5* Dormammu
Rerun_9
Member Posts: 109 ★
This man any good? He’s my ninth 5*
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Rerun_9
Member Posts: 109 ★
Comments
1) As early as possible, parry & unload a Heavy to start the soul stacking on them
2) Try to get to his L2 at the same time as you get his Perfect Imbued ability and then use his L2 Imbued - almost complete Power Drain & Power Lock
After that you can go to town and unleash another Heavy attack once the soul charges on them get to 100 (because they don't increase beyond that) for a massive damage boost.
A very useful utility champ, great for your own use as well as defence should you dupe him. His power control is one of the strongest in the game, arguably the best in some ways but a few champions can claim that title depending on personal preference. In my personal opinion though, Dormammu can be the most effective in a lot of situations.
Dark energy, Soul Bonds and ‘Quick Charging’:
* To place a soul bond, simply use a heavy attack on your opponent. This does not have much range so it can be difficult to punish some heavy attacks with it. Try to punish specials instead if you are unable to parry or use your heavy attack immediately after a SP2 with the opponent against the wall. This is completely safe with the right timing and can even set up a follow up 5 hit combo after the heavy attack lands. This little trick can have a big impact in some fights, it allows you to play dormammu without ever needing to block.
* Soul bonds deal direct damage when a follow up heavy attack is used to detonate it. The damage dealt can vary depending on your attack rating, the strength of the active soul bond (up to 100), active boosts and certain resistances/class relationships. At 5/65, I can hit anywhere between 11,000 and 20,000 damage depending on the circumstances. Repeated use of this is key to making sure you get plenty of damage in.
* When your dark energy is full (I.e. reaches 100) you are considered to be **Imbued**. This will be very important when referring to each of his special attacks later as it provides bonuses to each.
* As a side note, an Imbued medium combo ender will deal a small amount of direct damage and reset your dark energy to 0. This can be useful as ‘Quick charging’ a soul bond will not work if you are already imbued.
Dormammu has a medium combo ender that does not generate power for the opponent. Instead, it drains power and gives you 30 dark energy. When you gain dark energy, a placed soul bond is charged by an equal amount, so that will be increased by 30 too. Both of these need to be at 100 to reach their full potential. To master dorm, you need to learn how to be good at becoming imbued as it makes each of his specials more powerful. There are many ways to do this including some nice little shortcuts to speed up the process. The thing to remember here is that even though you can completely shut down the opponent’s ability to gain power, it is sometimes more beneficial to let them gain it and use that to your own advantage. Power gain nodes are boosts to a skilled Dormammu player, not the opponent you’re facing. When an opponent uses a special attack, they are still considered to be losing power and it will always fully charge your soul bond and dark energy if they are not already at 100. This applies regardless of which special attack they use; it can be SP1, SP2 or even SP3. (Although I would not advise using SP3 to do this as you’re potentially going to take a lot of damage.) I like to refer to this method as ‘quick charging’ your dark energy/soul bond.
If you’re in a situation where you want avoid the possibility of the opponent using a special attack against you, it would be best to adjust your playstyle to use your medium combo ender more frequently. This could be as simple as only using two hit combos, or you may choose to add in one or two light attacks rather than the usual five. Either way, it’s relatively easy to play a full fight and never allow the opponent to gain a single bar of power. This helps to give him the edge in some fights over more well-known power control options such as Magik for example. Unlike Dormammu, Magik would need to gain at least two bars of power before she can start to control her opponent. We recently had a fight with Symbiote Supreme in the latest Boss Rush challenge where he would begin the fight close to 3 bars of power. Dormammu was able to keep that under control and prevent him from reaching SP3 quite easily. This is where he really starts to shine in terms of power control in my opinion, because he can essentially combine some of the best parts of Magik and Vision and put them together when he needs to.
Special Attacks:
**SP1:** With mystic dispersion this can be a very useful attack. If you are not imbued, you can nullify one buff from the opponent and gain 50 dark energy/charge your soul bond by 50. If you are imbued, you can nullify EVERY buff the opponent has. If it’s 2 or more, you will instantly be imbued, have a fully charged soul bond immediately after and potentially have a SP2 ready or SP3 from the mystic dispersion mastery. This is ideal for medusa who needs fury to autoblock or for buff reliant champions such as Venom or Groot. If it’s a buff, he’ll remove it regardless of how many there are.
**SP2**: combined with your medium attack power drain this special can completely shut down your opponent’s power. If you are not imbued you will place a guaranteed power lock without draining power (you can however, chain into this attack from your medium for a small drain before the lock).
If you are imbued, each of your projectiles (3 total) will drain 20% of your opponent’s power bar for a 60% reduction. To put this into perspective, Magik will steal 33% power from her opponent on a SP2 attack, but she has the added bonus of taking that power herself to balance it out. The best way to use SP2 with Dormammu is to chain from a medium attack. You will get the imbued effects of your medium (direct damage as well as power drain) AND still get the power drain from your SP2. You should be imbued immediately after and have a fully charged soul bond if you’d placed one before using it.
**SP3**: if you are not imbued you will gain a dimensional link giving you a constant flow of dark energy. Essentially, you’ll be imbued almost all of the time and your soul bond will just automatically charge with it.
If imbued you get an empowered dimensional link instead providing the same benefits as before with the added bonus of being able to regenerate 25% of the damage done by a soul bond detonation instantly. So fully charge your soul bond, use an imbued SP3, then detonate the bond with a heavy attack to heal and deal a big chunk of damage. If done correctly, you can place another bond, charge it and heal again before the duration expires.
Signature Ability:
Most people are familiar with this as it allows Dormammu to be a much stronger defender in Alliance Wars. It gives him the ability to apply a passive degeneration on the opponent whenever a buff expires or gets nullified. This degeneration can reset easily, but it does not stack. Offensively this can be nice as it allows him to deal constant damage over time to help him end fights a bit more quickly. Dormammu can bring a lot of utility to your team but he is not the best option for dealing large amounts of damage. His signature ability will help him to compensate for that.
Extra bonuses:
* All of Dormammu’s attacks deal energy damage. This makes him a perfect counter to korg but weak against Ultron. Physical resistance will not reduce your damage.
* He can be an excellent defender if you place him on the right nodes. My 5/65 almost always gets a kill on the 200% power gain mini in tier 3/4
* He is a viable attacker in all tiers of Alliance war, I used him in tier 2 for months and he always added a lot of value to my team.
* Dormammu is immune to both bleed and poison, this makes him a great option for biohazard nodes.
* His XL tag makes him incredibly useful for variant 2. I relied heavily on Dormammu and Venom when I was going for full exploration.
A neat trick with dormamu that not everyone is aware of is that his sp3 can potentially provide heavy damage and regen. Use his sp3 after 1) you are imbued and 2) have soul bond at 100 charges. This activates a dimensional link buff (looks like a green venom spider), which allows you to regenerate a % of health dealt but soul bomb detonation (about 8% health per 100 soul charges). After the detonation, you can also apply another soul bomb and power drain by ending with a light attack to gain charges very fast