Devs, can we please have female characters that don't suck?

Pylgrim

So, forced to play with Bag-Hulk it's driven hard into me how much she sucks. I hear that some people have their uses for her, but when your best characters are ones that have abilities that put special tiles in the board, she's even worse than dead weight. It also sent me thinking how with the earlier release of Captain Bagvel, the double-nerf to an already mediocre Storm, and Bag Lady being the only remaining sucky 4* character, the only pseudo-viable female character in 3*-and-above land is GSBW. Psylocke is ok if you don't have anything better (i.e. almost every single non-Loki/Daredevil male character), I guess. The best female characters are 2*s, OBW and c.Storm, but Moonstone is the second worst 2* character. And which is the unarguable worst character in the whole game? That's right, a female, Yelena Balova.

So now that you are done with a round of buffs and nerfs, can we have another in which female characters are given more relevance? Or can we please have a new, truly powerful, tournament-worthy female character?

EDIT. It may have not come out as clear as I intended, but I am talking exclusively about their performance in PVP.

Unknown

I agree with you wholeheartedly

dkffiv

Isn't Invis Woman pretty good if you actually have enough ISO's to get her to 270? I like Psylocke a lot but her blue is terrible, GSBW isn't bad but the AI can't play her. Captain Marvel would be decent if she had an active yellow along with the passive portion.

unimatrix

I kind of like using she hulk. Of course if you're using patch or anyone else putting strike tiles.. then she'll destroy the bottom of the board. Put lazy Thor and black panther. . You have a very large tank team.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

Isn't Invis Woman pretty good if you actually have enough ISO's to get her to 270? I like Psylocke a lot but her blue is terrible, GSBW isn't bad but the AI can't play her. Captain Marvel would be decent if she had an active yellow along with the passive portion.

Primarily defensive characters are not playable in PvP due to the game's design, and since they're not especially strong in PvE to make up for their unplayability in PvP you might as well get someone who is decent at both. I think Invisible Woman would be playable in a neutral environment, but shields/boosts gives way too much advantage to offense oriented characters for PvP.

Unknown

Yeah... All the chickipoo's should be more game changing... I'm all for equality in the workplace..

Cap Marvel Energy Absorption does at the least make a power like World Rupture activate at a snails pace. Which could be an annoyance to shield hoppers not expecting a long fight. Also the added colors Energy Absorption allows makes it a useful ability.

Basically what Im sayin is that Captain Marvell really isn't all that bad...

Oh and she's a hot blonde.

That is all.

over_clocked

Moonstone needs slight tweaks (purple always dealing damage/always being able to generate a match, black dropping half the cost or so, red dealing more base damage) and bam, strong offensive female character with decent health. One I would not hate seeing as a lazified character.
Mohawk could use more health and/or not use green, that would bump her a tier higher as green is way too contested as is. Yellow should provide more board control, or more damage. Can't she destroy all TU tiles while generating only 6-7 TUAP? Her yellow power is random now, and she already has one random power.
Psylocke could benefit greatly from changing Bewilder to purple and/or being less random with it. She needs a purple, just look at her.
She-Hulk's green needs to be less random, or do more for what it does, and drop the green colour, too, and become purple (AP drain) or yellow (healing), or something. Why isn't her AoE that shakes up the board green? Makes no sense. She needs a purple, if we go by appearances, too.
Any female character with a nice purple power (they can't do a Black Widow since there's already a 3* Widow) and not sucktucular health would be awesome in my books. And since the next character is Colossus who most probably won't have a purple power, but some combination of red/yellow/blue/black, hope they recognize how easy it would be to make existing female characters more usable.
And of course, GSBW herself could use some slight tweaks, like being less expensive. Sheesh her every ability costs 11 AP and higher. Her purple needs to be played by the AI in such a way that greens drop between other greens, so that she doesn't just gift green matches to the player.

Pylgrim

JediHarbinger wrote:

Yeah... All the chickipoo's should be more game changing... I'm all for equality in the workplace..

Cap Marvel Energy Absorption does at the least make a power like World Rupture activate at a snails pace. Which could be an annoyance to shield hoppers not expecting a long fight. Also the added colors Energy Absorption allows makes it a useful ability.

Basically what Im sayin is that Captain Marvell really isn't all that bad...

Oh and she's a hot blonde.

That is all.

I bolded the word "could" there because it makes it sound as though you're speaking theoretically. Are you? Because in practice, I've found her irrelevant at best, and you don't really see anyone playing her. I have seriously, faced more players with Daredevil randomly in their team than her.

unimatrix wrote:

I kind of like using she hulk. Of course if you're using patch or anyone else putting strike tiles.. then she'll destroy the bottom of the board. Put lazy Thor and black panther. . You have a very large tank team.

Yeah, that's why I made a concession in the opening paragraph (though I'd argue that BP would not be super excited about getting his blue and yellow powers' tiles randomly destroyed by She-Hulk's Red or Blue) but if your team relies on special tiles (Punisher, Patch, Spiderman, Sentry, and a long list of etcs.) she's dead weight in attack. In defence she might be very annoying, especially her green. Not so much in attack.

Nevertheless, point is not "hey, let's find out that there's a tiny niche usage for these characters where they MAY not totally suck". The point is that there's not a single female character that is reliably tournament worthy (OBW once was, pre-True Healing) to the plethora of tournament worthy male characters.

They still have some of the most powerful female characters in Marvel Universe in the pocket (Jean Grey, Emma Frost, Scarlet Witch, Mystique). Hopefully, they'll do them justice.

OnesOwnGrief

To be honest, I think the only reason Moonstone, Yelena, and at times Venom are as bad as they are is because of the fact they are the opposition in which new players will face. Changing their skills would actually affect that balance a great deal. You want new players to make it through the prologue so they can get those covers to set them on their way. I am in favor of making the females better though. It also doesn't explain how Invisible Woman is the way she is now. Unfortunately, even she can easily be overpowered if they reduced her AP costs.

NighteyesGrisu

Mabybe they could add a 4* Thor to fix this?

IReallyHatePVP

I only have one thing to say about your assessment of Psylocke.

Put up any guy-only team. My Betsy will see them Murderblade-ed to Downed-town.

There is a reason she has TWO slots in my shiny 40...person roster. She is that hardcore.

Unknown

Perhaps a side note, but anyone remember when Ms. Marvel was touted as "the counter to Daken" and then she happened to be a better counter to Spidey and Bullseye instead, doing basically nothing against Daken but generating red AP you won't get to use anyways? Good times. Seriously, buff moonstone. I could do it in 15 minutes and it would be balanced.

Unknown

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

To be honest, I think the only reason Moonstone, Yelena, and at times Venom are as bad as they are is because of the fact they are the opposition in which new players will face. Changing their skills would actually affect that balance a great deal. You want new players to make it through the prologue so they can get those covers to set them on their way. I am in favor of making the females better though. It also doesn't explain how Invisible Woman is the way she is now. Unfortunately, even she can easily be overpowered if they reduced her AP costs.

Sure, but then Juggs and Daken were easily top 1/2 star characters. Rags was arguably #1 in the whole game pre-nerf.

Then there's the fact that the devs feel the ai sucks and compensates by giving them an additional levels beyond the player. If the characters were half-decently balanced, they wouldn't need to turn them into bullet sponges.

Unknown

Yeah, what he said. Juggernaut is the best 1* character. Full stop. Daken is one of the nastiest 2*s to fight against - not the best on offense, but no fun to fight, and doubly so when your team isn't well-equipped. Ares is a straight-up top tier 2*.

Unknown

I'm not sure we really need another "I want stronger female characters" thread but I guess it does show that it's important to some people...

I'm not sure I see the female characters we have as terrible though. Females make up 2 of the better 1* heroes, the best 2* hero (arguable after the healing nerf but OBW is still very good) and reasonable 3* heroes. The main issue is none of the most powerful (in PvP) characters are female I guess.

She Hulk is underrated by lots of people as are captain marvel and Psylocke. The main argument against their use is they aren't Patch/Mags (won't be an issue soon), they aren't Daken (less of an issue soon) and they aren't L.Thor, Sentry or Hood with Sentry (not so much on his own).

Once you're past that lot they are pretty interchangeable with the other 3* heroes and solidly better than some others (hello Spidey, Loki etc),.

If the game had any kind of strategy in hero choices then they would probably see use as it is but, since your defensive team is going to be your last used and there are so few heroes that are worth ANYTHING on defence you never get round to using them.

While game mechanics stay as is there will always be a restricted useful hero pool and it impacts plenty of male heroes too.

wymtime

First I will say I actually really like She-Hulk. Once I get enough covers in her she will be a staple in PVE and possible a solid B team in PVP. I do think a couple tweeks can be made to the other 3* female characters and they would be much better. Here are a couple ideas for the 3* women that I would make still keeping them the same theme as they were made.
1: GSBW- lower the cost of sniper rifle to 15. Her purple gets enough AP so she can fire and it still does more damage and board shakeup than CoTS.
2: Captain Marvel- Allow her red to destroy all enemy special tiles at level 5 and raise AP cost to 9. 1500 damage and all enemy tiles gone, well worth the cost.
3:Psylock: I think she is very solid already, but I think her red with reducing AP cost is too slow. Just reduce her red to 6AP all the time. This will make her more consistant. Right now I feel like I need to bring Daken with her to make her red spamable, but then I loose her strike tiles. A cost of 6 red AP would make her stand on her own better.
4:Mohawk storm-Change her green to her 2* CStorm blue AOE damage and 3 turn stun for 11 AP. Change her yellow back to red allow her to destroy all TU at level 5 and reduce the damage or cap the max damage she can do. Raise her health. Storms issues is she clashes too much with more powerful colors and has does not have enogh health. She can now fit in with better green and yellow characters.
5:She Hulk- I am on hold with her. Reduce her cost on Blue to 7 AP. Blue gives strike tiles to the enemy so a reduce cost is still works. Green should reduce the enemy teams strongest AP color instead of random.

These changes would make all 5 3* ladies very playable. They probably won't be Elite top 5 characters but they would become very playable on any roster. They will help with transitions to 3* and support in playing for a long time.

IamTheDanger

NighteyesGrisu wrote:

Mabybe they could add a 4* Thor to fix this?

Maybe thats the new 2* coming. The new female Thor. Now that would so awesome.
I know your post was for a 4*, and a 4* female Thor would be even better.

JJ

Pylgrim

bonfire01 wrote:

I'm not sure we really need another "I want stronger female characters" thread but I guess it does show that it's important to some people...

Or maybe, just maybe, "some people" haven't seen a thread with this topic before? Meaning that it's been a while and that the situation haven't changed and even more people feel it's an issue?

I'm not sure I see the female characters we have as terrible though. Females make up 2 of the better 1* heroes, the best 2* hero (arguable after the healing nerf but OBW is still very good) and reasonable 3* heroes. The main issue is none of the most powerful (in PvP) characters are female I guess.

Didn't you get the memo? m.Storm got nerfed to hell and back. And while MBW's blue is excellent, you'll be hard pressed to put her in the same category as Juggernaut, IM35 or even Venom. And yeah, the point is that none of the most powerful characters (all 7 of them as you yourself list them below) is a female. Not one, among seven. If that's not enough disparity to make you raise an eyebrow, well I guess you are not a great fan of female heroes.

She Hulk is underrated by lots of people as are captain marvel and Psylocke. The main argument against their use is they aren't Patch/Mags (won't be an issue soon), they aren't Daken (less of an issue soon) and they aren't L.Thor, Sentry or Hood with Sentry (not so much on his own).

No. The main argument is that they generally suck, independently of their comparison to the most powerful characters. They either have overcosted abilities (GSBW), or their abilities are plain weak and they are squishy (MoStorm, CapMav) or are even counterproductive to your other characters (She-Hulk). I'll agree that Psylocke is a solid package... until you notice that she's just a weaker Punisher/Black Panther, characters that do not even make your list of most powerful ones.

Unknown

Pylgrim wrote:

Didn't you get the memo? m.Storm got nerfed to hell and back. And while MBW's blue is excellent, you'll be hard pressed to put her in the same category as Juggernaut, IM35 or even Venom. And yeah, the point is that none of the most powerful characters (all 7 of them as you yourself list them below) is a female. Not one, among seven. If that's not enough disparity to make you raise an eyebrow, well I guess you are not a great fan of female heroes.

Storm used to be as good as a 2*, now she's a good 1* hero and MBW has the best stun in the game. Both are comfortably better than venom and, while Jugger and IM35 are decent 1* heroes you'd be better off with Storm or MBW replacing one or the other than both together.

Pylgrim wrote:

No. The main argument is that they generally suck, independently of their comparison to the most powerful characters. They either have overcosted abilities (GSBW), or their abilities are plain weak and they are squishy (MoStorm, CapMav) or are even counterproductive to your other characters (She-Hulk). I'll agree that Psylocke is a solid package... until you notice that she's just a weaker Punisher/Black Panther, characters that do not even make your list of most powerful ones.

GSBW's sniper rifle does 526 damage per AP BEFORE taking into account shatter damage on the primary target which is likely to increase the damage to a bit over 575 damage per AP . Call the Storm, considered borderline/fully overpowered does 645 damage per AP which is 70 damage per AP more HOWEVER cascades from sniper rifle average about 8 matched tiles per use, meaning it generates 8AP in place of that damage. If you want to pick on GSBW then complain about her red because 2/3 of her abilities are genuinely good and that's better than a lot of heroes.

She hulk is only counterproductive if you pair her with special tile creating heroes, so pick a better team.

Captain marvel is NOT squishy, she has above average health. Beast, Daken, Patch, Magneto ETC ETC would kill for 8500 health at 166. Also her powers are not plain weak, she only really suffers from her red being situational vs protect tiles and them being rare in PvP. In PvE she's GREAT vs overlevelled Bullseyes. Her passive slows the hell out of people Sentry bombing you through her animation every CD AND if you also have Sentry it means if he survives the CDs then they are eating a Supernova. Her black does good damage per AP for a black skill and a 2s stun is decent (at least in the devs mind) and doesn't seem to have increased the cost much because of the relatively modest enemy strike tile.

Cpt Marvel is significantly better than you give her credit for.

Psylocke... i'll agree a bit below those heroes, more so BP after his recent buff.

MoStorm would be more useful with more health but it's not like that level of health per level is only on female heroes.

NighteyesGrisu

Pylgrim wrote:

Didn't you get the memo? m.Storm got nerfed to hell and back. And while MBW's blue is excellent, you'll be hard pressed to put her in the same category as Juggernaut, IM35 or even Venom. And yeah, the point is that none of the most powerful characters (all 7 of them as you yourself list them below) is a female. Not one, among seven. If that's not enough disparity to make you raise an eyebrow, well I guess you are not a great fan of female heroes.

of course MBW isn't in the same category as Juggs, IM or Venom because she's an entirely different type of character. Doesn't mean she's worse than them (well, Juggs maybe, but she certainly holds her own against Venom or IM35). Same really goes for mStorm, she's not as good as she was back when she was easily the best 1", but she's still good. I'd still pick her over Venom and especially IM35. Maybe it's not about being a fan of female heroes than about just not liking what you got...

No. The main argument is that they generally suck, independently of their comparison to the most powerful characters. They either have overcosted abilities (GSBW), or their abilities are plain weak and they are squishy (MoStorm, CapMav) or are even counterproductive to your other characters (She-Hulk). I'll agree that Psylocke is a solid package... until you notice that she's just a weaker Punisher/Black Panther, characters that do not even make your list of most powerful ones.

No, they don't suck. GSBW is rock solid and a regular member of my team. MoStorm and Carol probably will too once I have usuable covers. Even She-Hulks looks pretty promising.

Yes, a new female hero that's absolutely top notch would be nice, but then you'd get people started about nerfing again. I just think you're taking the whole thing way too seriously.

Unknown

None of the 3*/4* female heroes are broken and need to be fixed so of course they're underpowered compared to guys who are broken.

For comparing Call the Storm to Sniper Rifle, there is a very large premium in this game for requiring more matches that increases damage more than linearly. Sniper Rifle is a 7 match ability versus 5 match for Call the Storm, so it should do considerably more damage than Call the Storm which it does not. That's more of a problem with Call the Storm being way too good, not Sniper Rifle being too weak. In terms of attacks that hit the whole team, Rage of the Panther, Call the Storm, and World Rupture pretty much threw balance out the window.

She-Hulk and Captain Marvel would both be pretty darn good if the game was actually balanced. Probably not top 5 but they match up very strongly against certain characters in the top 5, which is more useful in PvE than PvP but even on PvP, if the game was actually balanced it might make a lot of sense to sub in She-Hulk when fighting Punisher, for example.