C+D is way better than Mantis

[pkmnace]

I've been trying since launch to get Mantis's achievement. I'm almost at max proficiency with her now because I've used her so much. From luck alone, I think I should've been present for a team wipe by now, but somehow haven't been. Today I was so frustrated playing as her on yet another team all running around solo that I decided to say screw it and swap mid match to C+D, who I haven't played yet so I still needed her achievement too.

Her healing output is higher. Her attacks home in on the enemy. She can swap to DPS when your teammates all run away from you as you are desperately trying to keep them alive despite their best wishes. And her ult actually disrupts the enemy team, unlike Mantis's 2 seconds of healing, which Luna Snow does infinitely better too.

And I got C+D's achievement in that very match, even though my team was like herding cats. Which bums me out, because now I got to return to playing Mantis. Mantis mains, I don't know how you do it.

[Arc]

Mantis 1 interaction kills something like 80% of the cast for hitting a single skill shot, makes characters who nearly 1 shot actually do so, can use all of her kit during her moveable aoe ult
CnD does barely any damage at range or mid damage you can legit walk away from upclose if she turns into cloak, can't force people to take damage and her ult is highly telegraphed, slow and you can literally just walk away from it too.

[Paranoia_Inc]

As someone going for achievements too I feel your pain, OP. My struggle so far was with Punisher. Mantis wasn't nearly as bad. Just have to find the flow with her since the buffs are only five seconds. But that's easy to count to while doing other things (Heals, sleeps, or headshots) to maximize your team's damage. I can't really comment on your play so you'll have to be honest with yourself, if you're spamming any ability you need to stop. No need to double heal tanks/others at 50%/75% Or dedicate buffs to only the one or two in front. Spread them around, pace the abilities out so there's a consistent outflow, and you'll get it.

[Queen Yuu The Reclusive]

Originally posted by Arc:

Mantis 1 interaction kills something like 80% of the cast for hitting a single skill shot, makes characters who nearly 1 shot actually do so, can use all of her kit during her moveable aoe ult
CnD does barely any damage at range or mid damage you can legit walk away from upclose if she turns into cloak, can't force people to take damage and her ult is highly telegraphed, slow and you can literally just walk away from it too.

Cloak ult forces you to either counter ult with a support to fight for a point or hope you can outpace the enemy during it through sheer force. Cloak also has a damage amp with an attached blind, plus a healing amp ability.

Mantis is the medic with a gun, Cloak is the utility healer with strong point pressure on her ult. Yes, it's telegraphed, but at higher play you're going to use her ult when the enemy doesn't have an insta-kill up for you.

[Arc]

Originally posted by Queen Yuu The Reclusive:

Originally posted by Arc:

Mantis 1 interaction kills something like 80% of the cast for hitting a single skill shot, makes characters who nearly 1 shot actually do so, can use all of her kit during her moveable aoe ult
CnD does barely any damage at range or mid damage you can legit walk away from upclose if she turns into cloak, can't force people to take damage and her ult is highly telegraphed, slow and you can literally just walk away from it too.

Cloak ult forces you to either counter ult with a support to fight for a point or hope you can outpace the enemy during it through sheer force. Cloak also has a damage amp with an attached blind, plus a healing amp ability.

Mantis is the medic with a gun, Cloak is the utility healer with strong point pressure on her ult. Yes, it's telegraphed, but at higher play you're going to use her ult when the enemy doesn't have an insta-kill up for you.

Just kill her and it vanishes lol
LAWL

[Queen Yuu The Reclusive]

Originally posted by Arc:

Originally posted by Queen Yuu The Reclusive:

Cloak ult forces you to either counter ult with a support to fight for a point or hope you can outpace the enemy during it through sheer force. Cloak also has a damage amp with an attached blind, plus a healing amp ability.

Mantis is the medic with a gun, Cloak is the utility healer with strong point pressure on her ult. Yes, it's telegraphed, but at higher play you're going to use her ult when the enemy doesn't have an insta-kill up for you.

Just kill her and it vanishes lol
LAWL

'Just kill the support and they can't heal'

You, sir, truly are able to speak basic factual statements.

Yes, just delete her and it goes away. Start telling that to players in lower ranks, they'll instantly win more games.

Good Cloaks will play around a Magneto/Ironman planning to ult them mid-ult, but when her ult is already going off it's hard to actively land headshots because she'll be healing up fast enough to almost always survive a shot before moving again to mess up aim.

[Mitrovarr]

There are upsides and downsides to both. My thoughts:

C&D is a better bulk healer, providing bigger numbers, but Mantis switches between healing targets faster, and is really great at topping off several people quickly. Mantis' rapidly cycling between people often gives her better heal numbers than you might expect. Ultimately, C&D is a much better tank healer but Mantis is probably the game's best DPS healer.

Mantis is better offensively. C&D can kill one isolated squishy, but has to stop healing to do so. Mantis can heal and damage simultaneously, has better range, and does great burst damage allowing her to rapidly kill a squishy from full (if you can aim) or do pretty ruinous damage to a tank with headshots. Mantis can also eliminate deployables very easily (and even farms leaves from Loki clones), while C&D struggles badly with this.

C&D requires more tactical skill because you've got so many cooldowns you need to manage while Mantis really needs you to have good aim for maximum value and can run out of resources.

Mantis has better CC. Blindness is cool, but sleep is more powerful and often results in the deaths of flankers.

C&D can avoid a lot of ults and sometimes even save teammates with their utility/escape. Mantis has damage boost, which is nice, but probably not quite as good as that. Although, it can shine on certain characters, like a Punisher in a turret, anyone with an offenive ult it can boost, or Widow. Mantis can and often should damage boost herself (it also makes her faster if she's at full health).

The ults - They're both great and I'm not sure which one I like better. C&D's ult is stationary, but it covers more space, and I think it lasts longer. They also get it faster. Mantis' is mobile, but smaller, and Mantis gets to keep acting during the whole thing. C&D does some damage with theirs (way more healing, though) while Mantis doesn't. At the end, I think Mantis' ult is probably a little better, but honestly I think they're really close.

At the end of it, having played both, I think they're pretty equal. I think I like Mantis better personally because I'd rather be able to attack all the time rather that needing to healbot a lot as C&D does, but there are certainly team compositions where C&D is the right healer to play. They're both good choices under the right circumstances.

[pkmnace]

Originally posted by Mitrovarr:

At the end of it, having played both, I think they're pretty equal. I think I like Mantis better personally because I'd rather be able to attack all the time rather that needing to healbot a lot as C&D does, but there are certainly team compositions where C&D is the right healer to play. They're both good choices under the right circumstances.

I haven't played enough C+D to make an actual judgement, since today was essentially the first time. But the feeling I got was that I'd enjoy C+D despite whatever circumstances I might be facing. Whereas Mantis has been a lot of fun* when I have the right team. When I'm boosting people who are actually aggressive, grabbing the point or focusing pressure on the opponent, she's amazing. One you mentioned that's always great is when you have a Punisher who sets up in a good vantage point on a turret and you give that extra boost it's crazy how fast the enemies drop. And I'll get those Punisher players when I'm playing anything other than Mantis. The moment I select her, I get the Punishers who setup on a destructible bridge, or behind a wall, or directly in the center of the enemy and get downed before the turret even goes up.

Playing Mantis isn't the problem. It's getting the luck necessary to land on the right team that I could actually even give a chance to getting a team wipe. The game I first posted about, my teammates were not only running from the enemy, but from each other as well. There was no chance of buffing any of them to increase damage, I could only see 1 teammate at any given time because the rest decided to go find their own hide y hole. But once I switched to C+D, I latched onto one teammate, kept him healthy and eventually my team crawled out of hiding and we even managed a team wipe. And it felt like C+D was a big part of that because they weren't being KO'd, despite their terrible cohesion.

[pkmnace]

Originally posted by Paranoia_Inc:

As someone going for achievements too I feel your pain, OP. My struggle so far was with Punisher. Mantis wasn't nearly as bad. Just have to find the flow with her since the buffs are only five seconds. But that's easy to count to while doing other things (Heals, sleeps, or headshots) to maximize your team's damage. I can't really comment on your play so you'll have to be honest with yourself, if you're spamming any ability you need to stop. No need to double heal tanks/others at 50%/75% Or dedicate buffs to only the one or two in front. Spread them around, pace the abilities out so there's a consistent outflow, and you'll get it.

I would assume I'm not great as Mantis, because I've seen good Mantis players get MVP frequently. Whereas I've only gotten MVP as her a handful of times, despite how long I've been playing as her. I've never played hero shooters before, so I'm still getting used to what works. But I feel like I'm doing as much as I can to contribute to my teammates. The big one is spreading out the buffs, as you said. Generally I try to keep everyone in range buffed, apart from people who are focusing primarily on support. And I ping head shots in between to quickly fill my charges. The part where I'll excuse my own potentially bad playing is that I frequently get teammates who aren't working with the group at all. So I can't even buff or heal them because they're off doing their own thing. And if I'm the only healer on a tank and everyone else is off doing their own thing, Mantis cannot keep people or herself alive without support. If I could get even just 4 of us working together, I think the achievement would be a breeze.

For help on the Punisher achievement if you still haven't gotten it, I did it on the conquest mode. I had read elsewhere that if you actually KO'd people with the smoke grenade it didn't count. But from my own experience when I got it, those KO's absolutely counted. And all I did was I just kept running into the center of the map to where the health pack is and would ambush everyone who passed the door with a smoke grenade and the shotgun. I struggled to get it at first because I was trying to avoid hitting people with the grenade because of what I read. But once I decided that maybe they were wrong and I stopped worrying about where the smoke hit, I got it pretty quickly.

[Panthaz89]

C&D is fine for putting up stupid damage and healing numbers but Mantis will help you secure a kill a lot better with her burst damage along with her ability to boost a dps. Securing a final blow rather than 2 teams poking at each other and hoping someone eventually dies isn't going to win every game.

[Space DVAs69]

I still prefer Mantis's simplistic kit. Shes so easy to play! And her Ult is pretty decent at healing around her too. Dagger maybe the hotter one but I prefer the chill gameplay of Mantis.

[Paranoia_Inc]

Originally posted by pkmnace:

Oof yeah that is miserable. Are you focusing on Convergence maps? I got mine on Convoy, which I guess would be much easier since everyone hovers around the escort. I believe you can select a preference in the same spot where ya change Ranked/QP/Doom and all that.

I did get the Punisher achievement a few days ago and yeah, anyone reading should keep that in mind. Drop target down to a sliver then hit with the smoke. Best way to do it.

[pkmnace]

Originally posted by Paranoia_Inc:

Originally posted by pkmnace:

Oof yeah that is miserable. Are you focusing on Convergence maps? I got mine on Convoy, which I guess would be much easier since everyone hovers around the escort. I believe you can select a preference in the same spot where ya change Ranked/QP/Doom and all that.

I did get the Punisher achievement a few days ago and yeah, anyone reading should keep that in mind. Drop target down to a sliver then hit with the smoke. Best way to do it.

I didn't know I could set a preference, actually. I've just been doing quick play, which is always convergence and domination. If I can change that, I'll give it a shot, because I'd definitely think convoy matches would be easiest.

[Paranoia_Inc]

♥♥♥♥. Just went and checked and can't separate them. That's my bad. I should've double checked before saying anything.

Maybe I got confused with the Custom games section. Either my, I dum dum.

[Mitrovarr]

Originally posted by pkmnace:

Playing Mantis isn't the problem. It's getting the luck necessary to land on the right team that I could actually even give a chance to getting a team wipe. The game I first posted about, my teammates were not only running from the enemy, but from each other as well. There was no chance of buffing any of them to increase damage, I could only see 1 teammate at any given time because the rest decided to go find their own hide y hole. But once I switched to C+D, I latched onto one teammate, kept him healthy and eventually my team crawled out of hiding and we even managed a team wipe. And it felt like C+D was a big part of that because they weren't being KO'd, despite their terrible cohesion.

I guess it depends on your team? If my team is good and we need a tank healer, C&D is better. But usually our DPS are not good and I need to get some kills, and Mantis can deliver. Mantis is great if you want to heal enough to do some healing, but really, you have zero confidence in your team and want to try to carry.

[pkmnace]

Originally posted by Paranoia_Inc:

♥♥♥♥. Just went and checked and can't separate them. That's my bad. I should've double checked before saying anything.

Maybe I got confused with the Custom games section. Either my, I dum dum.

No worries. I still always appreciate anytime people are trying to offer help.