Mr Negative Gameplay Guide
BitterSteel
Member Posts: 9,264 ★★★★★
I’ve been working on this guide to cover the basics of Mr Negative, what to expect if you pull him, how to use him, strengths weaknesses et al. And I wanted to share it with you guys! Hopefully it helps anyone who has pulled/will pull in the future!
General gameplay
Mr Negative is all about building light energy, then converting to dark energy for big degen damage and petrify utility reversing healing and power gain.
Parrying and removing buffs from yourself by dashing back adds light energy to you. Parrying adds 2, and its 1 per buff removed. Using a heavy attack grants a fury on the first hit, which is important for building light energy, and increasing damage of Sp2s.
Below 10 light energy it is indefinite, but once you get to 10 light energy it will begin to run out. While you have at least 1 light energy you can charge heavy and evade the opponent. This converts your light energy into an equal amount of dark energy which also begins to run out at 10.
Every time you convert light energy into dark energy you place a debuff on your opponent reducing power rate by -60%, so they gain less power when you hit them. This debuff increases in duration the more light energy you convert.
For the damage:
In a typical match up you want to get to 9 light energy, then charge heavy and evade the opponent. That converts the light energy into dark energy.
Repeat so you get as close to 11 light energy as possible, then evade once more. Now you should have up to 20 dark energy.
If you can, try and bait out specials before you transfer your second batch of light energy. This means for the ideal situation you’ll hopefully be on 20 dark energy, opponent on low power, and your opponent will be in the corner. This is the optimal situation for damage.
This means you can heavy chain in the corner and build some furies. Then use your sp2 after the first hit of one of your heavies, and the sp2 applies 1 degen + one more for every dark energy on yourself. This degen damage scales really nicely with the furies.
Utility and strengths?
The sp2 applies one petrify guaranteed, that’s 80% reduction in healing and power. And if you have ten or more dark energy on opponent another petrify is added.
For every unique non damaging debuff on the opponent he has 40% degeneration resistance. So icarus degen, no retreat, Dormammu degen etc are all reduced. With 3 unique debuffs from the sp2 that’s a pretty consistent 120% resistance. Parrying counts, as do several synergies and masteries (touched on later)
His heavy evade counts as an intercept for any nodes or the like that require intercepts. Think about foresight, ebb and flow intercept etc that reward intercepts. Also think about any time there’s big block damage you want to avoid, negative evades and counters easily.
He’s great for stun immune nodes, you can just parry, reparry to build light energy and use the evade to get your in, no risky intercepts or baiting heavy. Just evade and counter.
Because Mr Negative doesn’t hit hard with his basic attacks or specials,( most of his damage is DOT), he’s good for when nodes punish hard hitting. Like safeguard, rage, protect in AW.
His sp1 has a nice little bulwark block proficiency boost, which is a passive buff so you don’t shrug it off. Also inflicting an exhaustion debuff which counts as another unique debuff.
Nullify immunity and stagger immunity is fantastic for buffet, power snack, dr strange fights, sym supreme fights, pilfer etc
He also has a nice, sizeable regen on his sp3 for every light energy on the opponent, and this also does bursts of damage to the opponent for every dark energy on the opponent. While also inflicting a delirium debuff on the opponent which reduces combat power rate by -60% for 20 seconds.
His signature ability adds energy resistance for every light energy, but as you constantly cycle between amounts of light energy, it’s not reliable to act as an energy damage reduction. Nice to have though.
He can regenerate up to 2.5% of his health per second while suffering from degeneration, which paired with his degen resistance can work really well to deal with degeneration. This is based on sig level.
Really, you want to be looking for match ups where you can reverse the opponents healing or power, take advantage of intercepts, if you need to avoid block damage he can be good, if you don’t want to have buffs on yourself like spite, any high degeneration match ups you can mitigate.
Does he need to be awakened?
It’s nice to have but not necessary. Gives him a little bit of damage when he has dark energy, regen while he has degen, energy resistance while he has light energy and a bit of damage when someone tries to nullify him. All the cool stuff he can do is on his base.
I’d say he’s worth a 5* class gem, but not a 6* class gem if that helps.
Synergies?
None are necessary, but he gains a huge benefit from several notable ones.
Nick fury and quake evade: normally, when you evade with 10 light energy it converts it to 10 dark energy, and you get an 8 second delirium debuff reducing power by 60%. When you use this synergy, the game counts it as 2. So you gain 2 debuffs reducing power to 0%, and 20 dark energy debuffs. Great for damage and utility. He has double the ramp up for damage, and a power lock.
Mr fantastic pre fights: a constant 80% degen resistance, since Mr Ns playstyle revolves around parry heavy and knocking the opponent down. The petrify pre fight is great to reverse regen and power even more as well.
Venom- a permanent 1% regen as long as you don’t dash back is great to have, don’t focus too much on it and take loads of block damage though. It’s nice for a decent heal, but you will want to dash back at some point.
Weaknesses?
Anywhere DOT is punished or shrugged off, so some skill match ups won’t great, cornered, ghost etc
Evade match ups, with no way to counter, you don’t want your heavy to be evaded
Evade counters- IMIW, night thrasher, hit monkey, true strike, all champs and nodes that will mess you up, with no easy way to convert dark energy
Rhino, Weapon X and Angela are a few annoying matches, rhino has unstoppable charges so you can’t evade, Weapon X goes unstoppable when you evade, Angela shrugs off DOT.
Disorient stops you from building dark energy, so avoid those nodes that place it on you.
Limber isn’t great for him, stun immune is honestly better. Limber means you can’t parry heavy, and you can’t reparry, so it makes building light energy a little annoying.
Masteries
There’s none that are required, but two that really help
Despair- if you’re using Negative as a heal reversal champ, it reverses even more heal
Resonate- as another unique debuff, that’s extra degeneration resistance. With parry, petrify, delirium, exhaustion, weakness, degeneration that’s 240% degeneration resistance
I hope this helps anyone who has recently pulled him or is interested. If anyone has any questions on play style, uses or anything let me know!
If you’d like to see him in action, I also have a playlist of Negative gameplay on my channel, linked below.
General gameplay
Mr Negative is all about building light energy, then converting to dark energy for big degen damage and petrify utility reversing healing and power gain.
Parrying and removing buffs from yourself by dashing back adds light energy to you. Parrying adds 2, and its 1 per buff removed. Using a heavy attack grants a fury on the first hit, which is important for building light energy, and increasing damage of Sp2s.
Below 10 light energy it is indefinite, but once you get to 10 light energy it will begin to run out. While you have at least 1 light energy you can charge heavy and evade the opponent. This converts your light energy into an equal amount of dark energy which also begins to run out at 10.
Every time you convert light energy into dark energy you place a debuff on your opponent reducing power rate by -60%, so they gain less power when you hit them. This debuff increases in duration the more light energy you convert.
For the damage:
In a typical match up you want to get to 9 light energy, then charge heavy and evade the opponent. That converts the light energy into dark energy.
Repeat so you get as close to 11 light energy as possible, then evade once more. Now you should have up to 20 dark energy.
If you can, try and bait out specials before you transfer your second batch of light energy. This means for the ideal situation you’ll hopefully be on 20 dark energy, opponent on low power, and your opponent will be in the corner. This is the optimal situation for damage.
This means you can heavy chain in the corner and build some furies. Then use your sp2 after the first hit of one of your heavies, and the sp2 applies 1 degen + one more for every dark energy on yourself. This degen damage scales really nicely with the furies.
Utility and strengths?
The sp2 applies one petrify guaranteed, that’s 80% reduction in healing and power. And if you have ten or more dark energy on opponent another petrify is added.
For every unique non damaging debuff on the opponent he has 40% degeneration resistance. So icarus degen, no retreat, Dormammu degen etc are all reduced. With 3 unique debuffs from the sp2 that’s a pretty consistent 120% resistance. Parrying counts, as do several synergies and masteries (touched on later)
His heavy evade counts as an intercept for any nodes or the like that require intercepts. Think about foresight, ebb and flow intercept etc that reward intercepts. Also think about any time there’s big block damage you want to avoid, negative evades and counters easily.
He’s great for stun immune nodes, you can just parry, reparry to build light energy and use the evade to get your in, no risky intercepts or baiting heavy. Just evade and counter.
Because Mr Negative doesn’t hit hard with his basic attacks or specials,( most of his damage is DOT), he’s good for when nodes punish hard hitting. Like safeguard, rage, protect in AW.
His sp1 has a nice little bulwark block proficiency boost, which is a passive buff so you don’t shrug it off. Also inflicting an exhaustion debuff which counts as another unique debuff.
Nullify immunity and stagger immunity is fantastic for buffet, power snack, dr strange fights, sym supreme fights, pilfer etc
He also has a nice, sizeable regen on his sp3 for every light energy on the opponent, and this also does bursts of damage to the opponent for every dark energy on the opponent. While also inflicting a delirium debuff on the opponent which reduces combat power rate by -60% for 20 seconds.
His signature ability adds energy resistance for every light energy, but as you constantly cycle between amounts of light energy, it’s not reliable to act as an energy damage reduction. Nice to have though.
He can regenerate up to 2.5% of his health per second while suffering from degeneration, which paired with his degen resistance can work really well to deal with degeneration. This is based on sig level.
Really, you want to be looking for match ups where you can reverse the opponents healing or power, take advantage of intercepts, if you need to avoid block damage he can be good, if you don’t want to have buffs on yourself like spite, any high degeneration match ups you can mitigate.
Does he need to be awakened?
It’s nice to have but not necessary. Gives him a little bit of damage when he has dark energy, regen while he has degen, energy resistance while he has light energy and a bit of damage when someone tries to nullify him. All the cool stuff he can do is on his base.
I’d say he’s worth a 5* class gem, but not a 6* class gem if that helps.
Synergies?
None are necessary, but he gains a huge benefit from several notable ones.
Nick fury and quake evade: normally, when you evade with 10 light energy it converts it to 10 dark energy, and you get an 8 second delirium debuff reducing power by 60%. When you use this synergy, the game counts it as 2. So you gain 2 debuffs reducing power to 0%, and 20 dark energy debuffs. Great for damage and utility. He has double the ramp up for damage, and a power lock.
Mr fantastic pre fights: a constant 80% degen resistance, since Mr Ns playstyle revolves around parry heavy and knocking the opponent down. The petrify pre fight is great to reverse regen and power even more as well.
Venom- a permanent 1% regen as long as you don’t dash back is great to have, don’t focus too much on it and take loads of block damage though. It’s nice for a decent heal, but you will want to dash back at some point.
Weaknesses?
Anywhere DOT is punished or shrugged off, so some skill match ups won’t great, cornered, ghost etc
Evade match ups, with no way to counter, you don’t want your heavy to be evaded
Evade counters- IMIW, night thrasher, hit monkey, true strike, all champs and nodes that will mess you up, with no easy way to convert dark energy
Rhino, Weapon X and Angela are a few annoying matches, rhino has unstoppable charges so you can’t evade, Weapon X goes unstoppable when you evade, Angela shrugs off DOT.
Disorient stops you from building dark energy, so avoid those nodes that place it on you.
Limber isn’t great for him, stun immune is honestly better. Limber means you can’t parry heavy, and you can’t reparry, so it makes building light energy a little annoying.
Masteries
There’s none that are required, but two that really help
Despair- if you’re using Negative as a heal reversal champ, it reverses even more heal
Resonate- as another unique debuff, that’s extra degeneration resistance. With parry, petrify, delirium, exhaustion, weakness, degeneration that’s 240% degeneration resistance
I hope this helps anyone who has recently pulled him or is interested. If anyone has any questions on play style, uses or anything let me know!
If you’d like to see him in action, I also have a playlist of Negative gameplay on my channel, linked below.
13
Comments
plus venom is a beast, and a lot of fun to play!
I have two questions, hope you have the kindness to answer:
1- When duped, would his degen resistance and heal allow you to bypass the degen node that happens in Incursions when your teammate fails to down the sub-boss?
2- About his Venom Synergy: Would Venom's sig ability affect in any way the heal he gets from the Mr. Neg synergy? I ask cuz in theory it should, Venom's sig can boost the buffs he gains up to 20% ( when in max sig), and the game usually counts regen as a buff. The thing is that the text on his sig specifies that this boost applies only to his "Klyntar Buffs", which is why , for example, it doesn't affect the precision buff u get when you Dex, as its not Klyntar . I guess it all boils down to whether the game would consider this regen as a "Klyntar Buff" or not. My logic says yes because the regen only triggers when Klyntar Buffs pop up so ... but well my logic may not necessarily be Kabam logic. Care to clarify please ?
1- firstly, it depends on how the node is worded. A lot of the time those sorts of nodes are "direct damage", like flare. So the degen resistance doesn't apply. Secondly, even if it is degen, it applies at the start of the fight, so you don't have any debuffs on them, so you have no degen resistance, the regeneration may save you if it triggers. I suppose it is possibly feasible if you brought Mr fantastic and applied two debuffs for 80% resistance, but I'd have to check if that works on degen triggered at the start of the fight.
2- I tested my 5* venom at sig 20 and he regenned 88 per tic at 50% health, then i threw a few sig stones into him and he still regenned at 88 per tic at 50%. So no, based on what I've seen it doesn't increase the potency of the regen.
Cheers!
All I mean is personally I'd rather take Negative against stun immune and parry and reparry. For me it's a lot smoother, limber just feels a little slower. It's not a huge con, but just something to note if you ever bring him against limber.
Sorry, I should have been clearer!