Forum Thread

aesthetocyst

Forum post.

broll

I'm not a 4* player, so I can't speak to this very much, but what's so bad about her? She seemed middle of the road and better than Agent Venom to me based on the loaner fight.

Mechahamster

I have no problems with her red and green as they are.

Her blue could affect all special tiles and needs to be cheaper, that would make her reasonably useful against maggia goons. Just plop all those yellow countdown tiles on one big heap in the middle. Just don't use it against Xforce Deadpool

Magic

It might be too early to say. Her Red that you forgot to mention is rather good. The damage is almost on the "extra" Cyclops level.

She is doing 956 damage per AP. Cyclops is doing 539 unless you have 10 TU (when it jumps to 1185 per Red AP but you lose TU). Peggy Red does 750 per AP. Hulkbuster - 630 per AP. So her red is the best ability.

And you can't have 3 abilities that are great or the power creep (already an issue) would destroy the game. So I would not call for a rework. Granted RED is well represented already and we could use a nice Green in the 4* land (other then PunMax and IceMan it's pretty dry) or Yellow but there will be others to do that soon enough.

Jarvind

I honestly don't think she's that bad. She's no A-lister, but her red is solid and green is alright. I agree that blue is sloppy, but plenty of characters get by on the strength of two strong powers and one weak one.

I'd redesign Eddie Brock, Reed, Wasp, Elektra, Drax, Agent Venom, Fury, and 4Cage all ahead of her.

Calnexin

aesthetocyst wrote:

Well, I've given her a few days, and it's official (in my humble opinion): Ironheart is a DoA Dumpster Fire.

Tell us how you REALLY feel.

I appreciate the heads-up. I missed the T100 release by 500 points and just rostered her this morning from progression. Good to know it's not that special.

deadtaco

As far as the characters on release - Agent Venom was worse and Thanos was unplayable with his black doing more damage to you than the other team. They have at least fixed Thanos since then but Agent Venom is horrible and I'll be happy to never have to use him again. Riri isn't great but certainly has her uses.

firethorne

Airborne damage like Nova would absolutely be a plus. And the enemy special tile management is pitiful. I find nothing underscores that more than having teen Jean boosted for Riri's debut. Do I use the skill that moves special tiles to the center, maybe matching a few of them? Or, do I use the one that straight up converts them to basic tiles, handles countdowns too, and does 8K AOE damage. Yeah, no question there.

But you're wrong, Agent Venom is still worse.

They're both bad though, and you're entitled to your opinion on which is worse.

Tony_Foot

Leave alone, do not alter. Perfect just the way she's been designed.

There's more than enough good ones anyway, save some iso!

Punisher5784

If her Blue also moved CDs, it would be a solid. It should at least move Invisibility tiles.. but I guess they want to keep that as War Machine's blue niche. Her red damage is really good but the added CD to remove special tiles should be moved to her Blue. This way, you move the tiles to the middle, whatever does not get matched will be destroyed with the CD. Her green can stay with the damage upfront, as a finisher it will end the match but if you split the damage between at hit and when they land, then you're waiting 2 turns to end the match. Overall she feels like another character that one developer started and another one finished (e.g. Agent Venom, 5Cap).

What sucks about her release is, our loaner node with her was not against special tile makers.. it was against goons! You would think they would want to show off her Blue by pinning her against Daken or Bullseye but nope instead it reminded me of Ant-Man's release. We all won purple covers then every essential was against Bulleye, who overwrote your purple trap tile. I think if we got a better loaner node to show off her abilities, then we would like her more and only complain about her low health. Her release was simply bad timing.

broll

aesthetocyst wrote:

broll wrote:

I'm not a 4* player, so I can't speak to this very much, but what's so bad about her? She seemed middle of the road and better than Agent Venom to me based on the loaner fight.

"Better than the worst recent release" is an awfully low bar.

And IME Agent Venom is better. And he's not that great. Yikes.

My point wasn't that she's just barely better than Agent Venom. I was disagreeing with your opinion that she's worse than Venom. I find her significantly better.

Nothing wrong with her not being the best thing since sliced bread. Not every character is going to be A list, but she's certainly not bad to the point of needing an emergency change only a few days after release.

Punisher5784

Magic wrote:

Granted RED is well represented already and we could use a nice Green in the 4* land (other then PunMax and IceMan it's pretty dry) or Yellow but there will be others to do that soon enough.

We need nice Green in 4*? RHulk, JG, IW, Moonknight, Quake say hello. Gwenpool's is nice even though random, Carnages works well with his abilities, CapMarv's passive is awesome, X-23 is annoying to use but strong, Thing and Chulk hits good despite the AP costs.. should I continue? Green is probably the most used ability in every tier except 1* land.

Magic

Punisher5784 wrote:

Magic wrote:

Granted RED is well represented already and we could use a nice Green in the 4* land (other then PunMax and IceMan it's pretty dry) or Yellow but there will be others to do that soon enough.

We need nice Green in 4*? RHulk, JG, IW, Moonknight, Quake say hello. Gwenpool's is nice even though random, Carnages works well with his abilities, CapMarv's passive is awesome, X-23 is annoying to use but strong, Thing and Chulk hits good despite the AP costs.. should I continue? Green is probably the most used ability in every tier except 1* land.

Yes. I take it back. Let's stick to the lack of good Yellow. I was rushing the post when I was doing it so I didn't think about all good Green (and how can I forget RHulk - i don't know, mea maxima culpa).

Vhailorx

I don't quite agree on your assessment of the recent releases aesth:

Recent release (going back 3 months) have been mostly good to great:

Blade, Modern **** (Solid, but too dependent on board luck to be top tier)
Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme ***** (Great)
Doctor Strange, Stephen Strange *** (Great)
Venom, Agent Venom **** (Ka-thud! Only worth using if you build specifically around him, and not great even then)
Medusa, Inhuman Queen **** (Great!)
Thanos, Modern *** (Pretty good - but only after being substantially fixed, as released he was trash tier)
Thanos, Mad Titan ***** (Great! a meta-defining 5*)
Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers **** (Even better than Medusa, best 4* release since Peggy, meta-defining character!)
Riri Williams, Ironheart **** (Ka-thud)

my changes in bold. I think you are bit too low on blade, and a bit too high on AV. You also lumped a bunch of characters together as great. I think Carol and 5* thanos are the real standouts as meta-defining characters, since they have awesome powers for PVE and PVP.

As for riri, her blue is the obvious problem. It's too expensive to be a multi-use boardshaker, and it's too unreliable to be an effective counter against enemy specials. It's also completely useless in 50% of matches that don't feature significant enemy specials. So lower the cost a lot. maybe 5ap. then let it affect enemy CDs, and make it more predicable (perhaps let the player select which types of specials to move, or give it a fixed order of operations?). But maybe lower the cap to fewer than 10 tiles moved. Now it's still niche power, but it will be useful in more matches and can be used more consistently to the player's advantage.

Red is mostly fine the way it is. Green is pretty bad in a world where Nova exists. Maybe lower the cost to 7 or maybe 6ap (but I would have to think carefully about making it a 2-match power) and increase the damage to 7 or 7.5k. Now it's a premier damage power, but is limited by throwing riri airborne so it can't be abused in combination with a green battery.

Edit: and yes Polares thanks for reminding me. As I said multiple times in her character thread, her health is a huge disadvantage. Absolutely no way she should have that little health without having hands down the best power set in 4* land.

Polares

Any fixes to powers doesnt matter as long as she keeps having just 10k hitpoints. Seriously, this is her worst problem. ProfX is ok, because he can go invisible, but for her this is a BIG problem.

Red and Green are ok then, the problem is her blue obviously. As a special tile remover Medusa is much better, so the purpose of her blue needs to be creating crits, this is what she should be all about. So,
- First we need to include all possible special tiles, ALL OF THEM (countdown, invis, etc.)
- Then remove the locking mechanism. Again the focus is creating cascades and crits.
- And to make the ability 'perfect' It would also need to change all tiles moved to the center to blue.
This way the chances of creating a crit would be maximized, and she would actually be quite good against any special tile creator enemy.

And yeah, after Carol which is obviously top tier 4, Riri is quite underwhelming.

DaveR4470

I think all the knocks in here are justified. She's not a great character; she's just there.

But I guess we were due for a "meh" character after we'd gotten some great, clever, useful chars in Strange, Medusa, Thanos, and Carol....

Dragon_Nexus

Her blue reminds me a lot of Beast's blue when he came out.
The countdown timer would change a handful of tiles surrounding the timer to special blue tiles. As a result you'd make those tiles and they'd likely match themselves away immediately. Same issue seems true for Riri. You lock the special tiles and then pull them all together so they can be matched before her red countdown timer resolves and destroys them.

Her green seemed okay but...nothing really stood out about it. Seemed kinda weak when I used the loaner, especially compared to her red. It feels like it needs something. Or perhaps Infamous Iron Man has a move that does bonus damage to airborn targets or something. It would seem strange to introduce a character that does airborne damage this late into making the function though. Like how we have several characters that can make people go airborne and then suddenly this *one* character can do something with it out of the 119 characters we have.

Really I think it comes down to her blue. It's way, WAY too situational. If you're against an enemy that uses no special tiles at all, it's completely useless.
I would suggest almost making it like IW. Ditch the countdown timer from her red and give it to blue. Fire the move, lock tiles, set a countdown timer down. Perhaps have the timer blow the locked tiles and damage the character who put them down? Probably too complicated. Just have them do damage per tile. Or hell, maybe flip them. Unlock the tiles and take posesstion, improving them by X amount like Medusa does. That's a lot more utilitarian if you don't want her to have three damaging moves.

Mr_Sinister

As mentioned, her red hits hard. I saw someone point that she does "x amount of damage per ap", and that's great but she's completely useless after that.
Her blue is not only bad, it can actually be a detriment. Example; wolverine pops living legend with other red strike tiles out, a common occurrence. They get shuffled to the center, no matches, then locked. Next AI turn, try to guess what happens? They get unlocked except now the needed color to get them out is gone because the AI used it/them unlock them. Now you've got a bunch of strike tiles with minimal way of clearing unless you get blue up and try again.

Her green... For what reason would you leave out another, better green user for this? It does something, so it's better than doing nothing at all, but to actually not bring a green user with the intent of using this is just dumb.

I also see a lot of people bashing Agent Venom. Wait until his red demolishes you and he starts spamming his 15k (probably 9k, but still), 7ap black when he's boosted, then kicks you in the teeth by hitting you with a 3-8k AoE making everyone behind him invisible for a few turns.

Kjempen

I'll tell you how to make Riri useful: spec her 0/5/0, and send her as teamup (don't use her as a playable character).

ErikPeter

Here's my redesign... Red and Green can stay as is. Turn Blue into an incredible enemy tile destroyer instead of a wonky one, and give it some cascade utility against enemies with few specials. It still wouldn't work 100 percent of the time--some enemy specials could survive if the board collapses a bit before the punch--but it would be pretty reliable. And it would not rely on tile locking which is the worst mechanic of PQ they just won't give up on for some reason.

Magnetic Repulsors 9 AP
Riri uses the magnetic repulsors in her armor's gauntlets to disarm her opponents. Attract 2 enemy Attack, Protect, and Strike tiles to the center of the board. After the board settles, destroy a +-shape of 12 tiles in the center of the board (these tiles do not generate AP).

Level 2: Attract 4 tiles.
Level 3: Attract 6 tiles.
Level 4: Attract 8 tiles, including Countdown tiles.
Level 5: Attract 12 enemy tiles of any type.

Jaedenkaal

aesthetocyst wrote:

Polares wrote:

Any fixes to powers doesnt matter as long as she keeps having just 10k hitpoints. Seriously, this is her worst problem. ProfX is ok, because he can go invisible, but for her this is a BIG problem.

I was so bamboozled by the nearmissedness* of her abilities I haven't even noticed her health. Lack thereof.

She is in armor ..... right?

Perhaps she is very susceptible to concussion? Must be sensitive to such things these days.

In her defense her health isn't quite PX low. It's just really, really close to PX low. She's got roughly PX + 15%

________________

* Kind of an uncanny valley effect. Powers that were just flat\-out gawdawful useless/stale wouldn't be anywhere near as offensive as powers that are new and almost good .... yet just short of the mark design-wise.

She has (level+4) *40 HP, which is even with X-Force Wolvie and Gwenpool. Also Daken.

I don't think the tile lock as as bad as you're assuming. If all the tiles are the same color, then the lock means that you could get 2 matches out of a single set of tiles, which could be fun with some match 5s. If the tiles aren't all the same color then they weren't going to make matches anyways so locking them at least means they're not benefiting the other team.

The real problem is that the power does absolutely nothing when there are no enemy A/P/S tiles on the board, which is an all-too common state in both PvP and PvE. It's also weird that it's supposed to interact with the bonus part of Remote Control Gauntlet, but just ends up being redundant. Who needs TWO powers that hate enemy A/P/S??