** Black Widow (Original) ** [PRE 2014-06]

Unknown

It's not that she is good, but that the 2* support characters are terrible. Classic Storm won't get to cast a spell on defense, and is very expensive to get her to do anything on offense. Captain America and Hawkeye rely on countdowns, and countdowns are extremely underpowered. Moonstone has two abilities that include the world random: Without red, she'd be Bagwoman. Magneto 2* has one ability that doesn't cost one million.

So who is your support 2*? The only one that has three usable abilities. Without her, people would go back to the one stars, because I'd argue that both Storm and Widow 1* are not really much worse than Storm 2*

If d3 wants to fix this, 2* supports are going to have to get buffed. Otherwise, we are better off using OBW and two 2* damage dealers to get 3* support covers.

Bacon Pants

I am seeing a more than healthy dose of OBW, Thor, and one of three wolvies in The Best There Is. 90% of the teams I have faced have put out this team. I don't mind beating them over and over, but a little variation would be nice.

Unknown

I can't see fielding a 2* team without her, but that's got more to do with the other options than her power.

Wolverine/Thor/Ares are the best damage dealers, so you're well covered on red, green and yellow. Cap has a blue, but it's really weak. C Storm's is good, but she overlaps on green and doesn't bring much utility. Magneto has blue and purple covered, but it's just more damage and without a healing or AP denial option he's too squishy. Hawkeye has ok damage, but not as good as the big 3 damage dealers and no real utility to make up for it. Moonstone kinda sucks. Bagman sets the standard to which "sucking" can be measured.

So in comparison she's too good, but even if her powers were nerfed to near oblivion she'd still likely find a spot in my rotation simply because I can't find anyone better. That's a problem that will sort itself out in time as more characters are buffed and newer ones are added.

Unknown

Maxing blue seems like a no-brainer. Healing is always good. Always.

The black ability doesn't seem so horribly important so I won't go into details on that one.

What is important however (at least for me) is that she has to be good at stealing mana. Having purple 3 means it will always cost 8 mana to steal 3 mana of each color except purple. On level 4, you steal 4 mana but the ability also costs 10 mana to activate, meaning you will often have to match purple four times before you can use this ability. Matching purple three times is difficult as it is, and stealing 3 mana is more than enough to stop the opponent's evil plans and activating your own abilities. I want to steal often instead of big, and having a high cost purple abilty means I can't activate it as often as I want. The extra power isn't worth the extra cost for me, so I will go 3/5/5 with no regrets what so ever. The maximized black will get me extra purple anyway whenever I match purple.

Unknown

OBW certainly is helped by the fact that all the characters of her opposite color (Ares/Thor/all Wolverines) are pretty good characters so she's a natural complement to them.

If those guys are all blue/purple/black, you would see far less OBWs because either you don't get full mileage out of espionage or you can't use a high level character of those colors. For 3*, they'd have to be around level 100 before they can outmatch OBW in tile strength, so she's quite viable until the 3* pass her in tile strength. At that point, you lose the benefit of espionage and her effectiveness takes a huge hit.

Unknown

I like using her, but mine is only at level 30 and I built her 3/5/5....in retrospect, probably should have gone 5/3/5

Unknown

She's fine. No-one fears to play against her. She has useful support abilities which are hard to find in this game, and especially has a useful colour combination to complement with favourite tanks like Wolvie, Thor and Ares (sometimes I think the devs forget colour balance; just witness how the characters provided for Heroic Oscorp had so little black and purple and so much green, red and blue). If other good 2* come out with similar colours or with a healing ability, OBW's popularity will drop.

Also, OBW got a LOT of tournament prize support over the past month, so there's that too. I happily maxed mine from progression rewards during No Man's Land but since then there's been a lot more given out.

OBW shouldn't be nerfed. Characters much weaker than her should be buffed. I agreed with the Thorverine nerfs, but I don't see any reason for an OBW nerf.

Unknown

For her to become over powered, she requires a lot of team synergy and can't "make her own shot" as it were. She is very good at AP and timer control, but by no means broken. All of her powers are appropriately priced based on the current environment (I can see the argument that her purple might be undercosted, but don't think so personally). She benefits from her teams strengths and helps them get better via AP steal, but she can't win by herself.

Second... As I've always argued since the first days of the Storm/Rags/whoever threads... There will always be a character that is in vogue. That's how metas work. People find combinations they like and play them. Then a counter is discovered and there is a shift in the game. If you want a nerf every time there is a popular meta character, then you have never really played any game for a long time. This stuff shakes out. What is good today changes with every new character, buffed tournament, or whatever. She's good, but she's not broken.

Here's my criteria for broken btw:
1. Is a character so good I'm an idiot not to play with them? - On certain teams with a great deal of synergy, sure. She fits combos well and does her job well, but she isn't an auto include like Classic Storm was or Rags as when he was 2R green machine. She isn't a solo "I WIN!" button by a long shot.
2. Is a character so good I'm at a disadvantage playing without them? - See Thor and Wolverine here. They were just excellent and generally better and easier to come by than any other characters. I always liked other characters better and I beat Thorverine a lot with lots of different variations, but they were by far the most cost efficient option. She doesn't fit here. She's useful, not over the top efficient.
3. Is a character the only answer to a specific issue within the game? - Unless you are saying she's the best way to control AP, then I guess, but she isn't a hard counter to anyone.

I think she's great, but not broken.

Unknown

Zhirrzh wrote:

She's fine. No-one fears to play against her. She has useful support abilities which are hard to find in this game, and especially has a useful colour combination to complement with favourite tanks like Wolvie, Thor and Ares (sometimes I think the devs forget colour balance; just witness how the characters provided for Heroic Oscorp had so little black and purple and so much green, red and blue). If other good 2* come out with similar colours or with a healing ability, OBW's popularity will drop.

Also, OBW got a LOT of tournament prize support over the past month, so there's that too. I happily maxed mine from progression rewards during No Man's Land but since then there's been a lot more given out.

OBW shouldn't be nerfed. Characters much weaker than her should be buffed. I agreed with the Thorverine nerfs, but I don't see any reason for an OBW nerf.

That's a good point too. I couldn't put out Magneto Now or Moonstone if I wanted to until I can score a few more covers. OBW got maxed out pretty easily though.

Unknown

I only use spidey and OBW for their heals. I want to be able to earn much iso and you can't do that without heals.

Unknown

Using Daredevil as a template, I'd say Aggressive Recon should always cost 11 purple for its current effect. Since Aggressive Recon is likely her best ability, this means you can't get both espionage dealing damage + heal at all times. If you look at it from a pure ratio point of view, you got:

Level 3 - 8 purple to steal 15 (1.875 AP stolen per purple)
Level 4 - 10 purple to steal 20 (2.00 AP stolen per purple)
Level 5 - 11 purple to steal 24 (2.18 AP stolen per purple)

The improvement is relatively small, and it's also offset by the fact that your opponent might not have all the AP to steal which brings down the ratio for the higher level versions.

Compare this to Daredevil, who simply steals 2/3/4/5/6, and even the last upgrade (5 to 6) is an improvement of 20%, versus 2 to 2.18 AP being less than 10%.

OBW can use a little bit more tradeoff in her three abilities. Right now you can basically get all 3 since Aggressive Recon barely improves at level 3/4/5.

Unknown

Veracity wrote:

Unity wrote:

They better NOT nerf her! I finally maxed her out 4 weesk ago. Suck it up and shut up! Just go away, some of you guys just don't get the more we complain or nag or "point things out" the worst the game gets.

I think Espionage is bugged, actually . It does the extra damage even when there's nothing to steal, which isn't what the description says. Only noticed recently and don't remember if it always did. Did look for developer comment on it, but all I could find was IceIX talking about her pre-Espionage and confirming Espionage is supposed to trigger strike tiles.

Stfu. I only have 5 characters maxed and i didnt put iso into her for her to get nerfed. Get off her **** dude! You guys find a problem with everything.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Using Daredevil as a template, I'd say Aggressive Recon should always cost 11 purple for its current effect. Since Aggressive Recon is likely her best ability, this means you can't get both espionage dealing damage + heal at all times. If you look at it from a pure ratio point of view, you got:

Level 3 - 8 purple to steal 15 (1.875 AP stolen per purple)
Level 4 - 10 purple to steal 20 (2.00 AP stolen per purple)
Level 5 - 11 purple to steal 24 (2.18 AP stolen per purple)

The improvement is relatively small, and it's also offset by the fact that your opponent might not have all the AP to steal which brings down the ratio for the higher level versions.

Compare this to Daredevil, who simply steals 2/3/4/5/6, and even the last upgrade (5 to 6) is an improvement of 20%, versus 2 to 2.18 AP being less than 10%.

OBW can use a little bit more tradeoff in her three abilities. Right now you can basically get all 3 since Aggressive Recon barely improves at level 3/4/5.

Well when you lay out the argument all logically like that in a reasoned tone of voice with data backing up your assumptions I can very much understand where you are coming from. (Sarcasm not at you, but at the less eloquent members of the forum )

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Using Daredevil as a template, I'd say Aggressive Recon should always cost 11 purple for its current effect. Since Aggressive Recon is likely her best ability, this means you can't get both espionage dealing damage + heal at all times. If you look at it from a pure ratio point of view, you got:

Level 3 - 8 purple to steal 15 (1.875 AP stolen per purple)
Level 4 - 10 purple to steal 20 (2.00 AP stolen per purple)
Level 5 - 11 purple to steal 24 (2.18 AP stolen per purple)

The improvement is relatively small, and it's also offset by the fact that your opponent might not have all the AP to steal which brings down the ratio for the higher level versions.

Compare this to Daredevil, who simply steals 2/3/4/5/6, and even the last upgrade (5 to 6) is an improvement of 20%, versus 2 to 2.18 AP being less than 10%.

OBW can use a little bit more tradeoff in her three abilities. Right now you can basically get all 3 since Aggressive Recon barely improves at level 3/4/5.

The level 5 purple is waaaay better than the level 4 purple. From level 3 to level 4 you get that 2 ap stolen per purple which is an increase of 6.25% in stealability. The jump from level 4 to level 5 is another increase of 9%. It pays to buy in bulk.

Unknown

The Black ability is by far the most important when paired with Punisher or Wolverine.

Unknown

The implementation is simple - You request a cover and put up things you're willing to trade for it (i.e. some set of covers with sweeteners of ISO and HP). The server goes and looks for people looking for your covers who have the covers you want. If someone else wants the same cover, whoever threw in the best sweeteners gets it. Obviously, there's a bunch of circular trading possible, and there'd have to be an algorithm for that, but I can't imagine it's too hard. Websites like BoardGameGeek.com routinely set up 20-100+ person circular trades.

And yes, they do sell you covers (or the HP to get covers anyway), but I'd imagine people are much more likely to trade, even with a "D3 finder's fee" than straight up buy, especially at the current prices.

bahamut685

MTGOFerret wrote:

if i could only give you the last oh i dunno 5-10 heroic cover pulls i've had that were OBW..Im getting utterly fed up with pulling her lately lol

You mean people get something besides Bagman?! Now I'm super jealous.

Unknown

IMHO the viable builds are 5/4/4 and 3/5/5

5 in purple isn't always that advantageous. You have to understand that sometimes being able to use it fast or spam it, to deny the enemy using a strong power, is more important that stealing more AP per use. Were the efficiency of Aggressive Recon to increase in levels without actually increasing the cost itself, then it would have been a no brainer to use Level 5. But unfortunately, the higher the level, the slower it becomes. That's why I cannot in good faith recommend it at lv 5.

Only advantage I see is, if you have OBW vs OBW, the one with Aggressive Recon 5 will win the one with 3, because the one with 3 cannot steal the other's purple, and the one with 5 just have to wait to get it all.

I used to think that 5/5/3 was the best. I realized how mistaken I was later.

Unknown

ApolloAndy wrote:

I'd imagine people are much more likely to trade, even with a "D3 finder's fee" than straight up buy, especially at the current prices

If each person pays 100HP per transaction, it'd need to be thirteen times more likely (for 3*s - there's no way 2*s are worth enough to warrant this), without taking into account the cost to Demiurge of setting up and supporting trading. People also buy tokens (albeit usually not for long) in hopes of getting something shiny. And incomplete covers are a progression hook that keeps people invested, playing, and half caring what falls out of all the free tokens they get. I don't think there's near enough heroes in the game yet for it to be worth their while, though that might change at several times what we have now.

Unknown

I left Aggressive Recon at Lv 3 and I did not regret it.

It pays to have it at minimal cost and make it spammable to deny the enemy of AP.

Sure lv 5 is more potent. But you have to wait much longer to get it.