**** Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) ****

notamutant

You can place her black, which makes it a lot better than expected. Purple trap goes on all colors. New video out below. I think she will be great in PvE, but useless in PvP unless boosted. Too much risk that AI will play her ****.

https://youtu.be/CQCTYzRvm2U

himatako

Her purple removes strike, attack, protect and CD tiles. I wonder if it removes invincible tiles as well.

Really wish we didn't have to choose between Love or Fear for her purple though. It could have been a mix of both, something like creating a specific number of trap tiles + converting special tiles to trap tiles. For example:


1 cover - Create 2 trap tiles + convert up to 3 special tiles to trap tiles
2 covers - Create 2 trap tiles + convert up to 4 special tiles to trap tiles
3 covers - Create 3 trap tiles + convert up to 4 special tiles to trap tiles
4 covers - Create 3 trap tiles + convert up to 5 special tiles to trap tiles
5 covers - Create 3 trap tiles + convert up to 6 special tiles to trap tiles


This would make her much more usable + not completely overshadowed by 4* Jean, imo.

notamutant

himatako wrote:

Her purple removes strike, attack, protect and CD tiles. I wonder if it removes invincible tiles as well.

Really wish we didn't have to choose between Love or Fear for her purple though. It could have been a mix of both, something like creating a specific number of trap tiles + converting special tiles to trap tiles. For example:


1 cover - Create 2 trap tiles + convert up to 3 special tiles to trap tiles
2 covers - Create 2 trap tiles + convert up to 4 special tiles to trap tiles
3 covers - Create 3 trap tiles + convert up to 4 special tiles to trap tiles
4 covers - Create 3 trap tiles + convert up to 5 special tiles to trap tiles
5 covers - Create 3 trap tiles + convert up to 6 special tiles to trap tiles


This would make her much more usable + not completely overshadowed by 4* Jean, imo.

That wouldn't work. They would nerf the damage to her trap tiles and make them useless, or make her not remove all types of special tiles, or be significantly more expensive. Jack of all trade moves, like her red, tend to not be so good.

Polares

notamutant wrote:

You can place her black, which makes it a lot better than expected. Purple trap goes on all colors. New video out below. I think she will be great in PvE, but useless in PvP unless boosted. Too much risk that AI will play her ****.

https://youtu.be/CQCTYzRvm2U

Yeah in the end both black and purple have been 'better' than expected. Placing black is a big win, and purple falling in all colors it makes is also much better. The only problem of the traps is not having a mechanism to detonate all of them together, I guess this is why they do so much damage. We need a new char capable of detonating all traps on the board

Red is still meh.

She is still mid tier though, black can be useful but there are much better options out there for everything else.

Vhailorx

I think I fall with polares on her so far.

Black and purple are solid powers that do second-tier things. (defense is good, but offense is better; trap damage is ok, but direct damage is better; removing special tiles is great, but generating ap or doing direct damage is better [except in pve!]). So she is quite good at what she does, but what she does isn't the highest priority. Most teams will be better served by picking characters that do more valuable things overall.

Red is still very meh.

She seems likely to end up in the broad middle class of 4*s when the dust settles.

notamutant

Vhailorx wrote:

I think I fall with polares on her so far.

Black and purple are solid powers that do second-tier things. (defense is good, but offense is better; trap damage is ok, but direct damage is better; removing special tiles is great, but generating ap or doing direct damage is better [except in pve!]). So she is quite good at what she does, but what she does isn't the highest priority. Most teams will be better served by picking characters that do more valuable things overall.

Red is still very meh.

She seems likely to end up in the broad middle class of 4*s when the dust settles.

She kind of reminds me of niche characters, like Captain Marvel. I only use Captain Marvel when I know I am going to take a lot of small damage that is large enough to still trigger Captain Marvel's yellow skill to power another red or black user on the team. I would also only use Spider-Woman when fighting certain types of enemies with really expensive single target attacks, or 5 stars (if they ever get added to PvE) to neutralize match damage, or enemies that create lots of attack tiles like the symbiotes. I could see her being a very useful health pack saver, but I don't know if I will cover her before I get a better character in the 5 star range.

Crowl

After using her in the heroic, she just seems to be too niche to be worth using.

Her red is just too expensive unless they increased the aoe component and/or made the stun an aoe. The purple is hampered by one half being useless against many teams that don't create special tiles and then the other half is almost useless against a goon team who cannot readily set off the traps, those should really do some damage if the player matches them instead. The black seems pretty good, but with the two conditional actions, it does seem odd that part of it wasn't a passive.

Vhailorx

Crowl wrote:

After using her in the heroic, she just seems to be too niche to be worth using.

Her red is just too expensive unless they increased the aoe component and/or made the stun an aoe. The purple is hampered by one half being useless against many teams that don't create special tiles and then the other half is almost useless against a goon team who cannot readily set off the traps, those should really do some damage if the player matches them instead. The black seems pretty good, but with the two conditional actions, it does seem odd that part of it wasn't a passive.

Agree on red. But the purple seems to address your stated problem perfectly. Against goons you just wipe the CDs. And against non-goons you bait them into traps. Any team that spawns special tiles that could overwrite her traps will be negated by the other half of the power. In that respect it seems well designed. The only thing missing is that friendly trap matches do nothing.

Crowl

Oh, I forgot about countdowns also being included, in that case the love half of the power is merely underpowered, presumably due to the dual nature of the power and it would still be nice if the offensive half still worked on goons like most trap skills.

OzarkBoatswain

Seeking redemption is 9 AP not 8.

zodiac339

Crowl wrote:

Oh, I forgot about countdowns also being included, in that case the love half of the power is merely underpowered, presumably due to the dual nature of the power and it would still be nice if the offensive half still worked on goons like most trap skills.

I don't mind cheaply eliminating countdowns.

wymtime

If her Purple traps did damage when the player matched them like X-23 and Dare devil she would be a lot more usable. As she is now she is a special tile remover and a health pack saver. Running her with IM40 and iceman would be a good team to save on health packs in PVE. i would also like to see her AOE damage increased. Even if they took some of the direct damage down the AOE is light.

mpqr7

I championed her, but I have no desire to use her. It doesn't seem like she's that great or useful. I guess I'll see when she's required in pve or for her crash.

OneLastGambit

I've used her in both PvP and pve and she's useful both times.

Pair with switch and just keep collecting black you'll never take much damage and at same time be spamming traps to the point they just match themselves to death , if you're also the type that hates cascades then drew is the gal for that. I pray for cascades with her on my team because it usually means someone's about to die.

Red is a terrible power set to 553 and enjoy. Just take a red user with you instead.

8ap to either remove those pesky cds or even peskier muscle strikes or flood the board with 24k worth of damage is a very good deal. What's better is once that black is out nobody takes damage unless it's aoe. Very useful character indeed

For a third team member throw in star Lord (355 build) and you have a good red user who will also make drew purple only 6ap.

DesertTortoise

I just champed her yesterday and she's boosted for The Hunt event that's going on. I'm currently running her at 3/5/5 with IM40 and Quake (who is also boosted). I know her black is great and her red is lackluster but this team is just mowing everyone down so quickly it's easy to deprioritize black/defense as a whole. Between Quake's blue and Spider-Woman's purple, no countdown tiles or special tiles last very long even with an ugly board. Also, between Quake's yellow and Spider-Woman's black you have defense against AoEs and single target damage. One green match, one red match and a recharge basically ends the game.

I'm looking forward to seeing how viable it is without everyone being boosted, but it's definitely something that has a good variety of damage and has tools to mitigate a lot of damage you would take.

bigsmooth

I've champed her also. I'd go 5/5/3, unless you are using her in PVE with IM40. Thoughts below.

• PVE: Awesome!! This is really, really powerful at five covers. In tough PvE nodes you can laugh while opponents bounce all of their powers off of her as soon as they gather enough AP. All you have to do is wait for the right time and then bury your CD in the corner. She also jumps in front to protect squishy teammates from everything except AOE damage, and she even avoids splash damage from powers like Symbiote Scythes and Court Death. It lasts 4 turns, so if you use her with a black generator it's very possible to have a CD out almost all of the time. This really can save health packs since there is no minimum to trigger the damage absorption.
• PvP: Not very good. Unfortunately, the AI will cast this as soon as it has the AP, and it may do very little other than absorb some match damage. Even worse, the AI has the tendency to place the CD on the board in easy-to-reach spots. Lastly, the opposing human player can simply wait to cast their damaging powers until after the CD expires (granted, this gives her teammates more time to wreak havoc). If the AI does get lucky and puts the CD in a corner, it still helps, but it's significantly more effective in PVE.

• PVE: Great for goons, good for tile movers. If you have this at five covers, using Love to wipe out 6 enemy special tiles of any color (including CDs) for 8 AP is pretty good value. It's not quite as useful against characters who spam large amounts of tiles (Storm, Sentry, Carnage, etc). Fear's traps do very good damage at 5 covers, but it feels too easy to accidentally match/destroy them on your own turn. Baiting the AI into making a match-4 to trigger a trap is still oddly satisfying, though, and it's helpful that the traps are all independent from one another, unlike Fury's.
• PVP: Mixed bag. The AI will potentially use Love whenever the enemy team has a special tile out, regardless of the number or the strength. It can still be effective, but you have to hope the AI gets lucky. I personally think Fear is actually decent vs. human opponents. You have a potential ~25K (or 50K when boosted) in damage out on the board, on random colors. I think that can cause a human player to alter their play style a bit to try and avoid/destroy the traps.

• PVE: Pretty good when boosted, otherwise meh. Although it's expensive, IM40 can fuel it with relative ease. At 5 covers, she can one-shot characters in all but the toughest nodes when she's boosted. Since you're also getting respectable AoE damage and a stun out of the deal, this can be worth using (depending on the opponents). Unboosted, however, I would very rarely choose to use this over the many strong red powers in the 4* tier.
• PVP: Borderline useless. The AI is not smart enough to cast it when it would maximize the targeted damage. Sure, it can still ruin someone's day if she gets it off, but you really don't want to count on it. Many top PVP characters have red powers that are cheaper/better anyway.

tldr;

• Good health pool
• Fun to play due to interesting powerset
• For PVE: excellent black, versatile purple, strong but expensive red
• Mostly bad in PVP 'cuz AI is dumb

OneLastGambit

bigsmooth wrote:

I've champed her also. I'd go 5/5/3, unless you are using her in PVE with IM40. Thoughts below.

• PVE: Awesome!! This is really, really powerful at five covers. In tough PvE nodes you can laugh while opponents bounce all of their powers off of her as soon as they gather enough AP. All you have to do is wait for the right time and then bury your CD in the corner. She also jumps in front to protect squishy teammates from everything except AOE damage, and she even avoids splash damage from powers like Symbiote Scythes and Court Death. It lasts 4 turns, so if you use her with a black generator it's very possible to have a CD out almost all of the time. This really can save health packs since there is no minimum to trigger the damage absorption.
• PvP: Not very good. Unfortunately, the AI will cast this as soon as it has the AP, and it may do very little other than absorb some match damage. Even worse, the AI has the tendency to place the CD on the board in easy-to-reach spots. Lastly, the opposing human player can simply wait to cast their damaging powers until after the CD expires (granted, this gives her teammates more time to wreak havoc). If the AI does get lucky and puts the CD in a corner, it still helps, but it's significantly more effective in PVE.

• PVE: Great for goons, good for tile movers. If you have this at five covers, using Love to wipe out 6 enemy special tiles of any color (including CDs) for 8 AP is pretty good value. It's not quite as useful against characters who spam large amounts of tiles (Storm, Sentry, Carnage, etc). Fear's traps do very good damage at 5 covers, but it feels too easy to accidentally match/destroy them on your own turn. Baiting the AI into making a match-4 to trigger a trap is still oddly satisfying, though, and it's helpful that the traps are all independent from one another, unlike Fury's.
• PVP: Mixed bag. The AI will potentially use Love whenever the enemy team has a special tile out, regardless of the number or the strength. It can still be effective, but you have to hope the AI gets lucky. I personally think Fear is actually decent vs. human opponents. You have a potential ~25K (or 50K when boosted) in damage out on the board, on random colors. I think that can cause a human player to alter their play style a bit to try and avoid/destroy the traps.

• PVE: Pretty good when boosted, otherwise meh. Although it's expensive, IM40 can fuel it with relative ease. At 5 covers, she can one-shot characters in all but the toughest nodes when she's boosted. Since you're also getting respectable AoE damage and a stun out of the deal, this can be worth using (depending on the opponents). Unboosted, however, I would very rarely choose to use this over the many strong red powers in the 4* tier.
• PVP: Borderline useless. The AI is not smart enough to cast it when it would maximize the targeted damage. Sure, it can still ruin someone's day if she gets it off, but you really don't want to count on it. Many top PVP characters have red powers that are cheaper/better anyway.

tldr;

• Good health pool
• Fun to play due to interesting powerset
• For PVE: excellent black, versatile purple, strong but expensive red
• Mostly bad in PVP 'cuz AI is dumb

Just one point here you say she's bad in pvp because AI plays dumb but make no mention of how useful in pvp she would be in the hands of a human opponent. EVERYONE is useless in the hands of AI there is no such thing as defense only shields. Really when assessing the viability of a character for pvp you need to look at how useful they are for a player (damage and/or speed) and how much of a deterrent they will be at discouraging hits.

I feel drew is fine at both speed and damage since her best powers are both only 8ap making her pretty speedy but fails on the deterrent for the reasons you mentioned.

So if we ignore the defensive value (which is actually zero for everyone due to AI stupidity) then she's not too bad for pvp

tonypq

Just started using her for pve wow. I was once upset I kept pulling her covers but glad now, she's a beast for pve especially goon squads. She's only 70 but due to being boosted last pve I got a good sample of how good she is.

That purple is cheap and deadly effective for wiping the board of count downs and others specials, 5 to 6 depending how many covers is sick. She really took care of those high level savages dropping eye beam tiles every move and those various ninjas and their annoying tiles. 

Her black is amazing, able to place it anywhere and the damage negated is awesome, saved lots of health packs allowing me to get the 15 CPs for the last pve. 

Her red is also great imo, nuke a 1 target, some team damage and stun on another. This is pretty deadly also when you have just 1 enemy left getting some nice damage and stun to make it super easy to finish them off.

I understand the purple trap tiles some aren't crazy they need to be matched but they're deadly when they are. Also not the best AI controlled for pvp but if you're playing her she can be lethal.

tonypq

Anyone know if her purple will remove fortified special tiles like Carols black ?

wingX

tonypq said:

Anyone know if her purple will remove fortified special tiles like Carols black ?

Yes, it will remove fortified special tiles.  I have just tried using her purple on Cloak and Dagger's fortified black countdown tiles in the PVE and It turns the tiles to a fortified basic black tile.