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Soft-hearted yet equally dangerous when provoked,Mantis is one of the strongest Strategist heroesinMarvel Rivals; given her utility and my non-stop hours of playtime on her as of right now, you might initially underestimate her potential.
She can be a force to be reckoned with, whether it’s supporting your allies or using her ranged attacks to fend off or pick off targets in heated moments on the battlefield.
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Something seems rather familiar about these heroes and villains.
And if it’s your first time playing as her, you might be confused about how her overall kit works or just the general strategy to follow when playing as her, which can be tricky given how Support heroes tend to get the short end of the stick.
Butstickaround as I’ll give you adetailed overview of how to play Mantis,including optimizing her usage for Offensive and Defensive plays, her counters, and the recommended team comps to run at any given moment.
This hero guide for Mantis is based on theVersion 20241210 Patch Notesof Marvel Rivals.
Mantis Abilities Overview
If you’re familiar withOverwatch 2, then the closest hero thatMantis shares similarities with in terms of her kit is Zenyatta,but a million times better; yeah, I said it.
Mantis is extremely versatile,with a passive that grants her a movement boost when not injured to abilities that allow her to provide a damage boost or heal-over-time effect to allies. You can even use the former ability here on yourself to give you an edge in confrontations.
Still, while there’s much to discuss about her strategy and how she isn’t perfect sometimes, I’ll first give you a brief breakdown of Mantis’s abilities and how they work:
Description
Life Energy Blast
Primary Attack. Fire an energy thorn and regain one Life Orb after a critical hit. Each projectile deals 50 damage with a 2.5 RPM fire rate.
Soul Resurgence
Ultimate ability. Release energy around her while moving, providing Healing Over Time and Movement Boosts for surrounding allies. Excess healing converts to Bonus Health. The radius is 15m with an 8-second duration.
Spore Slumber
Throw a Spore to sedate the nearest enemy. It has a 3m range with an ability cooldown of 15 seconds. The stun duration of the enemy is 3.5 seconds.
Allied Inspiration
Consume Life Orbs to grant allies a (12%) Damage Boost.
Natural Anger
Consume Life Orbs to grant herself a (12%) Damage Boost.
Healing Flower
Consume Life Orbs to grant allies Healing Over Time.
Nature’s Favor
Passive ability. Receive a Movement Boost when not injured and Healing Over Time when consuming Life Orbs.
Nature’s Soul
Team-Up ability. Adam Warlock enhances the rebirth power of Star-Lord and Mantis, granting them the power of cocooned revival. Ability Cooldown is 120 seconds.
Mantis Offensive Strategies
The universal law to play any given support is to obviously stay on the backlines as much as possible while dishing out any utility or healing capabilities to your team.
But since Marvel Rivals has a different approach to playstyle and given how theStrategist heroes can withstand some things on their owninstead of being built like fragile firewood, here are some actual offensive combat maneuvers you may take with Mantis.
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Mantis Defensive Strategies
Now, while I personally love playing aggressively as Mantis, there are several moments where you may need to reconsider and accept the hard-to-swallow pill of playing the defensive side when the situation demands it.
What I mean by that is how, in some scenarios, Strategist role characters like Mantisare the exoskeleton of the team,and chances are, if you’re out of the fight, so is your team unless they miraculously pull off a clutch to win the fight.
Below are some defensive strategy notes to implement when playing Mantis in Marvel Rivals. These strategies save not only myself from going back to respawn but also those of my teammates or friends.
Mantis Counters & How To Deal With Them
As you can guess at this point, with how much I’ve told you about Mantis, the best way to get rid of Strategists like her from the backline isobviously using Dive DPS and Tank characters in Marvel Rivals.
These are characters like ourfriendly neighborhood Spider-Man, who can swoop in andcatch you in his web grab attack,or even Black Panther, a character that, if someone knows how to play and master,can kill you so erratically,you’ll be left wondering how you even died.
Take the overpoweredIron Fist, one of the most annoying characters in the game;he can take you out relatively quickly with his fast jabs, and it’s almost the same case withMagik’s quick melee slashesthat close in on you suddenly to halt your support.
Lastly, with an enemy Venom, being one of the most agile Tanks in the game thanks to his web-swinging, attempt to stay out of his comfort zone and instead push up on him with your team at any chance before he singles you out to your death.
Best Team Comps With Mantis
The most obvious answer would be Adam Warlock,just so you can get Nature’s Soul to activate and receive free revives instead of heading back to respawn.
However, from my tests with friends, since Mantis isn’t one of those full-time healer characters,it’s best to run a hero like Luna Snow here,who provides equally great support but even greater healing to easily synergize with Mantis.
You can also greatly benefitaerial characters like Iron Manusing your Heal-over-Time effects so they can freely spend their time dishing out damage, as long as they don’t get too bombarded with damage to counter the effects mentioned above.
