**** Riri Williams (Ironheart) **** Updated (8/7/17)

Vhailorx

Polares:

There is absolutely a connection between ability set strength and health pool, it's just not a direct link.

This is a fundamental assumption of any discussion about character balance. If one character could have the best health pool and the best skill set, and the best match damage in the game, that character would be the only character worth having.

This is why demi often pairs very high health pools with slower, less efficient powers (think thing, or 3* thor, or r&g). And why incredibly power types of abilities are often paired with very small health pools (think hood, loki, prof. X, obw).

Sometimes, demi doesn't quite get the balance right, and the results are either trash tier, or best-in-class. So rulk has tons of health and a great powerset, same with original 4* thor. And they are great characters. Conversely, wasp has a tiny health pool because demi was gun-shy about passive ap theft after loki and hood. But her passive is only ok in practice and she has proven to be underpowered.

Riri has the health pool commensurate with an awesome powerset (e.g. strong passives that generate/steal ap, or do significant damage, or true heal). But her skill set isnt even as good as kate, who hits harder, and has 4k more health.

Cthulhu

Thank you for posting the stats, i was just about to finally get to this. Next character i should be able to post the stats a day or two before the character releases.

Also thank you all for the feedback, I'll discuss with the team.

Anon

Cthulhu wrote:

Thank you for posting the stats, i was just about to finally get to this. Next character i should be able to post the stats a day or two before the character releases.

Also thank you all for the feedback, I'll discuss with the team.

Fingers crossed for this next character!

coughrogueorgambitcough

Skygazing

Quebbster wrote:

Can her red remove special tiles that aren't locked?

Yup. When the CD tile resolves it first unlocks X special tiles, then converts X special tiles to basic tiles regardless of whether or not they were locked.

stochasticism

Anon wrote:

Cthulhu wrote:

Thank you for posting the stats, i was just about to finally get to this. Next character i should be able to post the stats a day or two before the character releases.

Also thank you all for the feedback, I'll discuss with the team.

Fingers crossed for this next character!

coughrogueorgambitcough

coughmordoalreadybeenleakedcough

Mr_Sinister

I've been using her 5/5/3 and she simply doesn't bring anything to the table that isn't done better by another character.

IW is much much better with 2 similar power (lock special tiles and single target number) and a team invis, so theres really no reason to ever use Riri if you have IW.

This character is DoA.

Phumade

I think she's actually a really solid character and fills a really important role in the game.

First off in your a 5* player, she's pretty much useless. Collect her or don't, boosted or not she'll never displace a 5* or top tier 4* char in pve or pvp.

If your past day 800 with a wide and deep 4*/3* roster, then she's only moderately useful. You've almost inevitably have other chars than can fulfill her niches.

If your a 3*/4* transitioner, she is great to have and def better than avg. Some points to consider.

1. New chars 4*covers are MUCH more common than older 4*. I.e. you might think JG is a better 4*, but I can guarantee that I will hit 13 riri covers long before I see 13 JG covers.

2. Her powers are actually costed fairly cheap. Especially if your using boosts. you can essentially cut a turn of red and green (red goes from 11 to 9 {which is 3 rounds} green goes from 8 to 6 {which is 2rounds}) This makes a huge difference if your a midlevel 3/4* player and your trying to speed up hops.

I am surprised that they didn't add CD tiles to her blue. That would have made her a game changer against goons. In addition, alot of recent chars have a small "punch" power. i.e. hood yellow, chulk gree, gsbw red blah blah.

If your roster is relatively younger and you caught the recent chulk cover wave, then Riri pairs really well with chulk.

Overall, she can pair with alot of different chars and give you some very different playstyle options.

edit
oh, I also think 4/5/4. ironically enough she has 2 drawbacks that make me think its better not to goto 5.

with 5 blue, locking 4 tiles can clog the board and make it hard to work around. But 2 or 1 tiles is pretty easy to manage.

With 5 green, its absurd to cast a power that takes you airborne. But ironically at 4 green its can be viewed as a 2 turn green stun. (with +2 green/black)

So 4/5/4 until I get to play it

Vhailorx

Have to disagree phumade.

(1) I don't see how new characters are (post release) any more available to players than older 4*. It's all rng and players have very little control over which 4*s they will cover first.

(2) as you said: IF her powers had affected cooldown tiles, she would would be a lot better. But they didn't!

(3) powers that are cheap "if you boost" are not cheap!

(4) i cannot overstate how big a weakness her health is. At level 270 she has less health than most 3*s at lecel 185 or so. Even if her skillset was as good as the average 4*, why would you accept a 30% health handicap? She will invite attacks in pvp and will die to a bad cascade against overleveled pve opponents.

Phumade

Vhailorx wrote:

Have to disagree phumade.

(1) I don't see how new characters are (post release) any more available to players than older 4*. It's all rng and players have very little control over which 4*s they will cover first.

(2) as you said: IF her powers had affected cooldown tiles, she would would be a lot better. But they didn't!

(3) powers that are cheap "if you boost" are not cheap!

(4) i cannot overdtate how big a weakness her health is. At level 270 she has less health than most 3*s at lecel 185 or so. Even if her skillset was as good as the average 4*, why would you accept a 30% health handicap? She will invite attacks in pvp and will die to a bad cascade against overleveled pve opponents.

1. Except you already know that 5 covers are available in pve, 4 are available in pvp, plus you can expect that they will fast track at least two more appearances in upcoming pve/pvp events to be eligible for crash inclusion plus whatever minivault options are concocted. I stand by my original statement. 90% of the the population will acquire 13 riri covers before 13 jg covers. To be fair, I know I will get 13 riri covers before 13 jg covers, but who knows what a 4* transitioner will accomplish.

2. Fair point, but there are many characters that are much better vs goons than regular chars and vice versa.

3. Boosts are a fact of life. If you play any sort of pve you probably overflowing with surplus damage and +ap boosts. At the minimum every player has a very steady supply of boosts that should be managed like every other resource. if you have +30 across the board on your boosts, you should never complain about failed hops or boosted speedruns.

4. This should be evaluated in the context of the rosters and players that are most likely to need/use her. With respect to pve, I could certainly see a scenario where riri is the highest leveled 4* on the roster. In that scenario, pve enemies might not actually be overscaled against that roster. (10k nuke is huge for a 4* tranistioner, but meh in the 5* meta. In pvp it will all depend on who the 3* feature is. In a blade/daken match, riri is top shelf.

spectator

2% or less of the population base will get 5 covers on release pve. Im not even going to go into PVP placement and progression for newer players.....

Punisher5784

If she attracted CDs and Invisibility tiles to the middle with her blue it would have been decent. Should have been at least 7AP.. 9AP for an ability that has no damage and might not do nothing sucks. It would have been better if the CD from her red was on her blue instead so you attract the tiles to the middle and whatever doesn't match will be removed in a few turns.. makes no sense to out it on an extensive red. The red should have a kicker that increases damage based in the number of special tiles the enemy has locked.

The only thing I see if using her against Daken, match green so he makes red stricks, use her blue to attract them to the middle for cascades then hopefully have enough red AP from it to one shot one enemy and use green to send the other airborne... But then again I'm better off using 4hor or Cyke for red/blue.. she looks very disappointing overall. I feel like this is another character that one dev started and another one finished (e.g. Agent Venom).

Crowl

spectator wrote:

2% or less of the population base will get 5 covers on release pve. Im not even going to go into PVP placement and progression for newer players.....

It depends if you include the progression cover in the subsequent pve as part of the release, if not then only 0.2% would actually get 5 covers via pve, if you do include that additional cover from the next event then it would still only be 1% of the population that had 5 (or 6) covers.

spectator

You are correct, my maths is bad

TLCstormz

seraphiel wrote:

On top of being a meh set of powers it's more of Marvel's "All Rehashed, All Tokenism" thing.......

Feel better about yourself, now?

:+D

Polares

Vhailorx wrote:

Polares:

There is absolutely a connection between ability set strength and health pool, it's just not a direct link.

This is a fundamental assumption of any discussion about character balance. If one character could have the best health pool and the best skill set, and the best match damage in the game, that character would be the only character worth having.

Maybe this is a debate for another thread but....

But no, healthpool does NOT have any relation with skill set. I agree it should, but it doesn't. There are tons of examples, in 5 land you have Thanos and IM46, max health pools, max match damage and amazing powers (others like BBolt also have hitpoints over the average). In 4 land chars like Rhulk or IMHB, but then also Peggy or Cyclops. Cyclops has a big health pool, not as big as the ones I mentioned, but much more than other similarly strong chars like Iceman or Jean (see in the next paragraph why). It is true that at some points in the past, they decided to penalise some chars like XForce because their skills were too good for that layer, but it was more a penalisation to one char in particular than the general rule.

I couldn't find it, but at some point Devs even acknowledged that the way they decide the health for any char in the game it is just based in how durable they are or how good they are moving in the battlefield, etc in comics (this is why 4 Cyclops for example has such a big health pool, because of their tactical knowledge).

Check hitpoints for any char and you will see that it just depends on how big/durable they are in comicbooks, not how strong are their powers. This is one of the main reason this game will never be balanced like other games are. This is why chars like Rhulk and Thanos will always dominate PvP (and before them it was 4hor and then IMHB, etc.)


For Riri, at some point, because she is young and 'small' they decided she should have the same hitpoints as ProfX... But they didn't consider she has armor!!! The same armor than IM, so it doesn't make any sense!

Straycat

I have to agree with Vhailorx, I think health is incorporated to the character balance and design. Its not directly related and not consistent for all characters, but its there. Hulkbuster has a self damage ability, so his health could be a balance to that. Red hulk has a passive that helps if he takes damage. Thanos has an ability that puts him in front, and he can kill his teammates so he might be alone more often. Yes, they should be durable according to the comics, but they are probably designed with that in mind. If you look at just their health, you will see they mostly line up with their comic durability, but that doesn't mean they have no correlation to their moves.
In general, true healers (wolverine family), invisible characters (prof x, miles), or strong passives (Dr strange, Hood) will have lower health. There are exceptions and its not completely balanced, but I think they put some thought into overall design. And as you say, she has armor and should have more health, but she also doesn't have an awesome kit, so she should have more health.

Also, for all the complaints about having variants, the all new all different Marvel is pretty explicitly making variant characters. Its a way of keeping the audience with built in fans of a character while also updating it and being more diverse. If you are upset about diversity... I'll just say thats not cool.

fanghoul

I think if the lockdown works the way I think it does, this might mean getting multiple match-5s for a single use of her blue. If you paired her with Prof-X then, you might have some real damage going on.

Actually, if you add Patch in there too, with his green maxed, you could probably at least kill a character with 9 green and 9 blue.

Jaedenkaal

fanghoul wrote:

I think if the lockdown works the way I think it does, this might mean getting multiple match-5s for a single use of her blue. If you paired her with Prof-X then, you might have some real damage going on.

Actually, if you add Patch in there too, with his green maxed, you could probably at least kill a character with 9 green and 9 blue.

I've been thinking about that combo myself, seems pretty mean. You could alternately mix with Rocket and Groot to cluster all the enemy special tiles in the middle of the board and then punch them away.

That first point is also good, I think a lot of people are thinking that locking the tiles is silly (or counter-productive, even) but I think you've nailed it; if all the incoming tiles are the same color, you'll actually get to make some of those matches more than once as the locked tiles unlock once and then match away immediately.

Mr_Sinister

Straycat wrote:

I have to agree with Vhailorx, I think health is incorporated to the character balance and design. Its not directly related and not consistent for all characters, but its there. Hulkbuster has a self damage ability, so his health could be a balance to that. Red hulk has a passive that helps if he takes damage. Thanos has an ability that puts him in front, and he can kill his teammates so he might be alone more often. Yes, they should be durable according to the comics, but they are probably designed with that in mind. If you look at just their health, you will see they mostly line up with their comic durability, but that doesn't mean they have no correlation to their moves.
In general, true healers (wolverine family), invisible characters (prof x, miles), or strong passives (Dr strange, Hood) will have lower health. There are exceptions and its not completely balanced, but I think they put some thought into overall design. And as you say, she has armor and should have more health, but she also doesn't have an awesome kit, so she should have more health.

Also, for all the complaints about having variants, the all new all different Marvel is pretty explicitly making variant characters. Its a way of keeping the audience with built in fans of a character while also updating it and being more diverse. If you are upset about diversity... I'll just say thats not cool.

"If you don't like this character, you're a racist..."

Good first half of your post, atrocious, childish second half.

hopper1979

I am really interested to see this character in play. On paper I really like the idea behind the blue and with the right team I think she could be very solid especially when paired with the correct teammates, Prof X being at the top of the list. I have to see how they group in the center to be sure. Also her HP do not seem to be an issue if you use her green properly (again I will wait and see it in action, Wasps yellow on paper is awesome but it should cost less this power may suffer from the same issue), she might be niche but it could be a very good niche. Imagine her with Carnage, blue then green then Scythes, that will be nasty. I always like when they introduce new play mechanics and the green and blue are both fairly unique in this game.