Shuri is a high level raid staple and for good reason. She provides a lot of survivability to the team and is very consistent in what she does.

Her special is what makes her amazing in conjunction with speed up on spawn. Effectively this makes her go before MOST enemies. The most notable enemy that moves before her is Korath. Aside from him, Shuri will move first allowing you to set Defense Up for two turns mitigating lots of damage. If a character does get bursted below 50%, she'll apply three stacks of Deflect which should make the character nearly impossible to kill before she can heal them again.

Playstyle

• Her special is required to have ready at the end of each node. My last usage is around 4-5 full health enemies, but you'll want to experiment and get a feel for this.

• Personally, I tend to hit special on cooldown even if defense up is still fresh since it charges her and generates two ability energy.

• Node start - Special should be ready in general.

T4 Upgrades

🟩 Passive - This is a nice boost to her survivability that scales with stat upgrades. In addition, it increases her healing output as well.

🟩 Ultimate - This upgrade in addition to passive increases her healing output considerably.

🟨 Basic - A luxury upgrade, but the heal block can help prevent heals on characters that would otherwise put them out of kill range. Great for characters with passive healing like Carnage or Venom.

🟥 Special - This upgrade has NO effect without another Wakandan on the team.

Additional Notes

• If she is the only one on the field that is heal blocked, feel free to use her Ultimate. She will miss a heal, but the heal block will be cleared after that.

• If Defense Down on her is flipped to Defense Up, she will still gain energy for that.

Black Bolt is a swiss army knife. He is listed as a Blaster, but I consider him more of a Blaster-Controller hybrid. He clears buffs (including taunt), can conditionally cleanse himself, has an unavoidable attack, aoe ult, damages enemies when they drop to 25% (red on life bar), disrupts summoners, and anyone killed by him cannot be revived. Also - he is an absolute brick house of stats. He has the highest base damage stat in the game and his focus and health are top notch.

One of his greatest assets is his ability to deal obscene amounts of damage such that you can run more supports/controllers in your comp and still clear raid nodes in under 5 minutes in good health and cooldowns. Having all of the bonuses in his kit just elevates him either further.

Playstyle

• Personally I spend much of the time using his basic to clear buffs and as a damage dealing ability, it is usually enough. Remember if you activate his passive on the same attack. it's essentially hitting the enemy with 800% damage.

• I usually reserve special for characters that can dodge (like Spider-Man or Wasp) to ensure that I can deal with them effectively. Other times where I use it is to drop an enemy enough to allow Ultron to kill them with his ult early in a match.

• His ultimate ability does MASSIVE damage, especially if you can give him offense up. I would caution against using it willy-nilly since if you clear the node too quickly, you will not be able to recover your cooldowns. In general, I will only use it if I am racing the clock, or I need to clear enemies before taking too much damage myself.

• Node start - No abilities usually needed in general. Special if you need to nuke a Vision, Spider-Man, Wasp at start, or Ultimate if you need to wipe a wave.

T4 Upgrades

🟩 Passive - Increasing his health and execute damage goes a long way in increasing his consistency in raids.

🟩 Basic - This upgrade is absolutely fantastic. It allows him to clear 2 buffs instead of one and if you're hitting a slowed target, he can flip 2 debuffs instead of just one.

🟩 Ultimate - A substantial damage upgrade at +120% aoe damage on top of his busted damage stat. A simple and straight forward ability that really helps you cut down your clear times.

🟩 Special - If you had to skip one ability it would be this one imo, but the upgrade allows you to burn down a specific target if you need to. Activating his passive puts it at 1,000% damage for a single attack.

Additional Notes

• Keep note of Villain Tech enemies as they will take a sizeable increase in damage from his passive execute.

• Likewise knowing what enemies summon on your raid route might help you with the disrupt that you can take advantage with a potential spread from a character like Hela.

• Due to how much damage he does overall and especially with his execute, he is a great candidate for a high red star upgrade (6+).

Ultron is a Blaster, but I consider him a Blaster-Support-Controller. With his bot summons, they offer your team a lot of options to control the playfield and ensure that things go your way more often than not.

When compared to characters without red stars, he has top notch damage, armor, and resistance numbers. With red stars in the enemies along with damage boosts, he is in danger of dying nearly every hit at high difficulty Ultmius VII. Even so, his contributions are nearly unmatched. He does have some protection against bad rng by auto-reviving if he started the match with full health.

Playstyle

• Special is the skill that you want have ready at the beginning of each node. This summons 3 bots that each provide great support to the team:

  • Accelerator (speed). Gives Speed Up to team members which is amazing, but on top of that, his basic will rewind 30% turn meter on his target. Note that you cannot reduce turn meter below 0. In general, it is better to apply speed up to the team, but if you need to prevent one specific enemy from taking a turn, his basic is generally more impactful. Rewinding that target's turn meter can give you enough time to outright kill them before they get to act.

  • Incinerator (damage). Gives offense up to team members. Absolutely devastating with high damage allies like Black Bolt, Hela, and Symbiote Spider-Man. He can also clear one non-taunt buff with his basic, but on top of that, Ultron will gain that buff. If possible, steal Deathproof since that will last until consume. Counter is a great option since that also doesn't expire, but can be spent easily if the enemy has aoe attacks.

  • Fabricator (heal). Special provides heals and basic gives Ultron ability energy. At high level, the heals are fairly miniscule outside the Ultron family, but they can help top the team off. When closing out the node, take note of Ultron's energy levels. If he needs more energy to recover his cooldowns, you should use basic over special for the ability energy.

  • Generally the specials on the bots can be used on cooldown. Even if Ultron already has the matching buff, he will gain turn meter. When first summoned, you'll want to try and use his ultimate right away. The reason for this is that he will gain ability energy for every buff on him. This is important to do immediately so that you can summon again and fill the field with bots. Only hold Special if there is already a full field, the bots will die immediately, or the node is about to be cleared.

• Ultimate should only be used when Ultron has buffs on him. Both of his abilities have VERY long cooldowns if you are not gaining energy from his ultimate. Ideally you want to set up an enemy to be killed with the ultimate, but this may be hard to do especially early in the match.

• Basic is a very strong ability. Not only does he steal 2 buffs, it will clear Taunt. This is important against buff stacking taunters to get past them.

• Node start - Absolutely need Special at start always. Ideally you want Ultimate as well so that you can quickly get a full field of bots.

T4 Upgrades

🟩 Special - Arguably without this upgrade, Ultron is incomplete. Have access to all three minions absolutely empowers the team

🟩 Ultimate - This is a great damage increase considering it is all piercing damage. 700% damage is likely all true damage. At difficulty 5, you can execute most enemies that are just under the 50% mark.

🟩 Passive - This might seem like an inconsequential upgrade, but when you are able to utilize it, it turns Ultron into a killing machine, if you're able to get 6-7 buffs, have a field full of minions, and line up a kill, it's likely that you can ult back to back. Once this train is rolling, If you can set up kills, you can keep ullting until there's no more enemies.

🟩 Basic - While this is only a damage upgrade, it's a sizeable 70% increase, but damage is important to Ultron because of the passive buff extension via his passive. Giving him a greater ability to execute enemies increases his value tremendously.

Additional Notes

• • Since Ultron does not currently have access to red stars, he is quite the glass cannon at higher levels of the Ultimus VII raid. As such, having him at Gear Tier 14 might be required for him to stay alive consistently.

  • If an enemy has both Defense Up and Defense Down, his ultimate will deal double damage to that target. Keep this in mind when looking for a target to hit.

  • Ultron will get buff extensions on assist and counter.

  • If going into a node where Ultron can be killed before you gain control of the match (Korath and Daredevil are prime suspects), spend the twenty raid heals to top him off rather than run the risk of losing him early.

While Symbiote Spider-Man (SSM) is classified as a Brawler, I consider him a Controller with Brawler stats. Every part of his kit is fantastic for raiding and he fits many team compositions.

One unfortunate part of his kit is that until you get nearly all of his T4 upgrades, he doesn't really shine. Once you do however, he provides so much. With self sustain, he can slot in many spots; usually in a controller or damage slot.

Playstyle

• Most of the time you'll be hitting basic with him to spread defense down and setting up kills. Remember this cannot be countered, so feel free to spread Defense Down near characters that have counter.

• Ultimate is and EXTREMELY powerful ability. The stun and slow is amazing, but note that it is not only unavoidable, but unblockable. This means that deflect/block won't interact with the status effects and pesky enemies like Miles Morales and Spider-Man will get slowed. If you don't need it ready for the next node, closing out a node with this ability gives you plenty of time to recover.

• Special gains more value if you have other debuffs to extend, but with big clusters of enemies it can serve as a big heal boost to Symbiote Spider-Man.

• Node start - In general you don't need any of his cooldowns, but having ultimate on specific nodes may be required.

T4 Upgrades

🟩 Passive - +20% max health gives him a great base and synergizes with his passive to give him more health on negative effect applications.

🟩 Ultimate - Two turn Slow is absolutely amazing especially when paired with the stun. Top notch ability.

🟩 Basic - Two turn Defense Down lets you spread it around and line up big hits if you have a big aoe attack on the team.

🟩 Special - While not as necessary as the others, the guaranteed bleeds and bleed damage boost is a huge damage increase and is fantastic as a burst heal to himself. Negative effect extension is also quite nice.

Additional Notes

• Characters like Yo-Yo that apply Offense Down to enemies on their turn will count for SSM's passive so pairing the two gives him a trickle heal.

Emma is a premier Controller giving you unparalleled control of the field. Even her passive slow against all enemies is a huge boon, but all of her abilities are top notch with pin point removal, team wide cleanse, team wide slow, and buff removal or flip. Of note, she is one of the few top tier raid characters with a team wide cleanse. She will take some getting used to as she affects the entire cadence of nodes, but well worth the effort. Shards for her are hard to come by at the moment, but she makes an impact even at low stars.

Playstyle

• With a global -10% speed to all enemies, this gives your team a great advantage. When it comes to first turns, many of the key defensive characters Shuri and Ebony Maw will move before most enemies. When slow is applied to enemies, this advantage becomes magnified giving you a lot of freedom with your attacks and the order in which you can set up your turns.

• Special is best used when new wave drops as the enemies will likely have low speed bar. With a three turn cooldown, this ability can be used often. Hold the ability if you you anticipate the enemy landing debuffs on you so that you can cleanse them quickly.

• Use Ultimate to take out key targets. In general the best targets in my opinion are high health targets like Juggernaut and Hulk or targets that have high dodge rate like Spider-Man or Wasp.

• If you know who will take their turn next on the enemies' side, you can force the Blind from her Ultimate to land on them by killing another target. This is especially useful when your intended target cannot be targeted such as Miles in Stealth.

• Basic is a fantastic tool to clear buffs on enemies. Paying attention to her charge can help you maximize its effects. If the enemies can apply many buffs, consider staying uncharged to flip more buffs to gain more advantages.

T4 Upgrades

🟩 Ultimate - Absolute killer upgrade that always gets you a second mind control target and removes ALL buffs from all enemies. A nice bonus to damage as well for the mind controlled targets. The stronger the enemies, the more effective this ability is, often killing targets on later nodes in a raid.

🟩 Special - A nice upgrade for its cleansing consistency by cleansing everyone on your team. If you happen to be running more than 3 Mutant Villains on the team, they'll also all get Immunity.

🟨 Basic - While Emma isn't chunking out enemies with her basic, but getting this upgrade increases the Bleed damage from flipping buffs and adds a moderate amount of damage.

🟥 Passive - This upgrade does not have any effect for raiding so it is not needed.

Additional Notes

• Emma's Ultimate is unavoidable so take advantage of that to clear pesky situations like Hand Sentry's Special and Miles Morals when he's Stealthed.

• Both Special and Ultimate can apply Vulnerable to primary targets with Skirmisher. This increases her utility by clearing buffs with both those abilities.

• When ending a node, attempt to stay Charged as Emma will being the next node in the same state. This provides her with +400% Armor and +500% Resistance to help withstand opening barrages from enemies.

While she excels when paired with Black Bolt, the Yo-Yo and Black Bolt is a staple and produces exceptional results. She's extremely fast and calling Black Bolt to assist for damage and buff clears grants exception control. The Offense Down applications on enemy turns is her other key raiding benefit.

One concern from many players is the inability to quickly rank up her yellow stars due to her shard acquisition method, but she can perform at high levels even when at low yellow star count. Gear 14 has a profound impact on stats, most notably her focus, which is one of her key stats.

Playstyle

• While there is a lot of decision on who to hit, in general, you'll be using Basic with her 95% of the time. With only Black Bolt as an ally, he will ALWAYS assist her guaranteeing that you clear counter + two additional buffs on the target.

• After Black Bolt ults, if you don't need to strip buffs, consider using Ultimate to generate energy for Black Bolt.

• Special is almost never used, but can be useful to eat evade or deflect stacks from a target.

• Node start - Since you are mostly using basic, you should run in to issues here.

T4 Upgrades

🟩 Basic - This is the key upgrade for her. Knowing that you'll always get an assist can help you coordinate attacks. Even when using team variants with both Black Bolt and Crystal, both have fantastic assists.

🟩 Passive - There are marginal increases with this upgrade, but additional dodge changes increases Yo-Yo's survivability quite a bit. And gaining 10% focus with Black Bolt helps her Offense Down applications stay consistent.

🟥 Special - Not recommended at all for raiding. This can do some decent damage at high stars, but in general not a worthwhile upgrade.

🟥 Ultimate - Primary use is to generate energy for Inhuman allies. Many other worthwhile T4 upgrades.

Additional Notes

• Always keep in mind how many Inhuman allies are with her when launching a node. While they all have excellent assists, getting a deterministic effect leads to consistency. Knowing your outcomes can help you make better decisions.

Raising in stock championed by SSM and empowered by the full Symbiotes team. Between their passives, the Symbiotes become a powerful self-sustaining force that can take on high difficulty content.

Playstyle

• Ultimate is a great way to start the match to burn down a target quickly and start the Symbiote train.

• Basic is what you'll end up doing with Carnage most of the time. You'll want to pick targets specifically to spread debuffs effectively. If you want to kill a specific target, you'll want to spread bleeds from that target to another target, and then spread them back to the desired target

• Special is used rarely, but it can do an obscene amount of damage if the target has a lot of debuffs on them. Experience will let you know how many is enough to guarantee an execute. Be very careful if using it though as it clears all debuffs on the target. If possible is it preferred to let the target bleed out.

• Node start - Having Ultimate ready is good to start the debuff train. Not having it is not the worst, but due to his speed, he is usually the first to go with nothing to spread on turn one.

T4 Upgrades

🟩 Passive - +10% turn meter when enemies drop to the red is a fantastic upgrade that helps the team get started and going. The synergy from bleeding targets down, healing from it, and then getting more turns is the engine of Symbiote teams

🟩 Basic - While just a damage increase, it increases the damage from the bleeds that are spread as well. Since you are likely using this the most, the damage will add up over time.

🟨 Ultimate - Sizeable increase in base damage (that is piercing) as well as increasing the bleed damage makes this quite the nice upgrade.

🟨 Special - Damage will go from obscene to ludicrous with this upgrade, but if you don't use special it's not worth the upgrade

Additional Notes

• With nodes that feature an enemy Carnage, you can add Mister Sinister to your team and clone the enemy Carnage to give your team +60% turn meter when enemies drop to red. If you manage to clone two additional Carnages, you'll gain 120% turn meter! It's unlikely that that match will last that long, but it's a fun thought 🙂

• The turn meter gained from Carnage's passive can stack allowing for incredible transitions between waves. If you set up the current wave to be well debuffed around 30%, hitting an attack to kill enough to drop the second wave as well as hit others into the red (25%), will give you a ton of turn meter and allow you to act again quickly and spread debuffs into the next wave before they get to act.

Ebony Maw is an excellent addition to raid teams and if paired with Thanos, he can absolutely power raid teams. The downside with Maw is his long cooldowns which limits the team compositions he can be in because he works best with Thanos.

His special is the ultimate defensive move. Damage is reduced from all enemies by 75%! This is huge to early survival. If paired with Shuri, there should be very few moments where the team does not have defense up at least. Ultimate is also an absolutely fantastic ability that helps with wave drops and to close out nodes.

Playstyle

• Opening with Special is generally how nodes start. Even with Shuri, I will use special to start most of the time since it charges her for more healing and gives her energy which might get her ultimate ready sooner.

• Ultimate is fantastic and best used right when a wave drops to slow them and give your team more time to control them. When used on the last wave of a node in this way, it gives you the necessary time to close out the node while charging up all abilities across the team and healing up to near full. With just Maw, this will also reduce turn meter of the enemy by 5%, but with Thanos, it's an additional 5% for 10% total reduction. This is quite powerful when paired with the slow.

• Basic is fantastic to use against targets that dodge like Spider-Man and Vision or against targets that are low with Deathproof to chew through the buffs.

• When there are Hero Controllers on the field, try and focus them to gain Maw's passive buff. 20% barrier and Immunity for one turn. When the next enemy goes, if there's a Hero Controller still on the field, all of them will be ability blocked. Absolutely fantastic to help mitigate damage in general, but can help you avoid key debuffs like Heal block.

• Node start- You will want Special at least. Some nodes you'll want Ultimate as well and if you have both, that is best.

T4 Upgrades

🟩 Special - Two turn defense up is fantastic. If paired with Shuri, the team will almost never be without defense up.

🟩 Ultimate - I'm leaving this as a green recommendation, but in reality, if Maw is solo or even with Thanos, it loses a bit of its brilliance. That being said, I still think it has fantastic value since the turn meter reduction across all enemies is VERY powerful especially with the slow. Thanos is quite slow so having the small bump in turn meter can help him get to his turn if he needs to ult.

🟨 Basic - Due to the fact that this is a pure piercing ability and applies bleed, I think this is a high value upgrade. Even with Thanos, it's unlikely that you're hitting special and ultimate in back to back turns consistently and the upgrade makes this quite formidible.

🟥 Passive - While I do have this passive upgrade, it's more for consistency. There are better upgrades out there. With the upgrade at 6/5*, I'm able to usually resist Strange's flip with Maw which is very important since getting his spawn buffs flipped will likely get him killed instantly.

Additional Notes

• Most nodes I open with special, but it can work out to open with Ultimate instead. While it is a healing ability, the two turn Slow and turn meter rewind that ultimate provides should not be downplayed, it gives your team fantastic control. If a node does not have massive burst in its opening, consider doing this.

• Due to his spawn buffs granting two turns of Deathproof, Immunity, and Regeneration, it's generally pretty safe to bring Maw in at lower health if you can stabilize and heal with your team. Even the dreaded Korath cannot one shot Maw.

• Maw's passive interaction with Hero Controllers makes him a VERY strong pick on nodes with many hero controllers. In particular, he helps out quite a bit on "Who's in Control" and "Firestorm" in the Ultimus VII raid.

• Drain health abilities like Maw's Ultimate will not trigger HP threshold abilities like SHIELD Security's auto taunt or Black Bolt's passive. Use this to your advatange if you need to get around auto taunts.

Because of his passive, Thanos will always be a useful raid option in my opinion. While it takes some care (and red stars) to use in high difficulty raids, the utility he provides is unparalleled. The introduction of Ebony Maw made his viability much higher, but if he does not have Defense Up at least one of the turns that he is taunting, it is likely that he will die.

Playstyle

• While Thanos is a tank type protector, it's worth noting that he has a high health pool, but relatively low armor. This means that taking many hits is very bad for him even if they are not particularly strong.

• In general, you'll want to taunt with him as much as possible. Not only to keep damage on him, but he gains a huge resistance buff when taunting. This will help prevent debuffs from sticking to him which makes his tanking ability more consistent - especially if he can get a Defense Up buff.

• Ultimate is ideally used when there are many enemies on the field and he is at 50% or less life. In general, if the field does not have defense up, he can heal up to full with around 5 enemies. Note that if he kills a target, he will NOT heal from that enemy.

• Node start - You will want Special ready at node start. For particularly front-loaded damage nodes, you'll want his Ultimate ready as well.

T4 Upgrades

🟩 Passive - This is the reason why you run Thanos on your team. Without it, he's hardly worth running at all.

🟩 Ultimate - This is listed as a high upgrade because you want confidence that when you use it, he will be healed to full. This is a healing tool first, damage second.

🟨 Basic - There is some utility here with the 100% chance to gain counter. It can stop pesky characters like Daredevil from chaining through your team. Value is modest at best though.

🟥 Special - This is just a damage increase. While chunky, not necessary for raiding.

Additional Notes

• Having one additional Black Order member gives Thanos the ability to go before most characters. (He will need one more to go faster than Korath). He will go just after Shuri which allows him to taunt very early and take attacks from characters like Daredevil or Carnage.

• Pairing Thanos with Ebony Maw will grant him two turns of Deathproof, Immunity, and Regeneration. This gives you the ability to start nodes at less than full and know that you can safely taunt if you can get some healing to him quickly. If the damage output is not that great, surviving until he can use Ultimate is usually all you need.

• While Thanos can feed energy to two characters in your main lineup excluding summons, I find that he works best and most consistently when feeding only one character. These days, my recommendation is Ebony Maw for that. While this means that Maw can receive a lot of damage through aoe and chain attacks. The stacks of Deathproof should give you some security and Immunity will prevent Heal block so that you can safely heal him up.

• If multiple characters are low, try getting Thanos to heal via Ultimate before using "heal lowest health ally" abilities like Shuri's Ultimate to get more value from it.

Not quite as strong these days as in the past with the once ubiquitous Scientist Supreme, Hela has a great toolkit to help with specific nodes. In addition to the debuff spread, her Special applies two turns of disrupt and is on a fairly low cooldown. It's also worth noting that Hela has an extremely high damage stat on par with the highest damage dealers in the game.

Playstyle

• Without other debuffers on the team, her key use will be her Special to disrupt targets. This is great on targets that put up taunts that cannot easily be stripped like Juggernaut. Also useful on Drax. Even though it won't get through his spawn taunt. It prevents the taunt extension.

• Hela's Ultimate does MASSIVE damage, on top of spreading up to 4 debuffs. Paired with other debuffers, this provides a great deal of control. If possible, try and time her ultimate with a new wave drop to spread debuffs from the current wave to the next.

• Be wary of who the lowest health target is at all times. Sometimes you can leave them up and know that Hela's Basic will finish them off for "free". Other times you might trigger a wave drop before you're ready.

• The Undead Asgardian (Greg) offers another facet of control. Target enemies that heal themselves like Mordo, Mantis, or Wolverine, and use his Special on cooldown to deal damage. The initial damage and Bleed damage is pretty great, but it also triggers his death which reduces enemy turn meter and heals Hela.

• Greg is an incredibly powerful tool against enemies. If attacking enemies that have many chain or aoe attacks, his value increases quite a bit. The best part of Greg is his death interactions by healing Hela and reducing the turn meter of you opponent.

• Node start - In general you won't need anything, but that being said, you are likely using her for a specific effect. Special is most likely the needed ability.

T4 Upgrades

🟩 Passive - Not only does this increase her health, but her summon's ability levels are tied to this ability. Which means more damage and more heals.

🟩 Special - Disrupt becomes two turns which is fantastic so that you can spread it with Ultimate the next turn. The damage boost is sizable as well.

🟩 Ultimate - Very nice damage boost as well as increasing the spread of negative effects form two to four. Depending on what you need her for, this might be more necessary for you over Special. This is also a very strong upgrade when paired with someone that can generate bleeds since spreading bleeds with generate new bleeds from Hela's damage stat which is quite high. The T4 upgrade increases all bleed's damage by 15% true damage.

🟨 Basic - While only a damage increase, Hela's damage stat makes this quite an attractive upgrade. If both attacks hit a single target, it's 400% damage which hurts.

Additional Notes

• If using her with Thanos, she can cause issues with energy generation as Greg can receive energy from Thanos which steals energy away from others.

• You can trigger Greg's death by attacking into characters with counter up. This allows you to consume the stack, heal Hela, and reduce the enemies' turn meter in a single attack.

"Phoenix Bomb" teams are still in use and can help you stabilize your daily raid runs. My philosophy on using Phoenix is to ensure/enable a clean one-shot of a node where your main raid team otherwise cannot. She can also be used as part of sacrificial teams to make big dents, eliminate threats, and play out enemy cooldowns. Using her means triggering her Dark Phoenix summon which means she is dead at the end of the node. Reviving her will quickly become expensive so it is not recommended to use her for more than one node on a daily basis.

Playstyle

• The key with maximizing her usage will be to get her to die early and quickly, but you also need to protect Dark Phoenix when summoned. Usually this is not an issue as Dark Phoenix has very good stats across the board, but if multiple high damage characters are lined up to go on the enemy's side, she can be erased in an instant. How and when to use her Special might take some tinkering if using it at node start doesn't work out for you.

• While in regular Phoenix form, you'll likely just want to use Special and get her to die quickly. If she lives to turn two, she can debuff a target with her Ultimate which should be able to debuff Juggernaut with taunt up. The following sections will be about Dark Phoenix

• On Dark Phoenix spawn, if the team is in rough shape, an immediate special can be used to help them out. Note that Offense Up/Defense Down doesn't matter for this ability since it is percentage based. Also if used immediately, you might get one or two more uses throughout the match

• Basic on Dark Phoenix is an extremely powerful ability. Massive aoe damage and two buff clear is amazing. Just using this will speed up clear times dramatically due to the damage.

• Ultimate does an obscene amount of damage if paired with the Defense Downs from her spawn. You might get another ultimate on long nodes like mini bosses.

• Node start - She gonna be dead :(

T4 Upgrades

🟩 Passive - Upgrade this gives Defense Down for two turns. This almost guarantees that they will all still be active when Dark Phoenix uses her ultimate.

🟩 Ultimate - Big damage increase, but it also boosts the buffs cleared from three to all.

🟩 Basic - For raiding, this is actually the key upgrade in my opinion as you'll spend most of your time hitting this with her. Hitting up to six targets speeds you through a node.

🟩 Special - While not as powerful in raids compared to Dark Dimension, this upgrade is still worthwhile since high level raids feature enemies with big health bars having the ability to hit all ten enemies at once is amazing value.

Additional Notes

• Remember, if you summon Dark Phoenix, Phoenix will be dead at the end of the raid node and you will have to revive her to use her again. She will spawn as regular Phoenix.

• Drain health abilities like Dark Phoenix's Ultimate will not trigger HP threshold abilities like SHIELD Security's auto taunt or Black Bolt's passive. Use this to your advatange if you need to get around auto taunts.

Minn-Erva (ME) is a fantastic support, but she is much different than supports like Shuri or Ebony Maw. She is an aggressive support that gains value in high damage compositions that can rack up kills quickly. The stronger you become in relation to the raid you are running, the more effective she becomes. She is also quite cheap on T4 upgrades, not needing any to perform at a high level

Playstyle

• In general much of her benefit comes from her passive healing so you will just be hitting Basic much of the time. Prioritize getting kills with the team to maximize her healing.

• Ultimate is her big heal ability. Used on a big wave, it can get quite a bit of health. Between that and the regens, it can end up healing quite a bit. Remember that the initial drain will work through Heal Block, but the Regeneration will not.

• Special is the Oh #%@$! button. Save this ability for when someone dies and get them right back. Two stacks of deathproof will make it hard for them to die again unless you lacking control of the match.

• Node start - Having Special ready is required on some nodes with early deaths. Otherwise, you don't need any abilities at start, but having them can give you confidence.

T4 Upgrades

🟨 Passive - This upgrade gives her just a bit more speed bar on ally death. This upgrade gains the most value when paired with Ultron or Hela to get the most out of it

🟨 Ultimate - Normally I like upgrades that have a bleed component as the upgraded bleed damage is quite nice. Minn-Erva's damage stat is not particularly high though so it's only through sheer application volume that you get value.

🟥 Basic - Similarly, with a fairly low damage stat, there are much better upgrades out there.

🟥 Special - No.

Additional Notes

• If Minn-Erva is the only Kree on your team, when she uses Special, she will grant herself one ability energy. This effectively makes her special a four turn cooldown instead of five.

• Drain health abilities like Minn-Erva's Ultimate will not trigger HP threshold abilities like SHIELD Security's auto taunt or Black Bolt's passive. Use this to your advantage if you need to get around auto taunts.

• Minn-Erva gains higher "heal per second" when paired with a summoner or against them. For example, pairing her with Hela gives her turn meter when Hela's summon dies, as well as slowing the enemy. This can cause her to gain her abilities back much faster as well as increase her healing output via her Basic. If paired with Hela often, her passive becomes a more attractive upgrade.

When joined by the Black Bolt and Yo-Yo power couple, Crystal adds an additional level of control and sustain on top of top notch damage.

Playstyle

• In general, spreading Slow and Bleed with basic will be your bread and butter. This gives you more control of the match and sets up a big Ultimate from her.

• Ultimate does a fair bit more damage to targets with Slow, so ensure that targets you really want to take down have Slow applied before using it.

• Node start - In general you shouldn't need any abilities charged unless you're looking to early burst a wave.

T4 Upgrades

🟩 Basic - This is a fantastic upgrade by increasing the Slow application to two turns. This affects her assist as well so paired with Yo-Yo, you can apply a fair amount of slows to the field.

🟩 Passive - This is a huge increase in health gained when Inhumans fall below 50% and can really help provide sustain through the mid portion of a raid node.

🟨 Ultimate - A great damage upgrade, but just that. More useful with better red stars.

🟨 Special - Like the above, if you have great red stars this can be a great aoe damage dealer. It is pure piercing damage so with enough damage, you can cut through all the armor an enemy has. Great for dealing damage to many high armor targets like Kree.

Additional Notes

• If you're counting on her passive to kick in for a particular node, make sure to check her health outside and top her off as necessary.

• An often-overlooked part of her passive is that she will reduce turn meter from the enemy with the highest Speed stat by 25% on turn. Combined with Slow this is a powerful tool to control faster damage dealers.

• If using Black Bolt as well, he can hit targets with Slow if he needs to flip debuffs on himself.

• If used with Yo-Yo and Black Bolt, note that she can be one of the assists called by Yo-Yo. While her assist is still pretty great, it is not deterministic so exercise caution if you are expecting to clear buffs.