Angela Champion Guide

Angela Summary

Angela is a powerful attacker that combines classic Cosmic abilities with some of the most unique abilities in the game. Both of these ability sets come together to give Angela incredible utility with respectable damage.

The Classic Abilities

Angela has all the abilities you would expect to see on a 2017 (updated 2021) champion. She has indefinite and expiring Armor Up, Fury, Precision, and Aptitude buffs. Angela triggers her buffs at specific power thresholds, and if she lands a critical hit while at that threshold, she triggers an expiring version of the buff on her. For this reason, I highly recommend the critical rating stat focus for Angela. Maintaining Angela’s damage is reliant on managing your power level and where you throw your special attacks in your power meter.

Additionally, Angela can parry non-contact attacks, which is very helpful for a certain robot with a face in his chest. More on that matchup later.

The Unique Abilities

Angela has one ability that is totally unique in the game. Based on the level of her signature ability, she can reduce the duration of all non-damaging debuffs on her for each buff she has. At max sig, she only needs 3 buffs in order to reduce the durations of all damaging debuffs by 100% (making her effectively immune to all of them).

Also, based on her sig level and number of buffs, she can reduce the ability accuracy of nullify and auto-block effects.

This means you naturally want to chase 3 buffs as quickly as possible. Thankfully, once you get to 3 buffs, it is very easy to keep 3 active at all times. She can get them most easily in these 3 ways:

Odin Pre-Fights. 4 buffs, right at the start, including Aptitude, Shock Resistance, Protection, and Armor Up. This is ideal for any gamemode that allows synergies.
Land a critical hit and take more than 10% of your health in damage. This will give you 2 Armor Up buffs and 1 Regeneration buff. This is the most likely scenario for hazard shift type fights. If you need your 2nd Armor Up quickly, use a heavy, which has extra critical rating and minimizes hits. Then, as you get a few procs of damaging debuffs on you, you should take enough damage to trigger your Regeneration buff. (Note: this does not mean you have to cross the 90% health threshold. You can heal back damage you take from willpower or other sources and still trigger Angela’s regeneration buff.)
Land a critical hit while above 1 bar of power. This will give you 1 Armor Up buff and 2 Fury buffs. You are most likely to use this method in fights where her abilities aren’t needed immediately, like some auto-block matches.

Full Champion Abilities

Signature Ability – Battle Focus

Always Active:
For each Buff on Angela, her opponent suffers the following:

-35.05% Nullify & Auto-Block Ability Accuracy.
-35.05% Damaging Debuff Duration.

Abilities

Blocking – Fighting Non-Mystic Champions
Advanced training allows Angela to Parry Non-Contact attacks.

When Damaged

For each 10% of Max Health taken in damage, gain an indefinite Resilience Charge.
When below Max Health, if Angela does not have a Regeneration Buff, she converts 1 Resilience Charge into a Regeneration Buff, healing 2366.7 Health over 10 seconds.

Indefinite Huntress Buff – Always Active
Angela gains an indefinite Buff based on her current Power Level.

Below 1 Bar: Armor Up, granting +964.29 Armor Rating.
Between 1 and 2 Bars: Fury, granting +3469.85 Attack Rating.
Between 2 and 3 Bars: Precision, granting +2250 Critical Rating.
3 Bars: Aptitude, increasing the Potency of all Fury, Armor Up, and Precision Buffs by 60%.

Temporary Huntress Buffs – Critical Hits
100% chance to duplicate the current, indefinite Huntress Buff. This duplicated Buff lasts 15 seconds. A maximum of 1 of each type of Huntress Buff may be duplicated at a time.

Heavy Attacks
This attack receives +2250 Critical Rating.

Special Attacks

Angela’s terrifying aura inflicts 1 Armor Break Debuff on the opponent for each Buff on Angela, removing an Armor Up Buff and reducing Armor Rating by 250 for 7 seconds.

Special 1

100% chance to gain a Fury Buff for 5 seconds, granting 3468.85 Attack.
This Fury Buff instead lasts 20 seconds if Angela already had a Fury Buff active on herself.

Special 2

100% chance to gain an Armor Up Buff for 5 seconds, granting +964.29 Armor Rating.
This Armor Up Buff instead lasts 20 seconds if Angela already had an Armor Up Buff active on herself.

Special 3

100% chance to gain an Aptitude Buff, increasing the potency of Armor, Fury, and Precision Buffs by 60% lasting for 5 seconds.
This Aptitude Buff instead lasts 30 Seconds if Angela already had an Aptitude Buff active on herself.
Angela’s Attack Rating is increased by +2040.5 for each Buff active on her during the attack.

My Thoughts on Angela

Angela is one of my favorite champions. She has been my first Cosmic rank up whenever a new rank is released, and has been since 6 star Rank 4. She is an incredibly versatile character, and there are very few things that can slow her down. She is very easy to play, but there are things you can do to optimize her rotation to make her as effective as possible. I hope those things come across in this post and that I can convey why I think Angela is such an incredible champion.

Does Angela Need to Be Awakened?

Yes, Angela absolutely needs to be awakened to have access to her best abilities. Her sig level determines the strength of her auto-block, nullify, and damaging debuff counters. The sweet spot for Angela’s signature ability is 183 (this gives her a 33.43% reduction to all 3 targeted abilities). This means that at 3 buffs, this threshold exceeds 100%. However, some cases (like Arcade) require more than 100% reduction, and sig 200 gives a 35% reduction. I consider sig 200 to be worth it for Angela.

Best At?

Angela has the best pseudo-immunities in the game. Because she is reducing the duration of debuffs, none of her abilities count as formal immunities and won’t trigger abilities that listen for immunities. Her ability to reduce the duration of damaging debuffs is especially helpful for debuffs that few champions are immune to, such as disintegration, plasma, corrosion, or neuroshock.

Overlooked Interactions

Less susceptible to gameplay disruption

One strong ability Angela has that is not in her character description is her ability to be resilient against fights that disrupt your tempo. There are a handful of places where a significant slowdown in the fight can reduce her damage temporarily, but she can go back up to the same damage level within one bar of power. This is very helpful in fights such as Arnim Zola when his SP1 energizes begin to stack up and force you to minimize hits to avoid the SP2.

Nullify on fight start

Angela’s sig ability can protect her against nullify except for at the start of the fight. This means that nodes (like power snack) that trigger right at the start of the fight will nullify your buffs, regardless of how many you have. This can leave you vulnerable if you need any of her buff-dependent abilities.

Matchup Summary

This is a list of matchups I wanted to highlight because they are good, bad, or tricky and force you to modify your normal loop.

Arnim Zola

Angela is a good, safe counter to Arnim Zola, but will consistently lose speed races to characters like Karolina Dean. Angela can parry non-contact attacks, leaving easy room for heavy attacks when Zola’s ESP charges get too high. Because of the increased critical rating, heavy attacks feel pretty good once you have a few furies online. If you choose to push Zola to his SP2, Angela can regenerate some of the disintegration damage back, but you will lose health. I find that Zola is a great option to use the 2 bars of power damage boost at the end of a battlegrounds fight. (See Gamemode Summary, General Rotation Summary.)

Arcade

Arcade is a tricky matchup because he takes away a lot of Angela’s most unique abilities, but she is still a good counter to Arcade. In fact, I got my highest scores against Coliseum Arcade using Angela.

Arcade’s debuffs cannot have their duration reduced, which takes the damaging debuff duration reduction ability off the table for Angela. He also has an additional 100% ability accuracy for all of his abilities, including auto-block. This means that Angela needs 6 buffs in order to turn off his auto-block.

Other than those, you can play Angela vs. Arcade like you would with almost any other attacker. Dash in at the right time during the SP1, and weave in a heavy after the SP2.

See this video for how to successfully dodge Arcade's SP1.

M.O.D.O.K.

M.O.D.O.K.’s auto-block cannot have its ability accuracy reduced, so Angela doesn’t have an advantage for this fight. However, she can work for M.O.D.O.K. if you are careful about using your heavy attack to disable his shield.

High Evolutionary

High Evolutionary’s auto-block cannot have its ability accuracy reduced, so Angela doesn’t work very well here. The matchup can work, but it’s very difficult and Angela does not have an advantage here.

Galan

Avoid this matchup at all costs. Every critical hit below one bar of power will give Angela an Armor Up buff, ramping Galan’s harvest very quickly.

This video shows how fast you can lose this fight.

Sentinel

Sentinel is not a great matchup for Angela because she relies on critical hits to get many of her buffs, and Sentinel has high critical resistance. This fight can work in a pinch if you keep his Analysis Charges down.

Shuri

Angela is a great counter from Shuri due to her ability to parry non-contact attacks. Just make sure to avoid baiting a heavy attack, because she can trigger an untouchable if Shuri has enough armor charges.

Red Skull

This matchup is good because Angela can hit through his auto-block. This matchup gets a lot better with the Odin Pre-Fights because Angela can inflict more Armor Breaks on her Special Attacks, removing Red Skull’s Armor Ups quicker and making the Parry mastery more reliable.

Warlock

Angela works great for Warlock. Warlock’s Techno-Organic Virus has its duration reduced for each unique debuff, which Angela has a lot of. You’re unlikely to take any degeneration damage in this fight. Angela’s Armor Breaks can also reduce Warlock’s tankiness.

Peni Parker

Peni Parker’s auto-block is protected from ability accuracy reduction, but this fight is still good. Angela’s furies allow her to break down Peni’s shield much faster than most champions. However, there are quite a few Cosmic champions that outclass her in this matchup.

Shocker

Angela is great for Shocker. He will basically never auto-block, so it is a very safe matchup.

Wow, Angela Can Take...?

Havok

Angela is a perfect counter to Havok. She can easily have 100% uptime on an Armor Up buff, and can parry non-contact attacks, making Havok a walk in the park.

Immortal Abomination

If Angela can get to 3 buffs in any way (see Angela Summary, Unique Abilities), she can become effectively immune to Immortal Abomination’s poison debuffs.

Bishop

This matchup is not quite as automatic as other Bishop counters, but her sig ability can allow her to deal with the Steady Release incinerates. However, she has no counter to Bishop’s unblockable special attacks.

Gamemode Summary

In this section, I’ll cover the general rotation first, then highlight the gamemodes where you may need to adjust your approach or pay attention to additional details to perform effectively.

General Rotation Summary

Angela’s most consistent rotation is very simple: You build up to 1.9 bars of power, then throw your SP1, and keep doing this on repeat until the opponent dies.

From this general rule, you can add two options to Angela’s rotation to make her more effective. First, take advantage of the increased critical rating on her heavy attack by chaining heavies in the corner for massive damage. This is easiest right after a striker, since the striker reliably pushes the opponent back. Second, you can push to your SP2 for a big finish. Going above two bars of power gives you a window of huge critical hits from her precision buffs, but once your furies expire your damage will dip until you can get back into the consistent SP1 rotation.

The only other time I deviate from this rotation is when I have massive power gain from a gamemode like incursions. In these cases, going to the SP3 is ideal because it grants extra attack for each buff on Angela, which you likely also have in incursions. Ultimately though, it doesn’t really matter what rotation you use when every single hit deals millions of damage.

Alliance War

Angela is excellent for Alliance War. She is very good for Hazard Shift fights with one notable exception: Bleed. Let’s talk about math in MCOC to explain why.

TL;DR: The Deep Wounds mastery makes it so Angela’s debuff duration reduction doesn’t work.

When determining how long a debuff should be, MCOC’s game engine first calculates percentage-based increases or reductions first and then calculates additions or subtractions to that amount.

Let’s say, for example, that you are inflicted with a bleed debuff lasting for 7 seconds while having 4 buffs active. If Angela is at max sig, this results in a 140% reduction to the duration of the debuff. Because debuffs can’t last for a negative amount of time, the duration of this debuff is reduced to zero. From there, if the opponent has the Deep Wounds mastery active and maxed out, this will add 2.5 seconds to the duration of the bleed after Angela‘s reduction has been applied.

This matters because in Alliance War, 2.5 seconds is plenty of time for a debuff to decimate your health bar and will likely result in a death if you forget about this interaction.

Note: The torment effect also adds flat (or additive) duration to damaging debuffs, which will partially bypass Angela’s sig ability.

Incursions

Angela is absolutely terrifying in incursions. Her debuff reduction ability makes nodes like Biohazard and Freezer Burn non-issues, but her real power is the Odin Synergy and Pre-Fights. If you have Odin on the team, Angela gets +5% buff potency for all buffs per fight the team has won. This means that at the end of a 25 room run, Angela is getting +350% buff potency. From my experience, you start to feel the effect of the synergy around Room 8, and you feel it more if you have hacks that are giving you buffs.

There are no “perfect” hacks for an Angela incursions run, as she can work with a lot of options. From my experience, hacks that give buffs or Armor Breaks tend to be best for Angela.

Bonus Videos

Photon - Battlegrounds

This isn't an ideal fight for Angela, but it can work in a pinch. Angela is Rank 5 here, but she has plenty of damage to deal with this fight. Photon is very stingy with her special attacks here, so this fight could be 10-15 seconds faster, but the health lost is realistic.

Attuma - Battlegrounds

Angela has no protection against Attuma's thorns, so you will lose health here, but it can work. Angela is Rank 5 in this video.