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

PorkBelly

Mine is 3/5/5 and she is my main support character in almost every event.

If you don't have a maxed Spidey, (which I do not), she is invaluable.

Unknown

I'm thinking the reason people can't see OBW is grossly overpowered is because they don't have Aggressive Recon at 5. It's trivial to hit it on offense. On defense, you will usually need 3 matches to hit any Aggressive Recon if your opponent has any idea of how to deal with it, and if you have only level 3 on Aggressive Recon then you can't stop their OBW because you can't steal purple.

Out of all her abilities, the heal is her weakest one. Most of the time I forgot it exists because it's so irrelvent. If you have her match black/purple/blue to maximize Espionage, she's guaranteed to take far more damage than what Anti-Gravity Device can heal for, and if you're matching blue without Magento/Spiderman on your team, you're actually just dying slowly because your blue can't be turned into offense and barely outpaces match 3 damage, while the enemy is getting useful colors and you're not. If you got either of those two character then OBW's blue ability doesn't even matter because all your blue will be used by these two characters instead.

Obviously, black needs to be at level 4 to take advantage of strike tiles, but the extra damage beyond that is fairly insignificant. I run 5/4/4 though I can also do 5/3/5 but the difference is mostly cosmetic.

over_clocked

yeah yeah a character with 3k health seems grossly overpowered to a dude with a bunch of 3***s maxed out, but doesn't to us, midlevel players with a bunch of 2**s maxed out, WHAT GIVES?
Yes her healing is invaluable. Because not everyone has Spider-Man; or one-eyed Wolvie and Magneto who can kill the enemy in less than 2 minutes.

Unknown

The strength of your roster has nothing to do with her healing because OBW will likely match blue/purple/black which means she takes half of the team's damage. She doesn't heal enough to keep up with that even against fairly weak abilities when she's taking half of the damage of the team, so collecting blue is just a way to die slowly if you use it for her heal. If you got one of the two premier blue characters in the game then you're not using her heal at all to begin with.

Aggressive Recon isn't something that wins the game by just casting once, and if you need to cast it more than once the level 5 wins every single time because it simply steals them more efficiently. It's actually cheaper when you get to use it multiple times than the lower levels because you also get purple back, and if the enemy has no purple then that means you have all the purple matches and it's hard to imagine a more ideal game.

over_clocked

The first rule of MPQ states to target oBW over anyone else (personally target her over mStorm, but not over Hood, and not many people run all three or Hood in general). It doesn't matter what level her Recon is if she dies before she can use it. Recon level 3 and below is actually more dangerous because it's faster.
Yes, her blue fades compared to Magneto or Spider-Man's. And compared to them only! Well maybe Doom too, because he offers sheer damage. Daredevil should not be compared to anyone, too *unique* lol, Psylocke offers tons of damage and her blue is simply a just for lulz bonus feature, same with Black Panther. Stop mentioning them, not everyone has them or uses Spidey and/or Magneto alongside oBW. If one has to use both Magneto and oBW, their Magneto is probably a **** yet (like mine). If they run both oBW and Spidey, they are probably an uber-paranoid person who always want to be able to both steal/stun and have 2 healing options, even I stopped running both of them on the same team some time ago. Spidey and oBW are redundant in abilities and colours, and Spidey IS more powerful as utility. You wouldn't run Daken and Patch on the same team, would you?
Oh and there's a little trick to collecting blue and purple without making oBW take half of the damage, it's called using cascades or board-clearing skills (hello, mStorm!).

Edit. I have both a very usable Spidey with 4 blue and a complete 3-5-5 oBW, I use both fairly regularly. Spidey for dangerous cheapass opponents who I can't recon in time, and for the Venom combo, oBW for countdown tiles and weaker opponents who can actually be killed with strike tiles + Espionage. I wouldn't choose one over another even if Spidey is more reliable, because oBW speeds things up in terms of damage and her blue most importantly delays CD tiles. If you fight 3 CD tiles mooks, you won't need healing in the first place if you can just delay a countdown tile here or there. Delaying CDs is almost the same as stunning with modern Black Widow or Spidey. Overpowered against mooks, she is, in conjunction with mStorm especially. But who isn't OP against mooks? (Do not mention the poor Daredevil).

Another edit. If enemy oBW uses her level 3 recon and has Thor/Ares/mStorm as companions, the game IS over. 3***s obviously have higher health pools and a single successful enemy Recon might not be enough to hurt them.

Unknown

Obviously, I don't know how my own OBW plays on defense, but when I'm fighting one a "magic cascade" into Aggressive Recon is annoying at 3 purple covers; it can be deadly at 5. I am reminded of this by playing in the Divine Champions event right now where every opposing team is running OBW. As soon as the match starts, you must open up the info window to determine if she is running the 8AP version or 10 or 11. Once you know that, scan the board to determine how many purple matches are available, then decide if you need to make some relatively useless purple matches or if you can try to get colors you really want. If she is at the 8 AP version, you probably just have to suck it up and assume you are going to get hit by it once. If she is at the 11 AP version, you need a plan. One bad cascade can mean you will lose.

I don't know if she is GROSSLY OP, but she is definitely at least somewhat OP. There's probably a reason why she is on every 2* team. I lost a couple Divine Champions games to bad cascades and OBW, so much so that I had to sub out my green generating level 128 Hulk (4/3/5) for her just to be able to respond to Espionage and Aggressive Recon. When she is the superior option to a 128 Hulk, she is a little OP.

Unknown

I started with 5/3/5 and after a lot of thinking kept it even having chance to respec and sold off the blue covers.

Lately OBW appears on 70+ percent of teams (up from 20-ish), stealing their purple is quite essential. While no healing with CD present is PITA indeed, it's more than situational. It's just not needed in big majority of situations. Guess bumping CD by 4 instead of 3 is hardly anyone's aim

Unknown

DirigiblePilot wrote:

The 5 in blue is of course essential for healing.

How so? How many CD battles you do? And is the crippled amount in that situation that significant?

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The strength of your roster has nothing to do with her healing because OBW will likely match blue/purple/black which means she takes half of the team's damage. She doesn't heal enough to keep up with that even against fairly weak abilities when she's taking half of the damage of the team, so collecting blue is just a way to die slowly if you use it for her heal. If you got one of the two premier blue characters in the game then you're not using her heal at all to begin with.

I wouldn't say "at all" but definitely way less. Lately I use Mags a lot, in many battles I have spare blue at the end (kept for emergency MF , the enemy goes down to red, so I can use the blues for a healing shot.

Leaving the **s I see black got taken by Punisher long ago, and blue bu Mags recently. Leaving her just purple (where mags is broken).

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

Phantron wrote:

The strength of your roster has nothing to do with her healing because OBW will likely match blue/purple/black which means she takes half of the team's damage. She doesn't heal enough to keep up with that even against fairly weak abilities when she's taking half of the damage of the team, so collecting blue is just a way to die slowly if you use it for her heal. If you got one of the two premier blue characters in the game then you're not using her heal at all to begin with.

I wouldn't say "at all" but definitely way less. Lately I use Mags a lot, in many battles I have spare blue at the end (kept for emergency MF , the enemy goes down to red, so I can use the blues for a healing shot.

Leaving the **s I see black got taken by Punisher long ago, and blue bu Mags recently. Leaving her just purple (where mags is broken).

In Magneto/OBW pairing the heal is like a victory lap, like if you've a game so wrapped up you throw an Anti-Grav at the end just because taking no damage is still better than taking some damage. But it's not unusual to have a game with Magneto where your whole team took a total of 1000 damage and you only have 5 blue the whole game because you're using up whatever blue you find into Magnetic Field as soon as it's available. It certainly makes no sense to drag the game out longer over such a paltry amount of damage since it still gives the computer a small chance to pull off a miracle cascade.

I went with 4 in blue for OBW for PvE purposes, though 3 in blue is certainly fine. I find that 4->5 in black is fairly irrelevent because you're never going to have a game plan solely around doing match 3 damage with OBW without strike tiles (it's still nowhere enough to kill anyone) and once strike tiles are in, the difference between 4 or 5 black is fairly insignificant compared to the strike tiles themselves.

Stealing purple is huge because 3 of the most powerful characters in the game depends on purple: OBW, Magneto, and Spiderman.

Unknown

dlaw008 wrote:

Obviously, I don't know how my own OBW plays on defense, but when I'm fighting one a "magic cascade" into Aggressive Recon is annoying at 3 purple covers; it can be deadly at 5. I am reminded of this by playing in the Divine Champions event right now where every opposing team is running OBW. As soon as the match starts, you must open up the info window to determine if she is running the 8AP version or 10 or 11. Once you know that, scan the board to determine how many purple matches are available, then decide if you need to make some relatively useless purple matches or if you can try to get colors you really want. If she is at the 8 AP version, you probably just have to suck it up and assume you are going to get hit by it once. If she is at the 11 AP version, you need a plan. One bad cascade can mean you will lose.

I don't know if she is GROSSLY OP, but she is definitely at least somewhat OP. There's probably a reason why she is on every 2* team. I lost a couple Divine Champions games to bad cascades and OBW, so much so that I had to sub out my green generating level 128 Hulk (4/3/5) for her just to be able to respond to Espionage and Aggressive Recon. When she is the superior option to a 128 Hulk, she is a little OP.

As powerful as AR is, it is not an ability you cast once and win the game. You almost always need more than one AR to win, especially defensively, and if you need to cast more than one AR, the level 5 version always wins on its superior efficiency. It costs less than AR3 if the opponent has purple, and if the opponent has no purple, that implies you have all the purple tiles so either way they're screwed.

OBW, The Hood, and Magneto all are overpowered in similar ways to due generating an insane AP advantage. When you have a lot more AP than the other team, it's generally pretty hard to lose. OBW is the most easily available character out of the 3. Out of the 3 similarly broken characters, Magneto is strongest offensively and The Hood is strongest defensively, and OBW is roughly in between in both categories.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

In Magneto/OBW pairing the heal is like a victory lap, like if you've a game so wrapped up you throw an Anti-Grav at the end just because taking no damage is still better than taking some damage. But it's not unusual to have a game with Magneto where your whole team took a total of 1000 damage and you only have 5 blue the whole game because you're using up whatever blue you find into Magnetic Field as soon as it's available. It certainly makes no sense to drag the game out longer over such a paltry amount of damage since it still gives the computer a small chance to pull off a miracle cascade.

My Mags works for 7 blue ATM and welcomes reserve so for me it's not uncommon to have 9 available. Sure as it improves chances to have the excess will dwindle.

Phantron wrote:

I went with 4 in blue for OBW for PvE purposes, though 3 in blue is certainly fine. I find that 4->5 in black is fairly irrelevent because you're never going to have a game plan solely around doing match 3 damage with OBW without strike tiles (it's still nowhere enough to kill anyone) and once strike tiles are in, the difference between 4 or 5 black is fairly insignificant compared to the strike tiles themselves.

That was the point I did most thinking around. And evaluated my plays too. Decided the extra espionage *is* in fact significant in many situations -- especially killing off the enemy storm/OBW in the first turns before they start working. I seldom use AP boosts (and going against OBW would remove them anyway likely) so strike tiles are not there right at start.
For fighting CD I found using OBW very rarely since I have Mags.

Phantron wrote:

Stealing purple is huge because 3 of the most powerful characters in the game depends on purple: OBW, Magneto, and Spiderman.

Yep. And in Moonstone gives me hard time too unless I manage to shell out some special tile early -- that is less likely if they cost 8/9G or 6B and I must collect up all reds from Jugs as first task and collect those stealing purples...

Phaserhawk

Never ever ever, have OBW purple or blue at lvl 4, they are terrible, lvl 4 black is okay, but by not allowing purple or blue as 4 this cannot happen. OBW's only two viable builds are 3/5/5 and 5/5/3.

3/5/5--Pro's --Quick denial of AP, always heal, good bonus damage
--Con's -- you have to put OBW, on the line to do damage, you can't steal purple

5/5/3--Pro's --Massive AP denial, always heal
Con's-- Black is worthless, Purple is slow


The short and sweet of it. If you are a primarily 2* roster, 3/5/5 is the better choice, you need her damage, and the early denial helps you out as you can keep upper level teams shut down. As you progress in the game and get more powerful, you have to weigh how important purple is to you. If you must have that early purple shutdown, then stay 3/5/5, but know that you probably won't be getting the passive AP steal from black as other characters will take the tile icon over her. If you are okay with your team, then 5 purple is a massive AP denial, it steals purple back and lets you cast it more often once it goes off. Depending on how good your team is, OBW may not even have a tile up, which is why her black can become useless. I have toyed around numerous times with taking my 3/5/5 to a 5/5/3 but I just love the early AP denial too much. If I had the roster space and covers and ISO She would be one character I would love to have 2 copies of, a 3/5/5 or a 5/5/3.

But to answer your question of 4/5/4 or 5/5/3, then go 5/5/3...4/5/4 is only worse then 4/4/5 (This is the worst build)

NorthernPolarity

Phaserhawk wrote:

Never ever ever, have OBW purple or blue at lvl 4, they are terrible, lvl 4 black is okay, but by not allowing purple or blue as 4 this cannot happen. OBW's only two viable builds are 3/5/5 and 5/5/3.

3/5/5--Pro's --Quick denial of AP, always heal, good bonus damage
--Con's -- you have to put OBW, on the line to do damage, you can't steal purple

5/5/3--Pro's --Massive AP denial, always heal
Con's-- Black is worthless, Purple is slow


The short and sweet of it. If you are a primarily 2* roster, 3/5/5 is the better choice, you need her damage, and the early denial helps you out as you can keep upper level teams shut down. As you progress in the game and get more powerful, you have to weigh how important purple is to you. If you must have that early purple shutdown, then stay 3/5/5, but know that you probably won't be getting the passive AP steal from black as other characters will take the tile icon over her. If you are okay with your team, then 5 purple is a massive AP denial, it steals purple back and lets you cast it more often once it goes off. Depending on how good your team is, OBW may not even have a tile up, which is why her black can become useless. I have toyed around numerous times with taking my 3/5/5 to a 5/5/3 but I just love the early AP denial too much. If I had the roster space and covers and ISO She would be one character I would love to have 2 copies of, a 3/5/5 or a 5/5/3.

But to answer your question of 4/5/4 or 5/5/3, then go 5/5/3...4/5/4 is only worse then 4/4/5 (This is the worst build)

I think that 5/4/4 is viable as well if you want max purple to deny your opponent purple. While 5 blue is nice, it certainly isn't a necessity, and having espionage trigger strike tiles is important.

Unknown

I actually had her at 5/5/3 and I never used her. But after getting two black covers from this event I went to 3/5/5 and she plays much better. I primarily use Patch, so her damage coupled with strike tiles is awesome. And while stealing 5 AP is nice, 3 in purple is just so much faster. To each their own though.

OnesOwnGrief

I had a 3/5/5 OBW for a while and was going fine. Never had an issue with it until I had this weird string of losses from OBW/Storm problems from the Divine Champions tourney. The one thing each of these OBWs had in common was that they had 4 or 5 ranks in purple. In my opinion, being hit by a 4 AP steal is just wreck and 3 AP steal wasn't safe enough to stop Ares or Thor teams while they were boosted. Once they had the AP, **** not the fan.

Now with this Hood tourney, it gets even crazier if you're looking at 2+ rank Blue Hood and OBW. AP theft can turn the match around so quickly and leave you crippled. Switched my OBW to 4/5/4 and had better success defensively than previously before. That and there's a good chance some may be tanking but less unlikely given the point totals.

The 50% heal is pretty moot IMHO if you aren't dealing with countdown tiles. Until countdown tiles become more commonplace, you can skip out on that. But its whatever since there is no "best" build. Build however it will help your team most.

over_clocked

Nope there is the best build and it's 3/5/5. You only have to watch purple a bit more attentively, is it so hard to do?
5/5/3 is 2nd best, but on defense it is almost negligible when it's Widow vs. Widow.

OnesOwnGrief

locked wrote:

Nope there is the best build and it's 3/5/5. You only have to watch purple a bit more attentively, is it so hard to do?
5/5/3 is 2nd best, but on defense it is almost negligible when it's Widow vs. Widow.

I watch purple just fine as it falls from the top of the screen into perfect 3 and 4 matches for the CPU. Most exhilarating thing ever.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

Never ever ever, have OBW purple or blue at lvl 4, they are terrible, lvl 4 black is okay, but by not allowing purple or blue as 4 this cannot happen. OBW's only two viable builds are 3/5/5 and 5/5/3.

LOL, more people obsessed with 5 blue... Why is that a necessity again?

Unknown

Just finished her at 3/5/5. Finally. Now who do I pair her with?