So, I'm just learning something I'm sure most of you were all well aware of. Gathered up my team, Legacy, Tempest, Haka and Expatriette and headed into Rook City to take on Spite.
What little pieces that were left of us were easily swept into a small plastic bag and dropped in the proper trash recepticle.
Wow...should of done a little research on him before taking him on.
Anyway, personally I never have a huge problem with Spite. That said, I do tend to play as the Wraith and use the double-Stun-Bolt combo against him as soon as possible. Legacy with the Lead from the Front/Next Evolution/Fortitude combo is good too. On more than one occasion we've managed to take down Spite before he's got all his drugs out. Probably the one we find the most annoying is the one that deals you toxic damage and forces you to discard the top five cards of your deck every time you use a power - causes someone like the Adept or Expatriette to cycle through their deck very fast under certain circumstances. Last time we fought Spite, I played the Wraith and ended up with a deck consisting of about eight cards - everything else was either in play or in my hand, we got Spite down to about 3hp and then…I got KSd by the Visionary dealing the only damage she dealt all game to finish off Spite before I had a chance to Inventory Barrage him :P.
Anyway, any kind of damage soak is good against Spite, since he tends to only do small amounts of damage at once. Once Mind-Phyre comes out, you can basically ignore the environment. In fact, you can ignore it, because Spite will be destroying whatever's in play on his turn meaning you don't get a chance to deal with it yourself, if needed. It's quite good on Mars, since you never have to worry about the countdown. And if Mind-Phyre is Spite's last drug to have come out, it'll take out the environment cards after he's done everything else…which is cool if a Meteor Storm is out since it'll block all his damage before he destroys it :D.
Meh, burning cards off your deck does nothing unless you're Nightmist or Tachyon, who care about trash size, or you're putting cards on top of your deck (with like AA or Visionary or Expatriette for example). I find it's actually typically beneficial because then you have more targets for effects that reclaim cards from your trash, and Tachyon can get really bursty really fast (and also doesn't rely on her power, so she can avoid reshuffling by just not using her power) Now, the 2 damage per power on somebody like AA can suck hardcore, but that's the main drawback to it.
RE: difficulty of Spite with that team, it seems to me that Legacy should be able to tank pretty effectively and Tempest can abuse his heals to keep everybody alive while Haka and Expatriette burn him down. Haka has ways of spiking damage to get past the damage reduction, and Expatriette can easily be doing 8 damage per turn with a Legacy around. At that point it's just a matter of feeding him enough equipment/ongoings and outlasting him. Rook City would be an annoying environment to fight him in. It's kind of a tradeoff though, as he'll eat the terrible ongoing cards in addition to the beneficial cards.
So, I was Legacy (hi, KillerTaco, who are you?) in that particular debacle. I could never get a good combo of soak capability out due to his drug that requires a certain number of ongoing cards to be returned. Tempest never got his heal out, and XPat couldn't get her shotgun or any good ammos. I think that Haka probably did the most damage.
I do think that we concentrated too hard on doing damage before he flipped and became vulnerable, but I'm not sure it would have mattered. When the Potential Sidekick (or whatever that's called) is the intial victim, and he's killed on Spite's first turn, things are just doomed from the beginning. I do wish I was Wraith or Visionary (they're more fun to play than the big guy anyway) but I thought in a group of 4 Legacy would be a solid choice.
Legacy + return drug is fun when Inspiring Presence is what you return (along with Unity's Supply Cache). But when that happened in my game, the return drug was mercifully the last one he found. :P
Bloody Knuckles is also another fun one to return! That's a +2 for Fixer's damage every round! Also Spite's strike back damage and the environment are the only things that get a +2 against Fixer.