Champion Guide – Mephisto

The demon Mephisto may be one of the more underrated champions in the contest. He entered the Battlerealm the same month as Blade and was understandably overshadowed, but has proven his worth time and again, particularly against buffed up Uncollected EQ bosses. His kit boasts a host of utility, and although not known as a heavy-hitter, with the right synergies in place he can do some serious damage.

View Mephisto on Auntm.ai

Key Information:
Mephisto is a complicated champion, who requires a specific play-style and synergies for maximum value.

Mephisto’s most important bit of utility is his Soul Imprisonment, which prevents the opponent from generating buffs for the first 15 seconds of the fight. This effectively shuts down buff heavy champs, particularly Cosmics. This effect can be refreshed by landing the SP1 and consuming one of Mephisto’s persistent charges.

Mephisto starts the quest with 3 persistent charges (souls). He earns one soul every time he KOs an opponent, and earns a soul at the start of each from the Morningstar synergy. Mephisto can carry over a maximum of 6 souls from fight-to-fight.

Mephisto’s Soul Charges have three uses. They can be used to soul imprison the opponent via the SP1. If Mephisto falls below 30% health, the Soul Charges are consumed and heal Mephisto. With 6 charges you’ll return to almost full health. Consuming the charges in this way makes Mephisto temporarily invulnerable, so he can effectively cheat death once a fight as long as he has a charge. The third use comes into play with The Champion synergy, which raises Mephisto’s attack 15% per soul (effectively turning Mephisto into a multi-fight ramp-up champion), which is a huge increase in his offensive output.

Signature Ability:
When taking a hit, Mephisto has a chance to activate his Aura of Incineration which causes passive incineration damage to a nearby opponent, as well as power gain for Mephisto. As the Aura can be activated by taking blocked hits, and has a bonus chance to activate on a parry, this signature ability is useful in offensive situations, and necessary for placement on alliance war defense.

Team Building/Key Synergies:
Mephisto is a synergy dependent champion. While he is a good addition to the Blade Trinity, he really shines when the team is built around him. For three champion teams (AW/AQ/Dungeons) bring Mephisto, The Champion (+15% attack per soul) and Morningstar (+1 soul at the start of each fight) for the ideal combination of sustainability and damage.

On a five champion team, add in Ghost-Rider or Dr. Strange for +70% incinerate energy damage, and Symbiote Supreme for a 15% chance to trigger Aura of Incineration with a basic attack.

If any of those are unavailable on your roster, Mephisto has a crit synergy with Sunspot, gains 15% Aura of Incineration damage with Omega Red, lowers opponents energy resistance by 30% with Blade, and regains the first soul spent in a fight triggering soul imprisonment with Hela.

Mastery Setup:
Because Mephisto is poison immune and has a built-in healing mechanic, Mephisto is a relatively suicide friendly champion, but they aren’t required either. If you are running suicides, you do have to be careful about matchups that require you to spam the SP1 to soul imprison the defender, because you’re giving up your healing reserve.

I run Mephisto with only 1 point in Mystic Dispersion. Any more and he tends to overshoot the SP2 and max out on power, which is not generally something you want. With the Aura of Incineration up Mephisto gains a lot of power anyways, so you don’t really need the help.

Alliance War Defense:
Mephisto can be a good defender, but he does need to be duped so he gets his Aura of Incineration. Void and Blade are going to be the main attackers used against Mephisto, so you want to put Mephisto on a node that doesn’t allow Void to reserve healing if possible.

Special Attacks:
Mephisto’s SP1 will consume a soul charge and prevent the opponent from gaining any active buffs for 15 seconds. As Mephisto’s souls are very valuable to the character, the SP1 should only be used in specific circumstances. Common opponents to soul imprison are Medusa, The Champion, Annihilus, and Hyperion. If you’re at zero souls, fire away. The SP1 can stack up to three incineration debuffs on the opponent.

The SP2 is Mephisto’s bread-and-butter special attack. It will activate his Aura of Incineration to cause passive incineration damage and power gain. You can stack multiple Auras.

The SP3 should only be used once per fight, and only when the opponent is above 2 bars of power. Launching the SP3 under these conditions will power drain the opponent and activate Mephisto’s Aura of Incineration. The SP3 is a great one-time “get out of jail free card” versus pesky power gain champions like Mordo and Hyperion.

Pros:
Mephisto is Poison, Incinerate, Coldsnap and Frostbite Immune.

Soul Charges make Mephisto an incredibly safe and sustainable character to play.

Mephisto can tank a SP3 without dying as long as he has 1 Soul Charge.

Soul Imprisonment allows you to instantly shut down opponent’s buffs at the start of the fight.

Power Drain on the SP3 provides a once-a-fight safety net against power gain.

Mephisto’s Aura of Incineration is passive, and he doesn’t rely on putting debuffs on opponents to do damage, so debuff immune fights don’t really hinder his damage.

In situations where you have to take a lot of blocked hits, like stun immune fights, Mephisto’s Aura will do a lot of the work for you.

Mephisto has synergies with some of the best champions in the game.

Cons:
Mephisto is hard countered by Blade, Void, Human Torch and Bishop.

Requires a full synergy team to reach maximum potential.

Not a big-hitter, so fight times will be longer, and time-outs are a worry versus AW bosses like The Champion.

Mephisto is forced to trade raw damage for Soul Imprisonment in important fights, so your damage decreases the longer the fight lasts. Furthermore, he needs several fights to ramp back up after a fight that requires expending souls. So if you get into a situation where you have back-to-back fights that require spamming the SP1 (say a Medusa mini into a Champion boss) you won’t be at 100% ramp-up for the second fight.

Soul Imprisonment does not prevent Magik’s Limbo.

Soul Imprisonment only prevents buffs from triggering, it does not nullify any currently active buffs.

Pro Tips:
Because Mephisto prevents buffs from triggering at the start of the fight, you can immediately parry champions like Iceman and Juggernaut.

For a tough AW fight that requires use of the SP1, I like to pop a power start boost. Race the defender to a SP3, trigger your Aura, then start spamming the SP1. You should be able to do this in about 20 seconds so here isn’t much of a gap between soul imprisonments.

If the opponent blocks the SP1, you will not expend a Soul. The attack has to land to consume a Soul and Soul Imprison the opponent.

Hela can not trigger her “cheat death” buff when at 1 HP while Soul Imprisoned.

Because Mephisto is cold and incinerate immune, he is an excellent counter to Freezeburn nodes, Iceman, and Aarkus.

Recommended Videos:
KT1 – How Good is Mephisto?
Seatin – Testing The Champion Synergy

-Dano357