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

Dayv

jozier wrote:

As people saw with IM40's yellow, increasing the AP cost of an ability is often not worth it for the benefits. Rather be able to trigger the steal earlier than steal 4 or steal more at a later time in the match.

Agreed. If Modern Black Widow had three skills, there's no way I'd have her more expensive Aggressive Recon maxed out.

Unknown

DayvBang wrote:

jozier wrote:

As people saw with IM40's yellow, increasing the AP cost of an ability is often not worth it for the benefits. Rather be able to trigger the steal earlier than steal 4 or steal more at a later time in the match.

Agreed. If Modern Black Widow had three skills, there's no way I'd have her more expensive Aggressive Recon maxed out.

Yep. I rarely triggered that back when I was using a MBW.

I don't even think 5 black is all that fantastic for BWO given that I'd rather match stronger colours half the time anyway. But if you max the purple, it'll rarely get triggered in time to be useful.

mischiefmaker

I went back and forth on her build a lot, and I eventually settled on 3/5/5. She's at 3/5/1 right now, and I'm really happy with how she's turning out, because:

- With boosts, you can trigger recon on the first purple match, guaranteed, whereas with 4 purple you need to get a 4-match or two 3-matches; this is important because she has low health, so you don't want to expose her to taking two hits if one will do
- You can almost always pick up a quick purple early in the match, so that if the opponent doesn't have a 2- or 3-AP power, you have recon ready to go before he can trigger his power
- After that, it's pretty typical to be able to cast it again every two matches (and often you only have to make one match since you'll get another off a cascade)
- This lets you use her to tightly control your opponent's AP; barring lucky cascades and 2/3-AP powers you can often go a whole match without your opponent casting anything

Also, if you have her at 3 purple now and are trying to decide whether to go higher, next time you play a match with her, take a look at how often you can actually steal 4 AP. I tracked this pretty closely for a few days and I found that while I could often get 3 AP in 4 or more different colors, it was rare to get 4 in more than 2 colors (especially since I want to use recon to control opponent casting, so am going to trigger it fairly early, when the opponent has only made a few matches). Also see how often you can cast it at 8 and whether you have 10 or could wait for 10. After paying attention to these I concluded that 4-purple was at best even with 3-purple, and occasionally much worse (e.g. when Thor has 6 red and you have 8 purple, 3-purple is way better than 4-purple). Give it a try and see for yourself.

Unknown

I agree 3 purple is better than 4 but I still prefer 5. I don't want to cast AR immediately anyway because there is nothing to steal. I usually try to control a different color at the beginning anyways usually red or blue. Once my opponents has matched purple every time I match purple espionage kicks in. Since AR steals purple and black at level 5 the second cast is generally equally quick to cast.

Yes it isn't as good if a cascade happens immediately but I'm usually not afraid of a Thor red attack at the start since I can heal that back/usually run Wolverine.

If cast prevention is that important (some PvE) I bring my 5 blue boosted Spidey.

Unknown

Hi Black Widow (Original) fans.

is it only me or is my black widow having problems?
my espionage is at level 2 and I should be able to steal purple and blue.
At this point, it only takes purple but doesn't steal blue.

you guys facing this?

Regards,
gnilow

Dayv

gnilow wrote:

is it only me or is my black widow having problems?
my espionage is at level 2 and I should be able to steal purple and blue.
At this point, it only takes purple but doesn't steal blue.

Does another character on your team do better blue damage? If Black Widow doesn't make the match herself, her Espionage won't trigger. In other words, the blue gems need to have her symbol on them.

Unknown

Regarding skill builds, I had purple at 3 for a long time and eventually decided to leave it there. 8 feels like a really good number to get it off early and often enough in PVP. Remember that if you're matching purple often, it means you're denying it and stealing it with Black Widow's passive, so it's pretty rare to be getting much back at level 5. Most teams also don't have purple abilities that you care about preventing.

Her black is her best skill, so it doesn't make much sense to me to leave it at 3. The incidental damage really adds up, even without strike tiles, and it costs nothing. The only reason I could see to not level black is if you only plan on letting her tank 1 color.

The utility of her blue between 3 and 5 isn't that huge, but it's worth noting that the amount healed does increase with levels, even though that's not indicated on the wiki.

Overall, this led me to choose 3/5/5, which I guess is what most people here also arrived at.

Unknown

DayvBang wrote:

gnilow wrote:

is it only me or is my black widow having problems?
my espionage is at level 2 and I should be able to steal purple and blue.
At this point, it only takes purple but doesn't steal blue.

Does another character on your team do better blue damage? If Black Widow doesn't make the match herself, her Espionage won't trigger. In other words, the blue gems need to have her symbol on them.

Also, you can't steal what the enemy doesn't have

Unknown

Yeah after using her for the first time in this women only tourney. It really should be if anyone on the team matches. I am using her moonstone and C storm and moonstone is taking over all the pinks and blacks and storm the blues so I am not able to steal any ap because of it. Kind of makes it useless.

Unknown

gnilow wrote:

Hi Black Widow (Original) fans.

is it only me or is my black widow having problems?
my espionage is at level 2 and I should be able to steal purple and blue.
At this point, it only takes purple but doesn't steal blue.

you guys facing this?

Regards,
gnilow

Also, she only steals the color that she's matching. She steals purple when making a purple match, but not blue. She steals blue when making a blue match, but not purple. At least that's the way I understand the description.

Unknown

No, it kinda means you have to pick your team carefully if you want to make use of it.

Unknown

If the ability was changed to always be active she would be stealing ap practically every turn making it op and if she did move to the front every time she would be quickly killed.
The skill itself should probably be revamped instead, remove an enermy strike/protect of that colour match if there are none of that colour the skill doesn't activate and she stays at the back or something to that effect.

Unknown

bongo king wrote:

If the ability was changed to always be active she would be stealing ap practically every turn making it op and if she did move to the front every time she would be quickly killed.
The skill itself should probably be revamped instead, remove an enermy strike/protect of that colour match if there are none of that colour the skill doesn't activate and she stays at the back or something to that effect.

It's fine the way it is.

Unknown

Used her a bit in the widow maker tournament. Very pleased. I love that she can steal ap in multiple ways, which makes getting to her heal very easy, even without boosts, which helps offset damage she takes by making matches to steal. Only got her at level 40, but great ability synergy on this character, IMO.

Unknown

She is the prefect support char IMHO. I'm not sold on going 5 in purple, rather get her to 3/5/5. I will level her definitely as my Spidey doesn't get any bigger (1/1/5) due to terrible luck. She is seriously awesome to the point I would rate her as highly as Thor in terms of ** heroes.

Unknown

She really is good. I'd love to use her, but too much overlap with Spidey and Mags which is her biggest downfall.

Unknown

Having used it to great effect this last tournament, I don't think the black needs any change. If you want to maximize the effect of it, you have to choose your team carefully, including levels of said characters.

Unknown

Don't get me wrong, I think she is great. She is hands down the best possible third choice for my Wolvie/Thor team. I'm just disapointed that she would be significantly nerfed if i used her with Punisher/Magneto or some similar combo.

Unknown

Zathrus wrote:

No, it kinda means you have to pick your team carefully if you want to make use of it.

If I could somehow delevel characters to go into battle sure. but in a restricted tourny you can't do anything about it if your guys are already level max.

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

She really is good. I'd love to use her, but too much overlap with Spidey and Mags which is her biggest downfall.

Agreed. I would have used her a lot, though, earlier in the game before making the transition to 3* characters, had she been available at that time.