Survivor Mode

Current gear set: Fourth World Set

Expires: September 27, 2017

Survivor Mode is a game mode that was introduced in the 2.6 update. It allows players to create a team of three members (with three reserves) to fight more difficult enemies as they progress with different mechanics, and for rewards that culminate in a jackpot, and tickets for the Last Laugh minigame. Notable rewards include Augments and gear sets, which give set bonuses when 2 or 3 pieces are equipped.

Introduction
Survivor allows players to make a team of three members to start the battle. Unlike any other game mode, in Survivor, health holds over between matches. If a player wins a battle, they advance to the next round, and enemies get tougher, and mechanics are introduced such as disabled Special 1, or Heal Suppression. After every battle, players have the option to take their jackpot and end Survivor mode, or keep battling onward. If a character dies after a battle, the player can have up to (3) character changes, swapping eliminated team members out for new ones. If all three characters are eliminated with no reserves, the player will be forced to forfeit their jackpot, earning nothing from the mode except rewards from the Last Laugh tickets.

Mechanics
Unlike any other matches, Survivor matches do not consume or require Energy. Your characters' health bars are displayed in its place. Your team is also not saved between plays, and you'll have to create a new team every time you start.

You can heal characters for a certain amount of (24% maximum health) for 2500 Power Credits once per character per match in the start match screen.

Although you fight AI-generated teams instead of player-created (but still AI controlled) teams, Survivor uses Online Battle's rules for power generation - you gain very little power by getting hit. Additionally, your opponents can have various gears, such as The Ibistick, but you will not be able to see the stats and build of your opponent's team at any point. Only fixed enemy teams can have gear (e.g. teams in match 6, 7 and 9).

Other than that however, Survivor largely follows single player's rules. It can be played without an internet connection, Super Moves are not able to be resisted, ensuring that they do maximum damage every time. Characters can be edited (specials upgraded or gear changed) during a Survivor battle. The matches, especially match 6+, may have multiple crippling Modifiers (also known as challenges or handicaps) that makes progression even more difficult.

You can exit Survivor and close the app safely; you will keep your progress. If you quit during a match, your current team will be knocked out, although you can still opt to use reserves. However, you can force-quit by restarting your phone, which will still allow you to retry that match with a chance of new opponents.

KO'd teammates will continue to offer their team-wide passives as long as they are not swapped out.

If your team is KO'd, you will start where the battle left off (provided you have reserves), with the same enemy team health left.

Survivor opponents are noticeably more aggressive than other AIs, as they can often hit you before you have a chance to block or tag.

Finishing Survivor mode puts it on a 24-hour cooldown, but there are 4 daily buy-ins, which allow players to play up to 5 times in a row for an increasing price of Power Credits (starting at 15,000).

With the 2.8 Update, most of the characters seen thus far appear to be potential opponents in Survivor. In later rounds it is very common to encounter the effects of signature gear items while battling these opponents (as shown in pic).

Meanwhile, with the 2.11 Update, there have been lots of changes. For example, Raven/Teen Titans, despite being announced but was never released, can be encountered as an opponent in Battle 4, while the new Suicide Squad characters can already be faced, with additional new characters from Online Battles such as Doomsday/Blackest Night and The Joker Unhinged/Suicide Squad can be seen as well.

Opponent's scaling
While it is possible for the enemy team to be an assortment of bronze, silver and gold characters, characters on the same team would have roughly the same level of stats, up to far beyond what players can achieve. By match 12, characters can hit over 150,000 with s1, have over 500,000 health, and Deathstroke/Arkham Origins is known to hit almost 300,000 with his unblockable s1. By match 15, it is possible to face opponents with over 1,000,000 health who can hit over 20,000 with every basic attack, and almost any character can hit over 200,000 with a single s1.

A very important detail to note is Survivor opponents scale according to the strongest character on your team. A maxed gold character will face opponents just as strong, whether their teammates are also maxed or at base stats. Therefore, you are strongly advised to build your team around Raven/Prime - if she is not promoted, use a non-promoted team, etc.

Overall, it seems that Survivor's scaling very slightly favors a high level team over a low level team, provided both teams have balanced stats. For gold cards, assuming all else is equal, an E7 card has 5x the damage and health of a E0 card, but the Survivor opponents received are "only" about 3~4x as strong.

Rewards
Before every match, the player is given a wheel to spin which grants them a specific reward dependent on their victory in battle. Rewards can be shards (3 of blue, red and green, or 1 purple), gear (1 or 2 star only, with 2 star being more common), 2x power credits multiplier, an augmentation card (which can only be Major Character XP augments), and one Last Laugh ticket.

Experience
Only character(s) on the team with the highest level (or close to it) will gain full experience (roughly 5000~8500, depending on stats and match). Below it, experience rapidly declines to a minimum of 1/10 of full experience. This is very useful for keeping certain useful cards within a good level range to maintain a balanced team, such as Batgirl/Arkham Knight, who has much higher base stats.

Recommended Characters
There are a number of characters who are especially strong in Survivor:
 * Raven/Prime: Undoubtedly the one of the best possible pick for Survivor. Her passive gives her an immense free ~80% max health and "healing" potential - twice. Not only the health swap means she can take down Survivor opponents with huge stretches of health, she could also restore her own health without it being reduced by Healing Suppression or Killer Frost/Regime's passive. In higher matches, enemy health rapidly increases to the point it will take millions of damage to win - making Raven all but mandatory.
 * Doomsday/Containment: Despite his low apparent health, his three resurrections allows him to soak up Survivor opponents' ridiculous damage, particularly 1-hit specials (Doomsday/Prime, Zod/Prime, most versions of Superman, etc.) that often is difficult for Raven to deal with, and is excellent for brute-forcing an enemy Raven's passive if you can't avoid triggering it. His health reservoir system also allows him to take reduced damage from Radiation. Since his resurrection count resets with every match, he essentially irreducibly heals for up to 60% of his large total health between matches. Additionally, his deceptively low base stats can lean scaling to your favor.
 * Killer Frost/Prime: Her incredible power dampening passive (as well as further slows through her s1) are very useful in preventing opponents in higher matches from generating even one bar of power, as even their special 1s can inflict immense damage.
 * The Flash/Metahuman: While technically not possessing mechanics that are particularly of use in Survivor, his passive allows him to launch barrages of unblockable crit basic attacks for horrendous amounts of damage, and is one of the few sources of damage (other than % health damage) that would truly do more than scratch against match 12+ opponents.
 * Darkseid/Apokolips: His passive grants him a chance to set a stacking permanent bleed effect that deals 2% of max enemy health per second per stack (until they tag out). This is especially more useful and important when either S1 or S2 is disabled.
 * Reverse Flash: Up to three times a match, he can recover from damage and status effects from specials, unaffected by heal suppression. He also has a theoretically infinite combo that can whittle down opponents without suffering any retaliation.
 * Doomsday/Prime: More readily available than Raven and also decent because of the +50% total health he gets from a knock out blow, even though not nearly as strong as Raven's passive. Note that his effectiveness diminishes towards later matches due to healing suppression.
 * Harley Quinn, Wonder Woman/Dawn of Justice, or Martian Manhunter/Blackest Night: For their team healing effects.
 * Batgirl/Cassandra Cain: Her passive allows her to take out 25% of the enemies health upon tag in which can be a significant amount of damage especially as one reaches higher matches. Her s1 can also inflict immense damage with geared properly along with Cloak of Destiny.
 * Sinestro/Antimatter : As described on his own page, given sufficient gears and good teammates, he can deal lots of damage with constant tagging in and out, thus allowing the AI little-to-no time to attack.
 * Catwoman/Arkham Knight: With a passive that allows her to add bleed DOT to AI, and can't be rinsed even if they tag out. Combined with her high base damage, she can cause a great amount of DOT.
 * Superman/Injustice 2, The Flash/Wally West Rebirth, Batman/Dawn of Justice: they both have the ability to block/avoid an entire special with their passives, which can nullify damage and any status effects that could've destroyed another character.

Opponents to look out for

 * Darkseid/Prime: The scaling does not seem to take Darkseid's passive into account; you may face bronze characters with disproportionately high damage and health, as their stats are further quadrupled by Darkseid's passive despite the fact that they have already been compensated by Survivor itself.
 * Green Lantern/John Stewart: His passive makes his teammates invulnerable for 4 seconds once per match upon falling below 20% health, which can be quite frustrating especially in later matches when those seconds can often result in taking unavoidable and unrecoverable damage.
 * Deathstroke/Arkham Origins: His passive can make his S1 incredibly deadly, which can cause a lot of pain, especially in the face of healing supression. This makes him deadly as he nears 1 bar of power or as he is tagged out gaining power and not vulnerable to power drain.
 * Raven/Prime: Her passive can greatly lower the health of one of your characters, making Survivor much more difficult as health isn't restored after each match. Also, when S2 is disabled (most notably Survivor Fight 7, where Raven is one of the possible matches) it can take a lot longer to defeat her unless you can gain enough power for a Super, therefore it's often harder to avoid her deadly health swap.
 * Joker/Insurgency or Joker/Prime: If you knock him out, you lose a good amount of your max health, which can be a significant threat and sometimes an unrecoverable number.
 * Superman/Injustice 2: On higher rounds, with constant health regain Handicaps and Special-Disable for your characters, it can be extrememly difficult to battle against him if his effect is still in play.
 * Batman/Dawn of Justice: Similar to above, he can be a difficult opponent to face due to his passive, along with the high damage output of his S2.
 * Batman/Arkham Origins: His infamous starting 2 bars of power can be tricky and hard to avoid sometimes.
 * Killer Frost/Prime: Her passive can make your power frustratingly slow ( at a 50% generation decrease), and her S1 can slow it even further.
 * Killer Frost/Regime: She can cut your health gain by 90% (except for regeneration effect) which can be critical in certain matches, and your healing is also suppressed at later rounds.

Gear
Notable gear includes:


 * The Ibistick: When fully upgraded, it allows your specials to do additional burn damage over time equal to 10% of enemy maximum health, which is critical in higher matches.
 * Ra's Al Ghul's Scimitar: For the constant power drain you will find useful at any stage, and need to prevent match 8+ opponents from knocking your characters out with a single s1.

Matches
There are 16 rounds in total in Survivor Mode, and completing all rounds is known as a "Total Victory" without special rewards. However, it will take astronomical investments in the perfect characters, gear, augments, as well as extreme luck, skill and patience.

Most characters can appear as Survivor opponents, including those that are in the game files but not officially released or playable yet.

Match 7
The heal suppression is only ~20% and it doesn't have radiation/regeneration, making it a good chance to heal up; although the disabled second special can make it harder (Harley Quinn can't heal her team with s2, and Raven/Killer Frost can't life drain from s2 either). For Raven, a good alternate option is the Fourth World Set, giving her health regen on s1, or Gauntlets of Azrael to life drain through basics. Doomsday's Mutated Bone Spikes and Bane's Venom Injection System is very good to use here. If you are using Harley, switch out her Dual .357 Revolvers for any heal on s1 gear.


 * Static, Superman/Godfall, Nightwing/New 52: Quite frustrating as Static is immune to power drain, while Ra's is usually so useful for keeping opponents from using specials by itself. His s1 is also a fast 100% stun special that does full damage, while New 52 Nightwing can do quite a bit of basic damage upon tagging in and has an effective s1 power drain.
 * Scorpion/Mortal Kombat X, Aquaman/Regime, Catwoman/Batman Returns: Generally the easiest. Their main threat comes from the heavy damage over time from all three characters; try not to switch your characters around unnecessarily as you will need to tag out immediately after being hit by a bleed special.
 * The Flash/Metahuman, Doomsday/Containment, Raven/Prime: The hardest of the three. Containment Doomsday's resurrections means he takes a long time to take down and often lands unavoidable s1s, and Raven's extraordinarily powerful health swap is always a pain to avoid. Metahuman Flash will also quickly wipe the floor with your team after using a special, due to his passive allowing him to rapidly fire an unblockable barrage of crit basic attacks. You can avoid this team by restarting the game.

Match 9
Where it starts to get difficult due to the powerful opponents and strong healing suppression.


 * Wonder Woman/Red Son, Deathstroke/Red Son, Batman/Red Son: Easily the hardest of the three. Wonder Woman allows them to gain power rapidly, Deathstroke makes their basics much faster, but the worst is Batman's passive: high unblockable chance on s1, essentially allowing WW and Deathstroke's s1 (which they reach very quickly due to WW's passive) to unavoidably one-shot most characters under 1000 base health unless significant alliance health boosts/gear were used. Batman's s1 deals reduced damage but due to its high stun chance another character will tag in and finish you off anyway. While enemy stats are "scaled" to your team, low level teams are at even more of a disadvantage: their s1 can do twice of your max health in unblockable damage.
 * Solomon Grundy/Boss, Green Lantern/Red Son, Superman/Red Son: The most tedious enemy team. Red Son Green Lantern and Superman has high base health and GL's passive makes them extraordinarily tough to take down. Boss Solomon Grundy also has high health and his basic damage skyrockets as his health depletes; unusually, he also has basic crit gear, further amplifying his immense damage at low health (note that if Raven's passive triggers against him, his basic damage modifier will stay at where it is, increasing by one level until it reaches the level he is supposed to be each time he takes a further hit; uses this to try and burst him down right after the health swap to prevent him from taking advantage of his absurd basic damage at low health).
 * Bane/Arkham Origins, The Joker/Arkham Origins, Harley Quinn/Arkham: Generally the easiest of the three, but that's not saying much. Arkham Harley's strength comes from her Arkham team-wide unblockable s2, but this is of relatively little concern here as at this level, if you let them get to two bars of power, you're dead either way, unblockable or not. Bane's passive is particularly dangerous, as he gives his whole team one bar of power upon falling under 50% health. Note that his passive shares a similar mechanic as Boss Grundy above; it won't be triggered directly by the health swap, but rather by the next hit after the health swap. If you can knock him out with one hit, his passive will not be triggered, which will be critical to survival. Joker's passive can do copious amounts of poison damage (which would also lower your damage dealt by 20%) even if you have block gear to tank the special itself, so tag out whenever he does s1.

Match 14
This is the point where it becomes simply impossible to the vast majority of players. Enemies could knock out almost any character with a single basic combo, and you can forget about taking a single s1. A single missed basic attack or combo ender will likely spell instant death. They can have over 20 times your health, and the whole team regenerates 1% of their gargantuan health pool every second (not affected by Killer Frost/Regime), making it a herculean task to even match their healing rate, let alone defeat them - further worsened by disabled special 1, which halves the efficiency of burns from % max health damage gear (e.g. The Ibistick). For some perspective, as The Ibistick, when maxed, burns for 10% enemy max health for every special used and enemies heal 1% every second (actually 3% combined, but it's assumed here you managed to focus on a single target first), it means you have to use a special 2 on the same character every 10 seconds just to barely break even.

Crit chance and damage augments are essential here, as it can affect Ibistick and League of Assassins Adept Blade's damage over time effects.

A possible setup and strategy than can get through match 14 are as follows, even though incredible luck is also required:


 * Raven/Prime with Ra's Al Ghul's Scimitar, The Ibistick and League of Assassins Adept Blade
 * Killer Frost/Prime with Fourth World Godly Mace, and 2 pieces of blocking gear
 * Batgirl/Prime is mostly for her passive, so 3 pieces of blocking gear can be used to buy a little more time. Although special 1 is disabled, Cloak of Destiny, LexCorp Gauntlets V2 and Demonic Cloak can be considered to hope for a tag-in stun into a Redemption to quickly finish off an opponent with very little health, which can be a very frustrating case as DoTs stop running once the target reach 1 health and they rapidly heal up.

Luck is particularly critical with the first two opponents: you need to trigger Raven's passive when she is at about 5% or lower, otherwise even a crit-augmented s2 won't be able to knock them out quickly, which you definitely need to do with the first two opponents quickly before the third opponent can generate one bar of power, which Killer Frost's power dampening passive can help stall longer.

Fourth World Godly Mace is not used for its damage effects - they can't help you now at this point - but rather its s2 power drain. KF's s2 has a good number of hits and is unblockable, giving it a good chance to power drain, which is very useful when an opponent manages to get 1 bar (or close to it) and Raven can't drain with combo ender in time. Additionally, you can use it immediately after Killer Frost throws back her opponent with a light or heavy basic combo. If timed correctly, it can hit them from a distance; this causes the ice daggers to hit her opponent after her special finishes, causing a pseudo-stun than allows you to segue back to Raven safely.

Raven's juggling with her basic combos needs to be perfect. If her light combo does not get a combo ender, it may be advisable to tag in one of her teammates to cancel its long ending animation, which may otherwise cause her to take enemy basic attacks. Another option when juggling the last opponent is to not use her s2 immediately after 2 bars, but rather when her basics get blocked (unless she has full power). Don't panic and spam light basics when one is blocked, as this almost always leads to them retaliating with their basics. Waiting a brief moment before using another light basic attack after the first one was blocked tend to give a much better chance the AI won't block it. It doesn't matter if your s2 is blocked, as the majority of damage comes from Ibistick/Adept Blade at this point, and it may be even better since Soul Crush's 4 hits can give them a dangerous amount of power if unblocked.

Match 15
This match is actually significantly easier than match 14: no regeneration suppression (full Fourth World Set and LexCorp Gauntlets V2 can be used to heal), no enemy regeneration, and most importantly, no disable special 1, allowing Sinestro/Antimatter to spam s1 with infinite power, even though it will still take an extremely long time simply due to their astronomical health.

Match 16
The most difficult and also the final round. This round allows healing on special 2 moves while disabling all special 1 moves. Random tagging is also present making this round extremely difficult to apply strategies.

Trivia

 * Survivor has been updated multiple times after release, as at that time it was considered too difficult (for example, Killing Joke Joker from as early as match 6 is known to deal 20000+ damage on s1 against non-promoted teams with ~10000 health). The scaling is taken down significantly, heal suppression has been lessened in earlier rounds and random tag has been removed from all rounds except round 16 which is the final round.
 * If you've managed to obtain more than 100 Last Laugh tickets, upon cashing out, the counter will only reach 99 as the highest, but once it reaches 91, it will counts back to 99 and continue so forth. For example, if you managed to cash out 132 tickets (either through hacking or using glitches), first, the counter will be displayed as 92, and then 99 and continue on until you actually have 99 left, then it will simply count down normally as it would be. This is no longer possible as now quitting the game during the Last Laugh interface would only cause it to reopen upon going into Survivor again.