Adam Warlock is amazing
Emilia90
Member Posts: 3,502 ★★★★★
This is long so I left a TLDR for the people who don’t want to read it
A common criticism Adam gets his his apparent reliance on AI and how he only gets you good results if they play along. I’m here to say that there’s very minimal AI reliance to him if you know what to do and he’s actually fun instead of stressful if you learn to use him. I personally have a lot of fun playing him but I know he’s not for everyone
So why learn Adam? I see people saying that he’s too complicated to learn and that they’d rather just use Hulkling or CGR. Fair enough, but Adam is so versatile that he can do matchups pretty well that even those 2 can’t take. They’re obviously much much easier to use, but if you get good with Adam there’s a ton you can do that you might not even think of. The second part to this is learning general AI behavior. The AI (as we all know) is awful right now. When learning Adam you need to study the AI to a decent level and I can now predict what they’ll do and have a plan to try and avoid it. Some of this is more exclusive to Adam since he can go unblockable, but there are some general tips you can pick up
Adam has a couple different playstyles to start the fight depending on what you’re more comfortable with. The safety rotations start with a parry and building some power before starting your counter. This can push you and your opponent over a bar of power making it more likely that your counter is easy to continue. The faster and more efficient way involves just starting the counter at the start, though you’ll need to know how to handle the AI. This is how I play him after some practice and it’s a breeze after a while. Regardless of how you start, you want to then do a few things
1. Dash back and light intercept (this is shared in bitter’s vid but I wanted to add some more to it). This is the ideal scenario and you want to be staring at the center of the screen. If Adam’s fist hasn’t made contact with the opponents face, follow step 2 or 4 (99% of the time it’s step 2)
2. Immediately dash forward. They’ll either hold block or try and intercept, but yours will win out.
3. Bait specials ofc. If they turtle up, break their block. Even the worst AI will throw it at some point or you could pod (sp2 guarantees they’ll throw it pretty much). You can also just nuke them before they throw anything but special baiting is nice. If they’re being a jerk otherwise and won’t throw, you have a pod and specials + you can try and intercept (light gives you fast recovery time). This is probably the most muscle memory part
4. The worst thing the AI can do is a rare one but I have seen it with a few defenders like Nick. Essentially they try and whiff an attack and catch you (standing still instead of dashing) when you try and light intercept. Don’t continue the combo here ofc. This is probably the toughest scenario (but rare from my 100’s of tests) and you need to pod, throw a special, relic (should connect), or if you’re really good you can reliably dash back and go back in real quick which comes decently easy with practice
5. From my experience, don’t light intercept when you’re too close against the wall. If the opponent is cornered and you’re shooting off light intercepts here, there’s a decent chance the AI will know and clip you with a light intercept. Backdrafts work fine here since there’s little room between you and your opponent. Light intercepts are safer when you have the distance, so it’s usually better to not try and do that here imo. This isn’t a concrete tip though, and I have managed light intercepts sometimes here but against champs like onslaught I go for mediums and it always works out
What not to do:
1. Panic. There are ways to keep your counter. This comes with practice
2. Medium intercept. I see so many people do this and they’re disappointed by the results. Don’t do this. Please. It’s a good way to never play Adam well. If they’re cornered it’s fine but generally not otherwise
What can Adam do? Well he’s a breakdown of matchups I’ve seen and attempted myself
Some simple, straightforward ones: Bishop, Iceman, Hulk, Zemo, Hulkling, Kate, Jessica, Nova, etc. nothing special going on for a lot of these matches, play as usual and you can easily nuke them. You have immunity to incinerate and coldsnap through the pod. Any standard matchup is just standard. You’ll nuke through it if you play well. For Jessica just throw an sp2 fast to not let her build charges.
There’s also matches like most techs, Chavez, kindred, attuma, scorp, IMIW, Peni, warlock, etc. I’ll just leave people to go and watch bitters vid cause there’s not much going on here. Play the standard way and nuke
For the ones where you need to do something specific:
Sasquatch: You give him quite a bit of power but sassy likes to throw specials generally and you won’t need much intercepting. He can actually do r3 sassy in a decent time despite class disadvantage
Photon: The only thing making this hard is that you need to save your pod once to eat a special. Start as normal, bait sp1 twice which she’s pretty willing to throw most of the times. Baiting one sp2 is also fine. Push her over 15 charges and trigger pure light with the sp2. You’ll eat most of the damage from the special. Inequity is annoying here but he still destroys her. If you happen to push her over to pure light too early, manually trigger the pod. This is like a 28-40 second fight usually, depends on inequity and stuff.
This meta I did kill her very fast with a good amount of health (46 seconds with 85%) but there are a few things working against Adam this GC meta. For one, your damage is lowered even more than usual due to inequity. I believe the biggest crit hit for like 20k less than usual. The pod also eats most of the damage in any other meta, but this meta the armor breaks make you take more damage through the pod too. Kinda sucks but he still did it. Photon is also super hard this meta because of how fast she goes into pure light so I had to dash back and build some power to be safe (wasted 10-12 seconds). This usually won’t happen ofc but this meta just isn’t in favor of Adam. He can nuke a r3 pretty fast with minimal damage taken in any other meta though
Onslaught: Don’t throw the pod when he has a special and that’s it. I learned how to dash in after his sp1 and it makes him even easier. His AI sucks but using the tricks above, you’ll still cook him. Just be careful with the pod
Skull: Manually trigger sovereignty through the sp1. Very easy fight and you shut down everything he does.
Domino: He’s great for domino. Here’s a ss of him in this meta (r3) inequity lowered his final hit damage by a lot and I messed up and parried!). Trigger the counter, back off and now your buffs won’t fail except for dex. Play as normal, keeping unlucky in mind and you’re good. I have had her evade on me before during lucky but it’s not too big of a deal and you can reliably get her down before she evades
Bullseye: Expert level Adam match with some AI reliance but kinda fun. Bitter said in his video that he wouldn’t reccoemdb. Build to about half a bar of power by dexing (you won’t take bleed damage now) start your rotation, cancel killer instinct with an sp1, use your pod as he throws the sp1, go back in, cancel killer instinct again, and now we have the tricky part. Here you should have your relic so I think dashing in and throwing it could work, but he could also turtle and allow you to kill him easy. If he does throw the special you’ll take some damage
Unsure:
Serpent: I’ve seen people do this fight before but I also need to actually test this in bg. Essentially you ignore his crit resistance and he can’t fail your unblockable. There’s no way to remove his death immunity but tbf neither can most of his other top counters. The only issue I see with this match is how much the pod can eat his specials. I have no idea if they’ll hit hard enough to put a big dent in him despite the attack reduction so I’ll leave this one for now.
TLDR; Glazed Adam a lot. If you practice you can play him well consistently against the worst AI imaginable. Nice AI is a nice thing to have, not a necessity (aside from a few select matches like bullseye and KM) and you can nuke a wide variety of matches. Would’ve loved to show more bg stuff but he’s constantly banned and this meta does make him less nukey. Shoutout to BitterSteel who has a great showcase on Adam and there are additional fights that he didn’t take that Adam could potentially do. It takes practice but you can do so much if you learn him + learn the AI better in general (also if anyone has some time and a high ranked version of some of these champs I kinda want to practice with him more so hmu for some friendly’s). Idk if anyone cares about Adam this much anyway but I just wanted to share this yap post in case anyone wanted to pick him up. I think he’s one of the most versatile champs in the game but he has a decently high skill cap
A common criticism Adam gets his his apparent reliance on AI and how he only gets you good results if they play along. I’m here to say that there’s very minimal AI reliance to him if you know what to do and he’s actually fun instead of stressful if you learn to use him. I personally have a lot of fun playing him but I know he’s not for everyone
So why learn Adam? I see people saying that he’s too complicated to learn and that they’d rather just use Hulkling or CGR. Fair enough, but Adam is so versatile that he can do matchups pretty well that even those 2 can’t take. They’re obviously much much easier to use, but if you get good with Adam there’s a ton you can do that you might not even think of. The second part to this is learning general AI behavior. The AI (as we all know) is awful right now. When learning Adam you need to study the AI to a decent level and I can now predict what they’ll do and have a plan to try and avoid it. Some of this is more exclusive to Adam since he can go unblockable, but there are some general tips you can pick up
Adam has a couple different playstyles to start the fight depending on what you’re more comfortable with. The safety rotations start with a parry and building some power before starting your counter. This can push you and your opponent over a bar of power making it more likely that your counter is easy to continue. The faster and more efficient way involves just starting the counter at the start, though you’ll need to know how to handle the AI. This is how I play him after some practice and it’s a breeze after a while. Regardless of how you start, you want to then do a few things
1. Dash back and light intercept (this is shared in bitter’s vid but I wanted to add some more to it). This is the ideal scenario and you want to be staring at the center of the screen. If Adam’s fist hasn’t made contact with the opponents face, follow step 2 or 4 (99% of the time it’s step 2)
2. Immediately dash forward. They’ll either hold block or try and intercept, but yours will win out.
3. Bait specials ofc. If they turtle up, break their block. Even the worst AI will throw it at some point or you could pod (sp2 guarantees they’ll throw it pretty much). You can also just nuke them before they throw anything but special baiting is nice. If they’re being a jerk otherwise and won’t throw, you have a pod and specials + you can try and intercept (light gives you fast recovery time). This is probably the most muscle memory part
4. The worst thing the AI can do is a rare one but I have seen it with a few defenders like Nick. Essentially they try and whiff an attack and catch you (standing still instead of dashing) when you try and light intercept. Don’t continue the combo here ofc. This is probably the toughest scenario (but rare from my 100’s of tests) and you need to pod, throw a special, relic (should connect), or if you’re really good you can reliably dash back and go back in real quick which comes decently easy with practice
5. From my experience, don’t light intercept when you’re too close against the wall. If the opponent is cornered and you’re shooting off light intercepts here, there’s a decent chance the AI will know and clip you with a light intercept. Backdrafts work fine here since there’s little room between you and your opponent. Light intercepts are safer when you have the distance, so it’s usually better to not try and do that here imo. This isn’t a concrete tip though, and I have managed light intercepts sometimes here but against champs like onslaught I go for mediums and it always works out
What not to do:
1. Panic. There are ways to keep your counter. This comes with practice
2. Medium intercept. I see so many people do this and they’re disappointed by the results. Don’t do this. Please. It’s a good way to never play Adam well. If they’re cornered it’s fine but generally not otherwise
What can Adam do? Well he’s a breakdown of matchups I’ve seen and attempted myself
Some simple, straightforward ones: Bishop, Iceman, Hulk, Zemo, Hulkling, Kate, Jessica, Nova, etc. nothing special going on for a lot of these matches, play as usual and you can easily nuke them. You have immunity to incinerate and coldsnap through the pod. Any standard matchup is just standard. You’ll nuke through it if you play well. For Jessica just throw an sp2 fast to not let her build charges.
There’s also matches like most techs, Chavez, kindred, attuma, scorp, IMIW, Peni, warlock, etc. I’ll just leave people to go and watch bitters vid cause there’s not much going on here. Play the standard way and nuke
For the ones where you need to do something specific:
Sasquatch: You give him quite a bit of power but sassy likes to throw specials generally and you won’t need much intercepting. He can actually do r3 sassy in a decent time despite class disadvantage
Photon: The only thing making this hard is that you need to save your pod once to eat a special. Start as normal, bait sp1 twice which she’s pretty willing to throw most of the times. Baiting one sp2 is also fine. Push her over 15 charges and trigger pure light with the sp2. You’ll eat most of the damage from the special. Inequity is annoying here but he still destroys her. If you happen to push her over to pure light too early, manually trigger the pod. This is like a 28-40 second fight usually, depends on inequity and stuff.
This meta I did kill her very fast with a good amount of health (46 seconds with 85%) but there are a few things working against Adam this GC meta. For one, your damage is lowered even more than usual due to inequity. I believe the biggest crit hit for like 20k less than usual. The pod also eats most of the damage in any other meta, but this meta the armor breaks make you take more damage through the pod too. Kinda sucks but he still did it. Photon is also super hard this meta because of how fast she goes into pure light so I had to dash back and build some power to be safe (wasted 10-12 seconds). This usually won’t happen ofc but this meta just isn’t in favor of Adam. He can nuke a r3 pretty fast with minimal damage taken in any other meta though
Onslaught: Don’t throw the pod when he has a special and that’s it. I learned how to dash in after his sp1 and it makes him even easier. His AI sucks but using the tricks above, you’ll still cook him. Just be careful with the pod
Skull: Manually trigger sovereignty through the sp1. Very easy fight and you shut down everything he does.
Domino: He’s great for domino. Here’s a ss of him in this meta (r3) inequity lowered his final hit damage by a lot and I messed up and parried!). Trigger the counter, back off and now your buffs won’t fail except for dex. Play as normal, keeping unlucky in mind and you’re good. I have had her evade on me before during lucky but it’s not too big of a deal and you can reliably get her down before she evades
Bullseye: Expert level Adam match with some AI reliance but kinda fun. Bitter said in his video that he wouldn’t reccoemdb. Build to about half a bar of power by dexing (you won’t take bleed damage now) start your rotation, cancel killer instinct with an sp1, use your pod as he throws the sp1, go back in, cancel killer instinct again, and now we have the tricky part. Here you should have your relic so I think dashing in and throwing it could work, but he could also turtle and allow you to kill him easy. If he does throw the special you’ll take some damage
Unsure:
Serpent: I’ve seen people do this fight before but I also need to actually test this in bg. Essentially you ignore his crit resistance and he can’t fail your unblockable. There’s no way to remove his death immunity but tbf neither can most of his other top counters. The only issue I see with this match is how much the pod can eat his specials. I have no idea if they’ll hit hard enough to put a big dent in him despite the attack reduction so I’ll leave this one for now.
TLDR; Glazed Adam a lot. If you practice you can play him well consistently against the worst AI imaginable. Nice AI is a nice thing to have, not a necessity (aside from a few select matches like bullseye and KM) and you can nuke a wide variety of matches. Would’ve loved to show more bg stuff but he’s constantly banned and this meta does make him less nukey. Shoutout to BitterSteel who has a great showcase on Adam and there are additional fights that he didn’t take that Adam could potentially do. It takes practice but you can do so much if you learn him + learn the AI better in general (also if anyone has some time and a high ranked version of some of these champs I kinda want to practice with him more so hmu for some friendly’s). Idk if anyone cares about Adam this much anyway but I just wanted to share this yap post in case anyone wanted to pick him up. I think he’s one of the most versatile champs in the game but he has a decently high skill cap
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Comments
Adam is the goat
My first R3 and most handsome boy salute you 😘
Now I just have to figure out if he works for serpent lol. Such a versatile king
Great write up. He’s always been a better nuke than Hulkling and cgr to me and eventually he will out age them because he’s a 7 star.
I believe the kids these days would look at this and say “yeet”
There is a big difference between “effective” and elite. The AI and “taunt” make or break things.
If he wasn’t good I wouldn’t have r3’d him, but he has some issues that hold him back from time to time.
I’ve done r3 domino a few times with him this meta and I had one that just wouldn’t play ball with specials. While you can fully control how you intercept and play around that, the specials part is obviously the bigger pain point. She was just standing there and I had to pod and throw an sp2 to get a special out of her. Even in this inequity meta I finished the fight in 50 seconds which is really good. My point wasn’t that he didn’t have some moderate amount of AI reliance to be a mega nuke, just that he can keep the counter up even when the AI is bad and that he can still get fights done in good times (just not as great).
He doesn't depend on it but AI cooperation makes it much easier.
I don't know if you all remember but he went through rebalance program and they increased his counter timer.
So you can actually hold block for a small period of time and see what AI wants to do and react to it.
It's not like you need to dash in immediately with the risk of getting light intercept.
My take on ADAM WARLOCK:
I have a r6 ADAM WARLOCK and I literally use him everywhere. I mainly focus on bg and I draft everytime. My opponents underestimate him too much.
You wouldn't believe the number of defenders he can take on. I have personally fought the following defenders and won.
Doctor Doom, kushala, sassy, fantman, nickfury, redskull, peni, onslaught, bullseye(in wars with attack tactic and in VT meta), maestro and much more.
I didn't include much because there are so many he can counter but I couldn't remember all of them so I included some you would often see in bgs.
How I play ADAM WARLOCK:
I don't play that much differently from op but I don't rely on light intercepts.
His taunt is really potent and works fine and helps in baiting specials.
There are only a few instances I would need to bait a special before my sp2 so I don't care about that. But if I really wanted to bait special I would trigger stasis pod immediately but I wouldn't recommend using it against defenders who have stun in their specials especially this meta.
Other than that his pod will regenerate some missing health and give you energy immunity buff(energy damage dealing debuffs and passive).
As I mentioned previously I actually hold block for a second or so this actually works really great if you play adam consistently like me.
If you play him more you would instinctively know when the counter is going to end so you will naturally know when to dash in.
I think this method has helped me more than light intercept(yes I have played in that style too).
Our AI:
Of course like every other champ he is also affected by our s hi t for an AI.
Like defenders walking towards you. Since you know you will get light intercepted you would naturally throw a sp or go into pod. But it gets tricky when it is defenders like onslaught or fantman.
All things considered adam is a great champ and I am finding out new matchups adam can take on everyday.
If you have any doubts I can clear it for you and also if I mentioned anything rude in this comment I don't mean it. I am just bad at phrasing words. But the AI is s h it I agree on that.
Out of interest, which relics are people best pairing with Adam? I’ve been using the Ms Marvel But someone said the other day, The Gamora one was better. Can’t find the post where I read that though.