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

Jarvind

Pumped Riri up to 270 to use boosted this week, and my results have been mixed. 

In PVE, with IM40 fueling and Kate as a third, she's pretty great. Red hits like a train, green is an okay way of delaying a CD or finishing off a weakened enemy. I've used blue once or twice against Kishu protect tiles but it remains largely useless.

In PVP, though... holy hell, her health is such a liability. I find myself using health packs on her almost every match because a stiff breeze will kill her. Even boosted she's barely over 20k. It's bad. I will say that blue actually works well against Patch, though, since all the hostile strikes he makes are on the same color.

zodiac339

In Sharp Dressed, I had fun using her with IM40. Recharge, Berzerker Rage, the use her blue at rank 5 to put all the purple strikes in the middle. Rocket Punch down someone, then a couple more matches maybe to finish it. Super funny to actually have a use for her blue. Just won't work against a Cardusa team.

Rick_OShay

zodiac339 said:

In Sharp Dressed, I had fun using her with IM40. Recharge, Berzerker Rage, the use her blue at rank 5 to put all the purple strikes in the middle. Rocket Punch down someone, then a couple more matches maybe to finish it. Super funny to actually have a use for her blue. Just won't work against a Cardusa team.

or agianst Medunage...

byc

Her green is kind of nice for dodging Thanos' Court Death.

I wish the blue was better at handling other special tiles like countdowns and maybe invisibility.

JarvisJackrabbit

Okay, I just champed her and she could really use a rework by either:

1) Giving her considerably higher health (she's wearing a suit of armor for crying out loud)

2) Keeping her health low and revamping her blue to fuel her red by drawing a certain number of any type of enemy specials (including CDs and invisibility) OR the enemy team's strongest color to the center of the screen and changing them to red tiles (specials or strongest color)

Hey, they could go crazy and do both of those and make her really interesting. Personally, I like the idea of a 4* glass cannon who is all about a quick powerful red (with blue to help it along) who also stands a pretty good chance of getting downed first if things don't go well. High risk, high reward health pack hog.

She needs help.

Dayv

JarvisJackrabbit said:

2) Keeping her health low and revamping her blue to fuel her red by drawing a certain number of any type of enemy specials (including CDs and invisibility) OR the enemy team's strongest color to the center of the screen and changing them to red tiles (specials or strongest color)

I like this idea.

On paper, her red looks to do damage comparable to 4* Cyclops red at full (TU AP boosted) effect with no prerequisite.  But Cyclops has massive internal synergy.  Two of his powers feed AP (blue feeding red, yellow feeding red if he's the strongest team member), and one of them encourages increased matching of TU AP.

Other characters have the internal synergy model.  4* Iron Fist is an obvious one, paying AP forward from one skill to another.  War Machine can fire red to have friendly attack tiles drop, and then green to induce board shake with tile-destroying countdowns, bringing in those attack tiles.  Gamora has a passive that takes out enemies after creating purple friendly specials, and two different ways to create those tiles even before you look at adding another stunner or special tile creator.

Ironheart doesn't have a single bit of internal synergy.  Nothing feeds AP, no powers play into each other.  She just has some powers.  The one part of her power set that seems geared to her overall design is using her self-induced airborne turn to mitigate incoming damage, a strategic way to offset her low health.  Her blue is incredibly niche-oriented as fewer and fewer new characters spam tiles on a single color, and her red is costly with no way to feed it even a little without bringing someone else along for that job.

zodiac339

Dayv said:

JarvisJackrabbit said:

2) Keeping her health low and revamping her blue to fuel her red by drawing a certain number of any type of enemy specials (including CDs and invisibility) OR the enemy team's strongest color to the center of the screen and changing them to red tiles (specials or strongest color)

I like this idea.

On paper, her red looks to do damage comparable to 4* Cyclops red at full (TU AP boosted) effect with no prerequisite.  But Cyclops has massive internal synergy.  Two of his powers feed AP (blue feeding red, yellow feeding red if he's the strongest team member), and one of them encourages increased matching of TU AP.

Other characters have the internal synergy model.  4* Iron Fist is an obvious one, paying AP forward from one skill to another.  War Machine can fire red to have friendly attack tiles drop, and then green to induce board shake with tile-destroying countdowns, bringing in those attack tiles.  Gamora has a passive that takes out enemies after creating purple friendly specials, and two different ways to create those tiles even before you look at adding another stunner or special tile creator.

Ironheart doesn't have a single bit of internal synergy.  Nothing feeds AP, no powers play into each other.  She just has some powers.  The one part of her power set that seems geared to her overall design is using her self-induced airborne turn to mitigate incoming damage, a strategic way to offset her low health.  Her blue is incredibly niche-oriented as fewer and fewer new characters spam tiles on a single color, and her red is costly with no way to feed it even a little without bringing someone else along for that job.

Unfortunately, if internal synergy were to be added, the developers might determine that some of her power may need to be dropped. The AP ratio on Rocket Punch is just crazy, especially with no conditional, and green is relatively solid. I can't deny that having some additional utility from blue would be fantastic, do something without there being enemy tiles to move, but having 1 niche with two solid powers is not bad. At least you're not left going, "Why can't I build 5/5/5!?" like Hobofist or Mordo.

Dayv

zodiac339 said:

Unfortunately, if internal synergy were to be added, the developers might determine that some of her power may need to be dropped. The AP ratio on Rocket Punch is just crazy, especially with no conditional, and green is relatively solid. I can't deny that having some additional utility from blue would be fantastic, do something without there being enemy tiles to move, but having 1 niche with two solid powers is not bad. At least you're not left going, "Why can't I build 5/5/5!?" like Hobofist or Mordo.

They'd have to be careful, but if they added just a little bit of red generation to her, maybe conditionally, it would help her out some.  If she's tanking red for the team, she's going to lose half her health trying to fuel red on her own.

zodiac339

How about, "In celebration of Spider Man homecoming, Magnetic Repulsors will now create web tiles if there are no enemy special tiles to affect." Then  you could pair her with miles and get red from matched web tiles.
Would charged tiles be acceptable? They're often an answer.

Dayv

zodiac339 said:

How about, "In celebration of Spider Man homecoming, Magnetic Repulsors will now create web tiles if there are no enemy special tiles to affect." Then  you could pair her with miles and get red from matched web tiles.
Would charged tiles be acceptable? They're often an answer.

It would be pretty weird to have a character that generates web tiles they have literally no use for, unless they were someone really chaotic and random, like Madcap.

DrDevilDinosaur

The newly revealed 4* Vulture shows something which I think could equally be applied to Riri to give her a bit of help - that is, his AP generation while airborne. I was thinking that Riri could benefit from gaining a few AP each turn that an enemy is airborne. I think if you added a passive component to her blue like:

(PASSIVE) At the start of each turn, if an enemy is airborne, generate 2 Red AP. Reduce the amount of AP generated by 1 for each unlocked enemy attack/protect/strike tile on the board.

Rank 2: no change to passive

Rank 3: Also generate 2 Blue

Rank 4: Generate 3 Red and 3 Blue

Rank 5: Generate 4 Red and 4 Blue

ammenell

have her at 5/5/2 and ignored her, except for ddq4. 
champ rewards aside, is she worth the iso now? 

granne

She was worth it before.

But yeah, you're about to get (probably) 3 covers from Sin6, and then another from progression in the following PvE. Champing her as soon as you can seems the obvious choice.

Daredevil217

What's her best build now?  I'm thinking 4 in Blue is easy. The charged tiles from 3 to 4 are a must, but the damage from 4 to 5 is negligible.

I could see swapping between 5 in Green and 5 in Red depending on team needs, but at default, which is better?  The damage dip seems to be significant for both colors when dropping to 4 covers.

Landale

I've been playing with her a little bit, just clearing the outside nodes on Sinister Six with her.  I've been running her at 4/5/4 and am not really feeling like I'm losing anything important.  

Edit: Moved my critique of her changes to a different discussion.

Tiger_Wong

Wow. Her blue really is random. RNG decides whether or not draw special tiles or not. I teamed her with patch and was VERY disappointed to watch her not target any enemy strike tiles and instead draw 4 random tiles to the middle of the board.

Thats..... pretty frigging stupid. Or maybe a bug?

Landale

I saw that as well.  Was a little annoyed about it.  Hopefully it's a bug and they will patch it later.

Rick_OShay

Tiger Wong said:

Wow. Her blue really is random. RNG decides whether or not draw special tiles or not. I teamed her with patch and was VERY disappointed to watch her not target any enemy strike tiles and instead draw 4 random tiles to the middle of the board.

Thats..... pretty frigging stupid. Or maybe a bug?

Dang, I was hoping to be wrong about that...  I do like the red acceleration though, so we'll see after more play.

I tried to keep people from getting disappointed in their expectations:
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/706737/#Comment_706737

  

Jaedenkaal

Tiger Wong said:

Wow. Her blue really is random. RNG decides whether or not draw special tiles or not. I teamed her with patch and was VERY disappointed to watch her not target any enemy strike tiles and instead draw 4 random tiles to the middle of the board.

Thats..... pretty frigging stupid. Or maybe a bug?

Why would it be a bug? It says it moves basic tiles or enemy whatever tiles, just like 3* R&G green. They're a possibility, not a guarantee. 

Use the power when there's already a Red tile in the ring around the center four and make an auto match with at least 2 Red charged tiles.

himatako

There seems to be a bug with her green, sending her airborne but not the target enemy when there are 4 or more enemy special tiles on the board. The text in her ability doesn't say "instead", so I thought the first part of the ability will always work and whether she will also be sent airborne or not is conditional. 

As for her blue, I'm disappointed at first that it doesn't prioritize enemy special tiles, but seeing how it has become much more useful than the original highly-situational blue, I'm ok with it.