Beast Boy

Beast Boy is shaping up to be one of the best Guardians in the game given his ridiculous kit for mitigating Spiritual Damage. He's able to reduce the enemy's damage, he's able to increase your damage, and he's able to stun the enemy. This champion is really just kind of super plug-and-play in general, and his stun on basic is insane value for PvP. I see him showing up in a lot of whale accounts, but I think he might provide a lot of value to anyone who invested in Nightwing early on in their account as well.

Faction Tags

Beast Boy is a Guardian champion and he's also Teen Titans, Outsiders, and Metahuman. A lot of people were kind of surprised about that Outsiders tag. It doesn't really make a ton of sense other than just trying to fill out some of these factions that don't have a lot of champions in them. I'm not complaining about getting a fourth Outsider, because it does mean that you start getting a little bit more optionality when it comes to building your teams, but he has no counterattack synergy. At some point in the future they're going to have to rework that faction tag to either provide some counterattack synergy to the champions that are part of the faction, or come up with a new way of using those champions.

• Teen Titans: deploying three, four, or five Teen Titans champions increases their Physical Damage dealt by 1, 2, or 3% and Spiritual Defense by 2, 4, or 6% for each buff they have, stacking up to 15, 30, or 45% and 30, 60, or 90% respectively. At max, that's a pretty significant amount of Spiritual Defense and Physical Damage you can ramp up.
• Outsiders: deploying three, four, or five Outsiders champions increases their HP by 20% and counterattack damage by 20%. If you don't have counterattack on your unit, it's kind of a worthless stat, and Beast Boy does not have counterattack. It's really more for if you were able to hyper carry Martian Manhunter.
• Metahuman: deploying three, four, or five Metahuman champions increases their Attack and HP by a percentage.

The nice thing is that having both Teen Titans and Outsiders gear you can equip to this champion definitely makes it a little bit easier to gear him up pretty quickly. Some units only get one faction tag, which makes that harder, so I'm glad they gave him the Outsiders tag just for the gear aspect of it.

Ultimate: Tyrant's Roar

Beast Boy transforms into a T-Rex and lets out a roar, reducing all enemies' Attack and Spiritual Damage dealt for 12 seconds. This is a really, really good ultimate in my opinion. It's up there with Swamp Thing, Queen Hippolyta, and Riddler in terms of being able to turn the tide of battle almost immediately. If you have Beast Boy in your squad and the other side doesn't, it's not going to be a fair fight.

At the higher levels you can reduce all enemies' Attack by 40% and Spiritual Damage dealt by 50%. It's going to prevent those early Sinestro ults from happening. If you're running a hyper carry where you've got four different units protecting your damage dealer, and those units are Beast Boy, Riddler, Swamp Thing, and Queen Hippolyta, it's going to be pretty crazy. There are going to be turtle teams that pop up where Spiritual Damage is pretty much useless against you in a lot of ways.

Rhino Rush

Beast Boy transforms into a rhino and charges at an enemy, dealing Physical Damage equal to a percentage of his Attack with a fixed chance to inflict Stun on the target for 2 seconds. The interesting thing about this one is that the stun chance goes up as you upgrade his star level: 50% at the start, 85% at the yellow star level, and a guaranteed 100% at two red stars.

Personally, one of my favorite things in this game is champions who are able to stun. That's why I'm huge on the Legendary and Mythic versions of Wonder Woman for non-spenders and light spenders, even at the higher levels of play, because you can kind of cheekily stun the enemies and buy yourself a little bit of time. It's one of the reasons why those early Justice League Dark setups were so good. Keep in mind this is a single-target stun, but if you're able to stun a frontline damage dealer, or a Zatanna, somebody who's not a tank, it makes a lot of sense.

If you invest in the Multiversal Force talent for Rhino Rush, it reduces the cooldown by two seconds, taking it from 10 seconds down to 8. Pretty smart to be doing that.

Gorilla Might

Beast Boy transforms into a gorilla, increasing all allies' Attack by between 20 and 60% for 12 seconds. Pretty standard one, but it's quite significant. Once you get it off the first time, it's basically a static 60% increase in Attack for your team, so it kind of replaces the need to have some of those standalone supporters when he can do the job for you.

Stack this with a Starfire and you get a lot of additional Attack for your team. Champions like The Flash (Wally West), who have been widely panned in the past, might actually have a place in the meta if you're running a full Teen Titans team, especially with Nightwing on it, because Nightwing guarantees you have a win condition and Wally becomes a second champion who can do a ton of damage. The Multiversal Force talent for Gorilla Might increases Beast Boy's Max HP by 12.5%.

Pack Instinct

This increases Beast Boy's Max HP by between 20% and 80%, a very significant increase if you get him to five red stars. At the start of battle, all Teen Titans and Outsiders allies also gain Spiritual Defense equal to a percentage of Beast Boy's Spiritual Defense, which at max is 40%. That's pretty crazy, and it's why you want to focus Spiritual Defense in your transmutes.

Keep in mind, Spiritual Defense is a little bit different from Spiritual Damage dealt, and this part of the kit is going to be more impactful if you're running a full Teen Titans or Outsiders team. But the Spiritual Damage reduction on his ultimate is universal, and that's one thing that makes him so good. I'm not saying Pack Instinct is irrelevant. I'm saying this champion is fully usable in any team, even if you don't use a Teen Titans or Outsiders setup. The Multiversal Force talent for Pack Instinct increases Beast Boy's Spiritual Resistance by up to 25%.

Global Skill: Thick Hide

Thick Hide increases all champions' Spiritual Defense by between 2 and 10%, and Guardian champions' Spiritual Defense by another 2 to 10%. Just all these different ways that you're able to manipulate and increase Spiritual Defense or reduce Spiritual Damage dealt. Basically, Beast Boy is the Spiritual Damage meta killer in a lot of ways.

I feel like everybody's going to be using this unit against one another. It's going to be very similar to the Swamp Thing meta we had, where everybody was just using Swamp Thing against one another and it really came down to who had the more invested unit.

Force Talent Priorities

All three Multiversal Force talents tied to his basic skills should be maxed at five out of five as soon as you can. Those are no-brainers. If there's a hierarchy:

• Rhino Rush (cooldown) is the top priority for me.
• Pack Instinct (Spiritual Resistance) is the second priority.
• Gorilla Might (Max HP) is third, though the Max HP one is actually pretty important.

Outside of those, the 20% Spiritual Defense talent is the first one you should upgrade. If you're a non-spender or light spender who doesn't have a lot of resources, throw what you have into that one first. Spiritual Resistance is worth taking up pretty quickly as well. Physical Defense is not as big of a priority, but it's one you should be taking care of before anything else on there.

Transmute Priorities

HP percentage is going to be super important. HP%, regular HP, and Spiritual Defense are kind of the trifecta for this unit. Energy Gain Bonus is always one that's worth getting; if you roll it, there's no reason to turn it back in.

Legacy Pieces

It's a no-brainer to use the Teen Titans Utility Belt. I know I'm a broken record on this, but pretty much any new champion that comes out, their legacy piece is most likely required. Every now and then you get one where they miss the mark and something else out there is better, but I really do think the Teen Titans Utility Belt is the best thing for Beast Boy.

The belt's gear effects give you regular HP, HP%, and Spiritual Defense. Its non-unique ability works for any Guardian or Warrior who equips it: it increases the wearer's Spiritual Defense by a percentage, and at the start of battle their Spiritual Defense is increased by an additional percentage for 15 seconds. That makes Beast Boy incredibly strong at the very beginning of a battle and incredibly difficult to kill off, and by virtue of that it potentially makes the rest of your team fairly strong as well.

The unique ability for Beast Boy is Titans Together. At the start of battle, Beast Boy immediately transforms into a T-Rex and lets out a roar, reducing all enemies' Attack and Spiritual Damage dealt for 10 seconds, and Teen Titans and Outsiders allies other than Beast Boy gain energy. At five white stars that's 20 energy, a 20% Attack reduction, and a 30% Spiritual Damage dealt reduction, which is a pretty solid change even at that level. If you're trying to build a Teen Titans win-condition team, getting the rest of your team that extra energy is going to be pretty solid. I'm planning on taking this legacy piece to at least the five blue range, potentially five purple. I think it's going to end up ranking fairly high because this unit is one of the best in the game.

If you can't get the belt yet, you could get away with some of the standards:

• Improved Fear Gas Vial gets you a ton of Spiritual Defense. It's kind of a cheeky one that would be worth using if you're a newer player or non-spender.
• Amazonium Alloy Shield gets you a decent amount of Physical Defense, which doesn't help Beast Boy a ton in terms of what he's meant for, but it could be a play for you. Critical Damage Resistance is pretty solid there too.

At the end of the day, though, the Teen Titans Utility Belt is what you need to get.

Teams

I think Beast Boy is going to slot in as kind of a flex pick, the way we've done with Hawkgirl, and he may end up replacing Hawkgirl in a couple of lineups. Some of the weird things we had on Best Teams, like Artemis as a frontline damage dealer for Teen Titans, are probably going to go away, because you just slot Beast Boy into that Teen Titans team and it makes it infinitely better.

For sure we know Nightwing is going to work with Beast Boy, so it's pretty easy to form a Teen Titans team, especially with the Mythic+ versions of Red Robin and Batgirl. The Flash (Wally West) is still going to take a while to ramp up, but having Beast Boy there to mitigate damage and keep your team alive a little longer may make it easier for Wally to work. Cyborg would also be interesting to throw in. Pretty crazy that you can get all these different faction tag synergies on one team, though you're not getting full synergy on all of them. The ones you can get full synergy with are Metahuman and a full five Teen Titans.

I'm running Beast Boy with my standard PvP team, which is basically a hyper carry trying to keep my Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow and Death Metal Batman alive. I've played around with a couple of different comps trying to get Death Metal Wonder Woman to work, and it does work, but this one just works a little bit better. In my testing, Death Metal Batman puts in a ton of work, Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow and Hawkgirl provide a lot of healing, and Beast Boy doesn't really have to do too much damage himself. What he does is prevent the enemy team from being able to do a ton of damage.

Whale or Skip?

Whale. If you have Beast Boy and the other side doesn't, it's not a fair fight. He reduces enemy damage, buffs your team's Attack, and stuns, and he works in any team whether or not you're running Teen Titans or Outsiders. He is a bit dependent on his legacy piece for full value, but isn't every champion these days?