Marvel RivalsMarvel Rivals Adam Warlock Character Guide

Adam Warlock wields the power of Quantum Magic to link the souls of his allies together. Serving a different function than the typical Strategist archetype, he offers his team offensive capabilities over defense. Positioned right in the middle of his team, he can quickly switch between pressuring the enemy frontline and peeling for his backline. The burst damage Warlock brings to his team surpasses most Duelist's capabilities.

Where he falls behind the rest of the Strategist cast is in his limited instances of healing. Strategist typically can continually offer sustain to their team, but Adam can only do so in individual bursts. If you want to play Duelist but your team needs a Strategist, just go Warlock, out-perform your Duelists, and exert your dominance as the head-clicking hero.

Find out where Adam Warlock ranks in our Marvel Rivals tier list.

TLDR

As

• Force the enemy to retreat. Your primary focus should be to dish out so much damage on an enemy that they have to either retreat and hide, or they’ll die. 
• Protect your other Strategist. Always be watching for flankers attacking your other Strategist. They are your team's main source of healing and it’s your job to keep them alive. 
• Get behind cover to activate your ult, then walk into range of where your allies died. Otherwise, you and your team will be easily eliminated by the enemy.

Against

• Out-sustain his team. Rather than trying to go crazy and kill Warlock right away, try to slowly get the advantage by living longer than his team. After he's used Soul Bond, it's time to full committ to winning the fight.
• Warlock is good at keeping his team alive against short bursts of damage from heroes like Psylocke and Magik. He’s not good at keeping his team alive against consistent damage from heroes like The Punisher.
• Play out of his LoS. If you can position where he can’t damage you, you are completely shutting down his primary utility.

Strengths

Highest Damage Strategist

A Duelist in disguise, Warlock can out-duel and out-damage many of the Duelist heroes, while also providing his team some healing. His bursts of damage can take the enemy by surprise and secure KOs even when the enemy assumed they were safe.

Resurrections

Between his passive, two Team-Ups, and a team rez ultimate, Adam makes the enemies have to eliminate the same heroes over and over. Getting a second chance to win a fight significantly increases your team’s odds of winning that fight.

Passive Mutli-target Healing

Being able to quickly apply healing to everyone in his area without even needing to look at them is a major advantage when also trying to focus on damage. Adam and up to three other allies in his range get a burst of healing every time he clicks [E].

Weaknesses

Inconsistent Healing

When his team is constantly taking damage, Warlock quickly runs out of heals, and his team feels the lack of sustain. Soul Bond has an insane 40-second cooldown, so he's only using that once per fight. Focus on fighting his allies instead of him because his healing is much worse than his damage.

Resurrecting is worse than not dying

The other defensive Strategist's ultimates prevent their teams from dying in the first place and enable them to press for an offensive advantage. Adam’s ult only gets value when his teammates die in quick succession, and even then, they only come back with a sliver of health. He also can't use his ult to save himself like the rest of the Strategists can.

No Mobility

Both of his attacks would be so much more lethal if he had any form of mobility to reposition, take off angles, or jump over cover. Warlock is stuck where he’s at, so on defense, he relies purely on killing before getting killed since he can’t escape.

Primary Fire: Quantum Magic

Tips for Primary Fire: Quantum Magic

• Hitscan Strategist
• • When the enemy team is running fliers or has a Duelist attacking your team from a high ground position, it’s Warlock’s job to deal with them. Use your hitscan primary fire to force enemy Duelists to retreat. 
• Apply pressure
• • You don’t necessarily need to secure eliminations, but you do need to apply pressure to individual enemies. Landing a couple of shots on the enemy Strategist forces them to back away from their team, which limits the resources available to their frontline.
  • A few headshots on a Vanguard stops their advance and makes them back up and wait for healing.
• Increase healing output
• • When your team needs more healing, focus on headshotting Vanguards. They have the largest head-hurtboxes, and are generally closer and easier to hit. 
  • Every headshot takes one second off your Life Stream cooldowns, so landing a few critical hits with each ammo clip significantly increases your overall healing over the course of a match.

Secondary Fire: Cosmic Cluster

Tips for Cosmic Cluster

• Charge behind cover
• • Rather than standing in the open doing nothing other than taking damage, charge up your Right-click behind cover and only peek when firing.
• Animation cancel
• • Broth Primary fire and Secondary fire’s recovery animation can be canceled by activating the other. Learning the timing of the animation cancel significantly increases Adam’s damage potential. 
  • • To execute: Hold down Primary fire, and click Secondary fire as soon as you see Warlock raise his arm for the Primary fire animation.
    • • Done too quickly, and you’ll completely cancel primary fire without shooting a projectile, thus decreasing your damage.
  • You’ll be alternating between a hitscan and a travel projectile, so this tech isn’t viable for tracking fast-moving targets.
  • • Great against stationary Vanguards or to burn down shields, barriers, and deployables.
  • You can also immediately primary fire after a charged secondary fire.

[SHIFT]: Soul Bond

Tips for Soul Bond

• Prevents one instance of death.
• • Not only does Soul Bond distribute the damage between all those linked together, but it also prevents one instance of death. When Adam’s or a linked ally’s health reaches zero, the link breaks, and they are left with one HP. 
  • Can be used to survive enemy ults like Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, Magneto, etc.

[E]: Avatar Life Stream

Tips for Avatar Life Stream

• Don’t need to be looking at teammates.
• • As long as Warlock has LoS, (not blocked by a wall, etc.), he doesn’t need to look at any teammates to bounce Life Stream’s healing to them. 
• Always try to be in range of multiple allies.
• • More allies in range means more total healing, faster ult charge, and more sustain for your team. 
• Short Cooldown
• • With a short 6-second cooldown, you’ll want to use one charge any time you see allies not at full health. 
• Try to space out the two charges.
• • If you use both charges rapidly, you’ll be left with no way to heal yourself or allies until both come off cooldown.

[Q] Ultimate: Karmic Revival

Tips for Karmic Revival

• Reposition to Safety
• • When using the cocooned revival, make sure you reposition to a location where the enemy won't be able to immediately target you again.
  • Take High Ground
  • • Cacoon Revival is your only form of flying and mobility. Use the opportunity to take a position you could not access otherwise
• Should You Ult?
• • If you can fly to safety, Cocoon, activate ultimate, and get into range of your dead allies before their respawn timer expires, then you can resurrect your team after Cocooning yourself.
• Cancel if Your Team is Dead and you don’t have ult.
• • Just because you can cocoon, doesn't mean you should. If your team is already dead and the fight is lost, don't waste this extremely long cooldown. Hit "CANCEL" and save for later.
• Cancel if Multiple Enemies Have Followed You
• • If you see more than one enemy following your soul around, it's usually better to cancel the revival and use it on your next death.

[PASSIVE] Team-up: Cosmic Awareness

Tips for Soul Perseverance

• Ask for Luna
• • If you are going to play Adam, you 100% want Luna on your team. Her base healing is extremely high and makes up for your primary weakness.
  • The Team-Up is OP and will make Luna and allies invulnerable until they absorb 250 damage.

Team Comp Synergies

Team comps built around Adam Warlock attack aggressively, coordinate focus fire, and try to end fights quickly. Warlock gets out sustained by every other Strategist but excels at dealing damage and getting picks.

The reason to pick Adam over the rest of the Strategists is for his two ranged attacks, and ability to save his team a large and sudden burst of damage with Soul Bond. He’ll typically want another Strategist who can focus on healing and consistent sustain to make up for his weakness.

Against flankers, he’s an excellent anti-dive pick because he can burst down and out-duel most Duelists. When you’re team isn’t running heroes who can peel for their backline, Warlock provides his own peel.

• Vanguards: Doctor Strange, Magneto
• Duelists: Star-Lord
• Strategists: Adam Warlock, Luna Snow, Mantis

Hero Synergies

Vanguards: Dr. Strange

The sheer amount of shielding Strange brings to his team provides Warlock with ample protection to focus on spamming damage. When the melee enemies who typically counter Dr. Strange get in his face, burst them down and force them off your fellow magic wielder. Anytime the Eye of Agamotto stuns a few enemies, Warlock is the best Strategist Strange can have to secure the KOs before the stun ends.

Duelists: Star-Lord

Star-Lord constantly harasses enemy backlines and goes off on his own into dangerous positions. Warlock’s long-range attacks allow him to focus down the same targets that Star-Lord is flanking. The damage of these two heroes combined earns your team lighting fast elims on the enemy. Make sure to link him with Soul Bond anytime you see him fly up and yell, “All Right!”

Strategists: Luna Snow

Luna and Warlock are a very difficult backline for the enemy team to deal with. The high healing output of Luna makes up for Warlock's lack of healing, and his high damage makes up for her lack of damage. Arguably, they are the most dangerous backline duo to solo dive since freeze + charged secondary fire deletes all Duelists and melts away a Vanguard's health.

Make sure to check the scoreboard for when Luna has ult. When she has ult available, you can save the 40-second Soul Bond cooldown for after her ult has been used.

As of Season 3.5, their synergy is stronger than ever as Luna's Light and Shadow Karma functions as a mini Loki Imortality Rune. Between Soul Bond, ults, and the Team-Up, this duo makes their team feel invincible.