Spiral Champion Guide

Spiral Summary

Spiral is a fun, control-focused Mystic champion that excels in her target matchups. In addition to this, Spiral is also ascendable, and I see her as one of the most powerful ascendable champions right now.

While Spiral does have a lot of good targets in the Cosmic class, she is especially good for Serpent. She punishes power gain, destroys Death Immunity buffs, replaces the Dexterity mastery, and causes frequent special knockdowns, all of which are perfect for Serpent. More on that in the specific matchups section.

Spiral’s main skill ask is for you to alternate these 5 actions: light attack, medium attack, heavy attack, dodge backwards, and block. (Don’t use Spiral’s heavy attack unless you have to, it interrupts your tempo too much.) This means that Spiral generally should not use the typical MLLLM combo. Instead, you should use LMLM or MLM combos. Once you get used to these, playing Spiral starts to feel very intuitive.

Spiral also has a strong power steal mechanic, which is how she is able to do very long combos while keeping the opponent’s power under control. Her power steal also gets 4 times more powerful when the opponent has a power gain buff.

Spiral’s main form of buff control is by using the Destroy mechanic, which removes (not nullifies) one of each of the following buffs: Fury, Precision, Unblockable, Death Immunity, Immortality, and Indestructible. After the buff is removed, it is replaced with a 45 second Rubble buff, which does nothing. This lets Spiral remove Serpent’s start-of-the-fight Fury buff and the cheat-death buffs of a number of Cosmic champions, including Serpent and Dark Phoenix.

Spiral also has a conditional dex replacement mechanic against non-Science champions. However, this is only active when Spiral’s Dancing Blades are active, which happens after each special attack. This ability still works when Dancing Blades are unable to be fired after the SP1.

Full Champion Abilities

Signature Ability – Mojoworld Stuntwoman

While Dancing Blades are active, Spiral Instantly Regenerates up to 60% of damage taken from Blocked hits.
For each Fervor on Spiral, the durations of incoming Shock, Incinerate, and Poison Debuffs are reduced by 10%.

Abilities

Deadly Dancer – Always Active

Spiral’s magical and martial mastery grants her Immunity to Falter, and increases the Ability Accuracy of Stun effects by 100%.
All of Spiral’s Weapon Attacks have -20% Offensive Combat Power Rate and a 1% chance to inflict a 947 Rupture Debuff over 10 seconds, paused during Spiral’s Special Attacks.
When a personal Rupture would be inflicted on the Opponent, if they are not at Max Power, Spiral Power Steals 1% of their Max Power, increased by +3% flat while the Opponent has a Power Gain Buff.
For each Buff on the Opponent, Spiral’s personal Rupture potency is increased by 10%.
Spiral does not benefit from the Mystic Dispersion Mastery. Instead, her personal Ruptures gain +1 second duration for each rank invested.

Martial Fervor – Max: 15

Each time Spiral performs a Light Attack, Medium Attack, Heavy Attack, Dodges back, or Blocks an attack, if it is not the same action as the one performed previously, she gains a 600% Fervor Passive for 13 seconds.
Fervors are paused during Spiral’s Special Attacks and while the Opponent has a Power Gain Buff.
Fervors are also paused for 10 seconds upon reaching the stack limit. When the pause expires, 10 Fervors are removed. Does not expire while Fervors are paused by another ability.
Spiral has 13.58 Energy and Physical Resistance for each Fervor she has gained without repeating an action.
Fervors expire 100% faster for each one past the first two gained consecutively without making contact with the Opponent or Blocking an attack.

Before the Opponent Lands an Attack

While Blocking, Spiral’s mystical weapons have a 100% chance to Destroy one of each Fury, Precision, Unblockable, Death Immunity, Immortality, and Indestructible Buff on the Opponent, replacing them with Rubble Buffs lasting 45 seconds.
Rubble Buffs are empty Buffs that Spiral can count on the Opponent, which raises her Rupture potency.

Special Attacks

Beam hits gain 947 Attack Rating for each Rupture on the Opponent, increased by 30% for each Bar of Power Spent.
Spiral summons her Dancing Blades for 10 seconds per Bar of Power spent, paused during Special Attacks.

Dancing Blades

Against non-Science Opponents, while Dancing Blades are active, Spiral is not struck by attacks while Dodging backwards, and Precisions she would gain from the Dexterity Mastery are granted to the Opponent instead.
While Spiral is not Blocking an attack or Stunned, Dancing Blades can be fired as a single projectile when Spiral is struck by a Light Attack 2 or swipes up while holding Block.
If the Opponent is struck by Dancing Blades, inflict a Stun Passive for 2 seconds as well as a non-stacking 562.5 Vulnerability Debuff for 10 seconds.
If the Blades strike the Opponent or their Block, Spiral triggers her Destroy.
As an Attacker, Dancing Blades cannot be fired for 2 seconds after being summoned by Special Attack 1.

Special Attack 3

This attack gains Attack Rating based on Fervors instead of Ruptures.
This Special Attack summons Dancing Blades, and both the Blade’s duration and the Attack Rating gain still scale with Bars of Power spent.

My Thoughts on Spiral

As I made this guide, I came to appreciate Spiral more and more. She is a remarkably versatile champion with a very fun playstyle once you get used to it. If you are willing to put in the time to learn how to play Spiral, the gameplay rewards are well worth it.

From a design perspective, I think Spiral answers many of the threats of the Cosmic class in an elegant and creative way. I especially like the way her fervor answers glancing (more on that later) and how her fight control via long combos delays the activation of special attacks that may come with negative effects, such as unstoppable or auto-block abilities.

While I haven’t pulled Spiral from the Super Duper Ascension Box yet, I am very excited for when I do. I am looking forward to seeing Spiral get more focus from the community in upcoming months and years.

Does Spiral Need to Be Awakened?

TL;DR: I think Spiral’s awakened ability depends on where you intend on using her.

If you play Tier 1 Alliance War, Spiral’s sig ability is very helpful and should be at sig 200. Otherwise, an awakened Spiral is nice and is worth sig stone investment if you find yourself using her a lot.

Spiral’s sig has 2 clauses: the first lets you regenerate some health on block and the second allows you to reduce the duration of certain damaging debuffs based on the number of fervors you have.

The first clause is nice to have but not particularly necessary. It is helpful because Spiral’s rotation will involve a lot of blocking, but I have my Spiral at low sig and I have not noticed block damage being a specific pain point.

The second clause seems targeted at Serpent being placed on certain hazard shift nodes in Alliance War, but can be helpful in a lot of places. This ability reduces the duration of Shock, Incinerate, and Poison debuffs by a certain amount per fervor. Because your goal will be to reduce their duration to zero, Spiral’s sig level matters a lot. At sig 1, you can only ever reach a maximum reduction of 75% duration. Sig 200 lets you reach a 100% reduction at 10 fervors, up to a 150% reduction. (A 150% reduction can be helpful for champions like Immortal Abomination, who can inflict poisons at 130% duration at max sig.)

Best At?

Combo Chaining - Control

There are two characters in the game I would consider to be the best at combo chaining: Spiral and Silk. Both can use a combination of strikers and their own abilities to extend their combos for a really long time. The difference between these two is that Silk’s combo chaining is best at damage whereas Spiral’s combo chaining is best at power control. Spiral’s combos can extend for a long time while keeping the opponent’s power under control. Because Spiral’s damage is primarily damage over time via Rupture, she deals damage throughout her combos rather than all at once. This incentivizes you to keep your combos going as long as possible so the opponent’s health bar can melt away.

Overlooked Interactions

Falter Immune

Spiral is immune to the Falter effect, which can be very helpful for a number of champions and nodes. This can help Spiral in matchups like Prowler, Ebony Maw, Super-Skrull, Dani Moonstar, Professor X, and Dazzler. This can also be helpful for various nodes in Alliance War and Story content. Note that this ability is just for falter and not other miss effects like Untouchable or Invisibility.

Increased Stun Ability Accuracy

Spiral has +100% increased ability accuracy on her stun effects, including from her parry stun and Dancing Blades. This is a fairly niche ability but can be very helpful against Adam Warlock, Red Skull, and Ruby Thursday specifically (though Spiral has no answer to auto-block). This can also help with effects like Disorient.

Glancing

The Glancing effect does 3 things: stops critical hits, reduces hit damage, and reduces your offensive ability accuracy by 100%. Spiral has no answer to the first 2 effects, but can counter the third to make sure she lands her ruptures. Because each of her fervors boosts her rupture ability accuracy (which starts at 1% ability accuracy) by 600% each, the glancing reduction does little to stop her.

For another perspective, here is the math for her rupture chance with 15 fervors against an opponent without glancing:

15 fervors x 600% potency = 9000%
9000% x 1% base chance + 1% base chance = 91% chance to inflict a rupture

And with glancing:

15 fervors x 600% potency = 9000%
-100% from glancing = 8900%
8900% x 1% base chance + 1% base chance = 90% chance to inflict a rupture

So, in practice, you will not notice a difference in how many ruptures you will be able to land against a glancing opponent.

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.

Serpent

Serpent is Spiral’s main target matchup. She counters his power gain, un-dexable special attacks, and death immunity. This matchup is actually quite straightforward, but it is easy to mess up the death immunity. In order to counter the death immunity, you need to either fire your Dancing Blades or block a hit (I prefer the Dancing Blades, it avoids some block damage). Just make sure that Serpent isn’t able to get his SP3 before you kill him.

Below are 2 different fights against Serpent in different metas. Both go pretty well, just note that I am getting increases to my damage in both of them (though I am punching up in both).

Maestro

This fight is great because Spiral doesn’t care about Glancing, which is Maestro’s main threat. On the other hand, she doesn’t have an answer to Cosmic Radiation, so she will take some chip damage. Spiral works great for Maestro in Battlegrounds regardless.

Dark Phoenix

I don’t have much experience with this matchup, but I have seen it go well for various content creators on YouTube. Here is one example:

Vision (Aarkus)

Spiral can take this match in a pinch, but you need to be mindful that Aarkus has 80% resistance to power steal, slowing Spiral’s power gain down significantly. Spiral also has no answer to Aarkus’s coldsnap and will take significant damage from it. Otherwise, Spiral benefits greatly from Aarkus’s constant power gain buffs.

Sersi

Spiral is great for Sersi because she makes Glancing irrelevant. Without Glancing, Sersi’s only remaining threat is unblockable special attacks, which Spiral can destroy.

Galan

Spiral can work for this fight in a pinch, but you need to focus on frequent knockdowns to keep Galan’s planetary mass down. Keep in mind that destroying his buffs will cause him to gain a new rubble buff and planetary mass.

Hulkling

While you may think this fight will go well, it won’t. While Spiral does counter Hulkling’s indestructible very well, Hulkling is immune to power steal, cutting off Spiral’s source of power gain and control and making your rotations much more difficult.

Medusa

Spiral can destroy Medusa’s furies by blocking or using her Dancing Blades. Be sure to be mindful of how high they are stacking to avoid being auto-blocked.

Super Skrull

Spiral is great for Super-Skrull. She benefits from his power gain buff when he has it, and her immunity to falter lets her get around Super-Skrull’s main defensive mechanic.

Sentinel

Sentinel tends to be vulnerable to damage over time effects, which is Spiral’s main damage source. Spiral’s goal of alternating her combos also fits in with that same objective when fighting Sentinel.

Adam Warlock

When Adam Warlock has his Sovereignty buff, the opponent’s parry stuns lose -100% ability accuracy. Because Spiral has +100% ability accuracy for her stuns, she can just parry Adam normally.

Wow, Spiral Can Take...?

Red Skull

Spiral is one of my go-to Battlegrounds options for Red Skull. Her main advantages here are her power control and extra stun ability accuracy, which guarantees your parries will stick and can keep Red Skull away from his special attacks, which slow down the fight a lot.

Ebony Maw and Prowler

Spiral is good for these matchups solely based on the fact that she is immune to falter, which is the main defensive threat of both of these champions. She can't parry non-contact attacks though, so it can be difficult to keep up your tempo and damage with less openings.

Immortal Abomination

I love using Immortal Abomination as a trap defender placement in Battlegrounds when the opponent does not have someone who’s immune to poison. However, I have seen a max-sig Spiral act as a trap attacker for this matchup, because she can reduce the duration of poison effects. Just be sure to keep your fervors as high as you can for as long as possible. If you do take this match, you will lose a decent amount of health. Just use a poison immune champion if you have one.

Defender Summary

Spiral has only 1 notable defensive ability in most fights. If Spiral has her Dancing Blades active, using your 2nd light attack will cause her to fire the blades and stun you. In order to avoid this, use only MLM combos or heavy attacks while Spiral has her Dancing Blades.

Spiral can also be a sneaky defender on hazard shift nodes because her fervor will increase the ability accuracy of those debuffs as well. In practice, if you fight Spiral on hazard shift, you should expect to be hit with a debuff on just about every hit.

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

I always start each fight with Spiral in the same way with this opening combo:

Parry - LMLM - Parry - LMLM - Dodge - LMLM - Special Attack

This combo has 2 benefits: first, it gets you to 15 fervors very quickly and second, it includes enough power stealing hits that your opponent won’t reach 1 bar of power before you get to 15 fervors. Because fervors do not pause during special attacks, allowing the opponent to throw a special attack can seriously mess up your tempo. The ideal time to bait a special attack from the opponent is while your pause is up.

Once your pause is up, it can free you up to do normal MLLLM combos and not worry about alternating your hits. This is a perfectly valid strategy, but I prefer to optimize Spiral further by continuing to use MLM or LMLM combos while I have the pause. This is because new fervors gained while your pause is up replace the oldest fervors, which lets you start from a better spot when you lose your pause.

Spiral also excels at very long combos. She can use her Dancing Blades and strikers to keep her combo going while she keeps her opponent’s power under control. See the video below for an example. I’ll use this combo:

LML - Blades - MLM - Striker - LMLM - SP2

There are a lot of ways to get creative with Spiral’s combos, and there is no “right” way to do things. Just use your combo extenders as convenient, especially when trying to hit 15 fervors to get the pause.

As for Spiral’s special attacks, they all do 2 things: a decent amount of damage and ready the Dancing Blades. This means you can generally use them whenever it is convenient, and ideally after every combo. If the opponent is at high power, keep in mind that the SP2 is much more likely to give them 3 bars of power because it has fewer hits that power steal from the opponent.