The Golden God: A Guide to Adam Warlock

An honest Gold player's advice on how to better play Adam Warlock (EDIT: I have made plat finally) (I was diamond last season)

The Basics

Adam Warlock, DPS, Healer, Mercy from OW. The Golden God.

Adam Warlock is an Off-Support who relies less on hitting teammates with his left click to heal and more on healing them using his abilities, leaving your main attack open for poking holes in enemies.
Relying on your abilities for healing your team does come at the cost of having those abilities go on cooldown however...

Adam's Left Click is Quantum Magic. This is a hitscan shot and he has 15 shots before he needs to reload. This number is pretty important so keep it in mind when we talk about his Right Click later. Adam can hit headshots with his basic attack, which can help your team get that annoying Iron Man out of the sky or finishing someone off that's far away from your team.

Adam's Passive is his Regenerative Cocoon. Upon dying, Adam enters a free-flight mode and can choose where to respawn. Make sure that you are safe when respawning as the enemy can see you flying and choose to hunt you down for a second time. This flight has some great uses, more specifically for his ultimate placement.

How to Heal

Adam's E is Avatar Life Stream, pressing E automatically sends out a healing stream from Adam to whoever he is targeting. This stream heals 95 HP per bounce and bounces between 3 allies. You get 2 charges of this ability and the cooldown for it is 6 seconds between charges. Targeting an ally with this ability sends the first bounce to them and from there it seeks out other allies. If there are no other allies in range to heal, the ability will bounce onto 1 person 3 times, healing them for 285 HP.

However, if you don't target an ally and press E, the first bounce will be on you instead. If there happens to be any allies near you when doing this, the subsequent bounces will seek them out.

Adam's Left Shift can also heal over time, but that isn't nearly as useful as some of the other stuff it can do.

When to Heal

Adam doesn't heal like a regular healer, instead, think of Adam's healing as less "Get your team back up to full HP" and more "Use your healing to save a life". Adam's heals are a big burst of healing to 3 teammates and then he loses one charge.

Getting caught with no charges is incredibly frustrating as Adam can't heal himself or someone else nearby to deal with any threat, not that Adam needs someone to protect him of course, you'll see why later. Make sure to space out your healing so that there's only about 2 seconds between the charges.

Don't be afraid to look down at the floor and press E to save yourself. You are the healer, you can turn the tide of a fight if you stay alive long enough.

Soul Bond

Adam's Left Shift is Soul Bond. Soul Bond is an insane ability. It targets allies around Adam and Bonds them to him. This bond does healing over time and most importantly, distributes damage between those that are bonded.

If this doesn't sound that crazy, think of it in this context:

You have 6 people in a team, all grouped up together. Adam uses Soul Bond to give everyone the ability to face-tank a lot of damage and only taking about half their health bar. You can give your tanks a second health bar with massive damage reduction. If Adam is bonded to just one person, a 50 damage hit would only be 25 damage. Take that 50 damage hit, and divide it by 6. Now you get the idea.

Using Soul Bond before entering a fight and having it active during a fight could win you the round simply by everyone on your team taking so little damage.

BEWARE however that this ability does have a massive cooldown of 30 seconds, so use it sparingly. Your team also needs to capitalise on the Bond and fast, as it's only active for 6 seconds.
The Bond can be broken on Adam if he takes damage from someone he's bonded with that would have killed him, leaving him on 1 HP.

BORN AGAIN!!!

That's the sound of a good Adam Warlock Player. That sound instills either fear or extreme happiness within the enemy team, which it is depends on where you revive people.

Adam's Ultimate revives nearby fallen allies and places an area down which gives everyone a second life. Reviving someone with your ult uses up that second life. If you are in the area after Adam has used his ult and you die, you will be revived.

Adam can place this ult in some tricky spots by dying intentionally and flying to a better position using his free-flight cocoon. You can check which allies can be revived by looking above your ultimate.

Always make sure to keep one heal charge when reviving your team as when they get revived they won't come back with full HP, only 100 HP.

Cosmic Cluster

Adam's Right Click is his Cosmic Cluster. This is Adam's bread and butter ability. This puts food on his table. By holding down Right Click Adam begins to charge up this ability, taking 5 ammo from his left click. Upon release Adam shoots out 5 projectiles. Projectiles in bold as they are not hitscan like his Left Click and cannot headshot either. Adam can choose to release the charge at any point during charging which will result in less projectiles being shot.

This ability absolutely makes Adam a DPS Healer hybrid, hitting with all 5 projectiles and afterward hitting with a Left Click is enough damage to melt down a squishy character. Adam can most definitely hold his own in 1v1 scenarios by using this ability.

This ability can get cancelled by using his E however, the charges reset and you have to charge again.

Quantum Cancelling

Quantum Cancelling is an Adam specific tech that uses Animation Cancelling to increase his DPS significantly. The easiest way to do this is to hold down Left Click, and spam Right Click. You should see the left click shot animation gets overwritten by his right click release animation, then get overwritten again by his left click. So on and so forth, until you need to reload.

This piece of tech sets Adam leagues above the other supports when it comes do dealing damage to enemies. Adam can melt down anyone trying to dive him or if a tank is getting too in your face.

General Gameplan

Adam's general gameplan is to hang back, heal when your tanks/squishies get to about 50% HP and poke as much damage in between his heals as possible. Using your right click on tanks is a great way to make sure they get low for a pick.

When getting dove as Adam, your best bet would be to use Quantum Cancelling as it's most effective when there is no space between Adam and the enemy. Use your heals on yourself and get to your team. Ping them like crazy so they turn around and shoot whoever is harassing your golden cheeks.

Adam's ultimate is best used in 3 scenarios:

• When 3 or more team mates are dead
  
• When the other healer is dead and has ult
  
• Before contesting point, at a safe place, with 1-2 allies down

That third use might seem strange but remember, Adam's ultimate revives people directly after death, meaning your team can play a bit more reckless and secure some kills. If they go down, they get revived and can fight again.

Conclusion

Adam Warlock is seriously fun if you enjoy being able to keep yourself alive and feeling like a true Golden God.

Thank you so much for reading my guide, if you have any suggestions on how to improve it please let me know.

[Gustav]

bro is gold

[Iselin]

thanks!

[CRACK!]

thanks my friend rory is really bad at warlock this helped him rank up by one

[blueyandicy]

@Drarkon He literally says that...and I quote..."think of Adam's healing as...'Use your healing to save a life'. [sic]" Did you even read the guide?

[Drarkon]

personally, I prefer playing Adam as a secondary healer, having at least 1 charge ready to save squishy allies at any times; and the soul bond for keeping someone alive, especially the soul bond could save an allies or yoursefl from a burst dmg ultimate and specially single target ult like Star lord (just link with at least 1 people is enough to make Star lord ult cant burst down a guy that fast)

[Ҳ]

Thanks for the write up! I just can't get the feel for him, his play is a bit unusual and doesn't relate with my typical Overwatch healer gameplay. I need to evolve...

[MOZAAAAAA]

good

[Nick]

TLDR; Have good aim, otherwise play the raccoon

[᲼᲼᲼᲼᲼᲼᲼᲼᲼]

pvp > pve

[5E]

maybe because of other team members, cause im playing like for 2 days with 10 ingame hours and already on gold1