**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
How shall I feel?
CaptainPoll
Posts: 901 ★★★
Just pulled a 5* wasp, how should I feel about it?
6
Comments
My 5* is at rank 5.
Playstyle and core mechanics:
To begin with wasp has the ability to safely chain any combo into a heavy attack through the use of a passive stun effect. Chaining into a heavy attack is crucial to playing wasp well and will help you maximise your damage output with her. As a bonus, this ability can help you get around certain defensive abilities such as autoblock for example. Since heavy attacks break blocks, it’s easy for her to bypass this ability. When facing MODOK, intercepting his medium attack will not trigger autoblock even with his force field active. This is not exclusive to wasp, it’s just how his ability functions. Wasp can punish this easily since she can chain that intercept directly into a heavy attack, enabling her to ignore his autoblock and remove his force field in the process. Without the force field, MODOK will not be able to autoblock any of your attacks until it refreshes.
Another prime example of where chaining into a heavy attack can be extremely valuable is facing Medusa. Medusa can only autoblock when she has 3 fury buffs, but in a similar way to MODOK your first hit against her is safe. This time it can be any hit, not just intercepts, so opening up against her is a little easier. Once again though, if you just do a single hit and then chain into your heavy attack, you never need to worry about the autoblock or the parry that she gets from it. Wasp is a very big damage dealer, so not being forced to back away until the fury expires makes her a viable option against medusa. She is more than capable of taking down a 5/65 Medusa miniboss in the higher tiers of Alliance War, even with debuff immunity. I’ll go into more detail about her damage later.
Important things to note:
* Wasp will always get two guaranteed critical hits after shrinking down. This happens right before her first heavy attack connects and during each of her special attacks.
* Both hits of your heavy attack will always be critical.
* At the time of writing this, Wasp has the second highest base attack in the game but also one of the lowest health pools. She only falls second to the recently added Claire Voyant.
* Her passive stun will still work on debuff immune nodes, but not nodes with stun immunity.
* Her base attack is increased by +1248.75 during guaranteed critical hits for every debuff on the opponent. This applies to heavy attack hits as well as special attacks. Launching heavy attacks with multiple debuffs active on the opponent is devastating.
* When you shrink down, her counterattack is disabled for 10 seconds.
* Chaining into a heavy attack will apply a 30% weakness debuff to the opponent.
* Wasp has a lot of range on her heavy attack, which makes it much easier to punish heavy attacks and specials directly. This is particularly useful for a low health Iron Man Infinity War. Be careful though, he can parry your counterattack if it triggers and he has 4 armour up passives. He would only need one if he’s in signature ability range.
Tips and tricks:
* When you’re fighting in the middle of the screen and the opponent is NOT against the wall, Wasp can frequently set up a free intercept opening due to the space that her heavy attack creates. To do this, simply tap block very briefly after the opponent is knocked down. More often than not, they will try to dash towards you. This is a perfect intercept opportunity and will allow you to chain combos together effortlessly when you master it. Since Wasp is a glass cannon with very low base health, intercepting is definitely the best way to utilise her. Using parry too much could start to hurt due to chip damage. I typically begin fights with a parry, M,L,L,L,H, tap block, intercept and repeat the same combo. At this point you should have them up against the wall. In an average fight, the only time I do use parry is at the beginning, after that it’s better to look for intercept opportunities.
* When the opponent IS against the back wall, it’s safe to use nothing but heavy attacks unless the opponent has a bar of power. Simply, land a heavy attack and as they’re recovering from the knockdown, launch another heavy. Just remember to back off when they do have a bar of power, since a special attack is usually the only thing that can interrupt this loop. You may also want to watch out for opponents that can auto evade. Some of my favourite matchups are Doctor Strange and Symbiote supreme. They don’t gain power from your attacks which means you can use a lot more heavy attacks before they reach a bar of power. When they do, you can easily back off and trap them in the corner again.
* Wasp can chain directly into special attacks from her initial heavy attack hit. For SP1 you will need to wait until she reaches the maximum height of her jump, otherwise she could whiff on the first hit. This only occurs when you are fighting in the middle of the screen though, you don’t need to delay it if they are up against the back wall. SP2 can be used immediately after impact anywhere on the screen. An example of this type of combo would be M,L,L,L,H,SP2.
Special Attacks:
SP1- This attack strikes 3 times and Wasp shrinks after the first one connects. That means that the final 2 hits are always critical. To guarantee that all 3 hits are critical simply chain into it from a heavy attack like I mentioned above. SP1 has a 100% chance to inflict a concussion debuff on the opponent and a 40% chance to stun them for 2 seconds. The potency of this concussion can vary depending on your combo meter. Each hit in your combo meter equates to a 1% reduction. Against mystics you have an extra 40% which is really useful for Juggernaut or Magik for example. Concussion can prevent limbo and unstoppable from triggering, making these opponents much easier to deal with. Remember that she gains a huge attack bonus from having extra debuffs on her opponent, this could apply up to two more with concussion and stun.
SP2- As a 5/65 it’s not unusual to hit 50-60k with this attack. This includes the combo leading up to it, the raw damage of each hit involved and any follow up damage you may get from the power sting. Aside from damage this attack can also provide you with some really nice utility, including the ability to reverse healing. When I fought wolverine in Realm of Legends with her, he was taking 90k damage per second. That isn’t going to happen in regular fights, but it should give you an idea of how powerful this can be.
To begin with, the attack consists of 5 hits and each will apply one power sting debuff for a total of 5 at the end of it. These 5 debuffs can result in an attack increase of +6,243.75 if you launch a heavy attack whilst they’re still active. You may also have weakness or shock active too, or even a parry stun for another +3,746.25. This heavy attack is in addition to the 50-60k damage I mentioned previously, so this can be a very powerful combination of attacks.
If any of the power sting debuffs expire before the opponent uses a special attack, it will instead place a petrify debuff reducing the potency of all healing and power gain effects by 1.75% per hit on the combo meter. If the opponent is mystic you can add 70% to that since she gets a bonus equivalent to an extra 40 hits on the combo meter. If you reach the point of blocking their healing/power gain altogether, any extra hits will start to reverse them and this gets stronger and stronger as your combo continues to rise. The number of hits required to block healing/power gain are as follows:
* 57-58 hits for regular opponents
* 17-18 hits for mystic opponents
SP3- This one is pretty simple; your attack rating will increase by +138 with each hit on your combo meter (+40 hits against mystics). That’s all there is to it for this one.
Signature Ability:
Your chance to shrink and counterattack is increased by a flat 25% and her cooldown time is shortened as your signature level goes up. At level 41 (my current level) the cooldown is reduced by 36.26%. Keep in mind that using counterattack will shrug off all damaging debuffs apart from bleed. I deliberately hold block when facing characters like iceman so that I can shrug off the coldsnap and preserve my health. For me, that is the most valuable part of her signature ability. There are plenty of situations where this can be useful, you may even choose to use it against a poison node for example.
Hopefully you’ll find that useful. It’ll take a bit of time to get used to her as she does have a very unique playstyle, but she’s extremely fun to play. I’m sure she’ll be able to add plenty of value to your roster.