Marvel Avengers Alliance: Best Team PvP: Guide for best characters for PvP. Review Baron Mordo

I have always liked Baron Mordo as a character and I love Dormammu and clearly there is no fucking way he would ever work with the good side hes another lockbox hero that makes absolute no sense. 

 I am not gonna go into his character to much, I just wanna say how much I always loved the Spider-man tas episode (2 parter) when Venom Returns, the creation of Carnage + then the return of Baron Mordo with Dormammu. Really one of those cult classic episodes. 

Baron Mordo is the classic Rival to Dr.Strange and to no surprise he shares some game mechanics with Dr.Strange while he mainly keeps his boss abilities, the astral plane attacks.

Right away one can see that Baron Mordo is an excellent character for 1 obvious reason, he is a better Kitty Pryde. Kitty has been one of the best character in PvP since season 1 and while she has become weaker and weaker, with the addition of more psychic attacks she was still really good. However, she has fallen a lot now with the ethereal becoming strictly weak versus magic. And there is a lot of magic users, still the ethereal iso is one of the best in the game, its still one of the best passives in the game(the one Kitty has).

But sure I would not play with Kitty these days, the reason why is becasue she only has Astral plane + 1 high damage attack with no good debuffs or utility, well she counters really hard during the start of the game, she still hard counters Nul etc, so she is not bad just not as broken as before. 

All that being said, Baron Mordo is just way better then her and they do make a really good team togheter even more if you use the old school weapon that gives astral plane to the agent as well, then the whole team is immune to most damage for 3 turns. That is a 100% win versus a lot of teams in the meta. 

 I think its pretty obvious that Baron Mordo is strong, hes biggest weakness is that his Ultimate is crap, really crap. The ultimate is just Invisible Women's ultimate. I mean 100% copy and she has one of the worst in the game, especialy for AI Defence so that is a real downer for him. However, it is still not that bad as Astral strategy is by far usable in attack, as you wanna hide away in astral plane sometimes longer and just recharge, there is no way the AI will do that anyway. So its a moot point in a way, you are not gonna run Baron Mordo in defence(I do see it sometimes even at high rank), of course the ultimate still sucks in attack as well, but it a massive negative to have in defence so just don't. 

Passives:

Astral Form: This is not his starting passive but just like Kitty(without suit) it is what you are gonna jump into right away and just like Kitty (now days, in the beginning of the game Kitty would leave Astral form with all attacks) he can attack from the astral plan while keeping his Astral Form, this makes him immune to all attacks except psychic and magic. 

First passive of Baron Mordo a unique passive, which is that he is immunity to fatal attack, attack that kill you at 30% hp or less or attack that kill you at 20% form the debuff that makes all attack fatal but at a lower percentage threshold. Hes also immune to insta death in general this means that if e.g Phoenix is in the team and can resurrect you cant kill Baron Mordo without getting a resurrect even if the attack damage was enough to kill him. This makes Baron Mordo amazingly strong with the resurrect iso.

 With it you cannot kill him pretty much. He cannot be prevented to trigger it by despair(most likely) and then after resurrecting at half life he can go and hide in the astral plane again. Hes extremely hard to die with. 

I used him in attack with Emma Frost 4-5 seasons back and it was unstoppable, Emma with Diamonds last forever so she takes no damage either from straight up attacks and the they both never die pretty much. And that was before the resurrect iso existed!

Right away here from these 2 passives, the way the interact with each other and how just ridiculous hard he gets to kill makes him extremely potent in attack.

The resurrect iso is the best iso for Kitty as well as being able to hide away after 1 death is so favorable, the timing it takes to die will let her phasing cooldown very likely be off cooldown again. 

 Baron Mordo than being immune to fatal attacks is really broken. 

To make it even better he has Desperation passive for all attacks.

Desperation is when an attack deal more damage based on life missing.

Baron Mordo has that on all attacks!

With a character like him that can be immune to damage at 10% health, yeah that is extremely dangerous for the opponent team not to kill him from full life when he is vulnerable, this of course works great with not being able to be fatal blown (and than even better with resurrect on top of that)

Furthermore this passive also gives him Measured, which was a unique ability for Baron Mordo that attacks do more damage when high on stamina (until Cloak and Dagger got the same thing and they can pick either desperation or measured) This is not fantastic, the damage is boost is low, really low. Otherwise it would be way to strong in the start of the game, but like many passives its better then nothing.

Lastly he has the same passive as Dr.Strange has, he can summon shields for himself or allies before they are attacked. Which a decent passive. 

Overall he has very heavily passives for survive ability all of them together does make him tough to get rid of, this with more damage the lower health he has is a great combo.

Abilities:

First of all you always start with his second ability. This has multi functional, but its more like he has 5 moves.

The second abilities are so vastly different this is just a way to put 5 moves on him, but on the same time. This move is not do anything except triggering his "real" passive. I would say its way to not make him overly broken as he then does not start with Astral like Kitty does, but I am sure that one day we will get a alternative costume for Baron Mordo that does start in the astral plane. 

Anyway as soon as its his turn you active astral plan, always no reason not to its a Quick Action as well so it really is just a pure activation thing. Kinda like Spider-man's spider sense, double evasion and QA this you also likewise always active as fast as possible.

After this you will not use his first ability except just before the astral form runs out of time.

 This is exactly like how Kitty works. The other moves will not turn it of and the first attack instead exploits the other abilities debuffs.  

Because of this lets look at the other 2 moves before. 

His second attack than, is a weak damage wise attack but it does 2 things. It does not turn of his astral so you are safe while hitting people with it, then it also adds in straining, which is the debuff that drains stamina.

This is very interesting as Agent with astral form + signpost as for long been one of the best combos in the game, in the first seasons of the game (season 2+) the fury demon set up with astral form was the best agent equipment by far. Baron Mordo fits great for the agent, you hide with both of them and he helps out with removing stamina so when you have to go out of astral form they cannot attack you anyway.

Now, its not that good of a stamina remove so don't count on it by himself but stacking i with other characters and it will effect the game.

However, it also gives them despair, the debuff that turns of healing and resurrect, read my latest recap about Despair. Its one of the most crucial debuffs to have right now with so much self healing characters especially to kill an agent. While its only single target its excellent to have it. Its so good that for example Angrir can still have it isoed when in a team with Baron Mordo as then you can for sure always prevent them from healing. 

The damage of this attack is very low but it has a great synergy with the Agent and despair is always top notch debuff. 

Then we have "sinister summoning"

This is a fantastic ability. It does no damage but its stealth summoning, it will hit everyone cannot be blocked etc. All of that is awesome then it 2 of the absolute best debuffs in the game, it has chaos shoot like Wanda, where it randoms all kind of debuffs and it also has breakdown where it randoms other debuffs. Both of these stack and the opponent can get like 1-10 debuffs and its on all opponents with unblockable. 

Its broken, this is broken. You will for sure do huge damage in total PER TURN!

+ They will have their stats reduced, you can get stuff like deathfrost that reduces stamina and of course soulfire that removes all buffs. Breakdown is extremely potent as we can see with the new agent weapon Spirit Blade. This attack is kinda like spirit blade I suppose but a little weaker, but you can use them both. IF you are gonna use Baron Mordo today, you would for sure combo that with Sprit Blade and Signpost on the agent. And that is gonna be stamina damage like crazy.

And he can do this without leaving Astral form + with iso this ability is a free action. '

This ability is amazing the debuff utility is insane and he is still safe, this the move you start with after going astral and then you wither them with the second ability. 

His first ability then exploits attrition this means it deals more damage on the number of dots on the enemy. While it also exploits straining the debuff from his second attack. So yeah its very simple you debuff them and before astral runs out you attack the main target with this. Its not amazing damage and actually its very random as its based on number of successfully placed dots, but his other attacks dels no direct damage so this is the go to finisher move. It also does no damage at the start when they have no debuffs on them.

This again also makes him so strong when the Agent is using similar item sets e.g Spirit Blade also sets up for this attack. 

Ultimate:

The ultimate is that 1 enemy character is locked away, they cannot do any attacks(except the bes ones like signpost) and they cannot be attacked. 

I was a little to hard on this move before, while it is a crappy ultimate and exactly the same as Invisible Women, it is better for Baron Mordo to have it. They are equally bad, they are 100% the same, but Baron Mordo can still hit over the shield as he can use magic attacks that passes over it. So while Invisible women can do nothing and will 100% lose in a 1v1 Baron Mordo AI can still do something. 

 However, even with that many top characters especially the agent is not effected by this wall and than Baron Mordo just wasted a turn for nothing. 

Baron Mordo does also of course have a huge number of damage over time effects, so where invisible woman really cannot utilize this ability att all with Baron Mordo you can dot them and then wall them of so they die in a 1v1 slowly, its not optimal but its way better then her. He also does shield, and avoid attacks, so hes like a far superior version of Invisible woman.

Verdict:

Baron Mordo is a top character 10/10 in power!!!

Hes extremely strong, he has huge debuffs, can random like all the different dots while he can also turn of healing/resurrect which is a vital thing to have in the game meta. 

He also immune to damage from like 90% of the game, which means like 50% of the characters in PvP. Even if he cant avoid an Angrir at all, he can avoid e.g Spitfire, or Rocket Raccoon so those games are 100% win. 

I will say do, that people are using more and more magic iso for their attacks because a standard iso for Cloak and Dagger, and Nul etc is the ethereal plane iso. That really works in a disfavor for the viability of Baron Mordo. And a big reason why I wont use Kitty as she is 100% on he phased.

However, Baron Mordo has great utility in his offensive debuff play, where Kitty is just pure damage. Kitty is actually pretty bad she is all about the phased, Baron Mordo even when they can hit him. He will do so much for the team, in right kind of team at least.

The combos for him are quite simply, you either use more immunity, for example than Kitty. Or other characters that can go immune to damage all the time, he does work good with Cloak and Dagger, they have extremely high evasion + damage over time. But he is best teamed by far with Angrir. Agent with Life/stamina drain + Angrir with that as well and then Baron Mordo with more stamina drain and also damage imunity, immunity to fatal and if isoed resurrect, just like the agent and Angrir aslo has. Yeah that is hard to kill, a lot of debuffs and a lot of stamina drain so they cant move,

Hes only problem is of course that poor AI cant use him efficiently, it does not break the Astral that often so its not terrible but just like with Invisible Women it may wall them off with no dots on them for example and that is often just a 100% wasted turn.

But he is one of the best attack heroes in the game by far.