Viv Vision Champion Guide

Viv Vision Summary

Viv Vision is a quick, bursty Tech attacker with utility for days. Included in her kit are power drain, power gain, combat power rate control, heal block, a unique block mechanic, invalidate, bleed, poison, nullify, and fate seal immunity, increased ability accuracy, and reversed controls immunity. All of these abilities cover so much ground that she can effectively counter most of the Mutant class and more!

These abilities all have different triggers and it can be hard to keep track of them when you are playing Viv for the first time. Below is a quick reference guide for how you can bring her utility pieces online.

Bleed and Poison Immunity

Nothing. This immunity is always active.

Nullify and Fate Seal Immunity

Have an armor up effect active.

Stun Immunity

Be phased.

Phase Ability

Have a phase charge and perform a well-timed block to cause all attacks to miss for 1 second. Gain phase charges via your combo ending attacks, heavy attack, and SP1.

Power Drain

Get hit with a light or medium attack or use your phase.

Power Gain

Consume solar energy. The amount of power gain you get is increased while you have more than 5 solar energy if Viv is awakened.

Combat Power Rate Control

Use your 4th light attack to place a supression debuff and/or use the collar tech mastery. The supression is paused when not attacking the opponent or using a special attack.

Heal Block

Use your 2nd medium attack to place a heal block on the opponent. Keep the supression paused by attacking the opponent.

Invalidate

Use your heavy attack to invalidate up to 3 prowess and deal a burst of damage. This damage scales with the number of prowess invalidated.

Increased Ability Accuracy

Viv has +25% ability accuracy always and an extra 75% when she has her SP3 fury buff.

Reversed Controls Immunity

Have the SP3 fury buff.

My Thoughts on Viv Vision

Viv Vision is my favorite champion in Marvel Contest of Champions! There is so much to love about Viv, including her damage, utility, animations, and how much fun she is to play. I would absolutely love to see Viv as an ascendable champion in the near future.

I also see Viv as a champion that has a very elegant design. She is an attacker that addresses her target matchups in incredibly creative and unique ways. This has caused her to age incredibly well as a champion. One example of this is her phase ability, which opens up so many matchups to her. This ability allows her to address non-contact attacks and stun immunity, which are two major threats in the Mutant class and elsewhere in the Contest.

If you keep reading, you’ll see a lot more about what makes Viv so amazing. Here, I do want to take some time to acknowledge Viv’s shortcomings. First, once Viv completes her first rotation, her damage output slows down significantly. I consider this the balance price you need to pay for that first loop being so powerful. Second, Viv has incredibly low block proficiency. Normally, this isn’t an issue because she has such easy access to her slow, but it can be punishing in certain situations. To combat this, I use the block proficiency stat focus on Viv, which helps her a lot. Third, Viv is just a glass cannon in general, which means her health is lower than most champions. There’s not much you can do about this except use your phase often and avoid blocked hits.

For all the weaknesses Viv has though, I don’t see them as failures of champion design but as successes. Low health and block proficiency force you to play Viv well or get hurt and limited long-form potential allows other champions to shine in those places in the Contest.

All in all, Viv Vision comes out to be my favorite champion in the Contest because of how fun she is to play. There is something magical about Viv’s kit that allows you to have whatever tool you need exactly when you need it without the kit feeling overcrowded.

Does Viv Vision Need to Be Awakened?

TL;DR: Yes, Viv absolutely needs to be awakened and sig 200 to be effective.

Viv Vision’s sig ability is incredibly important for her rotation and damage. In addition to making her hit much harder, it also gives her the ability to execute her damage loop significantly faster.

Rotation

Viv’s maximum damage rotation is SP2 - SP1 - SP1 - SP1. An unawakened Viv needs to build power between those SP1s like any other champion, which makes her damage per second much less viable for gamemodes like Battlegrounds. However, a sig 200 Viv can gain back a full bar of power immediately after a SP1, enabling her to throw them back to back. You can see an example of this in this video.

Damage

Viv’s signature ability improves her damage in the form of energy vulnerabilities. She places dormant energy vulnerabilities by using combo-ending attacks and then converts them to passives on the first of her three SP1s she throws. They then boost your incinerate/plasma damage significantly as you watch the opponent melt. Watch the dormant energy vulnerabilities be converted in this video:

Best At?

Viv Vision is the best at never taking block damage because of her phase ability. If played correctly, Viv can have a phase charge every time she needs to parry, allowing her to phase through the attack and continue attacking. To regain your phase charge, you must consume solar energy by using a light or medium combo ender, a heavy attack, or SP1. If you can consistently focus on doing these, you never need to block an attack. One sign of a Viv Vision fight going very well is seeing “no damage taken” at the end of a fight.

Overlooked Interactions

Collar Tech Mastery

The Collar Tech mastery is a mastery that applies to Tech champions and lowers the opponent’s combat power rate by a certain amount per rank invested. This mastery is very helpful for Viv because it synergizes with her power drain and supression debuff to shut the opponent out of much of their power, allowing you to be much more aggressive.

Immune to Nullify and Fate Seal with an Armor Effect

As long as Viv has an armor up buff, she is immune to nullify and fate seal. This ability is incredibly helpful against nodes like buffet and champions like Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom.

Heavy Attack Invalidate

This is an ability that is easy to forget about but is very helpful in certain Mutant matchups. I usually don’t use this ability if the opponent has no prowess because it interrupts your tempo, but against an opponent with prowess, it can be an impressive source of damage.

Ability Accuracy Protection

Viv has a number of ways to protect her ability accuracy, many of which protect her when fighting Domino. Notably, her solar charges and SP3 fury buff are not subject to ability accuracy reduction and she can get a blanket +75% ability accuracy with her SP3 fury buff. This helps protect her loop in matchups where it really matters.

Immunity to Reversed Controls

Viv can become immune to reversed controls, but only after using her SP3 and getting her fury buff. In practice, this means that you will have to play around reversed controls for at least part of the fight. Use cases for this include fights like Jean Grey or nodes that make you deal with reversed controls.

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.

Mr. Sinister

Viv Vision is a perfect counter to Mr. Sinister. Being a robot, she avoids debuffs being transferred to her, so she can bait Mr. Sinister’s SP1 over and over again. I like to play this fight by going for a medium combo ender to start, giving Sinister a heal block. From there, I stay aggressive and use light ending combos for supressions until the heal block falls off, at which point I use a medium combo ender to bring it back. If Viv and Sinister are even ranks, Viv’s normal rotation is plenty to take him down.

Jean Grey

Viv Vision is one of my favorite counters for Jean Grey, provided you can confidently dodge her special attacks with reversed controls. For Jean Greys with higher health (like in Alliance War), consider going for the SP3, which will give you more damage and immunity to reversed controls.

Viv is also my favorite battlegrounds counter to Jean Grey. Below are 3 fights against Jean Grey in different metas.

Domino

Viv has great protections against most of Domino’s abilities, including her critical failure and ability accuracy reduction. Viv also doesn’t need to worry about Domino’s non-contact attacks because she can just phase through them. However, Viv has no evade counter, so you need to keep an eye on Domino when she has her lucky effect.

Apocalypse

Viv can invalidate Apocalypse’s start-of-the-fight prowess and can avoid the punishing block damage on his special attacks by phasing through them correctly. See the timing of these below.

Dazzler

Viv can be good for Dazzler, but you need to keep in mind one important ability: Dazzler’s damage reflection. Dazzler will reflect all physical damage she takes while striking the opponent. Normally this is not an issue, but it can be when Viv phases. This means that Dazzler can continue hitting into Viv as she begins her combo, making Viv take damage back from the first hit in her combo. You need to time your attacks carefully to play this fight well.

Kitty Pryde

You need to be thoughtful in playing around Kitty Pryde’s phase ability, but you can keep her away from her phase by using Viv’s heavy attack invalidate to remove her prowess.

Dust

Viv is an excellent counter to Dust. Because Viv never needs to block, she can avoid one of Dust’s main threats. Viv’s damage is also not subject to Dust’s high base stats, such as her critical resistance, armor rating, and physical resistance. Viv is one of the best options for Dust in Alliance War when she is placed on Node 31 or Node 42.

Emma Frost

Emma’s defensive threats include stun immunity (which Viv’s phase gets around) and a wide assortment of immunities, which does not include plasma, Viv’s main source of damage against Mutants.

Cyclops

Because of Cyclops’s True Sense buff, Viv’s phase doesn’t work because he can’t miss.

Storm (Pyramid X)

Viv is able to turn off Storm’s main threats, including her large special attacks and glancing ability. Viv can remove the prowess through invalidate and Storm’s tempests via her power drain when she phases.

Gentle

Viv does need to play around Gentle’s unstoppable (which she can do with her phase and good timing) but she doesn’t need to worry about the effects that make Gentle a tank, like his reinforce or physical resistance.

This video is from Coliseum Gentle. It's not perfect, and Viv is not a champion built for long fights, but it shows pretty well how you should fight Gentle with Viv.

Havok

Havok asks you to bring armor up buffs to the fight, and Viv has plenty of those. Her phase ability also makes Havok’s non-contact attacks a non-issue.

This video is of a Havok fight on Node 18 of Alliance War. It isn't perfect, but it is very safe.

Cassandra Nova

Cassandra Nova can be a pain because she has non-contact attacks and stuns you when you punish her heavy. Viv is good for this fight because she can phase through Cassandra’s non-contact attacks and keep fighting.

Omega Red

Omega Red applies his spores much more slowly to robots, making Viv a perfect counter to him. You do not need to modify your rotation at all for this fight, just bait SP1s and use your supression.

Wow, Viv Vision Can Take...?

Absorbing Man

Viv Vision can use her phase to avoid block damage and her heal block to stop Absorbing Man’s healing. Just make sure Absorbing Man isn’t in Magma form when you throw your SP1 or SP2.

Doctor Doom

Viv is immune to nullify, which means she won’t get a shock on her against Doom. Doom also has high block penetration, which Viv doesn’t care about because of her phase.

Arnim Zola

Viv Vision is definitely a sneaky counter for Zola. She is able to get around his non-contact attacks and throw heavies out of her phase. Her damage type is also good for Zola as she does not rely on big special attack hits.

In this fight, you do need to keep in mind that Zola’s combat power rate can’t be reduced, so Viv’s SP1 doesn’t grant zero power like usual. I like to have Zola as close to zero power as possible before starting my SP1 cycle.

This fight is against an Arnim Zola in Alliance War on Node 45.

Sentinel

Viv Vision can work well for Sentinel, especially because her bursts of damage can quickly bypass his power gain at the end of the fight. However, Sentinel’s analysis charges reduce bursts of damage by 50% at 100 charges, so you need to factor that in when considering your rotation. Without a rank advantage, I would consider going for your SP3 rotation.

Red Skull

Red Skull can be difficult to fight because he decreases the ability accuracy of your stuns. Because Viv Vision can use her phase, this is not an issue. The primary thing to play around in this fight is Red Skull’s auto-block and unstoppable. I like to bait the SP1, phase through the last hit, and counter it with my heavy attack. I do that in this video.

Defender Summary

On defense, Viv has a few things to be aware of. First, Viv will power drain 6% of your current power if you strike her with a light or medium attack. In practice, this means that getting to 1 bar of power is painful and 2 bars is next to impossible. You can bypass this by using heavy attacks, having passive power gain, or being immune to power drain. This also means that Galan tears Viv Vision to shreds.

Secondly, if you have less than a bar of power, Viv’s SP1 is unblockable. Because of the aforementioned power drain, it is more likely than usual that you will need to dodge an unblockable SP1. This special can be especially punishing to miss the dex on because you can take a massive amount of incinerate damage depending on Viv’s current solar energy. You can avoid this with steadfast, incinerate immunity, or just pushing Viv to her SP2.

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

Viv Vision has two rotations that you will need to choose from when entering a fight. This decision ends up being very important because Viv needs to be able to close out a fight by the end of her rotation or the fight can drag on much longer than you want it to. The decision you make should depend on factors speeding up or slowing down your damage, as well as the size of the opponent’s health pool.

Choosing a Rotation

In Battlegrounds, Viv’s standard rotation is usually sufficient if you and your opponent are at equal ranks and there are no mitigating factors hindering your damage. If Viv has a rank disadvantage compared to her opponent or they have energy or burst damage resistance, consider using Viv’s extended rotation.

This decision is important because of the way Viv exchanges her currencies throughout the fight. She can trade in armor up buffs for solar charges on her SP2 and trade solar charges for damage on her SP1. Over time, Viv will build back her armor up buffs after spending them, but it’s unlikely that you will ever reach their limit ever again. Because of this, you should only count on getting one cycle where you deal maximum damage and everything after that will deal reduced damage because you can’t get as many armor up buffs as you had at the start of the fight.

Because you want Viv to deal as much damage as possible on that first cycle, her SP3 is even more important because it grants her a large fury buff, extending her range to finish out fights.

A few months ago, Simula put out a very helpful guide measuring Viv's damage potential in both her standard and extended rotations at different ranks and rarities. This table, with an additional row for the 7 Star Rank 5 rank, can be found below. Simula's original video is located below the table.

Regardless of which rotation you choose, you will ideally use 5 combo ending attacks before throwing your SP2. This will give you dormant energy vulnerabilities, which will increase the damage of your SP1s significantly.

After you finish your SP2, you will have 15 solar energy. In order to deal bursts of damage on every hit of the SP1, you need to have all 15 solar energy. If you have less than 15 because you need to do more combo ending attacks to get dormant energy vulnerabilities, you should wait before throwing your 3rd SP1 so your solar energy can recharge.

SP2 Minigame

The SP2 has a mini-game similar to Dazzler and Blue Marvel where you need to tap the screen in time with Viv’s hits. See this video for an example:

Standard Rotation (SP2 - SP1 - SP1 - SP1)

This is the rotation I use a vast majority of the time in Battlegrounds fights. In this rotation, I build up to about 1.7 bars of power, using Viv’s phase and combo-ending attacks to avoid block damage. Once there, I use my SP2 and complete the minigame. From there, I use my phase once to build power up to my SP1. Once I’m there, I bait out a special (if needed) so the opponent is under a bar of power, making Viv’s SP1 unblockable. Then I use the SP1 three times in a row and hope that is enough to finish the fight. If it’s not enough damage, I will usually use a combination of heavy attacks and SP1s until the opponent is knocked out.

Extended Rotation (SP3 - SP2 - SP1 - SP1 - SP1)

This rotation is almost exactly the same as the standard rotation, but you throw your SP3 first. This has the added benefit of increased damage and ability accuracy, as well as reversed controls immunity. You can use this if you are threatened by either of those RPG abilities and should use it if you believe you won’t have enough damage for the standard rotation to end the fight.

Bonus Videos

Negasonic Teenage Warhead - Alliance War Node 27

Sasquatch - Alliance War Node 36

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