Strategy Guide for Satana in Marvel: Avengers Alliance

Like her brother Daimon Hellstrong, Satana is an incredibly complex Marvel: Avengers Alliance character. Her complexity comes from very similar mechanics and a reliance on debuffs to make herself and her allies more powerful. She isn’t quite the powerhouse that her brother is, but she is still particularly good in most situations. She deals high damage while buffing allies, has a group heal, and has an incredibly versatile set of debuffs. Unfortunately, she is something of a glass cannon, which means you will usually want to pair her with a bodyguard or give her shields. Also, be aware that she is even more susceptible to scrappers than most infiltrators. Still, with the right team, she is basically a good choice in any fight.

Satana was a lockbox villain. To acquire her, you needed to collect 8 different comic book covers from demonic lockboxes. These lockboxes are currently no longer for sale, though they may be made available again at a future date through a seasonal promotion.

Special Ability (Dark Pact) – Dark Pact is a unique ability that grants her a buff to one of her attributes when she is affected by weakened, exposed, dizzied, or slowed. The attribute buffed is always defense, evasion, attack, and accuracy, respectively and the buff is roughly half again the effect of the equivalent debuff. This means that as your team weakens in some areas, it grows stronger in others. Dark Pact affects your entire team, which is important because her powers debuff the entire team. The subtle point of this ability is that enemy powers can strip buffs but not debuffs, so your opponent can’t strip these benefits from your team.

Special Ability (Sinful Thoughts) – Sinful Thoughts causes Satana to deal more damage while affected by sin and to potentially gain sin while attacking. It also gives her a chance of applying soulfire while she is affected by bane. This second benefit is huge because soulfire is one of the best debuffs in the game. Similar to the benefit of Dark Pact, sin and bane can't be removed by the enemy, which makes this special ability very difficult to counter.

Special Ability (Flying) – Flying makes her immune to ground attacks, which generally doesn’t matter, but can occasionally be very helpful.

The Enthralled Guardian power is a multi-function action. This means that you can perform multiple different actions with it. Unlike multi-function actions on characters like Nico or Dr. Doom, you need to unlock the extra options on this power. When Satana is affected by either sin or bane, Raise Hellth unlocks. When both status effects are affecting Satana, Dark Invocation also unlocks. If you use any of the Enthralled Guardian powers, Satana is stripped of bane and all sin effects, if they are currently affecting her.

Level 1 Power, Fiery Fists (One Enemy, Melee Unarmed Fire Magic, 10% Stamina Cost) – Fiery Fists deals moderately high melee damage to a single enemy. This attack also causes the enemy to deal less damage with future attacks and puts the sin debuff on this character and slowed debuff on your entire team. Since this character has a chance of gaining sin whenever she attacks, one of these benefits isn’t particularly great, making this a mediocre power at best. Also, she will use it on counterattacks. All that combined, you should generally avoid using this attack actively unless you need to conserve stamina or desperately need one of the debuffs it applies.

Level 2 Power, Fires of Hell (All Enemies, Ranged Fire Magic, 18% Stamina Cost) – Fires of Hell deals low ranged damage to all enemies. All enemies hit gain the bane and melt armor debuffs, which will massively increase the damage Satana deals to them in later rounds. Additionally, she will gain the very useful bane debuff and your team will become dizzied. This is a great opening attack. If you are very lucky, Sinful Thoughts will also put sin on this character allowing her to use Enthralled Guardian: Dark Invocation on the following turn, dealing unpreventable, unavoidable massive damage to all enemies.

Level 6, Enthralled Guardian: Bound Blade (One Enemy, Melee Slashing Magic Summon, 20% Stamina Cost) – Bound Blade is a very high damage stealthy attack that deals extra damage to protecting enemies and immediately negates that protection ability. Unless you are facing an annoying protector, this is rarely worth using. It is better to wait until Raise Hellth or Dark Invocation are available to put exposed on your team.

Level 6, Enthralled Guardian: Raise Hellth (All Allies, Heal Magic Summon, 20% Stamina Cost) – Raise Hellth provides high healing to all allies, but since this power also exposes all allies, the effective healing is reduced. Still, you should generally try to keep it available in any fight, since it offers top tier recovery to your team.

Level 6, Enthralled Guardian: Dark Invocation (All Enemies, Ranged Magic Explosion Summon, 30% Stamina Cost) – Dark Invocation deal moderately high unpreventable damage to all enemies. Combined with this character’s damage increasing abilities, potential debuffs on enemies, and the increased damage this attack deals when this character is debuffed, this attack usually deals massive damage despite its modest base damage.

Level 9, Soul Kiss (One Enemy, Ranged Magic, 12% Stamina Cost) – Soul Kiss is the attack you use when an enemy is low on health. When used on an enemy that has 30% or less health, this attack automatically defeats the enemy and provides good healing for this character. Additionally, the attack prevents resurrection effects and weakens the entire team. When used at the right timing, it is a great finishing attack that also heals. When used wrong, it deals almost no damage and provides very little healing.

Satana's most useful powers all have a very stamina cost and Satana has absolutely no means of recovering stamina on her own. While you can try to pair her with a character that restores stamina, most such characters are a terrible match with her. It is better to simply ISO her for increased stamina. After that, focus on her accuracy. While it starts reasonably high, you will almost always decrease it with your first attack. Accuracy is more important than attack since practically everything she does increases her damage significantly. Defense is absolutely a lost cause. If you want to increase her defensive abilities, either focus on health or evasion.

When using Satana, it is even more important to recognize her worst ally choices than her best ally choices. Any allies that remove or prevent debuffs or who regularly grant finest hour buffs are terrible for her. This completely rules out Rescue, Omega Sentinel, Fandral, Invisible Woman equipped with her unique E-ISO, and Angel, just to name a few. In fact, the list of terrible allies is close to a majority of the characters in the game. Satana is best supported by either Horseman of Pestilence or Daimon Hellstrong. Daimon can completely protect her from magic attacks, which all but negates the disadvantage from being affected by bane and grant her an evasion chance, all while dealing massively increased damage due to her debuffs. Horseman of Pestilence simply prevents the other team from equaling the playing field with buffs. Daimon works better in PvE, simply because debuff removal is less common in PvE. Also, never use the infiltrator version of Pestilence. Two infiltrators makes you way too susceptible to scrappers. If you don't own either of those characters, a powerhouse protecting character like Wolverine or Red Hulk partners well with Satana.

Like her brother, Satana is very good in PvP, though she is a much greater potential liability than Daimon Hellstrong. Her biggest advantage is that she essentially makes your team immune to buff removal like the Scroll of Angolob, because she debuffs your team, instead of buffing them, yet the end result is an effective buff. Soul Kiss, usable at will, makes her particularly devastating against many of the popular enemies who resurrect. Since she and her team benefit from debuffs, she is also a perfect counter to Horseman of Pestilence. Her one major weakness is Ghost Rider who can rip through her like a hot knife through butter, but he is rarely seen in PvP. The best team up for her is Daimon Hellstrong, by a far margin. He can protect her from magic attacks, and easily takes advantages of the debuffs she applies, while she can protect him from tacticians. It is a great, versatile combo that can be especially devastating if you equip your agent well. Horseman of Pestilence is also a near perfect team up, but only if you own the tactician variant.