Marvel RivalsMarvel Rivals Emma Frost Character Guide

Emma Frost joined the Marvel Rivals roster on April 11th as the newest Vanguard!

She can switch between her regular form and Diamond Form to adapt to various situations. The lunge of Carbon Crush is deceptively far and often catches enemies off guard. Her primary limitation is her lack of mobility. She can’t chase after retreating enemies, and has no way to access high ground. On the frontline, she’s a serious threat and can win most Vanguard duels.

She remained a high-performing Vanguard throughout Season 2 and even with the nerfs in Season 3, expect her to remain a strong pick.

TLDR

How to Play As Emma Frost

• Emma Frost is a hybrid poke/brawl Vanguard. Keep enemies at bay with her poke and shield, then overpower them in close range with Diamond Form.
• Use her ult to prevent defensive ults and create an opening for your teammates to use their offensive ultimates.
• Use Psychic Spear at high charge or just before activating Diamond Form to maximize damage output. 

How to Play Against Emma Frost

• She has very poor mobility and short range. Position outside of her 7m Carbon Crush range when she is in Diamond Form.
• Focus her when she ults or uses Diamond Form. She can’t activate shield and will either have to cancel the ability or force her Strategists to dump all their resources just to keep her alive.
• Breaking her ultimate LoS with a wall, barrier, or shield for a fraction of a second will allow you to activate your ultimate.
• • Her ult does not penetrate shields. The easiest way to counter her ultimate is to get behind someone with a barrier.

Strengths

Versatility

The Ice Queen's greatest strength is her versatility. Her robust kit makes her a great choice for solo queue. Once her primary fire damage ramps up, she has great mid-range damage, and when paired with her Mind's Aegis barrier, she dominates poke battles. Unlike other poke Vanguards like Doctor Strange, who are weaker once the enemy gets into melee range, Emma Frost's Diamond Form enables her to go toe-to-toe with the best melee heroes. 

Ultimate Combos

Her ultimate can secure KOs on its own, but its true power lies in its ability to prevent enemy ultimates from being used. As all Marvel Rivals players know, the pace of team fights is largely controlled by defensive ultimates like Luna Snow. Being able to lock out defensive ultimates gives free kills to ally offensive ults like Star Lord’s.

Counters Winter Soldier and CC

Both Diamond Form and Psionic Seduction are completely CC immune. She can’t get hooked out of either by Winter Soldier. Moreover, even if Bucky gets a reset off his ult, all Emma Frost has to do is keep him in her ult, and she never has to hear “Again!” ever again.

Weaknesses

Poke or Melee

Although she's a close-range menace in Diamond Form, the enemy can kite the ability, then exploit the 15-second cooldown window. They also know she can't use her ranged abilities while in Diamond Form. Smart players will play around the Diamond Form’s cooldown and avoid the strength of both forms.

Poor Mobility

Emma Frost always has to be careful not to get caught out in the open as she has no way to disengage. Without her shield, she’s a squishy Vanguard. If she lunges into the enemy team to Crystal Crush without having an ally who can protect her, the damage reduction isn’t enough to keep her alive.

Damage has to ramp up

Emma Frost can be thought of as a snowball hero. Once she gains the upper hand and charges up her primary fire, or gains control of a chokepoint, she's extremely difficult to deal with. At the beginning of every teamfight, however, she's at her weakness and can struggle to maintain the same level of consistent value other Vanguards have.

Primary Fire: Telepathic Pulse

Tips for Telepathic Pulse

Poke tool

• Use to poke, build ult, and keep constant pressure on the enemy
• Focus on building up to at least 80 charge before pressing up aggressively. While the damage is lower, play safer near your team and corners.
• • Does not auto-track like Scarlet Witch.

Energy farming

• Anything you hit with primary fire builds energy, whether it is a hero, shield, or deployable.
• Sentience charges energy the fastest.
• • Damaging both an enemy and their Sentience stacks energy gain to 25/s.

Secondary Fire: Mind's Aegis

Tips for Mind's Aegis

Block healing resources

• The best use of Mind’s Aegis is to cut off Vanguards and Duelists from their Strategists' healing. Once they are cut off, your team can go for an aggressive KO on the enemy frontline.
• • Strategists have a hard time breaking the barrier on their own and are forced to reposition. 

Manage barrier health

• Similar to Invisible Woman’s shield, there is a short cooldown to recall and resummon the barrier. Let the shield regenerate health before redeploying.

Extra Protection during Diamond Form

• Barrier persists during Diamond Form, so set it in front of where you want to attackt to protect your assault.
• On the Other hand, saving the shield for your retreat after using Diamond Form can help you get out alive in open areas.

[E]: Psychic Spear

Tips for Psychic Spear

Double Damage

• Telepathic Pulse can also damage both the sentience and the enemy simultaneously.
• Pull the sentient soul out of the body of an enemy. Damage dealt to the sentience by Primary fire also damages the enemy.
• The enemy can shoot and break their soul to prevent Emma Frost from using it to damage them.

Spear before Diamond

• Always try to use Spear first if you're about to activate Diamond Form, as the melee attacks damage the sentience, but you can’t place the use Psychic Spear once in Diamond Form.

[SHIFT]: Diamond Form

Tips for Diamond form

Counter Crowd Control

• Especially important in the Emma Frost mirror matches. When you see the enemy pop Diamond Form, you need to counter with your own or you'll get destroyed by the grab + kick combo.
• Ultimates like Groot, The Thing and Doctor Strange that inflict stun can be reacted to if you save Diamond Form when you suspect the enemy is looking to use these types of ultimates.

Cancel if no enemies in range

• Even if you have time left, it's better to restart the cooldown for your next use if you are just walking around with no enemies in melee range.

(Diamond Form Primary Fire): Faceted Fury

Tips for Faceted Fury

• Emma Frost cannot use her primary fire beam when in Diamond Form. Instead, she has access to a melee kit. Since she is Unstoppable, abuse the fact that you can't be knocked back or stunned on hold walk forward onto the enemy.
• Equally good for brawling tanks, and for eliminating Strategists.
• Animation can be cancled at any point with both Crystal Kick and Carbon Crush

(Diamond Form Secondary Fire): Crystal Kick

Tips for Crystal Kick

• Knock enemies back with a spin kick similar to Black Widow.
• The enemy takes a chunk of bonus damage if hit into a wall.
• • Payloads, structures, and Groot walls all deal slam damage if knocked into.
• Kick enemies into your team to allow them to follow up and secure the KO.

Diamond Form [E]: Carbon Crush

Tips for Carbon Crush

• During the animation, the enemy can be healed or damaged by other heroes.
• • Grab enemies in LoS of your team so they can pump damage into them during your grab.
• Be Careful when lunging deep into enemy territory. Emma Frost has no means of escaping or retreating. Getting in a grab is not worth trading your life for.

Ultimate: Psionic Seduction

Tips for Psionic Seduction

Stun effect

• When the diamond above the enemy’s head fills all the way up, Emma Frost takes control of the enemy's minds and forces them to walk towards her.
• • Mind control is considered a full stun. It cancels all non-CC immune enemy abilities.

Prevents ultimate use

• Incredible combo ult as it deals damage over time and (more importantly) locks out all affected enemies’ ultimates from being activated.
• • Targeted enemies need to be continuously in the AoE of Psionic Seduction to be prevented from using their ult. Any gap or break of the effect, and the enemy will be able to activate their ult during that window, no matter how brief.
• Shut down enemy Strategists with defensive ults like Luna Snow, so that your allies are free to use their offensive ultimates without being countered.

Focus the backline

• The damage, stun, and ultimate prevention are all significantly more valuable when used on Strategists and Duelists than when used on Vanguards.
• The long 30m range allows Emma to easily target enemies positioned behind their team

Immune to stuns and knockback

• Like Diamond Form, Emma Frost is completely CC immune for the entire duration of her ultimate.

Psychic Spear

• Works with Psychic Spear as the ult will damage both the enemy and the sentience.

Blocked by shields

• Against enemies like Magneto or Emma Frost with longer cooldowns on their barriers, be sure to track when they have them available. You could have the entire enemy team lined up, and Magneto putting his shield up completely cancels out your Ults' effect until the barrier goes away.

Team-Up: Mind Link (Passive)

Tips for Mind Link

Confusion, double shielding, and extra damage

• Illusion damage is only 30% of regular damage, but barrier health is the same (Bulwark and Metallic Curtain).
• Have your Magneto go out and generate double shields for you when you’re holding W during Diamond Form and get protected from damage from multiple angles!
• • Illusions cannot use Ultimates

Team Comp Synergies

Team comps built around Emma Frost complement her strengths and weaknesses. They can take care of the high ground and verticality for her, and chase down retreating enemies to clean up fights.

Equally as important, they can match her aggression when she’s using her ultimate or Diamond Form. Her abilities work best when enabling team play, so she wants allies who can play reactively to her attacks.

Team Comp Example

• Example of a team comp built around Emma Frost
• • Vanguards: Emma Frost, Magneto
  • Duelists: Wolverine, Winter Soldier
  • Strategists: Loki, Mantis

Hero Synergies

Vanguards: Groot

Between Emma’s barrier and Groot’s walls, the enemy team will be wasting all their time dumping damage just into breaking deployables. Additionally, Crystal Kick’s slam damage into a Thornlash wall deals a burst of damage too high for most to survive. Either hero can use their ult first because when combining the two AoE stuns, there is little the enemy team can do to survive the attack.

Duelists: Wolverine

Alongside Wolverine, the greatest strength of both heroes is their burst damage stun abilities. When chaining the two together, Vanguards are done for! Emma Frost can choke slam kick an enemy into the area where Wolverine is waiting to Feral Leap snatch them. If Wolverine goes in when Diamond Form is on cooldown, deploy Mind’s Aegies to protect him during his brief attack.

Strategists: Loki

Loki’s ability to copy ults pairs better with Emma Frost than any other hero. If she gets caught out and is being focused, he can keep her alive with Regeneration Domain or a copy defensive ult like Luna Snow. When she’s using her ultimate, Loki can copy an offensive ult like Spider-Man and go in for an easy team wipe while the enemy doesn’t have access to their defensive ults.