**** Invisible Woman (Classic) **** [PRE 2015-04]

Infrared

I know the blog about Colossus mentioned they tested for it, but what happens if Colossus is stuck out front and also Invisible?

And what if Deadpool is also on the team and he has more health than invisible immovable Colossus?

Decided to test this myself.

• Force Bubbles on Immovable Object makes it last forever.
• Immovable Object takes priority over Life of the Party. Deadpool cannot jump in front of immovable Colossus.
• Invisibility stacks with Immovable Object. Colossus will stand in front to absorb attacks, but the attacks will miss completely because he is invisible.
• At the start of the next turn, invisible immovable Colossus will automatically be moved back, only stepping up again when the enemy attacks. Still, Colossal Punch suffers a bit because he won't be in front during your turn.

Seems like a very effective combo, but oh so expensive. If only they didn't both use yellow. Now it will cost 22-27 yellow AP to get it going. Plus another 13 blue if you want to bubble wrap it.

OnesOwnGrief

All these weird interactions have me believing Immovable Object is so buggy as opposed to it behaving normally. Being able to bubble it is nonsense. Being able to invisible as well, ridiculous.

Unknown

IW: Colossus, get out front and I'll make you invisible!

Colossus: Couldn't you...couldn't you just make an impenetrable force field or something?

IW: Well, yeah, but this is way cooler. And I think, deep down, you realize that.

Colossus: ...you're right.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Fury and X-Force are now popular. The new Wolverine is terrific, fun to play, and rather fun to play against as well. Ponder the other character, focusing on two powers. At a cost of 13 , Force Bubbles is almost purely an achievement at the moment. It is useless for a fairly matched game, and requires another 9 before harming the enemy team even slightly, for 2172 damage when she's maxed at level 270.

Suppose Force Bubbles cost 5 instead? Now it's actually a useful utility. Using it to erase all moves from the board gives a board shuffle. Covering tiles with the "strongest color" counteracts Surgical Strike. It can cover up strike tiles and counters, temporarily. It can counteract World Rupture. Sue Storm can protect the team in various interesting ways. Then, when 9 is available, she can start blowing them up, causing moderate damage while gathering 24 AP. It would be more random than the power gained by Surgical Strike or Twin Pistols, but it would still be useful.

Here are the two powers as they currently are.

[anchor=invisible4]Invisible Woman (Classic)[/anchor]
4 Star Rarity (Legendary) Discussion link. Wiki link.
At Max Level: HP:8220 Tile damage:82/11/73/09/64/09/3.0

Force Bubbles - 13
Susan focuses her power to lock the enemy down and save the team. Locks 2 chosen tiles in Force Bubbles before creating a Blue Protect tile with a strength of 42.

Level 2: Locks 5 chosen tiles. Level 3: Increases Protect tile strength to 92. Level 4: Locks 8 chosen tiles. Level 5: Increases Protect tile strength to 185.

Max Level: 678 Protect Tile

Force Field Crush - 9
Invisible Woman shatters a 3x3 area around 1 random Force Bubble, dealing 42 damage and unlocking but not destroying it. If there are no Force Bubbles on the board, she creates 1 in a random location. This ability ends the turn. Generates AP.

Level 2: Unlocks or places 2 Force Bubbles Level 3: Each unlocked Force Bubble does 84 damage Level 4: Unlocks or places 3 Force Bubbles Level 5: Each unlocked Force Bubble does 168 damage

Max Level: 724 damage for each released bubble

At 5 , it would be a great and flexible defensive power, and would really bring her into the game.

Here's perhaps a better way of doing her.

[anchor=invisible4]Invisible Woman (Classic)[/anchor]
4 Star Rarity (Legendary) Discussion link. Wiki link.
At Max Level: HP:8220 Tile damage:82/11/73/09/64/09/3.0

Force Bubbles - 5
Susan focuses her power to lock the enemy down and save the team. Locks 2 chosen tiles in Force Bubbles (up to 16 bubbles) and gives Susan's team 10 protection for each bubble on the board while she's active.

Level 2: Locks 3 chosen tiles. Level 3: Locks 4 chosen tiles. Increases force bubble protection to 20. Level 4: If more than 16 bubbles would be made, Sue's team gains 1AP in each color. Level 5: Locks 6 chosen tiles. Increases force bubble protection to 30.

Max Level: 100 protection per force bubble (up to 16, for 1600 protection)

Force Field Crush - 9
Invisible Woman shatters a 3x3 area around 1 random Force Bubble, dealing 42 damage and unlocking but not destroying it. If there are no Force Bubbles on the board, she creates 1 in a random location. This ability ends the turn. Generates AP.

Level 2: Unlocks or places 2 Force Bubbles Level 3: Each unlocked Force Bubble does 84 damage Level 4: Unlocks or places 3 Force Bubbles. Each unlocked Force Bubble does 168 damage. Level 5: Susan can choose the bubbles to shatter. Doesn't end the turn.

Max Level: 724 damage for each released bubble

Nellyson

On point Nonce!!! We have 2 legendary in :fury: and so why not a legendary defensive ???

Unknown

If Force Bubble cost 5 AP there's going to be some awfully painful games on defense against IW. It'd definitely kill most attempts at shield hopping once you've a level 270 IW though, since 5 blue immediately stops even a Sacrifice + World Rupture combo, and a second Force Bubble would pretty much bring the game to a complete halt when you might have only 2 available moves each turn. I'm not sure if it's wise to induce people to surrender as soon as two Force Bubbles are up for the sake of their sanity, and there's no way your rating will hold in the time it takes you to deal with 2 Force Bubbles which would only be 10 blue AP.

If it can somehow only work in offense I'm all for it, because Force Bubbles is a fun ability to use on offense, but not so much when the AI drops two of them on you. Currently it can't do that due to its excessive cost, but at 5 blue AP that'd be quite easy.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Looks like the power needs to be changed. It's probably impossible to pull off at 13AP, but maybe someone can manage it with Patch / Daken support against another team of regenerators.

There should be a limit on the number of Force Bubbles, like 16 or so. As the number of Force Bubbles approaches 64, the board is locked and the game is put into an unplayable state.

Has anyone managed to break the game in this way?

Nonce Equitaur 2

Does anyone know if Sue Storm "owns" her force bubbles when they are put on the board?

In Sue Storm versus Sue Storm, can either IW blow up available Force Bubbles on the board?

For what it's worth, I don't think IW should own her bubbles. They should be a shared resource much like Spidey/Venom web tiles.

CrookedKnight

I'd test it for you if I had any green covers.

At 5 AP, I think you can safely scale down the strength of the protect tile a good ways. Maybe eliminate it altogether and add a small Protect effect to each force bubble? That way a human player gets extra benefit from placing the bubbles where they're unlikely to be matched, but the computer, distributing them at random, is going to lose a lot of the damage reduction from attrition.

It would also require the bubbles to be "owned," avoiding any issue with mutual Force Field Crushing.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Phantron wrote:

If Force Bubble cost 5 AP there's going to be some awfully painful games on defense against IW. It'd definitely kill most attempts at shield hopping once you've a level 270 IW though, since 5 blue immediately stops even a Sacrifice + World Rupture combo, and a second Force Bubble would pretty much bring the game to a complete halt when you might have only 2 available moves each turn. I'm not sure if it's wise to induce people to surrender as soon as two Force Bubbles are up for the sake of their sanity, and there's no way your rating will hold in the time it takes you to deal with 2 Force Bubbles which would only be 10 blue AP.

MMM... perfect....

Yes, She would definitely be dangerous. And she should be. There are several powerful teams that are weak against a locked-up board, and IW would be a good deterrent for them. On the other hand, the number of cascades would drop. She'd be more fun to fight against. Or maybe I'd try to kill her first, like I try to do with Deadpool and X-Force.

Unknown

A 5 blue AP wouldn't be dangerous in the sense that it is capable of beating you. It's dangerous in the sense that if there's a new power of 'all passive animation now takes 10 times as long to animate' that'd be a devastating power to face in PvP and only slightly less insane in PvE. For what Force Bubbles do it can easily get down to the 3 match range (as low as 7 AP) and it'd be balanced, but it is too powerful considering the human dimension in the game in its ability to bring every game to an utter crawl. You shouldn't even be able to have more than 8 bubbles on the field because that's already slow enough as is. 16 bubbles would probably just have the board resetting every other turn due to a lack of moves.

Unknown

I definitely like the idea of Force Bubbles at a cost of 5 AP, but then I think Force Field Crush shouldn't create random Force Bubbles anymore. It should cause base damage plus X amount for each force bubble unlocked and still end the turn while generating AP. I would really consider playing her as a Sentry counter!

Thanos

This would certainly make her much more formidable and make defensive strategies much more viable. Now just remove the "ends the turn" from her green and you'll be cooking with gas!

Sandmaker

I like the idea. She'll be a nightmare on defense. But I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with that. She'll still be slow on offense, so you're making a pretty fair trade-off if you use her in shield-hops. Slower matches in return for slower retails/attacks.

Unknown

Sandmaker wrote:

I like the idea. She'll be a nightmare on defense. But I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with that. She'll still be slow on offense, so you're making a pretty fair trade-off if you use her in shield-hops. Slower matches in return for slower retails/attacks.

Before the animation speed up Adamantium Bones is considered a very potent power for defense not because the protect tile mattered at a level you can use Bullseye but that the animation time was very slow. Phermone Rage was again another strong PvP defensive power because it took a long time to animate. Magnetized Particles (red in pre nerf Mag) was considered a evry strong defensive power again because it ate up a ton of clock and was pretty strong to boot. But this kind of defense is not the kind you want to encourage. If there's a hypothetical character whose only power is a passive one: every turn takes 10 times as long to animate, that'd be an unbelievably strong defensive character in PvP even though he literally does nothing. That's what bringing Force Bubbles to 5 AP would be. It's not really that strong of an ability but it slows down the game incredibly and it just wouldn't be fun to play at all.

Nellyson

If the force bubbles were changed to 5 AP, then they should only create a max of 2-3 bubbles. That would reduce the clutter, plus at 9 AP you're more than likely going to be destroying a lot of those bubbles as well. I like the 5 AP idea. It would help against everybody and actually be an amazing defensive character. As of now, all we have are "try-hard"s who don't really cut it. with Coercive Field and with that sense of his. They are pretty good, but they don't stop anything like could! Those bubbles get in the way of everything. I remember facing her in the Simulator ages ago and thought, "Damn, she's a pain in the **** to deal with." Of course she was being fed AP by the good old goons, but if her costs were lower, I'd use her as much as I could!

Sandmaker

Phantron wrote:

Before the animation speed up Adamantium Bones is considered a very potent power for defense not because the protect tile mattered at a level you can use Bullseye but that the animation time was very slow. Phermone Rage was again another strong PvP defensive power because it took a long time to animate. Magnetized Particles (red in pre nerf Mag) was considered a evry strong defensive power again because it ate up a ton of clock and was pretty strong to boot. But this kind of defense is not the kind you want to encourage. If there's a hypothetical character whose only power is a passive one: every turn takes 10 times as long to animate, that'd be an unbelievably strong defensive character in PvP even though he literally does nothing. That's what bringing Force Bubbles to 5 AP would be. It's not really that strong of an ability but it slows down the game incredibly and it just wouldn't be fun to play at all.

There's a big difference between the animation slowing you down, and game mechanics slowing you down. The former is dead time. You sit there waiting for it to end. The latter is active playing. You're still making matches and trying to figure how to get out of the situation.

Mechanically, having tiles locked is no different than having a bad board with limited options.

IReallyHatePVP

While I think 5 may be too cheap at the high levels, I overall like this concept. This is true, esp. in light of the recent anti-protect tile meta(which, really, was that needed?) with Capt. Danvers and the soon-to-be Otto Octavius. But I still maintain that, in order to buff , the power needs the complete, total rework.

Care to weigh in on that possibility, Nonce Equitaur 2?

Side Note: i still think that at L5, like Twin Pistols, should NOT end the turn.

Nonce Equitaur 2

IReallyHatePVP wrote:

But I still maintain that, in order to buff , the power needs the complete, total rework.

Care to weigh in on that possibility, Nonce Equitaur 2?

I think Invisibility is a fine power. If Force Bubbles is made cheaper, then she can be validly counted on as an AP generator, so it's fine for her to have an expensive ability. However, I'd tweak the leveling costs.

Grant Invisibility - 18
The Invisible Woman hides the weakest member of the team. Turn a chosen basic Yellow tile into an Invisibility tile. While it's on the board, the invisible character can't be targeted.

Level 2: Costs 2

less
Level 3: Costs 2 less
Level 4: Costs 2 less
Level 5: Costs 2 less

So a cost of 10 at level 5. By the time she gets going, she may well have decent protection on the board, might be untargetable, might be generating AP reliably for her team. She'd be a dangerous defensive powerhouse. If her invisibility was too cheap, she could reliably make the whole team invisible once she started blowing up bubbles. That's too much, so it has to stay moderately high. I like the ability, though, and the Invisible Woman really needs an Invisibility power. I think they got it right. I don't think a rework is necessary.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

IReallyHatePVP wrote:

But I still maintain that, in order to buff , the power needs the complete, total rework.

Care to weigh in on that possibility, Nonce Equitaur 2?

I think Invisibility is a fine power. If Force Bubbles is made cheaper, then she can be validly counted on as an AP generator, so it's fine for her to have an expensive ability. However, I'd tweak the leveling costs.

Grant Invisibility - 18
The Invisible Woman hides the weakest member of the team. Turn a chosen basic Yellow tile into an Invisibility tile. While it's on the board, the invisible character can't be targeted.

Level 2: Costs 2

less
Level 3: Costs 2 less
Level 4: Costs 2 less
Level 5: Costs 2 less

So a cost of 10 at level 5. By the time she gets going, she may well have decent protection on the board, might be untargetable, might be generating AP reliably for her team. She'd be a dangerous defensive powerhouse. If her invisibility was too cheap, she could reliably make the whole team invisible once she started blowing up bubbles. That's too much, so it has to stay moderately high. I like the ability, though, and the Invisible Woman really needs an Invisibility power. I think they got it right. I don't think a rework is necessary.

All the recent rebalancing suggests they don't want anyone good at generating AP anymore. This is hardly surprising because AP generation is pretty much the magic sauce that enables all kinds of broken stuff. It's akin to card drawing in MTG and if you got enough of it, it's awfully hard to lose in any conceiveable situation. This is what Force Field Crush ends your turn even though it's not even that strong, because it could generate positive AP. They're probably not going to go back and slap on the 'ends the turn' restriction or massively nerf similar type abilities out of fear of a potential backlash but they're not going to make even more abilities that can end up in a positive AP loop. X Force is also dangerous close to that area as Surgical Strike/X Force can often come quite close to generating a positive AP loop, especially if Polarized Force is added to the mix.

For Invisibility they stated they don't want to make it too easy to get because once it's on a character cannot die until the tile's destroyed and that is pretty powerful in its own right. Although the game doesn't favor offense it doesn't necessarily have to stay this way forever and if the pace of the game slows down, having an invulnerability ability for only 4 matches can be pretty game breaking. Again you've to think about are strong defensive characters interesting to play against. Sure having a WR combo dropped on you feels cheap, and having all your AP stolen by The Hood or OBW sucks, but at least in these case the pain is usually over pretty soon because you'd be dead. Against a strong defensive character you might end up not being able to win but not quite losing either and you'd be forced to surrender to just lose the game. It's one thing defense should be viable but it shouldn't be so strong that you'd have to surrender because the game would drag on for too long even if you somehow won later.