Oh, another guide, how nice it is to have the time to do these again!

Welcome back to the "How To:" series, where we cover tips and tricks for all your favorite Monsters and Mortals in "Monsters and Mortals." Today's character will be a Mortal that everyone who's played Dark Deception should be familiar with. You love her, you hate her, you distrust her, and you tell her to shut up every time you die, our guest today is Helen Bierce.

In the base game, Bierce is the deuteragonist of Dark Deception, being the one responsible for Doug getting all his powers, as well as the reason Doug is out to get the Riddle of Heaven's ring pieces. She is obsessed with being a movie star, which she was successful in cheating Malak in their deal to get her desired fame and keep her soul in the process. This is why she and Malak have a negative relationship towards each other, as both sides want each other dead. However, her ballroom is not available in Dark Deception: Monsters and Mortals, so she has no choice but to enter the nightmares and make herself vulnerable. Is she able to fend for herself? Lets get going, clock's ticking.

Bierce was one of the first Mortals introduced in the game, which gives her the distinction of being the only Dark Deception character that isn't Balanced. Instead, she is a Support class Mortal. This means she is very good at collecting shards, fighting if she needs to, and supporting teammates...the last one being very questionable at best. It may not look like it from face value, but Bierce is actually rather difficult to use properly, as her entire gameplan is centered around healing teammates using her heavy attack, which (like all Support classes) heals teammates by 5 hp her hit. This is reinforced with her Ult, but we'll get into that later. This means Bierce should be focusing on healing teammates whenever she's not in combat or collecting shards, as it can make all the difference in the next battle. As a Support class, she has very high HP and decent speed to boot, making her a good shard collector and able to keep up with all Mortals except PenPen, allowing her to keep everyone besides her topped off easier. Due to her Ult and her high hp, Bierce is notoriously good at staying alive for a long time. Combine that with her generous hitboxes on her attacks means she is notoriously difficult to kill for even Monsters at times, as she can just take an endless amount of hits if she plays correctly.

However, Bierce does face some problems. Having to camp other players to heal them does take time away from collecting shards and fighting, which can cost games if time healing and time collecting shards aren't balanced. Additionally, her damage output is rather low. However, that's not as big of a deal since she's VERY good at playing the long game in combat. She's not AS good at supporting other Support classes, as she ties speed with them and they don't get to benefit from Bierce's Ult. Finally, as bulky as she is, there are a few characters that are able to shred her, as her source of staying alive can be canceled via stuns, meaning she must be careful around anything or anyone that's able to stun her.

Bierce's Ult is referred to as "Helping Hand." When activated, Bierce rapidly begins to regenerate health over time for ten seconds, completely restoring all her health. Every Mortal who isn't a Support class will get the same treatment, but unlike Bierce, they will only get back 25% of their health. This Ult is fantastic for Bierce herself, as she gets all her HP back and she can do it in the middle of a fight, this Ult being the reason she's incredibly hard to kill. However, for teammates, it can be better since 25% doesn't really heal very much without heal slap support alongside it. Not only that, but Support classes do not benefit from it, meaning this is a one-sided benefit if the entire Mortal team happens to be Support classes. Thus, in order to effectively use it, it is important to pay attention to your teammate's silhouettes often to see if they're getting hurt, then use it when the time's right if your goal's to help teammates. Likewise, for Bierce herself, the best use is to wait until you're low, then use it for free health restored.

This Ult WILL cancel if Bierce gets stunned, which can potentially screw her over if she wasn't able to get much health back. As a result, the best use of it is to use it when you're not in the middle of a fight or you're disengaging from combat. Overall, this Ult is really good for Bierce herself, but really challenging to get the most use out of if your goal is to use her properly as an actual Support Mortal.

In Maze Escape, Bierce is generally considered to be a high tier Mortal by top players. This is primarily due to the fact that she is really freaking hard to kill for many Monsters without their Ults, as she can live for a very long time thanks to the combination of high speed, high health, and the ability to completely restore her health with Helping Hand. However, for a Support class, she's actually really inconsistent at providing support to her teammates if she doesn't dedicate her time to heal slap spamming her teammates. As a result, this can harm the team if she chooses to play a supportive role like she's meant to, as that means there's one less person getting shards. Her support weakens further if there's more Support Mortals in the match, as Helping Hand does not affect them. As a result of all these traits, Bierce is very good if used offensively and defensively, as she's able to use Helping Hand to prolong battles, but she is also very good at playing the support role. However, she's hard to use in this role, as it requires attention to teammates and forfeiting her ability to collect shards in favor of helping out teammates, which is why many people often use Heather for this role instead of Bierce.

In terms of maps, she's extremely irritating on open maps that don't have many damage sources such as Stranger Sewers and Deadly Decadence since she just doesn't die and she has generous hitboxes to boot. Crazy Carnevil fits this bill as well and also helps her poor supportive role since she can more accurately see if her teammates are under attack thanks to the lack of walls, although she needs to beware the Clown Spiders. Ancient Evil is a fantastic map for Bierce since she can outrun the Vampires and turret damage doesn't matter for her due to Helping Hand. Akademi Assault is also good since the Police traps are laughable and you can literally hold W to avoid Fun Girl, making them non-issues when playing the map and she can still fight well here thanks to all the space. Poppy Panic is a pretty decent map for her since Helping Hand's full healing allows her to handle the Cat bee traps better than most characters, and her high attack rate allows her to fend off Huggy Wuggy effectively. Monstrum Madness is also a good map for her, but she needs to be wary of the Super Brutes affecting her teammates, as well as herself. Elementary Evil has the fake portals, but the layout itself is helpful for her in catching up to teammates. Silent Sacrifice is very open and she can dispose of Air Screamers the best out of all the Mortals, but Pyramid Head is a big problem if you don't know how to properly evade them. Monkey Business has an abundance of bananas and is linear, making it her worst map since that means she can die quick and Helping Hand is a lot less useful since stuns of any kind can cancel it.


PvP Matchups:

Performs Well Against: Murder Monkey, Agatha, Clown Gremlin, Fiend, Robbie, Penny, Infected Clarice
Performs Decently Against: Gold Watcher, Reaper Nurse, Brute, Nurse, Kissy Missy, Infected Balathu
Performs Poorly Against: Malak, Dread Ducky, Lucky, Hangry, Ayano

Many of her matchups are doable considering her immense survivability allowing her to go toe-to-toe with many Monsters. The exceptions to this are Malak and Dread Ducky, whose Ults can cut through the healing rate of Helping Hand and kill her anyway. Brute can do the same, but it's unlikely he'll kill since she can ignore the fire damage with her healing, meaning he'll have to ram into her repeatedly. Reaper Nurse is also a doable matchup, but she'll need to be careful around her, as Reaper Nurse does have the range advantage and Vaccination Time to help her overcome Bierce. The vast majority of the Joy Joy Gang also murder her effectively as well; Lucky can catch up with Bunny Barrage and disable Helping Hand, leaving her very weakened, whereas Hangry can outright delete her instantly with a heavy hit + Rib Crusher. At least Penny's a positive matchup, even though it'll take 10 years to kill her thanks to having absurd health and Bierce having low damage.

Bierce is absolutely absurd in this gamemode. You only need to think about it logically: Monsters themselves focus on offense and they struggle to kill her at times, she's thrown into a gamemode normally full of defensive characters, it focuses on shard collecting, she's fast, and she has a lot of health. Those traits altogether form what's basically the perfect character, as every Mortal except 8-BitRyan and Detective Evans cannot stop her ability to heal, and even then, those two aren't very common thanks to their lack of useful traits besides their free stuns. She's commonly competing with Heather on who the best Mortal is in this mode, Bierce being just a touch better since she's able to completely heal herself, whereas Heather just takes reduced damage. Overall, Bierce is commonly considered the best Mortal in this mode, even being called broken here and there.

Maps are the same.


PvP Matchups:

Performs Well Against: Doug, Nikson, PenPen, SuperHorrorBro, Dawko, Info-Chan, Salim
Performs Decently Against: Vince, Heather, Bierce (herself), Cybil, Senpai, Hanako, Jason
Performs Poorly Against: Borisov, Evans, 8-BitRyan

Overall, Bierce does very well against the majority of Mortals in the gamemode, only really having issues against three of them, and one of said three is a good pick, being Borisov. Borisov is able to quickly kill her thanks to Cool Down ruining her speed advantage, meaning she pretty much needs to waste her Ult in order to potentially survive.

Bierce is a Mortal of many faces. She can play many different playstyles well, allowing her to be adaptive in many situations presented to her. However, her support playstyle is rather difficult to learn, as you'll have to find the right balance of healing teammates and collecting shards, as well as deciding when to use Helping Hand in order to allow the entire team to benefit most from. However, this is provided there aren't any other Support Mortals in the mode as well, since they don't get to benefit. Her self-centered playstyle causes her to be absurdly strong in Soul Collection, and she is really hard to face there, as her unkillable nature causes an unhealthy amount of both Monsters and Mortals to struggle fighting against her. Overall, if you want a basic support character to begin with or you want to dedicate your time to being a healer, Bierce is the Mortal for the job.