Necropolis: A Sentry Experience
Will3808
Member Posts: 3,876 ★★★★★
I thought I'd do a little write up on my 10 year Carina's challenge full necropolis run that I finished recently. I did three of the other necropolis half path challenges before attempting this run, but I'd never done a full necropolis path before. I decided to run r2 Sentry as my main clearer because I don't have a 7* Wong. Since the only documented necropolis runs, that I could find, using sentry were with a rank 3, I thought it prudent to let the community know that a rank 2 is completely capable of taking on the necropolis. I didn't take detailed notes of the items I used, so some fights have a ~ next to the revive count.
My team:
R2 unawakened Sentry
R2 sig 20 Vox
R3 unawakened Black Cat
R3 sig 40 Spider-Ham
R1 unawakened Wiccan
Quick Sentry explanation:
He's got 3 "phases," and you switch between them after throwing a sp1 or sp2 at 20 bulwark. The first phase doesn't have any additional effect, the second gives extra attack rating and burst damage on medium and light attacks, and the third gives extra attack rating and burst damage on heavy attacks. The three phases apply exhaustion, wither, and energy vulnerability, respectively, and Sentry’s attack rating is increased for each debuff on the defender. When you cycle from phase 3 back to 1, you get a reality warp charge. This is where the damage ramp comes from. Reality warp carries over from fight to fight, caps at 10, and you lose 1 each time you die. Something that I didn’t notice until doing this run, and that wasn’t highlighted in many videos is you always cycle through the phases at the beginning of each fight, which means you will always gain one reality warp. This means even if you die and go from 10 to 9 reality warp, you will quickly get back to 10 at the beginning of the next fight. Sentry also has a really nice mechanic where after getting 6 reality warp, you can interrupt to do a heavy attack mid combo after your first medium. This makes fights that wouldn’t normally have good heavy openings a lot easier.
For the first half of the run, I took the Sauron path, and the second half, I finished with the Apocalypse path.
Sauron (3 revives): this is where you ramp Sentry (big shout out to Nagase for the sentry videos that inspired me to do this run). I used 3 revives here. The first fight I got 4 reality warp before dying. This meant I started the second fight with 3 (cause you lose one when you die), and I added three more with the second fight. The third fight started with 5 and ended with 8. The fourth and final fight ended with 10. I ended up, unfortunately, dying with Sauron around 8%, so I finished him off with Spider-Ham. Not the best revive count for this fight, but what matters is I got ramped.
Hit Monkey (1 team revive, ~2 individual revives): This was the one fight I didn't plan on using Sentry, and it was way more of a pain than I expected. My plan was to use Black Cat, but for some reason Hit Monkey continued evading even when I was over 30 hits and had the sabotage debuff on him. I still don't really know why Black Cat didn't shut down his evade. After trying 2 or 3 times with Black Cat, I decided to throw my whole team at him (other than Sentry), and Vox worked better than expected, so I stuck with him. I had a Vox run that got 30% off and then I finished the last 25ish% with him, but it was still a pain.
America Chavez (1 revive): This fight is super easy with Sentry. Normally after cycling through the phases to apply all the debuffs, you want to stay in the heavy attack phase cause it both pauses the debuffs and does a lot of damage. But in this fight you want to stay in the medium and light attack phase because you apply wither, which removes Chavez’s dimensions. This means, after cycling through everything once, Sentry completely shuts down Chavez. I used one revive cause I ran out of charges and got clipped with Chavez around 20%. This is one place where rank 3 Sentry definitely has the advantage (he has enough time to solo without running out of charges at rank 3), but the rank 2 is still definitely adequate.
Air Walker (Solo): This fight is also really easy with Sentry. You have to watch Air Walker’s timer while cycling through the phases at the beginning, but after that, you’re already doing lots of heavy attacks, so it’s only a matter of time before Air Walker goes down. This unfortunately was my only solo of this run. I got within 10% of a couple other fights, but this was the only one I fully finished off.
Captain Britain (2 revives): You could definitely do this fight in 1 revive with rank 2 Sentry, but I got clipped by a special cause I messed up the reverse controls at around 70%. The next fight got her down to 10% and then I finished her off with one more.
Wiccan (1 revive): This fight is also really simple with Sentry. It almost feels like he’s designed to counter it. Sentry is incinerate immune and has enough debuffs to stop Wiccan’s healing with the despair mastery. Try not to parry while cycling through the phases at the beginning because it’ll slow down how quickly you can get back to the heavy attack phase to do the most damage. I’m not exactly sure when I died on my first fight, but it’s potentially soloable with a rank 2 if you can dex Wiccan’s sp1 consistently.
I took a break here and did the rest of the run the following day.
Psycho man (1 revive): When planning this run, I had originally thought I’d use Sentry, but when I got here, I decided to use Vox instead. I took around 50% off on my first attempt with Vox and then finished on the second attempt. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Vox did cause in the other challenges that ended here, Psycho man was a bit annoying and a longer fight.
Apocalyse (3 revives): I wouldn’t say this fight was difficult from a technical standpoint, but Apocalypse has so much health and his specials do so much damage when you’re rooted. I learned recently that Apocalypse’s special 2 is easy to dex if you stay close to him for the first projectile which gives you enough time to dex the other two further away (I think I learned that from MCOC Noob). I started with Sentry and got him to 67%. I decided to try Vox cause he’d been doing well and ended up doing two attempts with him. Then I finished with Sentry.
Tigra (1 revive): Working around the mechanics of this fight and cycling phases with Sentry took some time to figure out, so my first run with Sentry was far from optimal. I got pretty good at dexing Tigra’s special 2, which I was happy about. Once I got the hang of it, I was able to take her down to 40% on the first run, and I finished on the second attempt.
Hercules (1 team revive, ~1 individual revive): This fight was surprisingly hard. Sentry has to heavy attack to refresh his debuffs, so I found myself almost constantly removing protection from herc. I ended up deciding after my first Sentry run, which left herc at 70%, that it was more worth my time to throw my whole team at him than just revive Sentry. That strategy worked and only took one team revive and then one more run with Sentry, but I would have definitely liked for it to have taken less attempts.
Captain America Sam Wilson (1 revive): I learned from watching MSD that you can avoid Sam Wilson’s autoblock by parrying and then throwing your special because Sentry’s special attacks are fast enough that they finish during the parry stun. My first Sentry run took him down to 60%. I was surprised that I didn’t get further, so I decided to shift to using Vox. I know I revived Vox, but I can’t remember if I did two runs on this fight or I had to revive from the previous fight and finished with one Vox run.
Dragon man (1 revive): I really thought Sentry would be able to solo this at rank 2, but I was just a little off. The withers are super helpful for stopping Dragon Man’s power gain, so it’s a pretty bland fight. In the first fight, I got him down to around 20% before the charges feel off and took roughly another 10% before I died.
Captain America Infinity War (2 revives): This fight took way longer than I expected. I don’t know if I got unlucky on my first attempt or if something about Sentry makes it more likely that CAIW gets kinetic charges, but I kept getting concussion while cycling through the phases. It took so much longer than it should have to get to the point where I could do good damage, so the first run got him down to 60%. I finished it off in two more attempts. Both of my first two runs, I played around the unblockable for a while before dying. In retrospect, now that I know Black Cat doesn’t work well for Hit Monkey, I should have brought Cheelith for at least this fight cause I bet I could have saved a revive or two.
Nova (1 revive): Pretty straightforward last fight on the path. Not much to report other than I did a run with Sentry that went quite well, then I did a run with Vox that didn’t go as well as my first Sentry run, and then I finished off the last 15-20% with Sentry.
Grandmaster (4 team revives, ~2 individual revives): Typing that revive count was painful. Thankfully, I had a full inventory of team revives before starting this challenge, so I didn’t have to spend any units on this fight. I finished the first phase on my first attempt with Vox. I then team revived because everyone else was dead. I can’t remember exactly who I used next in what order, but I finished phase two in three more champions. Phase 3 is what got me. I think I must have been tired and had played too much in one sitting by that point, but I got slaughtered. I would normally say that I’m a fairly average player when it comes to reverse controls (I actually enjoyed the gwenpool SOS week and felt like I got better from it), but I kept making minor mistakes here that cost me run after run. I eventually finished phase 3 after the revive total above, and I did phase 4 in two runs from Wiccan. It would have easily been one attempt for phase 4, but the grandmaster refused to throw any special attack other than his sp3 when I only needed to build to my sp3 to finish the fight.
Total revive count before the grandmaster: 20 individual revives, 2 team revives
Total revive count including the grandmaster: 22 individual revives, 6 team revives
Overall thoughts: Other than the grandmaster fight, I was pleasantly surprised at how well this went using Sentry and with my revive count for a first time necro run. Vox really came in clutch for a couple fights on the backend of the run. As much as I love the two of them, Black Cat and Spider-Ham basically did nothing, so if someone is looking to use a similar team, feel free to replace them with other champs.
Rewards:
Tech 7* 2-3 gem
7* basics -
Gambit (sig 20)
Prowler (unawakened)
Titans -
Red Hulk (unawakened)
Hit Monkey (sig 20)
7* cosmic crystal -
Nova (sig 40)
7* Tech crystal -
Shocker (sig 20)
If anyone has actually read this far in the post, some of you might know I’ve had a ton of expiring 7* sig stones without someone good to put them into, and I finally duped someone worthy of them from these rewards, Shocker. Now I need to decide if I’m going to rank 3 Shocker or unawakened Guardian🤔 with the tech 2-3 gem.
TLDR:
A rank 2 Sentry, with a little help from rank 2 Vox, can do the 10 year challenge necropolis run in a relatively small number of revives. To be soloing most fights, he needs to be at rank 3, but the rank 2 was more than sufficient for my run.
My team:
R2 unawakened Sentry
R2 sig 20 Vox
R3 unawakened Black Cat
R3 sig 40 Spider-Ham
R1 unawakened Wiccan
Quick Sentry explanation:
He's got 3 "phases," and you switch between them after throwing a sp1 or sp2 at 20 bulwark. The first phase doesn't have any additional effect, the second gives extra attack rating and burst damage on medium and light attacks, and the third gives extra attack rating and burst damage on heavy attacks. The three phases apply exhaustion, wither, and energy vulnerability, respectively, and Sentry’s attack rating is increased for each debuff on the defender. When you cycle from phase 3 back to 1, you get a reality warp charge. This is where the damage ramp comes from. Reality warp carries over from fight to fight, caps at 10, and you lose 1 each time you die. Something that I didn’t notice until doing this run, and that wasn’t highlighted in many videos is you always cycle through the phases at the beginning of each fight, which means you will always gain one reality warp. This means even if you die and go from 10 to 9 reality warp, you will quickly get back to 10 at the beginning of the next fight. Sentry also has a really nice mechanic where after getting 6 reality warp, you can interrupt to do a heavy attack mid combo after your first medium. This makes fights that wouldn’t normally have good heavy openings a lot easier.
For the first half of the run, I took the Sauron path, and the second half, I finished with the Apocalypse path.
Sauron (3 revives): this is where you ramp Sentry (big shout out to Nagase for the sentry videos that inspired me to do this run). I used 3 revives here. The first fight I got 4 reality warp before dying. This meant I started the second fight with 3 (cause you lose one when you die), and I added three more with the second fight. The third fight started with 5 and ended with 8. The fourth and final fight ended with 10. I ended up, unfortunately, dying with Sauron around 8%, so I finished him off with Spider-Ham. Not the best revive count for this fight, but what matters is I got ramped.
Hit Monkey (1 team revive, ~2 individual revives): This was the one fight I didn't plan on using Sentry, and it was way more of a pain than I expected. My plan was to use Black Cat, but for some reason Hit Monkey continued evading even when I was over 30 hits and had the sabotage debuff on him. I still don't really know why Black Cat didn't shut down his evade. After trying 2 or 3 times with Black Cat, I decided to throw my whole team at him (other than Sentry), and Vox worked better than expected, so I stuck with him. I had a Vox run that got 30% off and then I finished the last 25ish% with him, but it was still a pain.
America Chavez (1 revive): This fight is super easy with Sentry. Normally after cycling through the phases to apply all the debuffs, you want to stay in the heavy attack phase cause it both pauses the debuffs and does a lot of damage. But in this fight you want to stay in the medium and light attack phase because you apply wither, which removes Chavez’s dimensions. This means, after cycling through everything once, Sentry completely shuts down Chavez. I used one revive cause I ran out of charges and got clipped with Chavez around 20%. This is one place where rank 3 Sentry definitely has the advantage (he has enough time to solo without running out of charges at rank 3), but the rank 2 is still definitely adequate.
Air Walker (Solo): This fight is also really easy with Sentry. You have to watch Air Walker’s timer while cycling through the phases at the beginning, but after that, you’re already doing lots of heavy attacks, so it’s only a matter of time before Air Walker goes down. This unfortunately was my only solo of this run. I got within 10% of a couple other fights, but this was the only one I fully finished off.
Captain Britain (2 revives): You could definitely do this fight in 1 revive with rank 2 Sentry, but I got clipped by a special cause I messed up the reverse controls at around 70%. The next fight got her down to 10% and then I finished her off with one more.
Wiccan (1 revive): This fight is also really simple with Sentry. It almost feels like he’s designed to counter it. Sentry is incinerate immune and has enough debuffs to stop Wiccan’s healing with the despair mastery. Try not to parry while cycling through the phases at the beginning because it’ll slow down how quickly you can get back to the heavy attack phase to do the most damage. I’m not exactly sure when I died on my first fight, but it’s potentially soloable with a rank 2 if you can dex Wiccan’s sp1 consistently.
I took a break here and did the rest of the run the following day.
Psycho man (1 revive): When planning this run, I had originally thought I’d use Sentry, but when I got here, I decided to use Vox instead. I took around 50% off on my first attempt with Vox and then finished on the second attempt. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Vox did cause in the other challenges that ended here, Psycho man was a bit annoying and a longer fight.
Apocalyse (3 revives): I wouldn’t say this fight was difficult from a technical standpoint, but Apocalypse has so much health and his specials do so much damage when you’re rooted. I learned recently that Apocalypse’s special 2 is easy to dex if you stay close to him for the first projectile which gives you enough time to dex the other two further away (I think I learned that from MCOC Noob). I started with Sentry and got him to 67%. I decided to try Vox cause he’d been doing well and ended up doing two attempts with him. Then I finished with Sentry.
Tigra (1 revive): Working around the mechanics of this fight and cycling phases with Sentry took some time to figure out, so my first run with Sentry was far from optimal. I got pretty good at dexing Tigra’s special 2, which I was happy about. Once I got the hang of it, I was able to take her down to 40% on the first run, and I finished on the second attempt.
Hercules (1 team revive, ~1 individual revive): This fight was surprisingly hard. Sentry has to heavy attack to refresh his debuffs, so I found myself almost constantly removing protection from herc. I ended up deciding after my first Sentry run, which left herc at 70%, that it was more worth my time to throw my whole team at him than just revive Sentry. That strategy worked and only took one team revive and then one more run with Sentry, but I would have definitely liked for it to have taken less attempts.
Captain America Sam Wilson (1 revive): I learned from watching MSD that you can avoid Sam Wilson’s autoblock by parrying and then throwing your special because Sentry’s special attacks are fast enough that they finish during the parry stun. My first Sentry run took him down to 60%. I was surprised that I didn’t get further, so I decided to shift to using Vox. I know I revived Vox, but I can’t remember if I did two runs on this fight or I had to revive from the previous fight and finished with one Vox run.
Dragon man (1 revive): I really thought Sentry would be able to solo this at rank 2, but I was just a little off. The withers are super helpful for stopping Dragon Man’s power gain, so it’s a pretty bland fight. In the first fight, I got him down to around 20% before the charges feel off and took roughly another 10% before I died.
Captain America Infinity War (2 revives): This fight took way longer than I expected. I don’t know if I got unlucky on my first attempt or if something about Sentry makes it more likely that CAIW gets kinetic charges, but I kept getting concussion while cycling through the phases. It took so much longer than it should have to get to the point where I could do good damage, so the first run got him down to 60%. I finished it off in two more attempts. Both of my first two runs, I played around the unblockable for a while before dying. In retrospect, now that I know Black Cat doesn’t work well for Hit Monkey, I should have brought Cheelith for at least this fight cause I bet I could have saved a revive or two.
Nova (1 revive): Pretty straightforward last fight on the path. Not much to report other than I did a run with Sentry that went quite well, then I did a run with Vox that didn’t go as well as my first Sentry run, and then I finished off the last 15-20% with Sentry.
Grandmaster (4 team revives, ~2 individual revives): Typing that revive count was painful. Thankfully, I had a full inventory of team revives before starting this challenge, so I didn’t have to spend any units on this fight. I finished the first phase on my first attempt with Vox. I then team revived because everyone else was dead. I can’t remember exactly who I used next in what order, but I finished phase two in three more champions. Phase 3 is what got me. I think I must have been tired and had played too much in one sitting by that point, but I got slaughtered. I would normally say that I’m a fairly average player when it comes to reverse controls (I actually enjoyed the gwenpool SOS week and felt like I got better from it), but I kept making minor mistakes here that cost me run after run. I eventually finished phase 3 after the revive total above, and I did phase 4 in two runs from Wiccan. It would have easily been one attempt for phase 4, but the grandmaster refused to throw any special attack other than his sp3 when I only needed to build to my sp3 to finish the fight.
Total revive count before the grandmaster: 20 individual revives, 2 team revives
Total revive count including the grandmaster: 22 individual revives, 6 team revives
Overall thoughts: Other than the grandmaster fight, I was pleasantly surprised at how well this went using Sentry and with my revive count for a first time necro run. Vox really came in clutch for a couple fights on the backend of the run. As much as I love the two of them, Black Cat and Spider-Ham basically did nothing, so if someone is looking to use a similar team, feel free to replace them with other champs.
Rewards:
Tech 7* 2-3 gem
7* basics -
Gambit (sig 20)
Prowler (unawakened)
Titans -
Red Hulk (unawakened)
Hit Monkey (sig 20)
7* cosmic crystal -
Nova (sig 40)
7* Tech crystal -
Shocker (sig 20)
If anyone has actually read this far in the post, some of you might know I’ve had a ton of expiring 7* sig stones without someone good to put them into, and I finally duped someone worthy of them from these rewards, Shocker. Now I need to decide if I’m going to rank 3 Shocker or unawakened Guardian🤔 with the tech 2-3 gem.
TLDR:
A rank 2 Sentry, with a little help from rank 2 Vox, can do the 10 year challenge necropolis run in a relatively small number of revives. To be soloing most fights, he needs to be at rank 3, but the rank 2 was more than sufficient for my run.
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Comments
Rnak up shocker he's a beast
Shocker over Guardian.
In your opinion, would a 6R5A Sentry lead to maybe double the revive counts due to the shorter timer? [Don't have any Wong, and only have the 6* Sentry]