Black Adam

**Black Adam** is a 3-star base, gold Arcane class hero. All his abilities are ranged and revolve around power manipulation, allowing him to blitz his foes with relentless barrages of lightning and empowering his allies to do the same, making him one of the deadliest heroes.

His shards can be obtained from Arena. He is also available from chests, with particularly high chance in the Regime Chest and Wizard Chest.

## Abilities

**Power of Aton (passive)**

* Immune to increases to Power cost of Abilities
* On Tag-in, 10%/25%/40%/55%/75 chance to stun.
* Special 1's power boost increases 1%/1%/2%/5%/10%. Stacks up to 1/1/2/4/5 times.
* Special 3 may steal 1/1/3/5/7 Power Bars.

Black Adam's Specials can manipulate power.

**Lightning Cage**

* [100% (+2% per level) of Damage stat] Damage
* +25% Power generation for 15 seconds
* 35% (+0.5% per level) Chance to reduce team power cost.

Increases power generation and grants a chance to reduce power costs for team's Abilities.

**Storm Cloud**

* [150% (+2% per level) of Damage stat] Damage
* 40% (+0.5% per level) Chance to increase power cost of current opponent's Abilities by 3 for 25 seconds.
* Reduces current opponent's Basic and Swipe damage by 40% (+0.5% per level) for 25 seconds.

Decreases Basic and Swipe damage of opponent and grants a chance to increase power costs of opponent's Abilities.

**Electric Burst**

* [300% (+2% per level) of Damage stat] Damage
* 25% (+0.5% per level) Chance to steal Power Bars.

## Strategy

Black Adam is a powerhouse. His power cost reduction **does** stack with Doctor Fate or Power Girl's passives, reducing power costs by up to 5 while it's active. Power costs cannot be reduced below 1 bar. The buffs apply **after** the special since update 2.8. It is currently bugged and leveling up the ability does not seem to increase the chance of activating the power cost reduction buff, and instead remaining around its base value of 35%.

His tag in stun is instant, unblockable, and ignore Shields.

**Storm Cloud'**s power cost increase **does** stack with Horrific Scarecrow's passive. It would affect targets using Special block, causing them to drain power extremely quickly.

Unlike normal power drain, **Electric Burst** can take enemy power and give them to Black Adam, even if his opponent is blocking (it can steal power from unhittable opponents, e.g. Armored Superman with his passive). It steals power at the **beginning** of the special. Therefore, it may deplete power and prevent special block from being used.

Overall, he is potentially an extremely dangerous opponent, being able to wipe out his target incredibly quickly. It is generally advisable to avoid him as much as possible. Fighting him would be quite luck based due to his chance effects, and that the AI doesn't *always* uses his specials immediately.

## Interactions

### Good with

* **Shazam**: Shazam is able to massive boost Black Adam's damage, and in return Black Adam's power cost reduction buff is very useful for letting Shazam heal his team more efficiently.

### Good against

* Heroes without ranged options, as Black Adam would be able to constantly blast them from a distance, and stealing their power even if they have enough to use a special (as they can't hit from afar).

### Countered by

* **Shazam:** One advantage of Black Adam is he can always apply his powerful buffs/debuffs on specials, even when blocked, but Shazam's Retribution of Zeus passive gives him a chance to disable the special, or even when using Roaring Strike for free in retaliation when he blocks a special.
* **Heartbreaker Harley Quinn:** She gives her whole team the ability to reflect stuns. Not only does Black Adam stun frequently, he is unable to control it so he is at risk of being stunned himself every time he tags in.
* **Last Laugh The Joker:** Synergizes with Heartbreaker Harley Quinn. Also he has a chance to stun the enemy when they tag in.
* **Justice League Superman**: If he uses his Special 1; CHARGE PUNCH, he can remove debuffs applied to him.
* **Dark Supergirl:** She can interrupt specials when she tags in, so the specials used by Black Adam will not be as annoying.

## Trivia

* The effects of his specials have been tweaked several times:
	+ Before update 2.8, the buffs applied at the beginning of the special, not when the special hits the target - if Black Adam is stunned in the small window between that, he could still apply the buffs.
	+ Update 3.1.0 unnerfed Electric Burst so he can steal power at the beginning again, but Lightning Cage's buff remains at the end of special.
	+ At release, Electric Burst can steal power even when the target is unhittable; it was then changed to not work; but by 3.1.0 it works again.