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

Phaserhawk

pasa_ wrote:

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?

Not obsessed, just for the mere fact that all lvl 4 in purple does is increase the cost while allowing you to steal one more AP of every color but purple, but at lvl 5 it costs you one more AP, the diff between 10 and 11 AP is nothing, especially now that you can steal purple.

4 blue just adds one more to countdown, blehhh, but at level 5 you can steal heal with CD tiles out. In the days of Punisher, Black Panther, Ares, who have CD tiles out alot, you dont' care about the timer, you want to heal, and that blocks you, which is why you want the 5 over the 4.

OBW's purple and blue at lvl 4 are worse than lvl 3 and worse than lvl 5, thus you never want purple or blue at lvl 4 period. Lvl 4 Black is okay, because all you are losing out on is a little bit of damage, but...you can't have lvl 4 black without having purple or blue at lvl 4 which is a no no.

OBW only has 2 viable builds. 3/5/5 and 5/5/3, period, no buts, if's etc. I already mentioned why you should pick one over the other. I personally feel 3/5/5 is better, but I cannot argue a 5/5/3 if that is your prefernce, because depending on team comps that build can be superior, but anything else is ****, period, you are lying to yourself to justify messing up on your build, or you didn't have the covers you wanted, but either way, anything but those to is an inefficient build, period, end of story.

Unknown

Iirc blue has a hidden modifier that increases heal on lvl up? So 4 blue is not as bad as it appears.

Imo 5 purple is good. Right now I'm deciding between 5/4/4 or 5/3/5. If people start using CDs more in PVP, I might go 5 in blue.

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

Iirc blue has a hidden modifier that increases heal on lvl up? So 4 blue is not as bad as it appears.

Imo 5 purple is good. Right now I'm deciding between 5/4/4 or 5/3/5. If people start using CDs more in PVP, I might go 5 in blue.

Compendium states "Max Level: Heals 1139HP". That is consistent with what 3 blue with lvl85 does. What your 5 blue one does in reality?

Unknown

Mine actually isn't maxed yet, just read it on these forums one time. I guess I'm going 5/3/5 then.

Unknown

SteelBus wrote:

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

Anyone shelling out strike tiles, the more the better .

Phaserhawk

pasa_ wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

Iirc blue has a hidden modifier that increases heal on lvl up? So 4 blue is not as bad as it appears.

Imo 5 purple is good. Right now I'm deciding between 5/4/4 or 5/3/5. If people start using CDs more in PVP, I might go 5 in blue.

Compendium states "Max Level: Heals 1139HP". That is consistent with what 3 blue with lvl85 does. What your 5 blue one does in reality?

You can heal for 569 if there are CD tiles out, at lvl 3 if there are any CD tiles out you will not heal, you will only put counters on the CD tiles

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

You can heal for 569 if there are CD tiles out, at lvl 3 if there are any CD tiles out you will not heal, you will only put counters on the CD tiles

I know that. The question is in how many real situations does that count really. Sure I keep screwing up play not paying attention but IME that utility is doubtful at best, and definitely NOT worth sacrificing from any of the other abilities that rock.

If it was full heal I might consider some benefit with healing on prologue hammer maps but halved not feasible time-wise. 569 is just not enough.

Phaserhawk

ihearthawthats wrote:

Mine actually isn't maxed yet, just read it on these forums one time. I guess I'm going 5/3/5 then.

That's the 3rd okay build. Just remember, your blue only works for the heal when there are no CD tiles on the board, if you are in PvE good luck, and if you try to recover right after an Ares Sunder, it's not going to happen, that is the draw back.

The way to build OBW is to look at purple first, do you want slow massive steal, or quick minor steal. Once you answer that question you go
5/x/x or
3/x/x

never go 4 in purple
since you never go 4 in blue either
5/3/5 or
5/5/3
3/5/5
are your only possible builds that are viable

To break them down, Purple steals, blue heals, black is for damage
Which do you want maxed to efficieny?
I like the max heal, max damage, quick steal so 3/5/5 was for me
5/3/5 is max steal (slow), max damage, conditional heal
5/5/3 is max steal (slow, allways heal, no bonus damage from black

Phaserhawk

pasa_ wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

You can heal for 569 if there are CD tiles out, at lvl 3 if there are any CD tiles out you will not heal, you will only put counters on the CD tiles

I know that. The question is in how many real situations does that count really. Sure I keep screwing up play not paying attention but IME that utility is doubtful at best, and definitely NOT worth sacrificing from any of the other abilities that rock.

What' is your current build?
I'm assuming 5/3/5

I agree the 5 black is nice, but you have to look at your purple. How many times do you wish you could have gone off one turn sooner, even if you couldn't steal purple? being able to steal 3 of every AP but purple after 3 matches, sometimes 2, is huge, most of the time I'm not even stealing max AP, and with black maxed, I at least can steal purple, blue, and black as well, that's the other reason I find 5/3/5 or 5/5/3 in efficient. Black already steals you purple when you match purple. So why do I need to steal even more purple when I have probably already drained them of any purple they had building up to 11 purple AP

Like I said, if your OBW has no tiles on the board due to your other 2 characters, then 5/5/3 is the better build, but if she does have tiles, especially purple, then 3/5/5 makes the most sense, since you really get no benefit out of a 5 purple that you don't out of a 3 purple

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

Just remember, your blue only works for the heal when there are no CD tiles on the board, if you are in PvE good luck, and if you try to recover right after an Ares Sunder, it's not going to happen, that is the draw back.

Sunder? OBW's main task is to prevent that, not to wash up. And to support your own sunder. (And the sunders I recall from real stuff hit over 3k so the 550 heal will not help you out really... ) In PVE goon-only setups you don't take damage so nothing to heal. And mixed ones usually need more special treatment that likely consumes blue (mags, spidey).

In PVE you especially want to steal purple that is produced by most hammers and will be shot at you in various ways or used for warp/stun. And not exploiting espionage is a thing that leaves you open to way more damage you can heal up. Just count the turns.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

pasa_ wrote:

What' is your current build?
I'm assuming 5/3/5

I agree the 5 black is nice, but you have to look at your purple. How many times do you wish you could have gone off one turn sooner, even if you couldn't steal purple? being able to steal 3 of every AP but purple after 3 matches, sometimes 2, is huge, most of the time I'm not even stealing max AP, and with black maxed, I at least can steal purple, blue, and black as well, that's the other reason I find 5/3/5 or 5/5/3 in efficient. Black already steals you purple when you match purple. So why do I need to steal even more purple when I have probably already drained them of any purple they had building up to 11 purple AP

Like I said, if your OBW has no tiles on the board due to your other 2 characters, then 5/5/3 is the better build, but if she does have tiles, especially purple, then 3/5/5 makes the most sense, since you really get no benefit out of a 5 purple that you don't out of a 3 purple

Sure. As I wrote several times I considered other builds many times, also had the opportunity to change and dropped it.
Purple, yes, there are many remembered games sitting at 10 and hitting retreat. But I'd estimate 10-20 times more unremembered ones wher it worked, but without stealing purple would not help at all.

With revent proliferation of OBW in PVP I see extreme advantage of having full purple -- yep, sometimes get robbed by lesser OBW but get most of my stuff back in a turn . Read what the champs say below if you don't believe me.

And stealing just 3 just fails to relieve the danger in majority of times.

Unknown

Blue at level 5 heals for like 100 more damage than level 4 even though it doesn't say so on the ability upgrade. However this totally overlooks the fact that ending a game several turns quicker reduces the damage you take by more than 100. In fact this game is really all about threshold. You take about 150 damage each turn and then there's a point where you're usually taking several thousand damage once the enemy hits the AP they need for their moves. It is far important to ensure the enemy never hits that AP threshold, either by killing them or stealing their AP than hoping your heals keep up with the big AP moves.

The heal 50% when CD is out is pretty much irrelevent due to CD being irrelevent. Even if they aren't, unless you're fighting a goon it's very rare an opponent can have a CD out at all times and you don't always need to heal immediately.

Saying AR3 can be used quicker ignores the fact, like Pasa pointed out, there are a lot of fights you'd have lost because AR3 doesn't steal enough. You're making the assumption that one AR3 is enough to wrap up the game, and as powerful as AR is, not even AR5 is usually enough to wrap up a game by casting it once.

Phaserhawk

Phantron wrote:

Blue at level 5 heals for like 100 more damage than level 4 even though it doesn't say so on the ability upgrade. However this totally overlooks the fact that ending a game several turns quicker reduces the damage you take by more than 100. In fact this game is really all about threshold. You take about 150 damage each turn and then there's a point where you're usually taking several thousand damage once the enemy hits the AP they need for their moves. It is far important to ensure the enemy never hits that AP threshold, either by killing them or stealing their AP than hoping your heals keep up with the big AP moves.

The heal 50% when CD is out is pretty much irrelevent due to CD being irrelevent. Even if they aren't, unless you're fighting a goon it's very rare an opponent can have a CD out at all times and you don't always need to heal immediately.

Saying AR3 can be used quicker ignores the fact, like Pasa pointed out, there are a lot of fights you'd have lost because AR3 doesn't steal enough. You're making the assumption that one AR3 is enough to wrap up the game, and as powerful as AR is, not even AR5 is usually enough to wrap up a game by casting it once.

Well can we all agree that 4 in purple sucks?

I see the merit of 5 in purple don't get me wrong. and i think 3 in blue or 3 in black is very character dependent.

AR3 -- you can go off on turn 2 sometimes, but if the board is okay and they got a purple match I can almost always go off on turn 3, I love this in PvP as it really shutsdown their early game. assuming they had purple I just stole 1 or 2 of it while gaining my own purple.

My current favorite deck runs Punisher 3/5/5, OBW 3/5/5 and my floating 3rd. Well as is. OBW is not going to be matching Black, If I put in say Thor, then OBW will be on purple and blue, as well as stealing purple and blue, but no black, as long as I run Punisher she will never steal black for me. This is where I see the merits of 5 purple.

I think a team of Patch, IM40, OBW is a good compliment and depending on your IM40, say 5/4/4 you can feed OBW as well.

You have convinced me that 5/3/5 is a decent build, So I will adjust my statment.

The only VIABLE OBW builds are
3/5/5
5/3/5 and
5/5/3

depending on your play style and current roster, but 4 in purple or blue is a waste as it would be better suited either as a 5 or have that 4th point in another ability.

Phaserhawk

Phantron wrote:

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.

Their OBW is dead because I stole red, yellow, green, blue, and black, which was enough to feed punisher to kill her, that's why she is deadly

over_clocked

I dunno, anything less than 5 in blue seems **** to me. What do these people run for 'villain + minions' types of battles? In the current PvE, every fight that has both a villain and a minion always has CD tiles on the board and always makes you take at least some match damage.
People that run 5-3-5 build seem to me as if they are running a completely different **** version of oBW.
Who would you want to steal purple from anyway? Enemy oBW? She dies before she can use any level Recon if targeted first; in PvE we are looking at Moonstone (just put a special tile for her and forget it) and Venom (mostly harmless, just watch black and other damaging colours). Yelena doesn't deserve a mention, if you let the computer acquire 19 purple AP, your problem might not lie in the miraculous AI cascades after all. GSBW doesn't put her purple to good use, so she's forgettable.
Magneto is quite powerful and different, but my 3-5-5 oBW could deal with whatever Simulator monstrosity on that Latveria level, if not 100% reliably but thank Magneto's 2 red AP spam for that. Another case worthy of mention would be Magneto MN acquiring enough purple to feed blue to Spider-Man or cStorm, but you should know better and kill Spidey or cStorm first.

Phaserhawk

I won my bracket of the last Divine Tournament, running Punisher 3/5/5, Ares 4/4/5, OBW 3/5/5 Got me a nice Red Wolvie X-Force, and I can say, running against a ton of teams comprised of C.Storm, Thor, OBW, I was wrecking them. I would match purple and blue quickly, so I'm only taking match damage, and I was stealing all of their blue and purple. Turn 3-4 rolls arounds, bam I AR and I have alot of AP, usually enough Green to cast Judgement, making all my matches hurt, if their OBW isn't dead already she's done this turn, I no longer have to worry about purple, I heal everyone up, and focus on C.Storm next, I did this over and over again to the point of efficency, and getting 1st let's me know it was working, that being said, I do see the validity in 5 purple, I really do but since I don't have a 3/5/5 Spiderman, I have a 3/0/5 Spiderman, damn you BLUE COVERS!!!!!!!, She is my healing crutch, until I can field a team of 6-7 Lvl 141's

over_clocked

I have been fighting teams of oBW and Thor/Wolverine/Ares (usually Thor though) in every PvP event for quite some time now, same roster after all.
And the 3-5-5 oBW is as more dangerous than 5-5-3 oBW as 5-5-3 mStorm is more dangerous than 5-3-5 mStorm: the build is faster, more aggressive, harder to deny. If I notice enemy oBW having a level 5 recon, I can even relax and stop watchig purple like a hawk which is nice. Even if she miraculously acquires 11 purple (it's A LOT in a oBW vs. oBW battle!) she's dead by the next turn.

Unknown

locked wrote:

I dunno, anything less than 5 in blue seems **** to me. What do these people run for 'villain + minions' types of battles? In the current PvE, every fight that has both a villain and a minion always has CD tiles on the board and always makes you take at least some match damage.

And does that halved heal make any difference for that situation? Those mixed fights require the most speed to kill someone, either the goon that feeds AP or the active villain to leave you alone. You very likely need spidey or mags to help you out and put the blue to actually good use. Or resort to different tactics that leave blue-collecting on back burner, as you need red/green/black for damage or purple to steal or just collecting the enemy colors, red for jug/rag, green then yellow for ares, purple for moonie, black for venom. Quite rare when you go for blue fast with just for OBW. As it leaves you likely quite dead quite soon.

Unknown

I calculated a while back that if you're against a level 141 The Hood, and you're only collecting blue and he's only collecting black, you'd barely outheal the damage done by Intimidation, and that's one of the weakest special attacks in the game. Against the beyond-the-level-cap DAs, you wouldn't even come close to matching their damage output even with 100% of the normal healed value.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

I won my bracket of the last Divine Tournament, running Punisher 3/5/5, Ares 4/4/5, OBW 3/5/5 Got me a nice Red Wolvie X-Force, and I can say, running against a ton of teams comprised of C.Storm, Thor, OBW, I was wrecking them. I would match purple and blue quickly, so I'm only taking match damage, and I was stealing all of their blue and purple. Turn 3-4 rolls arounds, bam I AR and I have alot of AP, usually enough Green to cast Judgement, making all my matches hurt, if their OBW isn't dead already she's done this turn, I no longer have to worry about purple, I heal everyone up, and focus on C.Storm next, I did this over and over again to the point of efficency, and getting 1st let's me know it was working, that being said, I do see the validity in 5 purple, I really do but since I don't have a 3/5/5 Spiderman, I have a 3/0/5 Spiderman, damn you BLUE COVERS!!!!!!!, She is my healing crutch, until I can field a team of 6-7 Lvl 141's

Probably not interesting to count that completely abandoned tournament. I also won it barely playing, and using same team early, then switching obw to hulk later -- not as if he did anything on offense ever, but got me less attacks and some defensive wins. And the setup proves that OBW was redundant on that tournement really -- killed by single sunder or 10 in onslought you just picked up while storm fell to tile matches. Or molotov+retr. whatever.