Fighter Mod Combinations
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I wanted to put together what I think are some of the strongest combinations of mods for each fighter - perhaps if you are a new player struggling to decide which mods to buy, or if you just want new ideas to improve on your favourite fighter. I feel, in general, players (newer players especially) do not take advantage of the mods. Whether that's because they don't have the credit to buy them, or they are unaware of the potential they hold. Either way, this is to kind of showcase some of the value you can get out of certain combinations. In comparison to games I've played in the past, there is a real uniqueness to mods in Bleeding Edge in the sense that if you feel an aspect of the game or a certain fighter's ability is underpowered or overpowered, you can usually find ways to balance this yourself in just the mods alone.
This is far from a definitive list - these are purely set-ups that have worked for me or have been used well against me. Another great aspect about the mods is the sheer variety and situational potential. There is no right or wrong set up. So I invite you all to share your own favourite set ups in this thread as well!
MAKUTUIn The Zone: Each successful basic attack reduces all ability cooldowns by 0.15s
Chill Out: Enemies hit by Repellent are slowed by 20% for 3s
Spread The Love: Increase Healthy initial heal by 40%
Makutu is definitely a difficult character to get to grips with. I think one of the main reasons for this is because, in order to get the most out of him, your approach play has to be completely different to every other fighter. You're not going to get high damage numbers, you're not going to get credited with a lot of kills, you're not likely to make that game-turning play. You are essentially a decoy - initiate the fight, tank as much incoming damage as possible, peel for your healers and disrupt the opponent's strategy. He's particularly effective in holding points in Objective Control. That's where the value in Spread The Love comes in. Being able to keep yourself alive as well as a health boost the size of Miko's Chain Heal to all allies in close proximity can provide a real difference to sustaining yourselves in a teamfight.
One of his main weaknesses ironically is his severe lack of mobility/reach. Just one evade away from him and damage-wise he is rendered useless. That's why using Repellent to slow enemies with Chill Out is a good way to keep them in range for you to damage, and for your team to chase as well alongside your speed buff. Slow is a great debuff to use in this game as it restricts enemies to being able to escape, and catching 1 enemy out of position and nullifying their escape methods can be all the difference in teamfights.
Finally, an absolutely essential mod to have for Makutu is In The Zone. If the general consensus was that Makutu wasn't so limited and situational anyway, I genuinely think this mod would be overpowered. Whenever you land a basic attack of any variation, your cooldowns will be closer to resetting. If you are dealing consistent damage, say for example you're contesting a Capture Point, you can HALVE your cooldowns. Holding the basic attack button will cause Makutu to continuously deal damage. This is especially useful paired with Spread The Love as your big heal is now available every 6 seconds! The only downside is that Makutu is incredibly easy to parry, especially his infinite slaps. The vast majority of players are not taking advantage of parrying yet so in the current climate it is very effective.
GIZMOBarrel Roll: Basic Attack is instantly set to maximum fire rate after evading
Dakka Dakka: Increase Basic Attack damage by 7.5%
Hoon: Jumping on Bouncer grants 30% extra movement speed for 4s
Gizmo has by far the highest damage output potential of any character. If you're not the highest damage dealer on your team, regardless of team compositions, you are not using her to her highest potential. At the same time, just because you're doing a lot of damage doesn't mean you are contributing as much as you believe, it has to be concentrated and coordinated onto the same target, usually squishies and healers first. The combination of Barrel Roll and Dakka Dakka is essential for maximising your damage output. If you position yourself smartly to begin with, using that one bar of stamina to get your minigun charge to full will be irrelevant as once enemies can get close enough to start pressuring you, it will have charged back anyway.
If you run out of stamina however, you have one more escape option - Bouncer. This is great for escaping to higher ground where the majority of characters are vertically challenged and wont be able to keep up the pressure. If you find yourself in a position with no high ground to escape to, Hoon's speed boost allows you extra mobility to escape. It can also be used aggressively to push opponents that are on very low health and escaping outside of your minigun's range. Hoon will make a huge difference to your success with Gizmo.
ZEROCOOLSpeed Run: Gain 30% movement speed for 2 seconds after using Evade or Nitro
Extension Cable: Increase Recharge target range by 25%
Overclocked: Increase Stamina recharge rate by 30%
Zerocool's effectiveness comes from his massive healing output. If you are being target healed by a Zerocool, it's very difficult to to take you down, which is why Zerocool himself is usually the first target for the opponent. All of his mods in this set up is to increase your survival chances so you are able to get more and more value out of your massive healing.
Speed Run is pretty essential and once again it involves SPEED. It allows you to escape both melee and range a lot faster than you otherwise would. Paired with Overclocked, you are able to live a lot longer in fights by disengaging, healing a little with your passive defrag and returning to heal your teammates. Whilst parrying would provide even more stamina recharge which would lessen the value of Overclocked slightly, the amount of ranged attacks and abilities that are not parry-able are high enough to make it worth using in my opinion.
Finally, Extension Cable allows you to keep a further distance away from the fight whilst still healing your allies. You can heal from some much safer spots with this mod enabled, for example, above Point B on Aqueducts, on the higher ground to the sides of Point B on Jersey Sinks and on all surrounding high ground on all 3 points on Boneyard. Taking advantage of high ground + speed mobility is a pretty common theme!
MIKOReplication: If Chain Heal bounces to a second target, its cooldown for the next activation is reduced by 1s
Adrenalin: Increase Base Movement speed by 20% for 3s after taking any damage
Persisting Field: Increase Stasis freeze duration by 0.5s
In my experience, a good Miko can be one of the biggest difference makers in a teamfight. Whilst her damage output is one of the lowest in the game, she can offer so much more than a more one-dimensional Zerocool. Her ability to act as a Tank in a sense and continue to stay alive whilst peeling for her teammates is impressive. Replication allows her already very short Chain Heal cooldown to decrease even further, meaning even more healing output and even more sustainability in teamfights.
Adrenalin is yet another SPEED related Mod and it's another very powerful one that allows Miko an almost continuous speed boost throughout a teamfight which can be used for a variety of purposes - to disengage out of battle and save yourself, to peel for a teammate quicker, to get into Chain Heal distance faster, to chase fleeing enemies down faster to perhaps freeze them with Stasis. Persisting Field increases the length of that freeze slightly which can make all the difference to finishing off that opponent.
MAEVEBuilt to Last: Increase Cage duration by 0.5s
Amplified: Increase Life Siphon damage by 10%
Exploits: Increase damage against Stunned, Trapped or Frozen targets by 20%
(Honourable Mention - Starved: Enemies trapped by Cage receive 50% reduced healing)
I've given my opinion about Maeve on here multiple times, particularly the value in her Cage. This Mod set up focuses solely on maximising the value out of her Cage even further. Exploits paired with Amplified gives you a huge damage boost into Siphon Life-ing a Caged enemy. If you have collected a Damage Boost, you are looking at doing 75% of an enemies health bar with just your Siphon Life. If you take into account her Schadenfreude resets, you are constantly able to pump out a lot of Cages and a ton of damage.
The last slot is a tie between Built to Last and Starved for me. Built to Last gives you that 20% extra damage for a further 0.5s which is a lot stronger than it looks on paper. It also keeps an enemy trapped inside a Cage for others to deal damage for that extra 0.5s. On the other hand, Starved means you can also do damage through someone healing the opponent inside the Cage. 50% less healing is a huge debuff. Personally, I find there to be more consistency in Built to Last whereas Starved is a little more situational (not everyone you cage will be getting heals, even more so if you target the healers first).
ELBASTARDOExtra Capacity: Increase Life Support maximum shield capacity by 150hp
Berserker: Deal 1% extra damage for every 25 Shield currently generated
Twinkletoes: Gain 15% movement speed while casting Death Spiral
For me, aside from Makutu, El Bastardo is the weakest character in the game. His kit is very one-dimensional whilst his damage output is pretty low. However, he can keep himself alive pretty well, but at the expense of frontlining and pressuring constantly. The combination of Extra Capacity and Berserker both increases his sustainability and damage output whilst synergising with how he's best played. He now has +150hp worth of shield, whilst gaining a damage buff based on each 25 shield generated which can go up to a maximum of 22% which is pretty significant, especially if you hold it in and around that number.
Another weakness of El Bastardo is his lack of mobility and range, similar to Makutu. With Leap of Faith, you can chase and pressure, however it's easy to evade and once you do evade, you have nothing else to chase and pressure, meaning you aren't building/sustaining shield. Twinkletoes gives Bastardo that extra bit of mobility and movement speed so he can chase down opponents after using Leap of Faith.
NIDHOGGRMega Hurtz: Increase Basic Attack damage by 5%
Feel The Heat: Increase Firebreath damage by 20%
Metal Head: Increase Base Health by 75hp
Nidhoggr for me has a real lacklustre mod list. His Feedback passive is pretty useless in my opinion, and you would be lucky to do 400 healing to yourself in a game. Compare that with Maeve's self healing of around 1.5k a match for example. That means I don't bother with the mod that increases Feedback healing, I don't see the value in it. Likewise with his burn, I don't think it does nearly enough to warrant taking up any mod slots for buffs. Shredder only really has value in cheesing hand-ins on Power Cells by burning through walls.
In fact, his entire worth as a fighter is completely centered around his Axe stun which is incredibly powerful. So naturally that's where I wanted to focus Mods. Again, there's nothing at all useful. The Mod that increases the length of the initial slow could be good, however the value in the Axe is off the stun, not the slow, so if you get the stun then the slow doesn't matter. Likewise, increasing the length of the Axe range is good on paper, but it just meant that the Axe would take longer to return for the stun hit meaning it was a lot easier to evade.
That's why I've gone simple - increasing his damage slightly with Mega Hurtz and Feel The Heat, then increasing his health pool slightly with Metal Head. Mega Hurtz is definitely the most valuable here. Despite only being 5%, you use your Basic Attack a lot. If you nail down the combo cancel between hits 2 and 3 by decoying Shredder, you can do massive damage in a short space of time.
DAEMONTrickin: Increase the damage bonus of the first attack out of Stealth by 30%
Ghostin: Stealth no longer has a time limit
After Effects: Slept enemies are silenced for 2s upon awakening
Daemon is almost the opposite of Nidhoggr in the sense he has a ton of good Mod potential. I've gone for a Stealth set up which has proven to be pretty deadly. Aside from the Power Cells cheese, Ghostin is a very powerful mod that allows you to disengage from fights and engage into an enemy completely undetected (mostly). You can essentially stay invisible during the entire duration of the match aside from those few moments where you appear out of nowhere and burst damage an enemy.
Trickin and After Effects both synergise with this as they allow his burst damage out of Stealth to increase even more, whilst also giving the enemy little to no self defense if you Sleep first.
BUTTERCUPDefeat Device: Enemies affected by Oil Slick suffer -25% healing from all sources
Sticky Substance: Enemies inside Oil Slick are slowed by an extra 12.5%
Increased Efficiency: Increase Burl recharge rate by 25%
(Honourable Mention - Outta Control: Increase Burnout damage by 25%)
(Honourable Mention - Big Spill: Increase Oil Slick effect radius by 25%)
Buttercup is a bit of a difficult one with her most recent nerfs on her slow. The above 3 was my mod loadout before the nerfs. I haven't played her enough since to see if there's still massive value in them which is why I've included a couple of Honourable Mentions just in case.
Once again, making the most out of SPEED buffs/nerfs is pretty essential in this game. Buttercup's Oil Slick was a big part of this. It made sure enemies couldn't escape, not just from Buttercup's high damage output but from the rest of the team as well. Both Defeat Device and Sticky Substance maximised that even more by increasing the slow and reducing healing received. If this is no longer effective, I think using Big Spill would be beneficial to increase the time that enemies are inside the Oil Slick with the higher radius. I always found Increased Efficiency to be pretty key in keeping myself up and alive as well. I would consistently be fighting with less than 500hp but still sustaining myself pretty well with my faster Burl recharge rate.
I'm not a big fan of mod builds focusing on Supers, unless they are a secondary build you can switch to mid-game. However, Buttercup's Burnout is one of the best Supers in the game due to it's high damage output, difficulty in avoiding and incredibly fast recharge rate. Using Outta Control to buff the damage even further wouldn't be such a bad idea, especially considering it's like an ability with a longer cooldown rather than a Super!
CASSDeadly Dance: Increase Blade Dance damage by 25%
Barbed: Increase Basic Attack damage by 7.5%
Sharpened Talons: Increase Rake damage by 10%
Cass is probably the character I've switched Mods with the most. I can't decide what's best for her at all, so I've tried to pick the least situational setup as possible for the most consistent value. Cass already has a ton of mobility potential in her kit without Mods, so I decided to leave anything SPEED and range related alone.
I think increasing her damage across the board with Barbed and Sharpened Talons allows her to finish off enemies faster and therefore puts her in less danger. I know I said I wasn't a fan of Super based Mods but there's no denying the strength that Blade Dance has, so increasing that damage even more with Deadly Dance is a no-brainer. The only Super in the game that has a probable chance of completely team-wiping the opposition if played well.
KULEVHum Bug: Curse targets take an additional 10% damage
Curative Curse: Attacking the Curse target grants health equal to 25% of damage done. This effect also applies to allies.
Arousing: Increase Lucky Charm passive healing by 25%
Kulev is the definition of a SUPPORT. I personally have 3 different set ups - 1) for if there is already a healer in the team composition which is based around DAMAGE, 2) for if there's no healer in the team composition which is based around HEALING, and 3) a blend of the 1&2, which is the one above. I don't recommend playing Kulev as a solo-support unless you are coordinating and disciplined enough to play inside his Sacred Ground and close enough to him to benefit off his passive healing.
Kulev's Lucky Charm passive healing is a bit underwhelming on it's own, but if you're in a long teamfight, contesting a Capture Point for example, there is always healing being outputted from him even without Sacred Ground which can be the difference maker, which is why I've increased its value even more with Arousing.
The other 2 mods are centered around his Curse. Hum Bug allows an additional 10% damage from everyone on the team to take out an enemy even faster whilst Curative Curse heals them on top of Sacred Ground and Lucky Charm for additional healing support.
MEKKOOverflow: Increase Safety Zone size by 25%
Long Watch: Increase Safety Zone duration by 3s
Brimming: Safety Zone's lifesteal heals for a further 15% of damage done
Mekko has only just been released so this is definitely the most speculative Mod setup of all the characters. Her kit is pretty varied and she is quite self-sustainable without the use of Mods increasing health/shield support. She's not built for high damage numbers, so again I've ignored those Mods. The best ability she has is her Safety Zone - not only does it reduce damage taken and lifesteal, it also reduces healing received from the opposition when used with a Power Orb. Overflow, Long Watch and Brimming further increases the value in Safety Zone, increasing the time it's up, the radius and the lifesteal amount.
Again, these are just MY favourite mod combinations and I invite you to share yours as well so we can learn things together! Hopefully this may have helped in some way as well. There's still plenty to try out and experiment with
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@x-AmberPrice
No surprise yet another really detailed and interesting feedback post came from one of our longest running supporters and players!
The devs had a great match against you during our last live stream.
Thank you from the entire team for taking the time to post such detailed information regarding our fighters and your experience with Bleeding Edge, we love to read everything our community is saying about the game.
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@x-AmberPrice I'm by no means a skilled players, but I find that a tanky load out for Nidhoggr has worked very well for me. Metal Head, Gain, and Fan the Flames gives Nid a lot more sustain and survivability, and often after chasing down a kill it means the difference between escaping back to my team or dying on the spot.
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@Tetris229
I am looking forward to the rematch
Despite a higher health pool than the other damage based Fighters, Nidhoggr can definitely feel pretty frail at times. His lack of escape/mobility means if he gets properly focused and doesn't get adequate healing support, he can go down pretty fast.
Gain and Fan The Flames is definitely a smart combination to enable even more healing from Feedback.
For me personally, I've always found his Feedback passive to be extremely underwhelming, especially when you compare it to other abilities that can self sustain characters (Maeve Siphon, Buttercup Burl). I don't think I've ever seen Nidhoggr with 4 digits worth of healing at the end of a match. So if you're going a whole match without healing yourself more than your total health pool, I don't see much consistent value out of it honestly. It may be what saves you occasionally, but my decision to focus on buffing attack over sustainability is because it's more consistent value - you're always getting value out of a higher % of damage whereas a ~200hp increase in healing during a match may not contribute anything to your overall performance.
