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

Phaserhawk

she disappears once your MMR goes up. But with players with solid 2* decks and those transition to 3* she is a staple and if that is where you are, due to the limited batch of playable 2*'s you are going to see her alot!!!

Unknown

While OBW is easily killed if she is in defense, I use OBW on offense mainly because of the crazy damage output of her passive when it's coupled with strike tiles (gained from patch or punisher (with whom she has better compatibility because of the black tiles). She's the main reason i haven't maxed my spidey yet

Unknown

I hate OBW and for me yes, she is ruining pvp. She is on 90% of the teams I face, my own OBW does not have enough covers to be a counter, and I have no way to reliably beat her. Of course I can beat her but I feel it's simply luck, can go either way. With a bad board I have no chance. A bad cascade means I have probably lost. She frequently blasts off a steal n heal combo on the third or fourth round, at which point my best play is probably to retreat. She simply snowballs her team so hard and so easily that either she dies VERY quickly, or you face a steep uphill battle you will probably lose.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

why go 4/4/5 when 5/3/5 is the better choice for only one more AP you get the benefit of stealing purple and the diff in 4 blue to 3 blue is nothing. 3/5/5 is a whole different beast as it falls into the 3 match category where Aggressive recond 4 and 5 fall into the 4 match category. If you always play with a +1 purple boost, okay, 4/4/5 is better than 5/3/5 in speed, but unboosted 4/4/5 makes no sense compared to 5/3/5

With 4/4/5 IF you face another OBW you can afford to have purple stolen from you once because you steal two back in three purple matches thus bringing you to 10AP. 5 in purple against another OBW means you need one extra turn which to me is one more risk of enemy OBW matching a purple and thus setting you back further. In addition, if you face another OBW that gets her Aggressive recon off first then there is no purple left for you to steal meaning that the extra level is pointless.

As for 4 in Blue, I don't know how big the difference is but I bet that in events where she is powered up that difference becomes somewhat more significant.

Therefore 4/4/5 is the obvious choice to me, although 3/5/5 would make some sense for the cheaper purple but the 5 in Blue seems excessive. Healing for only 50% with countdown tiles seems almost not worth spending the 9 blue for.

Puritas

if OBW is on 90% of the teams you face
your score/mmr are just not high enough to be vsing 141 lazythors on 90% of the teams you face
which is far worse trust me

Zantom

Posts like this ruin PvP if heeded.

BWO is strong to play with and easy to play against making her a great character. The problem, as has been stated by others in this thread is that there aren't many more appealing characters to put in a support slot.

Buff others, don't nerf BWO.

Unknown

I ran mine as 3/5/4 for a while, selling purple covers left and right because I feel it is actually worse than the cheaper steal. Rarely would I get much extra value out of stealing 4 and often it costing more would hurt. So I like 3/5/5 because it is the only way to max her level without making her steal worse.

Phaserhawk

To me it's simple now, there is no better choice there is a situational choice.

3/5/5 is great if you deck is quick, but I have found weaknesses to it where I wished I had a 5/4/4 or 4/4/5 etc. Which is why I think OBW is probably the truly worthy character of 2 roster slots with 2 builds. So, I plan on creating a 5/4/4 or 5/3/5 version in addition to my 3/5/5 and kick **** accordingly.

Unknown

Today is not my lucky day, I know I said that she's not really much of a threat anymore but for some reason, I lost 5 times to an OBW team today. Given that I was using C Storm / MN Thor for a while and I wasn't paying attention to Purple. I still stand firm with not nerfing her though. But man, she can really be a pain in the butt sometimes.

Unknown

Milkrain wrote:

With 4/4/5 IF you face another OBW you can afford to have purple stolen from you once because you steal two back in three purple matches thus bringing you to 10AP.

And if you leave the first purple to them, as you really should, you're at 11 the same way.

Playing with or against OBW requires good thinking and planning ahead. At least counting the available purple matches for the first 4-6 turns. And play on accordingly.

Unknown

I have both OBW and C.Storm at 85 and I like using both of them at the same time.

However, I have OBW's Espionage at 5, and since they're both at the same level/same blue damage, Storm's icon takes precidence. Therefore, Espionage doesn't trigger on blue when they're both in my party.

Is this a bug? I feel like since their blue damage is equal, OBW should get her icon on the blue tiles thanks to Espionage. It sucks missing out on 100+ damage each blue match + 1ap steal because of it.

OzarkBoatswain

Subtle OBW nerf in R51: Espionage only activates when the enemy has AP in that color. Previously it always activated for damage.

edit: Or at least that's what the description indicates. Seems to act the same.

over_clocked

Waaait I think the description was always this way, ambiguous, that is.

OzarkBoatswain

Oh? Ignore me then.

Unknown

You have an influence over who matches tiles in case of the same strength: It will always be the team member who is "first" on the line up (on the select screen this follows the order of middle-left-right). Just before you start the fight you have to check that BW is to the left of Storm on your team and you'll get your Espionages.

morgh

So I have a maxed 3/5/5 oBW... I also have 2 purple covers sitting in my storage and I've been wondering if it would be beneficial to go to 5 purple... I mean one more match to get the required amount does not seem like that big a deal, however whenever I encounter a 5 purple black widow it is an easy prey since I can stalk and deny it so much better...

Should I be changing? If so - where should I subtract? I love both the healing and the double dipping damage of oBW... she actually does tank all the 3 of her colour for me and whenever there are some strike tiles she starts to do serious mayhem...

Unknown

From my experience 3 purple is much better than 5. Especially on defense. I've had a ton of matches where the opponent gets a cascade and OBW is sitting with 8 purple AP. If they are specced at 4 or 5 in purple, I breathe a sigh of relief. If specced at 3, it forces me to either eat the AP loss or make some suboptimal moves, like launching attacks too early.

On offense, 3 AP steal seems to be enough. I don't really rely on it too much to gather a lot of AP. I mostly use it to either put me over the top on an ability, or delay an enemy ability by a turn or two.

Spoit

locked wrote:

Okay, 5/5/3 is probably just as good or maybe even better. Can't try it out myself unless I get 2 purple covers in a row.

I could maaaybe see the argument for 5 in purple, but not even having a small damage tick for her black? That's half the point of the character!

over_clocked

^ But likewise I don't see a point in leaving blue at 3. What if you *need* in-battle healing but can't take Spider-Man (roster restrictions, scaling yo, just don't have him)?
I'm making a transition to 3*s myself. These days I am mostly running oBW when she has only purple Espionage, rarely more than that, since blue/black are often covered by someone else. I can't complain because purple is the colour I want to steal (level 3 Recon doesn't steal purple), the extra damage while nice is nothing to die for. Sure, Patch/oBW is tons of fun, but also extremely risky for oBW herself (assuming that the third is a third wheel required character you probably don't have board control and cannot protect yourself). If anyone can share their experience with the 5-3-5 oBW, I'd gladly listen. But one thing I'm sure of - it's not a starter/transition player's build.
3/5/5 is universal, speedy, reliable. 5/5/3 - slightly less damage, slower but very good in PvE. (Who would you want to steal purple from in PvP? Only classic Magneto and he doesn't want purple by himself).

Edit: forgot enemy oBW lol. But barring crazy cascades Espionage steal is more than enough to deny the AI purple long enough for oBW to die.

Unknown

morgh wrote:

So I have a maxed 3/5/5 oBW... I also have 2 purple covers sitting in my storage and I've been wondering if it would be beneficial to go to 5 purple... I mean one more match to get the required amount does not seem like that big a deal, however whenever I encounter a 5 purple black widow it is an easy prey since I can stalk and deny it so much better...

Should I be changing? If so - where should I subtract? I love both the healing and the double dipping damage of oBW... she actually does tank all the 3 of her colour for me and whenever there are some strike tiles she starts to do serious mayhem...

You can just go for the best version (5/3/5) .

I usually play with Mags and laugh loud if the enemy OBW is 3 in recon. Same when I used to play with OBW (a lot really). The missing blue only means like 89 points less healing per shot, not noticable. And lack of healing if CD around, but I doubt the half shot actually worth that much. The steaing difference is drastic on offense (both your gain end their loss), and it happaning 1-2 turns later is okay for the opponent will have more AP to take.

While an AR at 8 may be harder to deny on a massively purple board in that case you just collect less colors and mainly purple, no big deal if 1x3 or 2x3 taken, and unless used immediately you steal it back in 1-2 turns. As the purple you took stays.