My final plea for a change to the Web Head.

kirk justice

Hey everyone. To preface this I'd like to say that Spider-Man is my all time favorite super hero, which definitely makes me biased. However, I do believe that he needs some sort of a change. Whether that be an IM40 type of change, which made him arguably one of the best 3* characters, or a slight change to make him more viable. With that out of the way, I'll begin why I humbly think 3* Spider-Man could use some adjusting.

So in March I held a poll for whether or not Spider-Man needed some form of a buff. Of the 82 forum users who took the poll, 73 agreed that he needed to be changed in some way. Couple that with the fact that Spider-Man was placed 37th out of the 40 3* characters and 81st over all in the survey held by the very dedicated forum user, Ebolamonkey84. His average score by the 1145 forum users that took the survey was a very bad 4.33. The 3*s ranked below him were Vision (who already received a buff), Sentry, and Ragnarok. The reason I believe Spider-Man should receive a buff before Sentry and Ragnarok is not only because he is a staple Marvel character, but also because Sentry and Ragnarok are often featured as enemies in PVE and if they received buffs on a similar scale to IM40, then they'd be a pain to have to grind. These numbers provided by the players who actively play the game seem to point to Spider-Man being a very low-tier character, which is a real shame.

Before I begin talking about the faults that I believe the character has, I'd like to bring up his good points. I'll begin with All Tied Up which, to me, is his best power. It's a very cheap stun that, at five covers, has the ability to stun a character for three turns. This can be incredibly useful, especially in wave nodes in which it's easier to fire off multiple times. His next ability, Spider Sense, is very similar to 2* Bullseye's power. Except unlike that power, Spider-Man's only activates when the player makes a match with purple. However this is made up for by the fact that Spider-Man's protect tiles are much stronger than Bullseye's. His power, Web Bandages, can heal the entire team for up to 3807, if there are three web tiles on the board. He also has very good health, having 8670 at max level. On paper he seems like a pretty decent support character. So why then is he so bad in practice? After using him for the duration of Webbed Wonder in which he was boosted, I think I know why.

Let's again start with arguably his best ability, All Tied Up. The second function of this power is to create a every time it's fired off. The problem is that it only creates on tiles. This completely clashes with Web Bandages which needs those on the board for the bonus. Often times when you match to get enough for that ability, you will also match away the that you created, and lose the bonus for the power. His power suffers from a similar problem, only creating protect tiles on purple tiles. This causes you to often match them away, but this admittedly isn't as big of a deal because the protect tiles are free. Finally, Web Bandages itself costs way too much to be useful in most matches, and as stated earlier, almost never receives its bonus. These problems often cause the player to have to play play against themselves as well as the computer. His powers are just way too counterproductive.

This isn't even mentioning the fact that Spider-Man doesn't have a single power that can cause any damage. This means that when he is the final character left on the player's team, the rest of the match will most likely drag on. But for the sake of argument, let's compare him to the only other 3* characters (to the best of my knowledge) that also don't have damaging powers. Loki fills the role of a support character much better than Spider-Man. He has a passive power that drains the enemy team of AP, a very cheap board shuffle power, and a power that can steal enemy protect and strike tiles. Overall these powers are much more useful than Spider-Man's and make up for the fact that Loki has less health. The next character is Sam Wilson who can also doe not have a damage ability, but can improve three special tiles every time a match is made, as well as creating protect tiles and removing enemy special tiles with his other two abilities. As support characters, these two aren't on the same level as IM40, who generates A TON of AP and can deal a lot of damage, but do a much better job of strengthening their teams than Spider-Man. What does Spider-Man do? He stuns. And if you're lucky he might heal the team.

I know the developers are busy churning out new characters, especially now that two big Marvel films are about to be released, but I hope they consider taking some time to improve Spidey. *Spoilers for Civil War if you haven't seen any trailers* I also feel that there is no better time than now to buff him, considering Spider-Man makes an appearance in Civil War. The developers don't need to buff him to IM40 levels of awesome (although that would be very much appreciated). They also don't need to give him a damaging power (although again, that would be very much appreciated). I just hope that they show some love to one of the most loved characters in the Marvel universe and make him at least a viable option when not buffed. I apologize for this being so long, but as the title states this is the last time I will be asking for Spider-Man to receive a buff and wanted the argument to be fully fleshed out. I spent a long time writing this out and hope that a developer at least sees this and that the effort doesn't go to waste.

tl;dr: 3* Spider-Man needs a buff because his powers work against themselves and aren't very good support abilities overall. Also he's a staple Marvel character and deserves better than this gosh dang it!

Unknown

I hope someone sees your post as well and makes those changes. I have had Spiderman a few different times and continue to delete him to make room for more applicable characters that are actually useful to my team. He just doesn't seem, as a character, to be very beneficial in a fight and does not offer much team support.