Nico Minoru (Hidden Potential!?) Min/Max Hero Guide!: Marvel's Midnight Suns

[@rodh1404]

Nico runs extremely well with a Surgical Strike Iron Man. Surgical Strike increases in power the more Iron Man cards you have in your hand, so no prizes for guessing what happens when she Doubles Up them - any of them. Also, I personally find Witchfire to be very good. It's her most powerful Attack card, and with a single attack it can equal or exceed the damage of Swarm+ half the time. You probably won't use this to KO bosses, but it's pretty good for finishing off enemies weakened by other attacks. And it's a free card play if at least one of those enemies are marked. So if you happen to have a Surgical Strike with Mark 1, this is a "win more" card. This can also work with any other Chain or Area attacks that have Marked 1, Magik's Gather being another example if you've given it that mod. That said, I agree that Double Up and Empower are her best cards. I like to have 2xDouble Up+ and 1xEmpower+, with a Restore+ for emergencies. But because she does use card plays for quite a lot of what she does, she really needs to be paired with heroes who have a lot of free/quick card plays themselves.

[@crailus]

I hear a lot of people complaining about the randomness of Nico's abilities. Honestly, I not only think she's S tier, but maybe the best character in the game. Cannot count how many times I have only needed one turn to finish a mission with her, Hunter, and another character.

[@juanmccoy3066]

Nico is actually bad ass. Pairing with the hunter is almost OP and I find myself not relying too often, only when I have an impossible mission that I just want to get passed for resources. Healing abilities and high damage. Even with random enemies she often picks the right ones or at least really good ones.

[@chibisven]

I did at least appreciate that they addressed the design in the story. There's a dialog where she talks about the staff of one and then says "that's why most of my magic just uses the staff as an arcane focus" or something like it. Overall, I've found she can work well if you put "on redraw" effects on as many of her cards as possible and pair her with a hero that generates a lot of redraws and treat her more as a "on redraw" support with a niche win button. I don't disagree with your rating, and I don't think she's unplayable by any means if you really like her.

[@ryonalionthunder]

“She’s not that bad. Just don’t play any of her cards and hope you redraw into other characters cards.” Is a wild thing to say. XD

[@chibisven]

@@ryonalionthunder Not really if you've played a lot of deck builders. The trigger condition of "on redraw" can be super valuable. Especially if your build involves fishing for specific cards.

[@ryonalionthunder]

​@@chibisven I don't think you are following. If Nico's useless you'd be better of using ANY OTHER CHARACTER and slap redraw on their cards instead. So that way at least 1/3rd of your deck isn't hot garbage that you MUST redraw. They'll actually be playable and happen to give a benefit when redrawn.

[@chibisven]

@@ryonalionthunder I'm following, I just disagree

[@ryonalionthunder]

@@chibisven then you are objectively wrong. A stack of 8 blank cards are exactly as “playable” under that model. If you can replace a character with a stack of blank cards, that character is not in any way valuable. For the record. Nico is on my main team, so I obviously don’t agree she is the weakest. Your reasoning is just terrible. XD

[@xXxCelticsPridexXx]

so glad that this is a series cant wait to see who you do next!

[@ZEUS-ds6fl]

I use her for clearing out stragglers mostly. have her Witchfire attack cards modded with an extra 50% offensive damage. Also, using Empower, I can one-shot enemies by using Hunter's Patience card early. Played the mission where you encounter the Dread Maiden for the first time last night, did just that. She's one of my favorite characters to bring along on missions.

[@jrotvtube]

Hey man, I love this series! You talk about the importance of having a hero designated to provide the "marked" debuff, which totally makes sense, but you also run nearly exclusively cards with free or quick. It seems almost overkill! I'm sure I'm just playing sub optimally, so I was wondering if you could talk more about this balance of marked and free/quick in the future :)

[@lowfive7983]

It's not overkill, it's overlap to make sure you can just keep refunding your cards after a kill regardless of card draw.

[@caelansaschamciver8294]

The goal is to clear an entire map in one turn with quick cards drawing more cards into your hand instead of shrinking your hand, and free cards either help you get more cards into your hand or beef up your damage cards to help clear said map. In higher difficulty you want to clear as many mobs from the map as you can because they hit like a truck even as minions :)

[@AskZch]

his builds are only viable in end game, as in you beat the final mission, and are grinding "open" portion of the game, where you just get lvl 40 general missions indefinitely, he often stuffs too many heroics which without his hunter built to run 2 call to arms and generate insane heroism would lead to many bricked hands, but builds are decent, in many cases I use something really similar, maybe with tad less heroics, you don't really want more than 2, at max 3 heroic skills in your deck. Mark is nice for endgame where you 1 turn missions, but I know some really successful MMS players who do not value mark that highly (Zedd, creator of Zedd's Balance patch being one of them you can check out his youtube channel @Zedd_MSuns, he did runs with no quicks, runs with common cards only (u3 ofc).... I would make case for witchstorm instead of swarm, because swarm is too gamba in what level of swarm you'll get, Witchstorm does guaranteed dmg, but you actually do not want increased power ( aoe) because you want all 4 hits to go into same target or two BTW Johnny repeat after me, CRACK THE SKY, not CRACK IN THE SKY

[@MystyreNiggma]

Ive found Nico to be extremely efficient for grinding missions at low levels

[@gamrage]

Personally, I felt one of Nico's weakest points aside from RNG was the fact that her skill cards can't have "Free" applied to them. This means whenever you use one of her skills, it forces out a cardplay. The build I went for Nico is very similar to yours. A build that minimizes her RNG and fully embraces her ability to support. As a result though, I took out Crack the sky. I didn't want her taking Heroics and cardplays from other heroes. I say that but I still put Witchstorm on her taking "a little" heroics. Marked can at least give a cardplay back and you can at least choose where the attack goes and is generally targeted and doesn't need a redraw like Swarm sometimes.

[@Channel5Gaming]

Yeah she's pretty expensive. I liked mark on witches storm too, but ultimately felt that it was a costly mark and didn't provide a large enough radius for the cost. Think other supports just work better as markers. :)

[@dudeman7590]

Nico was really good early game then dropped off . The opposite of everything you'd expect. Gonna watch this and hope I can make her a bit more viable

[@hestral2894]

Nico doesn't use the staff of one in battle. If you pay attention to one of her hangout sessions she outright says the magic she uses in battle is her own and she uses the staff of one as a focusing rod or catalyst.

[@chiguy69]

Awesome job again. Keep doing your thing!

[@Channel5Gaming]

thank you!

[@xtraordinaryslackersguild9616]

I love Nico; and use her in a similar way but also a more DPS version; I think she's low A tier esp now with her new passive not needing health but cant argue why you'd put her in B, which is still nice. I do agree mostly with your take on her RNG roulette not being the right concept for her power/char; although I don't think exhaust on all her cards works, perhaps once you reach Ult 3/optimal everything, but choosing one of any card, is brilliant; and a card like Double Up a way to cheat that as her char has in comics. I do think a roulette on a few cards can work; perhaps if on upgrade you could choose the order of the roulette, and that effect is only able to be used once in a mission, with the next in order when redraw card. But anyways still enjoy her; marked on Witchstorm really helps her with that feeling a lot better. Anyways I love your series, one of the best how you explain, go over other options, what works for you and why you think it personally, really has helped me, esp Scarlet Witch was literally mindblown changing, she's one of my fav heroes now, even tho I don't have the mods optimal yet, cant wait for the rest!

[@Channel5Gaming]

Glad you're enjoying the series! Definitely agree exhaust on that concept might be too much. But certainly think roulette is a bit overkill in design and something feels off with it. Feel like Nico could have been a lot cool, but I still really enjoy the character for sure!

[@ershin_chaos5815]

Awesome work bro! cant wait for ghost rider!

[@Redbird-iq6qp]

Another fantastic build. I am seeing a pattern forming, you have all these builds so far and if i am seeing correctly they are set up for not matter the team make up, the builds play great and benifit all team members. Am i seeing this correctly, if so I hate you, lmao cause now I am going to restart my game and follower your builds. Lol keep up these great builds.

[@Channel5Gaming]

I try to make each hero somewhat independent yes. But as mentioned even with my builds, I tend to enjoy pairing them up with certain heroes to maximize their builds potential. But of course my builds tend to work well with most heroes! :) Think someone like the Hulk is a bit more team dependent. He will always rely on someone else to build heroism and draw cards, cause he simply doesn't have anything like that in his kit. No need to restart you game? Just plow that endgame a bit longer! :P

[@Redbird-iq6qp]

The reason for the start over is I am running a dark hunter. You have urs as a hybrid dps and support. So i was thinking to maximize ur builds to the full potential then I need to run a different Hunter. Cant wait to see the rest of ur builds.

[@koreyj1987]

I’m new to the game and Nico and iron man are by far my most used duo with hunter. I use witch fire with iron man’s mark so I rarely get a chance to use her ultimate, the screen wipe potential these two have together is ridiculous

[@francisnguyen6349]

Whoa, Johnny.

[@shadybrain3424]

how did you not use witchfire, like at all? thats like her bread and butter spell. it can help clear the map quite a bit. you say its unreliable, but its super reliable, you know the exact damage it will do, just not who it will attack, but guess what as a player with 2 other characters and environment attacks you can control those things to knock down enemy health to meet the requirements for witchfire to ko the whole map especially if anyone has been marked. also witchfire generates heroism and doesnt cost it. at high level you can generate the heroism to lower the entire map to mid to low health very easy on any difficulty and use two witchfires to wipe the rest of the map very consistently, big oversight, but you only played the card twice.

[@prevenger]

Yeah, I rate her just under Iron Man with appropriate mods as the second best character in the game. I use her as a high damage capable small group clearing support that can feed and enable one of the card hungry damage dealers like Iron man or Ghost Rider, and is complimented well by secondary damage dealers like Spider-Man, and Scarlet Witch. Crack the sky I found to be unimpressive as I'd rather be spending less heroism to do more damage with another character through either their heroics or environmental attacks. I likewise found Double up to be pretty lackluster in many hands that I'd draw while Blood magic can become a 1 card combo for a character like Iron man by drawing you Leave it to me or Quick Blasts modded for draw Iron man card on KO drawing you into a full Surgical strike combo or Air superiority/Hellfire Beam which becomes especially potent when you high roll the strengthened on Blood Magic. 2x Empower with +2 heroism mods 1x Blood for blood with Quick mod 2x Blood magic with +2 Heroism mods (I've gotten used to the extra Heroism and prefer it to the 3x resists since extra heroism often means an easier full board clear, so resists aren't doing much when there aren't enemies at least in Heroic III which is the current difficulty I'm playing on.) 2x Witchfire with damage mods (it's already above curve for an attack card and can really shine when you plan your turns around ending with it. It's not a starter like Empower or Blood Magic.) 1x Witchstorm with damage mod (Which I mainly use for a single target nuke and only in a pinch as board cleanup/clear since 4 shots of its damage is pretty good and often better than swarm for only 1 more heroism. I also actually minmaxed her stats to remove as much power as possible to make her circle as small as possible using Morbius's bench since witchstorm is the only ability she has the uses power as a stat. Due to wanting to keep that skill low after I hit friendship 40 and maxed her other stats I never took her with hunter again in battle or hangouts.)

[@OneWingedRose]

Can Double Up get Free? It "generates" cards rather than draws them, so can it be Free? Or does it count as drawing them and thus doesn't let you get that?

[@DDavino333]

Keep ‘em comin, Brother. I’m a new Sub & huge fan already, looking forward to your content! Digging your style & strategy, very similar to mine 🙌🏻

[@paulmoulton7248]

I got Free on Restore, really handy as I can just heal anybody under 50% to max and it remains in my hand.

[@OmegaCoyote]

Great builds. I hope you do Hunter soon.

[@ChrisOwens-wg4zm]

I had just gotten around to playing this game and I have to say Nico is one of my favs because she can do some insane things and I would place her at S tier because of her utility

[@WolfgerSilberbaer]

I agree that Nico's mechanics leave something to be desired... She's more chaos-witch than the actual chaos witch. And when the RNG goes your way, she definitely feels super strong, but when it doesn't she feels so freaking weak you feel you deserve a bonus for managing to win with her in your group.

[@Reddragoon100]

When the passive upgrades with friendship level it drops the hp requirement.

[@noosborn3601]

Thanks man! Keep going!

[@MattM284]

play 8 cards max lol, iron man solo army ultimate 3 difficulty, you cast your deck twice lol

[@ResplendentTrash]

Using her as a support character is your problem. The randomness is easy to work around. You aren't even using witchfire???

[@joram807]

Yeah, it doesn't really need the stars to Align you can 100% build her to be as stronger and even stronger than most other characters, with a good of chance of continual massive AOE clears. I hear the lore part but man your take seems like you haven't played the character right.

[@LynxStarAuto]

Her "love from above" heal is pretty damn good. Maybe it's the luck of the draw for me, but her random cards have worked out in my favor more times than not.

[@Enidehalas]

I strongly disagree; and the reason you find her bad is simple. On your profile you can see you never use Witchfire. With the right mod, it's literally her best spell (yes, even including witchstorm and crack in the sky), even when RNG is against you. Paired with Blood Magic or Hunter's Heal with Strengthened or potion item, she can clear whole maps in one turn. Even better if you can prepare with a iron man/blade/ghostrider chain abilities that apply Vulnerable. Now it's not RNG anymore, it's just pure consistant one shots of anyone, anytime, anywhere x4, at minimal cost, paired with strong buffing and the best healing of the game

[@xthatwhiteguyx]

Nico was my favorite character to use, by far... and probably one of the 2 worst storyline characters lol.

[@crealkillr]

I gotta disagree with you about her "witchfire" ability. Its by far the best one she has! it does 240 damage (enough to kill medium enemies), and with 3 recast, it can go for 4 hits. The first is the spell, and it recasts if it kills. I use 2/3 turns softening the enemies, and then cast it to kill anything it hits, no matter where they are on the map. Not to mention if you can mod it with "+1 heroism for each KO", its gonna make you lots of heroism for what ever you play later. Sure the grunts are a resource, but with my 1 card i can kill 4 things. If only i could put quick on it, then it would be unstopable.