Marvel RivalsMarvel Rivals Mantis Character Guide

The alien empath taps into the unlimited flow of life energy to give her allies a natural boost of inspiration. Mantis enables big playmaking and encourages aggression. As the only Strategist to hand out damage boosts, her assists often make the difference between enemies surviving with slivers of health or being sent back to spawn.

With her high individual damage potential, she wants her teams to push up and open up sight lines for her to blast into the enemies. Although she is quite small, she packs a mighty punch as is one of the most dangerous Strategists to dive on.

As long as she can land her sleep on an enemy, she always has the upper hand. Good aim exponentially increases Mantis' potency as headshots not only deal critical damage but also restore her Life Orb Resource. Don't let the dev's one-star difficulty rating fool you, Mantis is definitely one of the hardest heroes to master.

Find out where Mantis ranks in our Marvel Rivals tier list.

TLDR

As

• Manage your Life Orb resource. Try to never be sitting on all four, but also never find yourself with zero Life Orbs because you'll suddenly need one when you don't have any.
• Enable your Duelists. Manti's primary role is empowering her Duelists with greater lethality and sustain. Let your other Strategist focus on your Vanguards.
• Use your ultimate to save your team. As her only form of burst healing, Soul Resurgence is the only way Mantis can bring her team back from the brink of death.

Against

• Create focus fire. Her single-target healing is very low and easy to kill through. Watch who your allies are attacking and fight the same person.
• Watch for her sleep. When trying to attack Mantis, be unpredictable with your movement and try to get her to use sleep early. If you see her sleep your teammate, immediately shoot the ghost to wake them up.
• Out sustain her team. When you are unable to KO the enemy Mantis, your next best option is to get into long fights where total healing output determines the outcome. Mantis is weak in a fight where two Vanguards are slowly killing each other while receiving pocket healing.

Strengths

Passive Support Abilities

Both her healing and damage boost are passive abilities that persist long after Mantis' activation. These abilities allow Mantis to quickly grant her allies continued support without having to keep her focus on them. Mantis is free to focus on damage and going for critical hits, while her teammates can go off on their own, while still bringing her healing and damage buff anywhere they go.

High Damage Strategist

When playing Mantis you never need to complain about your Duelists not killing anyone because she can take matters into her own hands and become the queen of eliminations. Her damage puts immense pressure on Vangurads trying to take space against your team and helps her teammates outdamage any enemies they are engaged in duels with.

AoE Stun

Compared to other stuns, Spore Slumber is super easy to land on high mobility enemies because of its large AoE. Throw your sleep at the ground as an enemy melee flanker is dashing through and you can secure the KO all on your own.

Weaknesses

Difficult Resource Management

• All of her abilities share the same store of 4 Life Orbs. The most difficult component to playing Mantis is optimizing Life Orb usage. Knowing when to self-damage boost, ally damage boost or grant healing requires rapid decision making. At the exact same time you also need to develop the ability to track which allies still have an active Life Orb, which ones are almost at the end of their duration, and who is going to get you the most value from your remaining orbs.

Low Solo Target Healing

• If you need to save a teammate from burst damage, Mantis is completely incapable of doing so. Technically she can spam Healing Flower and grant 55HP per Life Orb, but that still tends to be too slow and a total waste of her resources. Mantis either needs another Strategist to do most of the healing, or for her team to go full aggro and kill before the enemy even has a chance to deal damage.

No Mobility

• Although she has higher than average walking speed, Mantis has no way to quickly reposition or traverse map areas. If your team is quickly repositioning or jumping up to a high ground area you will not be able to follow them. Additionally, you have no way to escape enemy attacks.

Primary Fire: Life Energy Blast

Tips for Life Energy Blast

• Headshots
• • Even more than every other hero, as Mantis, you'll want to be purposely trying to go for as many headshots as possible
  • Aiming a bit high and to the right of your opponent's head will help you increase your critical hit percentage.
  • • Life Energy Blast has a very slight arced trajectory.
• Against Loki
• • Every single headshot grants Mantis a life orb including headshots on immobile Loki clones
• Help Destroy Deployables
• • Against enemies like Peni Parker or Namor, it will often be up to you to destroy their deployables with your ranged primary fire.
• Peel for your fellow Strategists
• • Mantis high damage is great for peeling for your fellow Strategist when they are under attack. Your damage combined with your teammate's is usually enough to kill the enemy before they can kill you.

Secondary Fire: Healing Flower

Tips for Healing Flower

• Don't Spam on a Single Teammate
• • Each Healing Flower grants an instant 55HP, so you will be tempted to throw a bunch of Healing Flowers at your low-health ally. Do not do it. Your life orb resources are far too precious and that tiny amount of extra health typically won't be saving your teammate from death.
• Grant Healing Before Your Ally Dives
• • Since Healing Flower has a nice long 8-second duration but limited range, you'll want to give it to your teammate just before they full send into the enemy's territory. That way they are already being healed as soon as they take damage and when outside of your range to grant another Healing Flower.
• Focus on Strategists and Duelists
• • 20 hp healing per second is nothing on a Vanguard. You get way more value when using Healing Flower on Strategists and Duelists, so focus on them and let your other Strategist focus on healing the Vanguards.

[SHIFT]: Spore Slumber

Tips for Spore Slumber

• Only Sleeps One Enemy
• • Even though Spore Slumber has large AoE, it can only sleep one person with each use even when multiple enemies are in the AoE.
  • • The enemy closest to the center of the explosion gets put to sleep.
• Always Save for Hard Engagements
• • 15 seconds is a long time not to have the ability to stun someone considering you have no other means of escaping enemy attacks. In general do not use Spore slumber offensively unless you're in the cleanup phase of a fight.
  • Whether it's a Vanguard, Duelist, or Strategist, once an enemy has broken through your front line and is attempting to kill you or another backline teammate, that is when you want to use Spore Slumber.
• Counter Key Enemy Abilities
• • A single sleep can save your entire team from an enemy alt that would have killed them.
  • • Sleeping Hulk when he jumps in as Monster Hulk wastes a good chunk of his ult. Sleeping Spider-Man in the air while he's handing out webs left and right during his ult can save multiple lives as well.
  • When you haven't seen these types of enemies use their ults in a while, try extra hard to hold onto your sleep.
• Shooting the Ghost
• • When using sleep to run away, watch out for the enemy's teammates waking them up early.
• Natural Anger Can be Canceled into Spore Slumber
• • Anytime you are sleeping somebody, that means you are actively in danger. Since you will definitely be dueling an enemy, you'll want to be damaged boosted.
  • • Press [F] then [SHIFT] immediately, and Mantis will grant herself damage boost, self-healing, and fire Spore Slumber all at the same time.
• Unwakeable Window
• • The first half a second or so, the slept target cannot be woken up even when taking damage. This allows Mantis to get in two shots immediately without waking the enemy up.
  • • Here is your bread-and-butter combo for eliminating Duelists and Strategists:
    • • Spore Slumber Combo
      • • Natural Anger → Spore Slumber → body shot → headshot → headshot

[E]: Allied Inspiration

Tips for Allied Inspiration

• Always Boost Duelists
• • Your primary target for Allied inspiration will always be your team's Duelists. In a situation where two Duelists are evenly matched, the one who has the 12% damage boost will always win.
• Boost Aggression
• • Whoever on your team is actively making an aggressive play, becomes your primary target for damage boosting.
  • • Example: Thor activates his Awakening Rune and is pushing up trying to eliminate the enemy team's backline. Definitely grant him Allied Inspiration.
• Damage Boost Ultimates
• • You don't even have to think about it if you see a teammate using their ultimate just throw Allied inspiration on them.
  • • The damage boost can literally be the difference between getting zero kills and getting a team wipe.

[F]: Natural Anger

Tips for Natural Anger

• Every Mantis Player's mantra: "ABDB"
• • Always be damage-boosted
  • • You should always be in a position to be damaging the enemy. Therefore, you should always be damaged boosted to maximize your damage output.
• Don't Boost Yourself without Targets
• • Realistically, there will be times when there are no enemies that you can attack, but there are enemies that a teammate can attack.
  • • In these scenarios do not waste a precious Life Orb on damage boosting yourself. Instead, use two orbs to grant healing and damage to your teammate who's actively fighting.

Ultimate: Soul Resurgence

Tips for Soul Resurgence

• Counter Enemy Ultimates
• • There are very few ultimates that can kill through the healing and overhealth provided by Soul Resurgence. Pretty much anytime you see an enemy trying to get kills with their ult you can pop Soul Resurgence to keep your team alive and attacking.
• Save Your Teammates From Dying
• • Even if it's not from an enemy ultimate since you have no other method to provide burst healing to your team using sole Resurgence just to keep your teammates alive as a great use of her ultimate.
• Go Signal
• • Because your ult grants simultaneous healing and speed boost, it is a great way to signal to your team, "it is time to go get some kills," when you feel they are playing too passively.

Passive: Nature's Favor

Tips for Nature's Favor

• Self Sufficient
• • The combination of having a stun self-healing and high damage makes mantis very self-sufficient. You should try to only very rarely be calling for your teammates' help.
  • • Play behind cover while you self-heal and only peak when granting more Life Orbs to allies.

Team-Up: Nature's Soul

Tips for Nature's Soul

• Cancel if Your Team is Dead
• • Just because you can cacoon, doesn't mean you should. If your team is already dead and the fight is lost, don't waste this 2-minute cooldown. Hit "CANCEL" and save for later.
• Reposition to Saftey
• • When using the cocooned revival, make sure you reposition to a location where the enemy won't be able to immediately target you.
• Take High Ground
• • Since you can fly during the revival, this is a great opportunity to take a position you could not access otherwise.
• 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. Otherwise, you'll likely die twice in a row, feed ult charge to the enemy, and have to wait two full minutes for another cocooned revival.

Team Comp Synergies

The Ideal comp built around Mantis thrives on burst damage, aggressive play, and not sustain. Typically when Mantis is on a team, that team wants fights to be quick and decisive. Dive comps are a great example as they want to hard engage on the enemy back line, and either kill or be killed.

Vanguards and Duelists who excel in quick engagements and disengagements get the most benefit out of Mantis' kit. Due to her own strong range damage mantis pairs well with both melee Duelists and long range poke Duelists.

Frontline heavy comps are not a good fit for Mantis, however, since they typically look to have long drawn out battles, where each team tries to out sustain the other team. Having a second or third Strategist who can provide a ton of healing to your team's Vanguards is also very important to Mantis.

• Vanguards: Thor, Magneto
• Duelists: Star-Lord, Hela
• Strategists: Mantis, Luna Snow

Hero Synergies

Vanguards: Thor

Thor is the perfect example of a Vanguard who thrives on quick lethal engagements. Mantis' healing is actually good when paired with all the overhealth Thorforce generates. More importantly, value comes from his ability to go into an awakened state and quickly burst down the enemies.

The combination of his Enhanced Mjolnir Bash's ranged attack and your own primary fire damage, melts anyone the two of you are focusing on. Keep him permanently damage-boosted, and the enemy backline will be raging at their own team about how no one is saving them from Thor.

Duelists: Star-Lord

As the legendary leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Star-Lord and Mantis' pairing makes perfect sense. Star-Lord meets every requirement for a good Duelist match with Mantis. He wants to go by himself on off angles, he has high bursts of damage, and his ultimate is 10 times better when a healing and damage orb has been given to him.

Make sure to coordinate with him, and have him signal when he is looking to ult so that you can have two life orbs ready for his Galactic Legend. Plus if there is an Adam Warlock on your team, you both will be benefiting from the cocooned revival.

Strategists: Luna Snow

Luna Snow and Mantis are by far the most self-sufficient backline. Each of them has consistent self-healing and a great stun. Enemy flankers have to be extremely careful when diving the two of you because getting stunned twice in a row is signing their death certificate.

Make sure to coordinate who is going to use their defensive ult first, because the worst thing this duo can do is use their two ults simultaneously.