A Frost In the Hellfire Club. An Emma Frost Guide.
Rockypantherx
Member Posts: 3,917 ★★★★★
I love Emma. Easily one of my favourite champions in the game. And yet, no one talks about her. In fact, it seems her main use these days is as Colossus’ synergy piece. It probably didn’t help she was released the same month as Omega Red, the mutant king.
But there is a reason mine is Rank 5, and there is a reason she went there instantly.
So let’s take a walk, and examine Emma Frost.
Her abilities you dirty b*****d, get your mind out the gutter.
Emma’s core mechanics are her diamond form, and her telepath form, each bringing their own set of utilities and mechanics. Learning to manage which form you want to be in is key to unlocking Emma’s full potential, and it’s not an easy feat to master. Emma will start the fight in diamond form, and will switch to telepath form when she is one power threshold above the opponent, switching back to diamond form when the opponent is a power threshold above her.
Now, if that sounds complicated, that’s because it is. I think this is the best way to explain it.
White power bar = 0
Green power bar = 1
Orange power bar = 2
Red Power bar = 3
If she is at 1, 2 or 3 and the opponent is at 0, 2 or 3 respectively, she will go into telepath form.
Alternatively, if the opponent is at 1, 2 or 3, and Emma is at 0,1 or 2 respectively, she will be in diamond form.
Also, if she is under the effects of an armour break, then she switches to telepath form for its duration, regardless of her power meter
This is a very finicky mechanic, and honestly, the best way to get used to it is just to go out and use it. But let’s take a look at what these forms do, and why you might want to be in a certain one.
Diamond Form:
This is the form you start in, and it’s your ‘defensive’ form. Here, Emma is immune to practically everything.
Stun, Bleed, Poison, Incinerate, Shock, Frostbite, Coldsnap, Fatigue, Concussion and Exhaustion. That is 10 immunities. That is crazy.
Additionally, she gains a ton armour, a good chunk of block proficiency, 10% chance to perfect block, a **** ton of crit resistance and crit damage resistance.
Also, parries grant an indefinite prowess, stacking up to 5, and granting +10% special attack damage
So, why might you want to be in this form. Clearly, she is sustainable in it, which makes her great for questing, but that isn’t reason enough to stay in it. No, you want to be in this form for immunities. And how do you stay in this form? Spam SP1. Aggressively. Your damage isn’t going to be amazing, but you will still get through the fight reasonably quickly.
So, what does this counter? Biohazard; freezer burn; Shock, Bleed, Poison, Incinerate nodes; Caltrops; Icemen and Aarkus’, Doom’s shock; Morningstar; Abomination; Energy Absorption nodes; Encroaching stun; Stunning reflection; Window of Opportunity; EMP Mod; Hazard shift. The list goes on. In fact, the immunity to fatigue makes her a pretty good void counter since she is immune to one of his 3 debuffs. I soloed a stubborn, hazard shift Void miniboss in war the other week with her.
Basically, she is probably the character with the most immunities in the game, in terms of straight immunity. Obviously Aegon can reliably shrug off anything.
I just want to point out here that she has already surpassed ⅔ of Colossus’ utility points. More immunities and better damage mitigation. The only thing she is missing is an armour up buff which is useful for *checks notes*... one matchup. Obviously, the damage isn’t close. But I’m just saying…
And we’re just getting started.
Next, let’s look at her 2nd form. Her telepath form. This really is your damage form. Those indefinite prowesses become temporary and last for 7 seconds but now stack to 10. You gain a stack every time you crit in this form, and each crit refreshes all of your prowess. Which works great in combination with the next benefit of this form.
Each stack of prowess grants a hefty chunk of crit rating and some crit damage rating.
Of course, if you switch back to diamond form, then you lose stacks until you reach 5 and the critical benefits. Clearly, this access to prowess allows her to counter special connoisseur in 6.4.
All this comes together to mean that in telepath form, you’ll be critting almost every hit, aggressively stacking prowess, and your specials will crit more than they don’t. Plus they hit for big yellow numbers. My R5 with suicides consistently throws 65k SP2’s at 10 prowess.
But that isn’t even it for telepath form. Oh no. Emma also just shuts down all evade abilities in this form. It doesn’t even show up ‘evade failed’. It works like Venom against spidermen, but for all evaders. This is pretty freaking amazing. Evade is one of the most common defensive abilities in the game, so countering it is incredibly powerful.
Of course, this is just in one form. So how do we keep this up consistently? Well, there are two ways. One is just to stay at 3 bars of power and not use specials. Not the greatest damage output wise, but she’ll be critting most hits, so she will somewhat account for it.
The second way is a bit more complicated but maybe worth it. It allows you to get the SP2 damage, and retain your evade counter for most of the fight. But we need to discuss her heavy attack first to truly understand this rotation.
In diamond form, Emma’s heavy attack gives the opponent 80% less power, and she gains 50% more. In telepath form, it places a 5 second 70% special activation/40% weakness taunt on the opponent, which is removed if she switches back to diamond form. This is just a really nice to have on any champion and is great for managing her forms.
In diamond form, this has two functions. One is a pseudo power control. Not the best, but some sort of power mitigation can always be useful. Secondly, it can be used to launch you into telepath form. 3 heavies will push you above a bar of power at the start of the match, and your opponent will barely be half.
So, returning to the evade counter, it involves throwing your SP2, then utilising this heavy in diamond form to get back to telepath form as quickly as possible. Obviously in stun immune or debuff immune matchups, this is going to be a lot more difficult. But if you can pull it off, she becomes one of the best evade counters in the game.
And...breathe. I know that was a lot at once, but what can I say? Emma is a damn complex champ.
This is where Emma’s first major crack appears. She can’t retain her immunities and evade counter at the same time. Now, I don’t think this is a massive deal. I can only think of one matchup in the game where you need both, and that is a biohazard Nightcrawler miniboss in 6.4.4, but this sort of thing might appear in AW/AQ more frequently. So while it is certainly a downside to the character, it’s certainly not enough to write her off at all.
Now let’s look at Emma’s special attacks.
First thing, they all deal true damage and ignore the opponent's armour. Nice. Why not?
Secondly, she switches to telepath form for the duration of these attacks, regardless of her power meter. Now, this is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you’ll get the crit bonuses. On the other hand, you lose your immunities for a few ticks. Which can be enough to whittle you down eventually. The second major flaw of the champ. Usually manageable, but not the funnest time.
Lastly, as you might expect, all her prowess are removed at the end of a special attack.
For the special 1, she inflicts a smallish power sting for 8 seconds. Bit of extra damage if you are spamming SP1 to stay in diamond form, but its main use is the ‘That’s Gonna Sting’ path in 6.4.
The special 2 inflicts an 8 second 50% concussion. It’s a concussion, they are always nice for getting around some stuff, and no doubt we’ll see a node in future that reads ‘90% less damage unless you have a concussion on the opponent’. Just a small little cherry on top of her utility cake. Really this is your damage special and the one you want to go for in most matchups.
The special 3 is incredibly underwhelming. It reduces the opponent's power gain from all sources. Which sounds absolutely amazing until you read the 8 seconds attached. It makes it practically useless. If you need power control, use someone else. If you’re relying on this for power control, something has gone wrong.
And finally, for her core abilities, the signature ability. This really isn’t needed straight off. It inverts the opponent's controls on specials, which also seems to counter miss? Doesn’t say that in the abilities, but Ghost can’t phase them.
Secondly, if Emma would lose 50 -> 10% of her health from a single source, she switches to diamond form. It activates before checking armour and resistances, so I think that makes it slightly better. Don’t quote me on that though. This can be nice for mitigating incoming damage if you’re getting slapped around, but don’t expect it to realistically save you.
Don’t worry, almost there. Just rotation, suicides and synergies to go.
I’ve gone over her specific rotation in the core breakdown, and the rotation for normal fights is literally just spam heavies until you’re in telepath form, throw SP2, see big numbers. That’s your bread and butter,
As for suicide compatibility, she is very suicides friendly. Double immune, the extra damage is super helpful, and her inherent sustainability makes recoil damage much less painful. Besides, most Act 6 fights are going down in 3 or 4 SP2’s, possibly less if you’re lucky.
And finally, synergies. As I mentioned at the start, she is mainly seen as a synergy piece for colossus (even if I definitely would take her over colossus personally). But she has a lot of great synergies, both for herself and others. Not so cold-hearted after all I guess.
Yeah alright, I’ll see myself out.
The aforementioned colossus synergy gives him 2% power gain per armour up, which we all know, is stupidly good. But it also makes Emma switch to diamond form when she and her opponent are in the same power bar. This is another double-edged sword. When you don’t need immunities, this makes it much more difficult to reach telepath form and stack prowess. But when you need immunities, this makes it much easier to maintain.
Her synergy with the Cyclops’ does nothing meaningful for them, a meagre +10% power gain, but it allows Emma to crit through the block, which can help refresh your prowess, and just deal a bit more damage through the block.
The Sentinel synergy gives Emma 15% attack in diamond form, which is really nice, especially in matchups where you want to stay in that form. Sentinel gains +4 physical resistance for each analysis charge, maxing at 400. Makes a tanky champion tankier. Never a bad thing.
And finally for Emma’s inherent synergies, the Phoenix force synergy with, you guessed it, Phoenix. It allows Emma to gain 2 prowess whenever she would gain 1, allowing her to ramp much quicker. As for phoenix, it allows her to retain all her furies when overloaded, until overloaded ends. Nice bump in damage output for Phoenix, but not changing the game for her.
Mysterio has a synergy with her that gives them both immunity to reversed controls, which is genuinely brilliant, for both champs. Bit niche, but that’s what you need at the endgame.
Invisible women allows her prowess to last 10% longer, which equates to an extra 0.7 seconds. Don’t bother with this one.
Magneto is an a**hole and doesn’t give her anything for her contribution to his hellfire club, but his bleed and armour breaks get +20% duration. Because Magneto is the one that needs more power. Sure.
Now we reach the section that we have to consider for every mutant now. Apocalypse and Professor X.
Professor X has a unique synergy with her that gives Emma up to 30% extra crit rating based on her power meter, which is alright. Nothing game-changing for her. It also gives all mutants and X-men, aside from Prof X, 15% extra prowess duration for each Cerebro charge. Even at 1, this is quite nice for the Frost, at 4 you’re basically never losing your prowess. The rest of Prof X’s synergies are pretty good for Emma. especially the extra special damage one, that can really inflate the numbers.
Emma doesn’t really get much as a horseman. The extra 50% prowess is great, and the unstoppable is a nice safety net, but you won’t really be dealing with any of the other benefits.
Of course, combining the Prof X and horseman abilities is mental. At 4 cerebro charges, and as a horseman, she can consistently chuck out 100k SP2’s. Not bad if you ask me, but not exactly practical either.
And that’s it. Wow, that was a lot. But Emma has a lot to her, she’s a very complex, but very versatile and useful champion. Top 5 mutant? I would say so. I know the vast majority won’t agree with me on that, but that’s the nature of opinions. Certainly, the community needs to take another look at her, as she is criminally underrated. I would almost say she is a mutant Claire. Not the highest damage, but very, very versatile. Som thank you for reading, and as Spidey told me, “ Stay Frosty”, and stay safe out there.
But there is a reason mine is Rank 5, and there is a reason she went there instantly.
So let’s take a walk, and examine Emma Frost.
Her abilities you dirty b*****d, get your mind out the gutter.
Emma’s core mechanics are her diamond form, and her telepath form, each bringing their own set of utilities and mechanics. Learning to manage which form you want to be in is key to unlocking Emma’s full potential, and it’s not an easy feat to master. Emma will start the fight in diamond form, and will switch to telepath form when she is one power threshold above the opponent, switching back to diamond form when the opponent is a power threshold above her.
Now, if that sounds complicated, that’s because it is. I think this is the best way to explain it.
White power bar = 0
Green power bar = 1
Orange power bar = 2
Red Power bar = 3
If she is at 1, 2 or 3 and the opponent is at 0, 2 or 3 respectively, she will go into telepath form.
Alternatively, if the opponent is at 1, 2 or 3, and Emma is at 0,1 or 2 respectively, she will be in diamond form.
Also, if she is under the effects of an armour break, then she switches to telepath form for its duration, regardless of her power meter
This is a very finicky mechanic, and honestly, the best way to get used to it is just to go out and use it. But let’s take a look at what these forms do, and why you might want to be in a certain one.
Diamond Form:
This is the form you start in, and it’s your ‘defensive’ form. Here, Emma is immune to practically everything.
Stun, Bleed, Poison, Incinerate, Shock, Frostbite, Coldsnap, Fatigue, Concussion and Exhaustion. That is 10 immunities. That is crazy.
Additionally, she gains a ton armour, a good chunk of block proficiency, 10% chance to perfect block, a **** ton of crit resistance and crit damage resistance.
Also, parries grant an indefinite prowess, stacking up to 5, and granting +10% special attack damage
So, why might you want to be in this form. Clearly, she is sustainable in it, which makes her great for questing, but that isn’t reason enough to stay in it. No, you want to be in this form for immunities. And how do you stay in this form? Spam SP1. Aggressively. Your damage isn’t going to be amazing, but you will still get through the fight reasonably quickly.
So, what does this counter? Biohazard; freezer burn; Shock, Bleed, Poison, Incinerate nodes; Caltrops; Icemen and Aarkus’, Doom’s shock; Morningstar; Abomination; Energy Absorption nodes; Encroaching stun; Stunning reflection; Window of Opportunity; EMP Mod; Hazard shift. The list goes on. In fact, the immunity to fatigue makes her a pretty good void counter since she is immune to one of his 3 debuffs. I soloed a stubborn, hazard shift Void miniboss in war the other week with her.
Basically, she is probably the character with the most immunities in the game, in terms of straight immunity. Obviously Aegon can reliably shrug off anything.
I just want to point out here that she has already surpassed ⅔ of Colossus’ utility points. More immunities and better damage mitigation. The only thing she is missing is an armour up buff which is useful for *checks notes*... one matchup. Obviously, the damage isn’t close. But I’m just saying…
And we’re just getting started.
Next, let’s look at her 2nd form. Her telepath form. This really is your damage form. Those indefinite prowesses become temporary and last for 7 seconds but now stack to 10. You gain a stack every time you crit in this form, and each crit refreshes all of your prowess. Which works great in combination with the next benefit of this form.
Each stack of prowess grants a hefty chunk of crit rating and some crit damage rating.
Of course, if you switch back to diamond form, then you lose stacks until you reach 5 and the critical benefits. Clearly, this access to prowess allows her to counter special connoisseur in 6.4.
All this comes together to mean that in telepath form, you’ll be critting almost every hit, aggressively stacking prowess, and your specials will crit more than they don’t. Plus they hit for big yellow numbers. My R5 with suicides consistently throws 65k SP2’s at 10 prowess.
But that isn’t even it for telepath form. Oh no. Emma also just shuts down all evade abilities in this form. It doesn’t even show up ‘evade failed’. It works like Venom against spidermen, but for all evaders. This is pretty freaking amazing. Evade is one of the most common defensive abilities in the game, so countering it is incredibly powerful.
Of course, this is just in one form. So how do we keep this up consistently? Well, there are two ways. One is just to stay at 3 bars of power and not use specials. Not the greatest damage output wise, but she’ll be critting most hits, so she will somewhat account for it.
The second way is a bit more complicated but maybe worth it. It allows you to get the SP2 damage, and retain your evade counter for most of the fight. But we need to discuss her heavy attack first to truly understand this rotation.
In diamond form, Emma’s heavy attack gives the opponent 80% less power, and she gains 50% more. In telepath form, it places a 5 second 70% special activation/40% weakness taunt on the opponent, which is removed if she switches back to diamond form. This is just a really nice to have on any champion and is great for managing her forms.
In diamond form, this has two functions. One is a pseudo power control. Not the best, but some sort of power mitigation can always be useful. Secondly, it can be used to launch you into telepath form. 3 heavies will push you above a bar of power at the start of the match, and your opponent will barely be half.
So, returning to the evade counter, it involves throwing your SP2, then utilising this heavy in diamond form to get back to telepath form as quickly as possible. Obviously in stun immune or debuff immune matchups, this is going to be a lot more difficult. But if you can pull it off, she becomes one of the best evade counters in the game.
And...breathe. I know that was a lot at once, but what can I say? Emma is a damn complex champ.
This is where Emma’s first major crack appears. She can’t retain her immunities and evade counter at the same time. Now, I don’t think this is a massive deal. I can only think of one matchup in the game where you need both, and that is a biohazard Nightcrawler miniboss in 6.4.4, but this sort of thing might appear in AW/AQ more frequently. So while it is certainly a downside to the character, it’s certainly not enough to write her off at all.
Now let’s look at Emma’s special attacks.
First thing, they all deal true damage and ignore the opponent's armour. Nice. Why not?
Secondly, she switches to telepath form for the duration of these attacks, regardless of her power meter. Now, this is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you’ll get the crit bonuses. On the other hand, you lose your immunities for a few ticks. Which can be enough to whittle you down eventually. The second major flaw of the champ. Usually manageable, but not the funnest time.
Lastly, as you might expect, all her prowess are removed at the end of a special attack.
For the special 1, she inflicts a smallish power sting for 8 seconds. Bit of extra damage if you are spamming SP1 to stay in diamond form, but its main use is the ‘That’s Gonna Sting’ path in 6.4.
The special 2 inflicts an 8 second 50% concussion. It’s a concussion, they are always nice for getting around some stuff, and no doubt we’ll see a node in future that reads ‘90% less damage unless you have a concussion on the opponent’. Just a small little cherry on top of her utility cake. Really this is your damage special and the one you want to go for in most matchups.
The special 3 is incredibly underwhelming. It reduces the opponent's power gain from all sources. Which sounds absolutely amazing until you read the 8 seconds attached. It makes it practically useless. If you need power control, use someone else. If you’re relying on this for power control, something has gone wrong.
And finally, for her core abilities, the signature ability. This really isn’t needed straight off. It inverts the opponent's controls on specials, which also seems to counter miss? Doesn’t say that in the abilities, but Ghost can’t phase them.
Secondly, if Emma would lose 50 -> 10% of her health from a single source, she switches to diamond form. It activates before checking armour and resistances, so I think that makes it slightly better. Don’t quote me on that though. This can be nice for mitigating incoming damage if you’re getting slapped around, but don’t expect it to realistically save you.
Don’t worry, almost there. Just rotation, suicides and synergies to go.
I’ve gone over her specific rotation in the core breakdown, and the rotation for normal fights is literally just spam heavies until you’re in telepath form, throw SP2, see big numbers. That’s your bread and butter,
As for suicide compatibility, she is very suicides friendly. Double immune, the extra damage is super helpful, and her inherent sustainability makes recoil damage much less painful. Besides, most Act 6 fights are going down in 3 or 4 SP2’s, possibly less if you’re lucky.
And finally, synergies. As I mentioned at the start, she is mainly seen as a synergy piece for colossus (even if I definitely would take her over colossus personally). But she has a lot of great synergies, both for herself and others. Not so cold-hearted after all I guess.
Yeah alright, I’ll see myself out.
The aforementioned colossus synergy gives him 2% power gain per armour up, which we all know, is stupidly good. But it also makes Emma switch to diamond form when she and her opponent are in the same power bar. This is another double-edged sword. When you don’t need immunities, this makes it much more difficult to reach telepath form and stack prowess. But when you need immunities, this makes it much easier to maintain.
Her synergy with the Cyclops’ does nothing meaningful for them, a meagre +10% power gain, but it allows Emma to crit through the block, which can help refresh your prowess, and just deal a bit more damage through the block.
The Sentinel synergy gives Emma 15% attack in diamond form, which is really nice, especially in matchups where you want to stay in that form. Sentinel gains +4 physical resistance for each analysis charge, maxing at 400. Makes a tanky champion tankier. Never a bad thing.
And finally for Emma’s inherent synergies, the Phoenix force synergy with, you guessed it, Phoenix. It allows Emma to gain 2 prowess whenever she would gain 1, allowing her to ramp much quicker. As for phoenix, it allows her to retain all her furies when overloaded, until overloaded ends. Nice bump in damage output for Phoenix, but not changing the game for her.
Mysterio has a synergy with her that gives them both immunity to reversed controls, which is genuinely brilliant, for both champs. Bit niche, but that’s what you need at the endgame.
Invisible women allows her prowess to last 10% longer, which equates to an extra 0.7 seconds. Don’t bother with this one.
Magneto is an a**hole and doesn’t give her anything for her contribution to his hellfire club, but his bleed and armour breaks get +20% duration. Because Magneto is the one that needs more power. Sure.
Now we reach the section that we have to consider for every mutant now. Apocalypse and Professor X.
Professor X has a unique synergy with her that gives Emma up to 30% extra crit rating based on her power meter, which is alright. Nothing game-changing for her. It also gives all mutants and X-men, aside from Prof X, 15% extra prowess duration for each Cerebro charge. Even at 1, this is quite nice for the Frost, at 4 you’re basically never losing your prowess. The rest of Prof X’s synergies are pretty good for Emma. especially the extra special damage one, that can really inflate the numbers.
Emma doesn’t really get much as a horseman. The extra 50% prowess is great, and the unstoppable is a nice safety net, but you won’t really be dealing with any of the other benefits.
Of course, combining the Prof X and horseman abilities is mental. At 4 cerebro charges, and as a horseman, she can consistently chuck out 100k SP2’s. Not bad if you ask me, but not exactly practical either.
And that’s it. Wow, that was a lot. But Emma has a lot to her, she’s a very complex, but very versatile and useful champion. Top 5 mutant? I would say so. I know the vast majority won’t agree with me on that, but that’s the nature of opinions. Certainly, the community needs to take another look at her, as she is criminally underrated. I would almost say she is a mutant Claire. Not the highest damage, but very, very versatile. Som thank you for reading, and as Spidey told me, “ Stay Frosty”, and stay safe out there.
43
Comments
This post was extremely detailed and insightful and counters a lot of arguments against her.
She was extremely useful for this months side event especially with the collosus synergy. She was also my mvp against the grandmaster (with mysteriio synergy) in my act 6 completion run, even though she was only rank 1 then (I used the rank up gem from the rewards on her)
Besides that, you might have inspired me to r4 my 5* EF (provided Gambit and Falcon don’t get mega-buffed)
☝️Pay attention to these comments dear scrollers.
And sorry I can't ignore her... ☺😛
I would say take Void to R5 anyway
Left here knowing that my body pillow is that much better 👀
Brilliant guide and write up for an often underrated champ