Symbiote Difficulty Walkthrough for the Average Player

Hey all, a little about myself real fast: I'm a Free-2-Play player with what I would consider to be average or slightly above average skills. I have a 500k account, uncollected, Act 5 finished but not explored. So again, I'd consider myself an average player. Certainly not a whale, top-level guy or end-gamer.

I finished Symbiote Difficulty last night, and I know there are some walkthroughs from your big-name youtubers out there, but let's be honest, most of us don't play at their skill level. I learned some helpful things from them, but I just can't play like they play.
So I thought I'd throw down some thoughts on how I beat Symbiod Difficulty of this month's EQ, and some tips I learned along the way that will make it smoother for others still not finished or who didn't think they could do it.

1st of all you've gotta max out your Symbiod. That means you have to complete a single run through Expert (Uncollected) difficulty. Without that run, it's impossible to max your symbiod. But once that's done, you're ready to go.

I'd recommend having about 500-900 units saved up or a good stash of Energy Refills. 900 units is what I spent in total, but most of that was on energy refills to keep my buffs from expiring. I also spent about 700 Klyntar Strands on boosters. I probably could've spent less of both if I'd known ahead of time some of the tips and info I'm attempting to lay out now - I ran some boosts at times that were unnecessary for the matchups and I did a poor job at times of managing boost expiration with energy running out.

As far as team, only fight with the Symbiod and run the Mutant Crit team as support (OG Mags, Wolv, Storm, either Cyclops).

Now for the buffs; always at all times (refresh as they expire) run these buffs:
Cut Deep
Total Carnage
Undying

And then here's your strategy for 99% of the fights: since Undying gives you Invulnerability and Unstoppable for the 1st 5 seconds of the fight, don't worry about trying to parry the 1st hit, just come out swinging with a 5-hit combo. Then get your parry.
Because of Cut Deep, all your debuffs including Stun will last longer, so every combo after a parry should be 8 hits (9 if you're super fast): 3 hits (4 if you're fast) and then a regular 5 hit combo, like this: M,L,M M,L,L,L,M. Again if you're fast, u can get an extra L hit in the 1st part of the combo. At this point, your SP1 should be ready and you can fire it as a finisher if necessary.
So now you've hit the opponent 13 or 14 times (plus the SP1 combo), and that will end 99% of your fights due to the crazy bleed from Total Carnage. If you want, you can probably just run as they degen, if they're not already dead - most of the time they'll be dead.

Now for specific fights that require extra boosters or for special situations:
Any evade champ or autoblock champ run Fight Dirty (Modok, IMIW, Spidey, Domino, etc).
Any unavoidable degen champs (if if you're worried about getting hit and bleeding to death) run Recoup - the degen will heal you instead of killing you (Iceman you must have this buff!)
Abomb run both Recoup and Unknown Enemy, which gives you Ability Accuracy Reduction, so you'll survive his poison.
Magik run Unknown Enemy to mitigate the limbo (combine with 3/3 pacify and use parry to your advantage for 0 limbo).
Vision Boss, make sure you have Undying up (you should anyway) and then also run Cleanse. Don't parry at first, just let him fire his SP3 while you are invincible from Undying. Then just manage power with Cleanse by holding block and baiting specials.
For Symbiod Supreme, similar thing, just start the fight by letting him hit you with his SP3 while you're invincible and then fight like normal. I'd recommend not firing any specials against Symbiod Supreme. I think he has power sting or something because I kept magically dying for no reason when I fired specials. Your bleed should be sufficient to kill him pretty easily.
For bleed immune fights, it's just a bit of a slog, but you can help yourself by running Frenzy and then spamming your SP1 for extra crit dmg. Fight Dirty helps too for bleed immune champs. Maybe throw in Cracking Blow too for faster kills, but probably not necessary.
Other helpful buffs - if your Symbiod is getting beat up and you want to save on heals and at the same time not worry about dying, run Momentum (gives you random buffs throughout the fight) along with Second Wind. If you take what would be a lethal blow, Second Wind will heal you (once every 10 seconds) 10% of your hp for each buff on you...and Momentum gives you buffs.

To be honest, I don't think any of the other buffs were helpful.

I struggled most with Symbiotic Supreme, Corvus Glave and Emma Frost.
If you want an easier time with Emma Frost maybe run: Cracking Blow, Power Start 1, and Unknown enemy 🤷
Corvus was just ridiculous in the last chapter. Thankfully you only have to fight him once. I restarted his path like 5 times...maybe I just suck.
Also in the last chapter, Dormamu was annoying because his degen is not reversed by Recoup.

And then when you're finished, hopefully you'll have better luck than me from your Featured 5* crystal - I got a dupe of my already duped Miles Morales :-(
I probably spent 10-15 revives, some of which I already had.

Hope this helps someone! Good luck and happy hunting!