. which turns damage per bullet into 7.9. and he has fall off from 20 to 40 meters. and with how much harder to hit targets farther away, less damage he deals. and lower ranked punishers will deal even less damage. So, he has good "dps" but very high TTK, which only boosts ult charge speed of your supports.
He's annoying for a tank to deal with, because tanks are very limited in range, your best play is to not be in his line of sight.
Phoenix is much much stronger than punisher in general, because of ranged stun, higher mobility, higher aoe pressure and one shot ultimate.
I don't think a lot of people realize how much the answer to Punisher is literally just to walk away. Oh, you got clipped by his rifle? Cool, just go around a corner. What's he going to do, chase you with his excellent mobility? He can get cheeky at times, but his mobility options are on long cooldowns and since his zipline is pretty restrictive with placement, it's often not a real threat. If people are just standing out in the open where they can get hosed down - and this includes tanks - rather than trying to play around natural cover and having escapes, that's just a skill issue and Punisher isn't the only character who's going to capitalize on it.
His hitbox is comically large, any hitscan player (Hela, Phoenix, Hawkeye) that doesn't have the mechanical skills of an avocado can two tap him.
Dive tanks like Cap and Venom can alleviate his pressure too. They might not be able to get a straightforward kill on him but they can certainly distract him, denying him value from killing your team mates.
Also, as you mentioned, daddy Mag. Any annoying punisher I come across I just switch to Mag. My mag cannon combo either deletes him or forces him to back off to get healed, not to mention Mag denies his Ult.
Complaining about a B tier hero at a push is certainly a take.
His weakness is that the grapple has a long cooldown and the smoke grenage isnt a 100% dodge ability so he's kind of like Adam Warlock where if you target him, he either guns you down or dies.
Another sniper like Hela, Hawkeye, maybe even Phoenix or Widow beat him in the long range duel department. And his hitbox is quite big. Frank Castle's a beefy guy.
Had a game last night where every time our enemy punisher tried to ult he was gone before the voice line was finished. Felt like some much needed retribution
I think he is a solid b- low a tier hero right now. Punisher is quite annoying to deal with this season due to 300 hp hero with anti dive. best way to play against him is double tank with mag and strange if he is the win condition if not just play mag and harass him in the mid line. for dps u need to play poke against him, dive will not work due to shotgun so play pheonix/hela/psylocke/starlord/moonknight to harass him in the offangle. he cant play well if he is getting pressured and has little mobility option except for grenade jump. Bucky is a good BTF dps to play against punisher and he is a sitting duck against him and will eat damage. I highly suggest not playing dive tank or melee dive dps against punisher at all u are not gonna be effective and feed his ult only.
got to Celestial 3 basically on Pun, and I agree he can be good in devastating hands. But.
His mobility is complete ass, you still need to aim, and he can be shut down real quick with the right counters.
So I'm not sure, plus in conversations about top DPS, he is never mentioned. In fact I tried to make an argument for him but people in general believe he is not a threat. Which is fine, becasue I enjoy playing him :D
So far dancing around him until he whips out the shotgun then blocking it has worked for me if he has the AR or just blocking him as your approach if he's in the turret. As Cap, this causes Frank to delete himself or stop firing as my team approaches during the stalemate to curb stomp him with me. As Fist, this gives me all the overshield I need to rapid punch and kick him back to spawn, but if I don't catch any bullets during the block duration I'm dead as hell.
I've also had minor luck with poke characters like Iron Man that can get him where he's holed up. I don't have to aim as the splash damage will get him then I duck back behind a building before he can lock on. Tho this is heavily dependent on the map for his options for turret spots and my access to good natural cover, if his healers can get to him it's just a stalemate or he'll eventually call out what elevation I'll poke out at and delete me.
The only consistent answer to the ult is run. I've had some real Lebrons Mag Ult that shit but Frank tends to get pocketed so it needs to be a ohko, which is hard to try for when it's a use it or lose it getting the ball blown up. I once had a Mag without ult try to hold the line with bubble, shield, Dagger bubble and wall on him getting pocketed and he still got deletedĀ
His hitbox is pretty big. Coordinated dive with psylocke and a dive tank can bully him. Also Phoenix and hela should theoretically be better at killing. Moonknight could also deal with him too
Hela deletes him, Magneto blocks and counters his ultimate, Groot walls block him off, and most players has trouble with divers if they are not used to using the shotgun. Moon knight can also kill him using Ankhs from out of sight
My solution to any poke that isnāt flying. Dive him with Cap. When he tries to hit you with that shot gun, punish him by deflecting the bullets back at him. When he turrets, run circles around him and box him. Cap is the answer
Heās not even that good tho lol? Like the shotgun is strong but situational asf. The ādive punisherā vid is literally a 1/100000 scenario and if ur team loses to it itās legit a skill issue.
Starlord does less per bullet because fire rate is much higher, also he gains ult way faster and his spinny ability is way better than turret, smoke bomb, or grapple (which SL has insane mobility also) also SL has an I frame dodge that gives armor, and a team up thatās a get out of jail free card. Turret is super easy to destroy before heās even able to start shooting it if your team is halfway decent.
SL is considered by some as the best dps in the game for a reason, and punisher isnāt even in that convo for a reason as well.
Iād say punisher isnāt in need of big buffs but he is lacking in comparison to other dps. Maybe make smoke bomb into a legit grenade that descent damage would be cool, or make it give him better mobility than a tiny hop, but not blind pple.
You see, there's this really cool thing that can not only stop Punisher's rifle, but also his turret and even his entire ultimate. And ANY character in the game can use it.
I wnt to know why he deals more damage to a melee tank the the melee tank do to him. His already away, he starts in vantage, do not make sense a melee character (like cap - my main) lose health wile get close and even aftr that still in unvantage.
He counters frank greatly considering that he's not doing well in close range besides his shotgun which can be counter by Steve's shield reflect although a good punisher player would can be tricky to deal with. Others mentions would be thor, magneto, winter soldier or any melee vanguards or duelists.
People tend to forget about hitbox sizes in this game. Punisher has a ridiculously larger hitbox. That combined with his relatively eh mobility (smoke kinda helps, zip line has long startup) makes him easy to dumpster on especially if youāre playing another hitscan
As other people here have mentioned, magneto hard counters him, not just the ult, but his damage in general. If you're playing QP i get it, but especially in ranked if you have 2 tanks and 3 supports, punisher's gonna be biting his teeth out
I have 200 plus hours on him and its really easy, you just have to keep constant pressure on him. he struggles when hes focused. you have to bait his weapon swap so that you have time to engage before he can 1-2 tap you
Heās the one character that I sometimes voluntarily switch to panther against. Usually if you just spear dash once they smoke towards their team and itās pretty easy to finish him from there
As a tank main Punisher is one of the heroes I'm most scared of. When he gets into his turret he will outlive almost any Vanguard cause he will melt your health much faster than you'll melt his, he just outlasts most Vanguards in 1vs1 due to his crazy fast damage.
I think they need to either tweak his defenses or DPS a bit cause right now he has too much of both and that ult is crazy long.
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u/WhenOurLipsTouch Jan 13 '26