Archangel: My rambling write up on my favourite Champion
Fluffy_paws
Member Posts: 2,678 ★★★★★
Archangel. Big metal wings. Lots of debuffs. Easy to play.
Very true.
But I wanted a thread I can shove under people's noses when I suggest Archangel as a rankup. And because I'm procrastinating my uni work.
I'll start with the basics.
His main source of damage is his DoT. He doesn't have big yellow numbers or massive specials. In order to reach his max potential, he needs to be able to convert his bleeds and poisons to neurotoxins. The damage is crazy. They melt.
Bleeds
He has a 40% chance to apply bleeds on crits. His heavy has a 50% chance to apply bleed. I'm assuming thats per hit. Not sure. Bleeds are very easy to apply. My 5* does 2876.8 bleed damage per bleed. Each bleed reduces Tenacity by 25%.
Poison
His chance to poison on block is sadly reliant on his ability to bleed. Otherwise he'd be slightly better against bleed immune. Each bleed is a +25% chance to apply poison. The poison deals same amount of damage as the bleed.
Neurotoxins
Combine a bleed and poison, get a neurotoxin. This is his MAIN source of damage. And what makes him so insane because they reduce ability accuracy. Mine does 6903 damage per neuro. AND reduces Ability Accuracy by 40% at sig 200. Doesn't need sig 200. Just needs dupe and more neuros the lower his sig is. Around sig 80 is what most people consider to be ideal, so would need 3 neuros. Shuts off regen. Bye!
Archangel's biggest strength is his biggest drawback. I hear a lot of "he's useless against bleed/poison!" Again, true. He needs to be balanced though, so his ability to completely shred non immunes is relative to his uselessness against bleed immune. He is still able to put in work against those immune to poison, it's just slower than your average AA fight, and he can't completely shut them down. Deep wounds is helpful.
Very Bad Matchups
No, not the Robots. You wanna take Archangel against Darkhawk? Go for it. It'll take forever, because he's a noodle in this scenario. But he has some matchups that he'll get WRECKED in.
1) Abomination: You bleed him. He poisons you. You die
2) Cable: You bleed him. He degens you. You die
3) Omega Red: You ble- you get my point.
4) Guardian: Now this is a stranger one. A duped Archangel will apply neuros, get shocked and die. An unduped Archangel is perfectly fine. Or if Guardian has Force of Will, I think a duped AA would be fine too. Or poison immunity. Just don't reduce his ability accuracy.
5)BWCV. Too much power gain.
Purify and Resistances
1) Red Hulk converts poison into Heat Charges. However, there is a very short window in which you can apply a neuro. You have to get the timing very perfect though, I think I've done it once. Or just use sp3. Instant neuro.
Works on IMIW too when he doesn't have armour up. DorkLessons has a vid. I tend to take Venom for the True Strike so I've never bothered to try.
2) He doesn't care about resistances. As long as they don't have immunity. He converts his bleeds into neuros, so you'd loose a little bit of damage, but barely noticeable.
Ability Accuracy Reduction
With enough neuros, he can shut off many many annoying abilities. Magik's limbo doesn't proc, Void's debuffs can fail, no damage back from Electro, Punisher/Hela's indestructible doesn't trigger, DP's power gain, Modok's autoblock, Mojo's strange Mojo stuff, Mr Fantastic's annoying evade and stuff (actually anyone's evade Ronin's, Black Widow's, Hit Monkey's) but sadly also prevents sp1 debuffs so no willpower healing, spiderverse evades - if buffet is there, Venom isn't reliable, AA is - he can turn buffet off too. I've recently just learnt he can shut off the debuff transfer from Mr Sinister's sp1. He can turn the most annoying champ into just a blob with high health and attack. I'm looking at you, Mojo.
It can save you when you mess up and get clipped too. For example if you fail on evading Yellowjacket's sp1, if he has 3 neuros, you don't get the power sting. He can also cause bleeds and other debuffs to fail to apply so you'd just take damage from the hits.
Nodes
1) Lifecycle. No damage from debuffs (bleed and poison) but neuros are passive and still do damage. His primary playstyle is parry-heavy anyway, so you can just do that, let the neuros block regen and let them flop dead. Make sure there isn't any immunity though. You don't do damage on the bleeds = noodle hands if poison immune.
2) Safeguard? What Safeguard.
3) Diss Track. Gotta be careful not to convert everything to a neuro. They're passive. Don't count.
4) Nodes which limit power: he doesn't care. Doesn't need those specials 99% of the time. Unless it's a Red Hulk. He will completely turn off Matador. Means no power for you at all.
5) Masochism. He applies so many debuffs. Also after a few bleeds, they can't shrug the stun. -25% chance of Tenacity.
He can turn off so many nodes too. No Retreat. Caltrops. Spite. Biohazard. Energy Adoptions. EMP Mod. Fight or Flight. Just to name a few. If I was to list them all, I'd be here forever. And I don't even know all of them. He can turn off the new Root though!
6)Limber/Stun Immune. Remember that parry-heavy is his fastest and most efficient playstyle. He will be slower yes, but use your specials. Provided that you have some bleeds from hitting them, you'll get some poisons up which will still convert. And heavy counter.
Note: make sure either there is no Force of Will node (immunity to AAR) or the champ themselves aren't immune to it. Longshot is a strange one. He is immune to AAR except from debuffs. Neuros are passive, so they don't count, but since Longshot can be bled and posioned, well RIP Longshot. OML, Kingpin and Mordo are other examples of non immune fools but are resistant to AAR. Actually, if anyone can explain AA and Kingpin's interaction, please do. I don't understand it.
Note II: Interaction with the Champion. Not the big bad 6.2 one. Just a normal one. The Champion has +25% increased ability accuracy facing AA, as he's classed as one of the Contest's Greatest fighters. Keep that in mind, you need more neuros than usual. Additionally, neuros won't stop Regen when he's on a final node. What they can do, is cause the Fury to not proc. No Fury. No annoying regen.
Archangel himself is immune to ability accuracy reduction. No, this doesn't make him a Domino counter. His abilities have a natural chance to fail, so you still take crit failure. He's not the worst though. She can be bled and poisoned.
What it does mean however, is you can run suicides and face Masacre, Electra. You can parry Gwenpool to your heart's content, no matter how high her combo. And Black Widow. And Magneto. The Red one. White one is sadly now bleed immune. Well you can still parry him.
Random Other things
- He's a mutant champ, therefore can apply bleeds to Elsa Bloodstone, no degen back.
- Neuros expiry can give you an opening to push them to another special if thats easier to evade or transfer bane as they stun on expiry but sometimes I've been trying to bait sp and they get stunned and bane is about to be transferred so don't push them to nearly an sp3 and bait.
-Duped sig 1 = shuts down regen with 1 neuro. Even undupe, keep up posion and they reduce healing by 30%. With despair mastery the amount of debuffs he applies should shut off regen anyway.
-He also doesn't rely on synergies so only needs one spot on the team. Not to say he doesn't get a HUGE boost from Apoc, and Prof X and Mags HoX (if the passive stun is working yet). He doesn't need it though. Although the -100% bleed damage is crazy.
-He can work with or without suicides, no need for specials, no recoil
-His heavy timed right can be used against Mordo's astral evade
-His heavy has good reach and he's great for heavy countering and specials with heavy
-All or Nothing. He has absolutely no power control. But sometimes they just die that fast, you won't need to care.
-He's great for 5.3 with the attack reduction due to his damage output, the fights don't seem as long. He also works similarly in v3. As his playstyle is primarily parry-heavy and he is a medium champ, in v2 his heavy won't be glanced.
-Did I mention big metal wings?
I think that's all I'll write for this one. I'll probably think of something else as soon as I post it. I can think of more nodes, but it's long enough already. If anyone's actually read this without me shoving it under their nose, thanks! I appreciate it. I spent far too long on this and now I'm very sleepy.
Very true.
But I wanted a thread I can shove under people's noses when I suggest Archangel as a rankup. And because I'm procrastinating my uni work.
I'll start with the basics.
His main source of damage is his DoT. He doesn't have big yellow numbers or massive specials. In order to reach his max potential, he needs to be able to convert his bleeds and poisons to neurotoxins. The damage is crazy. They melt.
Bleeds
He has a 40% chance to apply bleeds on crits. His heavy has a 50% chance to apply bleed. I'm assuming thats per hit. Not sure. Bleeds are very easy to apply. My 5* does 2876.8 bleed damage per bleed. Each bleed reduces Tenacity by 25%.
Poison
His chance to poison on block is sadly reliant on his ability to bleed. Otherwise he'd be slightly better against bleed immune. Each bleed is a +25% chance to apply poison. The poison deals same amount of damage as the bleed.
Neurotoxins
Combine a bleed and poison, get a neurotoxin. This is his MAIN source of damage. And what makes him so insane because they reduce ability accuracy. Mine does 6903 damage per neuro. AND reduces Ability Accuracy by 40% at sig 200. Doesn't need sig 200. Just needs dupe and more neuros the lower his sig is. Around sig 80 is what most people consider to be ideal, so would need 3 neuros. Shuts off regen. Bye!
Archangel's biggest strength is his biggest drawback. I hear a lot of "he's useless against bleed/poison!" Again, true. He needs to be balanced though, so his ability to completely shred non immunes is relative to his uselessness against bleed immune. He is still able to put in work against those immune to poison, it's just slower than your average AA fight, and he can't completely shut them down. Deep wounds is helpful.
Very Bad Matchups
No, not the Robots. You wanna take Archangel against Darkhawk? Go for it. It'll take forever, because he's a noodle in this scenario. But he has some matchups that he'll get WRECKED in.
1) Abomination: You bleed him. He poisons you. You die
2) Cable: You bleed him. He degens you. You die
3) Omega Red: You ble- you get my point.
4) Guardian: Now this is a stranger one. A duped Archangel will apply neuros, get shocked and die. An unduped Archangel is perfectly fine. Or if Guardian has Force of Will, I think a duped AA would be fine too. Or poison immunity. Just don't reduce his ability accuracy.
5)BWCV. Too much power gain.
Purify and Resistances
1) Red Hulk converts poison into Heat Charges. However, there is a very short window in which you can apply a neuro. You have to get the timing very perfect though, I think I've done it once. Or just use sp3. Instant neuro.
Works on IMIW too when he doesn't have armour up. DorkLessons has a vid. I tend to take Venom for the True Strike so I've never bothered to try.
2) He doesn't care about resistances. As long as they don't have immunity. He converts his bleeds into neuros, so you'd loose a little bit of damage, but barely noticeable.
Ability Accuracy Reduction
With enough neuros, he can shut off many many annoying abilities. Magik's limbo doesn't proc, Void's debuffs can fail, no damage back from Electro, Punisher/Hela's indestructible doesn't trigger, DP's power gain, Modok's autoblock, Mojo's strange Mojo stuff, Mr Fantastic's annoying evade and stuff (actually anyone's evade Ronin's, Black Widow's, Hit Monkey's) but sadly also prevents sp1 debuffs so no willpower healing, spiderverse evades - if buffet is there, Venom isn't reliable, AA is - he can turn buffet off too. I've recently just learnt he can shut off the debuff transfer from Mr Sinister's sp1. He can turn the most annoying champ into just a blob with high health and attack. I'm looking at you, Mojo.
It can save you when you mess up and get clipped too. For example if you fail on evading Yellowjacket's sp1, if he has 3 neuros, you don't get the power sting. He can also cause bleeds and other debuffs to fail to apply so you'd just take damage from the hits.
Nodes
1) Lifecycle. No damage from debuffs (bleed and poison) but neuros are passive and still do damage. His primary playstyle is parry-heavy anyway, so you can just do that, let the neuros block regen and let them flop dead. Make sure there isn't any immunity though. You don't do damage on the bleeds = noodle hands if poison immune.
2) Safeguard? What Safeguard.
3) Diss Track. Gotta be careful not to convert everything to a neuro. They're passive. Don't count.
4) Nodes which limit power: he doesn't care. Doesn't need those specials 99% of the time. Unless it's a Red Hulk. He will completely turn off Matador. Means no power for you at all.
5) Masochism. He applies so many debuffs. Also after a few bleeds, they can't shrug the stun. -25% chance of Tenacity.
He can turn off so many nodes too. No Retreat. Caltrops. Spite. Biohazard. Energy Adoptions. EMP Mod. Fight or Flight. Just to name a few. If I was to list them all, I'd be here forever. And I don't even know all of them. He can turn off the new Root though!
6)Limber/Stun Immune. Remember that parry-heavy is his fastest and most efficient playstyle. He will be slower yes, but use your specials. Provided that you have some bleeds from hitting them, you'll get some poisons up which will still convert. And heavy counter.
Note: make sure either there is no Force of Will node (immunity to AAR) or the champ themselves aren't immune to it. Longshot is a strange one. He is immune to AAR except from debuffs. Neuros are passive, so they don't count, but since Longshot can be bled and posioned, well RIP Longshot. OML, Kingpin and Mordo are other examples of non immune fools but are resistant to AAR. Actually, if anyone can explain AA and Kingpin's interaction, please do. I don't understand it.
Note II: Interaction with the Champion. Not the big bad 6.2 one. Just a normal one. The Champion has +25% increased ability accuracy facing AA, as he's classed as one of the Contest's Greatest fighters. Keep that in mind, you need more neuros than usual. Additionally, neuros won't stop Regen when he's on a final node. What they can do, is cause the Fury to not proc. No Fury. No annoying regen.
Archangel himself is immune to ability accuracy reduction. No, this doesn't make him a Domino counter. His abilities have a natural chance to fail, so you still take crit failure. He's not the worst though. She can be bled and poisoned.
What it does mean however, is you can run suicides and face Masacre, Electra. You can parry Gwenpool to your heart's content, no matter how high her combo. And Black Widow. And Magneto. The Red one. White one is sadly now bleed immune. Well you can still parry him.
Random Other things
- He's a mutant champ, therefore can apply bleeds to Elsa Bloodstone, no degen back.
- Neuros expiry can give you an opening to push them to another special if thats easier to evade or transfer bane as they stun on expiry but sometimes I've been trying to bait sp and they get stunned and bane is about to be transferred so don't push them to nearly an sp3 and bait.
-Duped sig 1 = shuts down regen with 1 neuro. Even undupe, keep up posion and they reduce healing by 30%. With despair mastery the amount of debuffs he applies should shut off regen anyway.
-He also doesn't rely on synergies so only needs one spot on the team. Not to say he doesn't get a HUGE boost from Apoc, and Prof X and Mags HoX (if the passive stun is working yet). He doesn't need it though. Although the -100% bleed damage is crazy.
-He can work with or without suicides, no need for specials, no recoil
-His heavy timed right can be used against Mordo's astral evade
-His heavy has good reach and he's great for heavy countering and specials with heavy
-All or Nothing. He has absolutely no power control. But sometimes they just die that fast, you won't need to care.
-He's great for 5.3 with the attack reduction due to his damage output, the fights don't seem as long. He also works similarly in v3. As his playstyle is primarily parry-heavy and he is a medium champ, in v2 his heavy won't be glanced.
-Did I mention big metal wings?
I think that's all I'll write for this one. I'll probably think of something else as soon as I post it. I can think of more nodes, but it's long enough already. If anyone's actually read this without me shoving it under their nose, thanks! I appreciate it. I spent far too long on this and now I'm very sleepy.
35
Comments
Very informative and Funny!
Only problem! Domino sucks so much everybody can counter her
It may be 00:13 here but that’s still time spent on here and not essays!
By the way, LOVED the matchups specific breakdowns. That’s just brilliant
Any time spent away from essays is time well spent.
By the way, it turns out that Mordo is also immune to archangel's passive AAR like Longshot is. Kingpin's interaction still continues to baffle me, God knows what that one's about.
Also, it seems you forgot to mention that his DoT scales with attack mods as well. Another reason why he absolutely rocks suicides. Also, extra ability accuracy really benefits him. It's fun getting heavy enhancement and debuff enhancement hacks in incursions, and watching 300k health opponents die in like 12-15 hits!
Just wish they'd fix his bug against glancing. I used to have so much fun bypassing that mechanic back in the day when he could almost completely ignore it.
Speaking of the 6*, has anyone seen a rank 3 Archangel? Those neurotoxins would be filthy.
True yeah, I forgot his DoT scales with attack. I've never ran suicides and rarely play incursions.
The extra ability accuracy is nice too. I like to take him with Quake, Hawkeye, Heimdall and Angela for RoL.
Good shout on those!
Continue until opponents melt.
Don't use against bleed and/or poison immunes or weird champs that do weird things, and it all seemed so much simpler.
One of the few really OP champs that dont need a degree in nerd to figure out.
I'm glad you've decided to use your gem on him, he'll do a lot for you!
There's a few things I found out since then, but I'll wait till there's more and do an updated one at some point
Yep, totally should've r5'd Venompool
He's earnt me back those resources x100 by now
Does anybody know if there is a background from the comics? I never understood why some champs are immune to AAR, like Mysterio, Mordo, AA,.... Probably because the developers designed them that way lol
btw no complaints about that fact, i am only curious