Black Cat - How good do you have to be?

Only a few hours left of level up and i was going to r2 her with a generic, but I’m seeing people mention you need a lot of skill to make her worth the rank up (or worth the rankup over Mantis).

I’ve just been getting the card on me then throwing sp2 and if I have the BW striker i activate it for bonus damage, but I don’t heavy counter to stack up the card (at least not in BGs) .

I also don’t bother with viscous because i only run 1 in DW. And the BW relic makes it so you kinda always want to run sabotage even if they dont have abilities that fail.

Comments

Polygon

Anyone rank her up and find her highly effective in BGs? Would be nice to see some screenshots of matches

captain_rogers

here's a list of nasty defenders black cat can melt
Mutant: Nightcrawler,
Skill: korg, stealthy, nick fury, killmonger
Science: all spiders, thing, scorpion, overseer, void, modok
Mystic: rintrah,
Cosmic: hulkling
Tech: all those pesky autoblockers, like omega sentinel
Rank her up ASAP

captain_rogers

My recent matchups, mine is r1 unduped black cat no suicides

LetheLatte

Only a few hours left of level up and i was going to r2 her with a generic, but I’m seeing people mention you need a lot of skill to make her worth the rank up (or worth the rankup over Mantis).

I’ve just been getting the card on me then throwing sp2 and if I have the BW striker i activate it for bonus damage, but I don’t heavy counter to stack up the card (at least not in BGs) .

I also don’t bother with viscous because i only run 1 in DW. And the BW relic makes it so you kinda always want to run sabotage even if they dont have abilities that fail.

Just need a bit of Tigra Skill

Polygon

Only a few hours left of level up and i was going to r2 her with a generic, but I’m seeing people mention you need a lot of skill to make her worth the rank up (or worth the rankup over Mantis).

I’ve just been getting the card on me then throwing sp2 and if I have the BW striker i activate it for bonus damage, but I don’t heavy counter to stack up the card (at least not in BGs) .

I also don’t bother with viscous because i only run 1 in DW. And the BW relic makes it so you kinda always want to run sabotage even if they dont have abilities that fail.
Just need a bit of Tigra Skill

@LetheLatte why’s that? I thought the special/heavy punishing to build up the card wasn’t needed for BGs?

Pikolu

Black cat can be played as simple or as complicated as you want her too. Something to note is you can heavy counter opponents heavies, not just their specials for more card movement. The fights she can be played the most braindead is when opponents have abilities that can fail. Don't need to move the card around unless you need to get your combo up. Here is a video of a hazard shift rintrah I took in war today.

https://youtu.be/jtCgzSw-xqg?si=OkMY8Yirp4lnviwx

Sungj

You can play her very simply and she still is great. The skill requirement is if you really want to maximize her breadth of match ups as well as speed.

Like Tigra knowing most special and heavy punish openings makes ramping black cat much faster. Her heavy reach isn’t as good as Tigra’s so this takes even more precise spacing and light attack whiffs to close space. Knowing how to reliably intercept also makes her ramp quicker.

She also takes a lottttt of match ups you wouldn’t intuitively think she’s good for. While not necessarily a skill there’s definitely a knowledge requirement with nodes and champs to use her to her full potential.

MaxtheSilent

She reminds me of Absorbing Man in this regard: it takes minimal skill to succeed with her in ideal matchups (e.g. Thing) but if you are skilled in using her then she can take down a lot of non-ideal champions. So you can benefit from ranking her up even while you’re learning to play her In trickier match ups.

LetheLatte

Only a few hours left of level up and i was going to r2 her with a generic, but I’m seeing people mention you need a lot of skill to make her worth the rank up (or worth the rankup over Mantis).

I’ve just been getting the card on me then throwing sp2 and if I have the BW striker i activate it for bonus damage, but I don’t heavy counter to stack up the card (at least not in BGs) .

I also don’t bother with viscous because i only run 1 in DW. And the BW relic makes it so you kinda always want to run sabotage even if they dont have abilities that fail.
Just need a bit of Tigra Skill
@LetheLatte why’s that? I thought the special/heavy punishing to build up the card wasn’t needed for BGs?

Its mainly to end the fight faster or to do more dmg on a short period of time

DrZola

R2 mine unawakened. She’s terrific, and I struggle with connectivity and frame rate stutter quite a bit, so playing intercepts can sometimes be an issue.

Honestly, I think she’s the best Skill 7* with possible exception of Mantis. See if @Ercarret has any videos.

Dr. Zola

jcphillips7

R2 mine unawakened. She’s terrific, and I struggle with connectivity and frame rate stutter quite a bit, so playing intercepts can sometimes be an issue.

Honestly, I think she’s the best Skill 7* with possible exception of Mantis. See if @Ercarret has any videos.

Dr. Zola

I would agree with that second sentiment. I took mine to R2 unawakened as well. Now I'm debating on who to R2 next for skill with the obvious champ probably my awakened Mantis (also have unawakened Elsa, Falcon, Hawkeye, and awakened Ronin)...but part of me wants to wait to see if I can pull a Killmonger, or perhaps end up with Chee'Ilth from my next Titan (this opening is a ways away, but better to save resources than impulse rank I suppose?)

Polygon

R2 mine unawakened. She’s terrific, and I struggle with connectivity and frame rate stutter quite a bit, so playing intercepts can sometimes be an issue.

Honestly, I think she’s the best Skill 7* with possible exception of Mantis. See if @Ercarret has any videos.

Dr. Zola
I would agree with that second sentiment. I took mine to R2 unawakened as well. Now I'm debating on who to R2 next for skill with the obvious champ probably my awakened Mantis (also have unawakened Elsa, Falcon, Hawkeye, and awakened Ronin)...but part of me wants to wait to see if I can pull a Killmonger, or perhaps end up with Chee'Ilth from my next Titan (this opening is a ways away, but better to save resources than impulse rank I suppose?)

KM dupe or first time? I know hes a top r3 candidate but i assume needs the dupe for that? Still tanky without

jcphillips7

R2 mine unawakened. She’s terrific, and I struggle with connectivity and frame rate stutter quite a bit, so playing intercepts can sometimes be an issue.

Honestly, I think she’s the best Skill 7* with possible exception of Mantis. See if @Ercarret has any videos.

Dr. Zola
I would agree with that second sentiment. I took mine to R2 unawakened as well. Now I'm debating on who to R2 next for skill with the obvious champ probably my awakened Mantis (also have unawakened Elsa, Falcon, Hawkeye, and awakened Ronin)...but part of me wants to wait to see if I can pull a Killmonger, or perhaps end up with Chee'Ilth from my next Titan (this opening is a ways away, but better to save resources than impulse rank I suppose?)
KM dupe or first time? I know hes a top r3 candidate but i assume needs the dupe for that? Still tanky without

It would be a first time pull. And yea, I really think you want the dupe, although I know he can still be fairly annoying unduped on defense.

DarknessFalls

I did r2 for mine, still unawakened, really enjoying playing her, don't even care about rotations. She takes a lot of matchups even though I play her in a simple way.

captain_rogers

R2 mine unawakened. She’s terrific, and I struggle with connectivity and frame rate stutter quite a bit, so playing intercepts can sometimes be an issue.

Honestly, I think she’s the best Skill 7* with possible exception of Mantis. See if @Ercarret has any videos.

Dr. Zola

Shang chi exists...

Vegeta9001

I am in no way super skilled with Black Cat, but I can deal some huge damage and ignore abilities with her, helps I have a duped 6* Black widow relic on her

Ercarret

Since @DrZola summoned me, knowing I'll always gladly give my perspective on her when asked (and quite a few times when not asked), here are my two cents.

I think that a lot of people think she is more complicated to play than she is, at least for the situations where you'd most often use her over other champions. I largely follow the same strategy as you, OP. I transfer the Card to me and then launch an SP2, and after that I generally win. Building up the cruelty passives by kicking the Card back and forth between you and the opponent is a way to maximise her bleed damage in fights where you don't use her DAAR, but you don't bring her into fights for her bleed damage. It can be quite respectable if you are good at building up those passives, but her main value will always be her DAAR and the power that lies nestled into that piece of utility is severely underrated by a lot of people.

That being said, I think she has a skill ceiling that shouldn't be underestimated either, especially when you get her awakened and the sig starts to rise. When she's unawakened, you have to play a little carefully so as to not lose your combo. As soon as you dupe her, you get an instant set of combo shields that makes her a lot safer to play aggressively with. As the sig rises, her chance to evade attacks also rises - to the point where you can intentionally trigger it to evade tricky special attacks or other hazards that you want to avoid. It's less useful in questing since it's a depleting resource, but it's amazing for Battlegrounds where you can use the evade charges freely.

One thing that I think a lot of people miss about the Black Widow relic is that it, once awakened, grants Black Cat one of her cruelty passives whenever she causes one of her opponent's abilities to fail. This means that you'll automatically ramp those up against most opponents/nodes that you want to use her against, or whenever you fail the relic debuff itself.

If anyone's interested, I'll leave a couple of compilations I've done. The first is a little showcase of how a great of a counter she is for a lot of annoying mystic champions, like Rintrah, Morningstar, Man-Thing and America Chavez.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7-sqemQulo

If anyone needs some inspiration for how to use Black Cat vs some 8.3 bosses, I've also got you covered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvvRmUp_Ul8

unknown

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