Would riri be solidly mid tier if she had 14k health?

Vhailorx

Topic.  We all know her blue sucks, her red hits hard, and her green is decent.  But her 10k health is both bizzare and a real disadvantage.  

Would she be average if they had just given her standard 4* tier health?

Thanos

Not even close.

JHawkInc

She could use a health buff, but also maybe a tweak to the green or blue. Personally, I'd mimic 4* Luke Cage's yellow with Riri's blue, let her do X damage per locked tile (or maybe only for locked enemy special tiles, so it doesn't stack with other forms of locked tiles? no idea if that would be necessary or not), so it does some damage, and does escalating damage if you use it repeatedly.

She's got a useful niche as a support character (great against anyone that generates single-color special tiles, like Captain Falcon's yellow, Nova's strikes, etc; and I used her to great effect against the sentries in the Doom path of Strange Sights), but she could use some tweaks to make her more viable for general use, or she'll never get used outside that niche.

Fightmastermpq

I'm weird, but I think her blue is where she shines.  It's super niche, but against PHX or Blade for example it's an incredibly good counter.  It's so niche though that it doesn't come close to making her mid tier and more health wouldn't change that.  Still, IMO she is worth champing for her red TU alone - that thing is a beast boosted to 479.

Bruinsfan17

In before this gets moved to Character Discussion.

Akari

It really doesn't make sense for her to have Wolverine level hp... she's wearing a metal suit of armor!

Anyway, if she had more HP, I think she'd be a little more usable, but her HP isn't the deal breaker as much as her secondary abilities of special tile handling being extremely niche. I'd rather be using Jessica/Jean to just straight up wipe them - locking them does nothing except leave ticking time bombs in the center of the board. When you take out her special tile factor, you're left with a ho hum DD with no self synergy and very limited utility.

catcusvader

I rather see her blue destroy the middle board after she attracts enemy APS tiles instead of locking them and have her green add a passive of after she returns aiborne she removes 2 enemy timers off the board. The extra hp would be nice but she needs better utility.

Jarvind

I honestly don't think she's nearly as bad as people make her out to be. The low health is a little puzzling, but red and green are both solid. Even if blue is unlikely to cause matches except against opponents that make all same-color tiles, it still yanks them to the center of the board where they're probably going to be easier to match.

Pwuz_

I'm just waiting to see what kind of DDQ Crash she'll be victim to, I mean facing.

I know DDQ isn't the be all and end all of usefulness for characters, but it's an interesting bar to measure. Chosen well it will really emphasize her strengths.  Chosen poorly and it will prove frustrating even for Champions.

Crowl

catcusvader said:

I rather see her blue destroy the middle board after she attracts enemy APS tiles instead of locking them and have her green add a passive of after she returns aiborne she removes 2 enemy timers off the board. The extra hp would be nice but she needs better utility.

That seems like a much better version of her blue, it seems like they had this idea for a mechanic but never stopped to ask themselves if there were existing characters that did the same thing with none of the downsides.

DesertTortoise

Riri's already a mid-tier character at worst, she's just really bland and got a lot more backlash than warranted. Her red is legitimately good and her green is okay, but not fantastic. Her blue is a bit confusing and is a bit too niche. She should be an asset boosted with a nice combination of a big nuke and a moderate one with a bit of crowd control thrown in as a bonus. I think the 4-stars that are "very good when boosted, forgettable when not" make up a majority of the characters and a good green/red nuke character is something that can be plugged on a number of teams. 

Her health is annoying but I think they should have done the opposite: made her a full fledged glass cannon akin to 2 star Storm. We're severely lacking those in the 4-star tier. 

Straycat

She's pretty poorly designed. She is billed as a support character, but is only useful for her damage. She got more hate than she deserves, but thats probably because she sounded better on paper than she ended up being.

Its just disappointing that they really missed on her blue power. Its her only unique mechanic, and there were so many good ideas based around its original idea of moving tiles to the middle of the board.  It undercuts itself by locking the tiles. If you wanted to use a targeted board destruction, like R&G or GSBW, the tiles are protected. Matching locked tiles doesn't generate ap and it register as matching a special tile for characters like Medusa or Mr Fantastic. If you use it as intended,  you still have to wait out a countdown for the special tile removal. And it doesn't work on countdown tiles, where she could have been useful in pve. Since its often (literally) unusable, she becomes very boring.

I hope she gets an update, with more than just her health. Eddie Brock has a ton of health but he's still the worst 4*.

Jarvind

Straycat said:

Eddie Brock has a ton of health but he's still the worst 4*.

I'm gonna have to nominate freshly-nerfed Carnage, aka Carbage, for that honor.

DesertTortoise

Straycat said:

Its just disappointing that they really missed on her blue power. Its her only unique mechanic, and there were so many good ideas based around its original idea of moving tiles to the middle of the board.

I could be remembering it totally incorrectly, but doesn't her blue move the tiles to the middle, let them resolve then lock them? If that's how it works, it makes way more sense because you're basically giving her blue power a chance to have the gathered tiles destroy one another and if that fails it'll lock them so they can't be used. If it's move, lock and then resolve it is pretty self defeating. 

Straycat

DesertTortoise said:

Straycat said:

Its just disappointing that they really missed on her blue power. Its her only unique mechanic, and there were so many good ideas based around its original idea of moving tiles to the middle of the board.

I could be remembering it totally incorrectly, but doesn't her blue move the tiles to the middle, let them resolve then lock them? If that's how it works, it makes way more sense because you're basically giving her blue power a chance to have the gathered tiles destroy one another and if that fails it'll lock them so they can't be used. If it's move, lock and then resolve it is pretty self defeating. 

I think that is correct. It makes sense on paper, but moving it to the middle is supposed to make it easier to match away, so why lock it?

I've never tried it out fully, but I remember using her loaner originally that the tiles don't even move in a way that leads to easy matches. I think if you fix her blue, and probably change her red with it, she could be decent or at least more fun.

Some people's ideas of changing all tiles to one color then moving them to the middle, or moving them to the middle then destroying that part of the board are all better than what we ended up with.

Pwuz_

DesertTortoise said:

I could be remembering it totally incorrectly, but doesn't her blue move the tiles to the middle, let them resolve then lock them? If that's how it works, it makes way more sense because you're basically giving her blue power a chance to have the gathered tiles destroy one another and if that fails it'll lock them so they can't be used. If it's move, lock and then resolve it is pretty self defeating. 

Even if that is the case, it only helps against teams that make only a single color special tiles like Daken or...sorry it's too early for this.  Captain Falcon!  There we go, I need more coffee for this.

Anyway, my point is that more special tile generators make there tiles on multiple colors.  I'd even argue that any character that makes special tiles on a single color would be improved by removing that restriction.  And that doesn't take into account a team with multiple tile generators.

I do like your idea of making her a glass canon though.  That would require her Blue being scrapped and replaced with something more dangerous.  Even a powered up version of Raging Tempest would be more useful than what we have here.

DesertTortoise

I think a good way of bringing her blue to life, if we're not going to go the glass cannon route, would be for it to lock x special tiles (including countdowns!) without the movement and then she could have a passive that would destroy locked a locked tile at the start of every turn. Maybe the passive would have a blue AP amount qualifier or something. 

Jaedenkaal

Still doesn't really address the issue that it would almost literally nothing in situations where the enemy team makes no special tiles. Including CDs helps, certainly, but a power that does actually nothing some meaningful percentage of the time (and then fails to be amazing when it actually can be used) will always be a hard sell. I thought they'd learned their lesson with Hot Dog Stand.

Edit: And Hot Dog Stand at least only cost 5, so that in the really rare cases when it would actually do something, you could at least fire it. Magnetic Repulsors doesn't even have that going for it.

Dayv

Straycat said:

She's pretty poorly designed. She is billed as a support character, but is only useful for her damage. She got more hate than she deserves, but thats probably because she sounded better on paper than she ended up being.

Its just disappointing that they really missed on her blue power. Its her only unique mechanic, and there were so many good ideas based around its original idea of moving tiles to the middle of the board.  It undercuts itself by locking the tiles. If you wanted to use a targeted board destruction, like R&G or GSBW, the tiles are protected. Matching locked tiles doesn't generate ap and it register as matching a special tile for characters like Medusa or Mr Fantastic. If you use it as intended,  you still have to wait out a countdown for the special tile removal. And it doesn't work on countdown tiles, where she could have been useful in pve. Since its often (literally) unusable, she becomes very boring.

I hope she gets an update, with more than just her health. Eddie Brock has a ton of health but he's still the worst 4*.

I was in total agreement on this, until the last part.  There's way weaker 4* than Eddie Brock Venom, IMO.  Yellow is a solid attack with minimal downside, and yellow doesn't have many direct attacks in general.  I can't count the number of teams I've run where yellow was a dump skill to be used only if you accidentally acquired the AP.  His green is dependent on enemy special tiles to be significant (it's a seriously over-costed direct attack without them), but against teams with even moderate special tile creation, and given a little boost by the protect tiles he creates for enemies if needed, it becomes a decent attack.  For enemy-special-tile-dependent skills, I'll take Venom green over Ironheart blue any day.  Venom's black is a total waste, though.  Something more interesting here would kick him up in value a lot.

Ironheart's design isn't that bad in general, it's just her blue that's really disappointing.  In the absence of enemy special tiles it is completely useless, and as others have mentioned, with multiple colors of enemy tiles out, it can be actively harmful.  I've had it gather and lock the tiles in such a perfect arrangement that I couldn't match even a single one of them away,  Her red, though is top tier in terms of attack power, comparable to the full power version of 4* Cyclops' red at just one higher AP cost, but without the TU AP requirement.  The tile-removing countdown on her red is basically a free bonus.  Her green seem weird, but it compares well to 4* Thing's red punch+stun.  It costs two less AP, but removes her from the match for a turn or two.  In fact, sending her airborne at the right moment can be used defensively, helping to offset her glass cannon health.  It's just too bad about that dang blue.

Straycat

I dunno, aside from Carnage no one else sticks out as being the worst. And Carnage's green at 8 with special tiles on the board is way better than Venom's green at minimum 7 ap if there's special tiles on the board. In general characters get way downgraded based on having just one useless power, and Venom has 2. Yellow is not even that strong. Its not bad, especially when using teams with all passive yellows, but its not that good.

I think Ironhearts design is pretty bad because of the way her blue and red interact. You agree her blue is bad, and if you fix it you probably end up needing to change her red too.  Theoretically you are supposed to lock tiles with blue, then use red to remove them. But you could just use red to get rid of them without using blue first, making blue even more irrelevant. Without the countdown, there would be no reason to use blue at all.
And as I said before, moving tiles to the middle and locking them contradict each other. I would rather they move them to the edges and lock them, or move them to the middle and did something else. Green is ok, not a big fan of sending yourself or the enemy airborne, but it has its benefits.

I think both Venom and Ironheart need each ability tweaked some. Their best powers interact with their worst, so they need a change on every level