Completing the 10 year challenge run… on the right side of Necro: a writeup
Squidopus
Member Posts: 643 ★★★★
What do you do when a bunch of Carina’s challenges for Necro drop but you only have one path on the much more difficult right side of Necro left for full exploration? You just do the challenge run on the missing path. Here’s a writeup of my 10 year challenge run on path 4 of the Necropolis (Jubilee/Stryfe).
The squad:
Wong (7* r2), Chee’ilth (7* r2), and Sentry (6* r5) were the main workhorses of the run. Wiccan (7* r1) and Hulkbuster (7* r2) were bit parts for some specific fights.
And now let’s get to the fights.
Trap node: suffer stifle (reduced combat power rate) and fatigue passives when landing crits. This isn’t a dealbreaker for most of the champs here, it’s just annoying. Of note, Wong’s ramp gets a bit tougher (Wiccan’s synergy helps though, and he plays the same once he’s set up) and Sentry can’t really make much use of his sp2 furies or sp3 regen.
Jubilee - fought with Sentry. Here’s where I ramped up Sentry, and managed to get him to 10 warps by the end. Why use Sentry? With his withers, you can completely shut off power gain and thus disable Jubilee’s necrotic boon, letting you throw basics and dodge specials freely. Sentry can’t refresh and maintain those withers though until he hits 3 warps, so make sure you get a good starting run; you want to end the first fight having gained at least 3 warps to make sure you’re on good footing. Once you do, Sentry can go to town. The energy resistance slows down Sentry a bit, but he can manage. 3 revives.
Ibom - Chee’ilth clears. She gets her gamma bonuses against Ibom, and her tranquilize does a great job keeping the poison debuffs of you (and the poison debuffs off Ibom too, which is great for dealing with the necrotic boon). Her cleanses will keep you safe until you set up tranq. Just do normal Chee things, hold block and heavy punish Ibom’s heavy and specials until he dies. Only throw your sp2 for the tranq, and let Ibom throw his sp2 on occasion to clear his own poisons off of him. A buzzer-beater of a solo, as the vengeance charges hit 0 in the middle of my finishing heavy attack.
Diablo - Sentry fight. The debuffs with despair will block his regen, you just have to manage Sentry’s mechanics and Diablo’s necrotic boon. Rather annoying, and tbh with all the icons on the hud from Sentry’s buffs and debuffs I just kept losing track of what concoctions I needed to brew. Ended up using 3 revives as I figured out how to optimize getting damage while managing the node.
Squirrel girl - Easy Wong fight. Nothing of note, do Wong things. His special spam should make keeping tippy off you easy. 1 revive due to a series of mistakes managing the ruptures on the first attempt.
Silver Centurion - Aka the only reason I brought Hulkbuster. TBH he didn’t do as well as I hoped despite that. Play HB normally with sp2 spam to keep SC’s power low. The stifles make that unfortunately difficult. 4 revives.
Spidey 99 - Chee actually makes this fight quite easy. Use the tranq to keep off debuffs if necessary, but otherwise use sp1 spam for bleeds. Avoid blocking because you want 99 to get his power gains; they let you trap him in a loop of throwing sp1s that you can easily heavy punish to pause and stack bleeds. Block the occasional hit of sp1 to make sure he doesn’t get too many power gains though. 1 revive.
Sunspot - Wong fight. The power stings from nova flames hurt, so make sure you aren’t triggering them too often, they will absolutely beat out Wong’s regen and kill him if you play too recklessly. Try to throw a sp2 just before he enters solar flare mode so Wong’s spells are refreshed, and let Sunspot throw specials in solar flare mode because Wong’s spells will be paused. 2 revives.
Trap node: landing a basic starts a timer, if you don’t land 5 hits in that time the opponent goes untouchable for 6 whole seconds. I’ll note something that got me a lot, the timer does not end once you hit 5 hits, so if you do a 5 hit combo and immediately parry and go back into another combo, the timer may not be finished yet and you’ll start the new one mid-combo, which will trigger the miss. Watch out for that. Also heavies are basics, so try not landing heavies with Wong while you’re charging it. A particular note with Sentry; he needs to heavy to refresh his debuffs, which is a problem with this node. He has a heavy charge stun like Chavez at 6 warps, but unlike her he can only do it after the first medium. The solution? Do medium 1 late. A LLLMH combo is perfectly valid and has enough hits to satisfy the miss timer while refreshing your debuffs safely.
Stryfe - honestly just treat Stryfe as unblockable and it’s not terrible. Don’t let him hit you while unstoppable (whether from the boon or Wong’s base kit) as he’ll remove it and stun you. Wong can recover from it of course, but it wastes time. Speaking of time wasting, if he triggers his invisibility cloak mid-combo, you’re also probably triggering the trap node miss, so be prepared for a lot of waiting. Almost got a solo, but died and finished the last 5% with HB. 1 revive.
Spot - a surprise threat. Chee should have no trouble thanks to tranq (which also bypasses miss) and the ability to regen rupture damage if duped, and she probably doesn’t have trouble if you’re good, but I just kept messing up. A few deaths due to accidentally letting Spot hit sp3 (kept forgetting about the energize) and a lot of hits to the face from me misjudging where to stand to heavy punish his specials. Overall strat is to do regular 5 hit combos until you can land sp2 for the tranq and anti-miss and start doing regular heavy spam. Push Spot to sp2, which is much easier to punish with heavy. 5 revives.
Galan - Nothing of note, easy Wong fight. Just watch the special lock. 1 revive from accidentally letting Galan trigger harvest while I was ramping.
Sandman - this was rough. Used Sentry but was having trouble finding a flow. Triggering unstable isn’t a huge issue because Sentry’s halt ignores it (aside from strikers, which is probably a bug, watch out for that) but the resistance ups hurt Sentry’s damage and the specials are really annoying. A lot of deaths trying to figure out a strat. What I eventually found was that Sandman actually gets a lot easier once you hit the halfway point because being rooted during his special 1 lets you punish with a light attack, which you can lead into a LLLMH combo to refresh your debuffs without parrying or worrying about the untouchable timer. I’d thus make sure to heal Sentry up to near max health each attempt and focus on surviving to the halfway point. Bait sp1 as much as possible to avoid block chip, I definitely pushed Sandman to sp2 way too much in my first attempts and ate too much damage. I used 7 revives, but I’m confident a more prepared player could cut that down a lot.
Spidey Supreme - a welcome break with Sentry. Sentry triggers buffs very easily, including when he inflicts a debuff (including parry stun) and stacking buffs when he dexes (so you can dex multiple hits of specials and trigger multiple bursts of damage). Just parry medium to safely trigger the astral form cooldown before playing regularly, you don’t have to worry about Sentry’s usual rotations or maintaining debuffs. I also realized that the optimal form this fight is the base form, since he inflicts debuffs (and gains buffs) on every hit, so you should get to base form and stay there by only throwing sp3s. 1 revive from timing out, if I realized the base form thing sooner I probably could’ve soloed.
Knull - for as much as I hate this fight, I also have basically nothing to say about it. Use Wiccan and just hit him until one of you die, push him to sp2, basic stuff I don’t need to tell you. 4 revives.
Shocker - another fight I shouldn’t have to say much about, besides mentioning that the miss timer is actually pretty annoying with the need to intercept to vent Shocker’s charges. Wong’s unblockable sp2 should help with that though, since it bypasses Shocker’s auto block. This should’ve been easy, but at this point I think fatigue was setting in and I was also being stingy with health potions because I was running low so 3 revives.
Nameless GM - 3 deaths. 0 revives. Get dunked on nerd.
(Sentry was quite a good carry for the first two phases since he triggers all the missions easily and hits hard).
Conclusion: by my count, I used a total of 33 revives, which may I say feels so wrong because that’s less revives than I used in my path 5 and 6 runs. Was I just more experienced? Was I playing out of my mind? Was this team somehow better than my others? Who knows, but I’m not complaining. Would I recommend doing this? Maybe. If you’re skilled there’s definitely potential here if you want to finish an unexplored path instead of doing the easy path again. I would probably wait for the 7* Sentry from banquet to drop though, I only ranked my 6* and did it now because I had expiring revives (The dupe is nice as a safety net if you get hit by a basic, but it’s not necessary). If you’ve already fully explored Necro though, probably just stick to the easy path, this probably isn’t easier.
The squad:
Wong (7* r2), Chee’ilth (7* r2), and Sentry (6* r5) were the main workhorses of the run. Wiccan (7* r1) and Hulkbuster (7* r2) were bit parts for some specific fights.
And now let’s get to the fights.
Trap node: suffer stifle (reduced combat power rate) and fatigue passives when landing crits. This isn’t a dealbreaker for most of the champs here, it’s just annoying. Of note, Wong’s ramp gets a bit tougher (Wiccan’s synergy helps though, and he plays the same once he’s set up) and Sentry can’t really make much use of his sp2 furies or sp3 regen.
Jubilee - fought with Sentry. Here’s where I ramped up Sentry, and managed to get him to 10 warps by the end. Why use Sentry? With his withers, you can completely shut off power gain and thus disable Jubilee’s necrotic boon, letting you throw basics and dodge specials freely. Sentry can’t refresh and maintain those withers though until he hits 3 warps, so make sure you get a good starting run; you want to end the first fight having gained at least 3 warps to make sure you’re on good footing. Once you do, Sentry can go to town. The energy resistance slows down Sentry a bit, but he can manage. 3 revives.
Ibom - Chee’ilth clears. She gets her gamma bonuses against Ibom, and her tranquilize does a great job keeping the poison debuffs of you (and the poison debuffs off Ibom too, which is great for dealing with the necrotic boon). Her cleanses will keep you safe until you set up tranq. Just do normal Chee things, hold block and heavy punish Ibom’s heavy and specials until he dies. Only throw your sp2 for the tranq, and let Ibom throw his sp2 on occasion to clear his own poisons off of him. A buzzer-beater of a solo, as the vengeance charges hit 0 in the middle of my finishing heavy attack.
Diablo - Sentry fight. The debuffs with despair will block his regen, you just have to manage Sentry’s mechanics and Diablo’s necrotic boon. Rather annoying, and tbh with all the icons on the hud from Sentry’s buffs and debuffs I just kept losing track of what concoctions I needed to brew. Ended up using 3 revives as I figured out how to optimize getting damage while managing the node.
Squirrel girl - Easy Wong fight. Nothing of note, do Wong things. His special spam should make keeping tippy off you easy. 1 revive due to a series of mistakes managing the ruptures on the first attempt.
Silver Centurion - Aka the only reason I brought Hulkbuster. TBH he didn’t do as well as I hoped despite that. Play HB normally with sp2 spam to keep SC’s power low. The stifles make that unfortunately difficult. 4 revives.
Spidey 99 - Chee actually makes this fight quite easy. Use the tranq to keep off debuffs if necessary, but otherwise use sp1 spam for bleeds. Avoid blocking because you want 99 to get his power gains; they let you trap him in a loop of throwing sp1s that you can easily heavy punish to pause and stack bleeds. Block the occasional hit of sp1 to make sure he doesn’t get too many power gains though. 1 revive.
Sunspot - Wong fight. The power stings from nova flames hurt, so make sure you aren’t triggering them too often, they will absolutely beat out Wong’s regen and kill him if you play too recklessly. Try to throw a sp2 just before he enters solar flare mode so Wong’s spells are refreshed, and let Sunspot throw specials in solar flare mode because Wong’s spells will be paused. 2 revives.
Trap node: landing a basic starts a timer, if you don’t land 5 hits in that time the opponent goes untouchable for 6 whole seconds. I’ll note something that got me a lot, the timer does not end once you hit 5 hits, so if you do a 5 hit combo and immediately parry and go back into another combo, the timer may not be finished yet and you’ll start the new one mid-combo, which will trigger the miss. Watch out for that. Also heavies are basics, so try not landing heavies with Wong while you’re charging it. A particular note with Sentry; he needs to heavy to refresh his debuffs, which is a problem with this node. He has a heavy charge stun like Chavez at 6 warps, but unlike her he can only do it after the first medium. The solution? Do medium 1 late. A LLLMH combo is perfectly valid and has enough hits to satisfy the miss timer while refreshing your debuffs safely.
Stryfe - honestly just treat Stryfe as unblockable and it’s not terrible. Don’t let him hit you while unstoppable (whether from the boon or Wong’s base kit) as he’ll remove it and stun you. Wong can recover from it of course, but it wastes time. Speaking of time wasting, if he triggers his invisibility cloak mid-combo, you’re also probably triggering the trap node miss, so be prepared for a lot of waiting. Almost got a solo, but died and finished the last 5% with HB. 1 revive.
Spot - a surprise threat. Chee should have no trouble thanks to tranq (which also bypasses miss) and the ability to regen rupture damage if duped, and she probably doesn’t have trouble if you’re good, but I just kept messing up. A few deaths due to accidentally letting Spot hit sp3 (kept forgetting about the energize) and a lot of hits to the face from me misjudging where to stand to heavy punish his specials. Overall strat is to do regular 5 hit combos until you can land sp2 for the tranq and anti-miss and start doing regular heavy spam. Push Spot to sp2, which is much easier to punish with heavy. 5 revives.
Galan - Nothing of note, easy Wong fight. Just watch the special lock. 1 revive from accidentally letting Galan trigger harvest while I was ramping.
Sandman - this was rough. Used Sentry but was having trouble finding a flow. Triggering unstable isn’t a huge issue because Sentry’s halt ignores it (aside from strikers, which is probably a bug, watch out for that) but the resistance ups hurt Sentry’s damage and the specials are really annoying. A lot of deaths trying to figure out a strat. What I eventually found was that Sandman actually gets a lot easier once you hit the halfway point because being rooted during his special 1 lets you punish with a light attack, which you can lead into a LLLMH combo to refresh your debuffs without parrying or worrying about the untouchable timer. I’d thus make sure to heal Sentry up to near max health each attempt and focus on surviving to the halfway point. Bait sp1 as much as possible to avoid block chip, I definitely pushed Sandman to sp2 way too much in my first attempts and ate too much damage. I used 7 revives, but I’m confident a more prepared player could cut that down a lot.
Spidey Supreme - a welcome break with Sentry. Sentry triggers buffs very easily, including when he inflicts a debuff (including parry stun) and stacking buffs when he dexes (so you can dex multiple hits of specials and trigger multiple bursts of damage). Just parry medium to safely trigger the astral form cooldown before playing regularly, you don’t have to worry about Sentry’s usual rotations or maintaining debuffs. I also realized that the optimal form this fight is the base form, since he inflicts debuffs (and gains buffs) on every hit, so you should get to base form and stay there by only throwing sp3s. 1 revive from timing out, if I realized the base form thing sooner I probably could’ve soloed.
Knull - for as much as I hate this fight, I also have basically nothing to say about it. Use Wiccan and just hit him until one of you die, push him to sp2, basic stuff I don’t need to tell you. 4 revives.
Shocker - another fight I shouldn’t have to say much about, besides mentioning that the miss timer is actually pretty annoying with the need to intercept to vent Shocker’s charges. Wong’s unblockable sp2 should help with that though, since it bypasses Shocker’s auto block. This should’ve been easy, but at this point I think fatigue was setting in and I was also being stingy with health potions because I was running low so 3 revives.
Nameless GM - 3 deaths. 0 revives. Get dunked on nerd.
(Sentry was quite a good carry for the first two phases since he triggers all the missions easily and hits hard).
Conclusion: by my count, I used a total of 33 revives, which may I say feels so wrong because that’s less revives than I used in my path 5 and 6 runs. Was I just more experienced? Was I playing out of my mind? Was this team somehow better than my others? Who knows, but I’m not complaining. Would I recommend doing this? Maybe. If you’re skilled there’s definitely potential here if you want to finish an unexplored path instead of doing the easy path again. I would probably wait for the 7* Sentry from banquet to drop though, I only ranked my 6* and did it now because I had expiring revives (The dupe is nice as a safety net if you get hit by a basic, but it’s not necessary). If you’ve already fully explored Necro though, probably just stick to the easy path, this probably isn’t easier.
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Comments
BP and Warlock are new dupes, VtD is now sig 60. You know what, it could be worse.
Didn’t super care about any of the launch pool champs and Mysterio is my second favorite Marvel character (you’ll never guess who my favorite is, I’ve been so subtle about it) so why not. Considered Terrax as a nice solo option for path 3 war but I let myself have fun.
I’ve got two titans but in a rare move for me, I’m holding on to them. I do quite want some of the new titan additions coming and don’t want some of the ones leaving. Tbh the biggest factor in holding is just that it’s changing in only a few days, if it was like 2 weeks until the change I’d just open them now. Similarly holding on to the rank up gems to see if I get anything interesting from banquet.