**** Emma Frost (Astonishing X-Men) ****

Brigby

4-Star Rarity (Legendary)
Heroes, X-Men
  

"Emma Frost spent her charmed youth honing her mutant gifts to become one of the world's most powerful psychics. Coupled with her creative flare for manipulation, Emma's powers carried her swiftly up the ranks of the powerful and villainous Hellfire Club.

After a devastating attack wiped out her school, Emma joined forces with the X-Men. Despite their antagonistic history, Emma's dedication to educating mutant youth has made her into an unlikely ally."

(Abilities, Match Damage, and Health listed at level 270)
13,995 Health
 85 |  74 |  65 |  43 |  13 |  12 |  11 |  3.0x

Psychic Meddling - 10  AP
Emma weaves her way through the enemy's mind, further destabilizing their psyche at every turn. Creates a 3-turn Purple Repeater tile that destroys 2 enemy Strike, Protect, or Attack tiles. If none exist, the Repeater tile destroys 1 AP in the enemy's strongest color instead. (Does not generate AP.)

• Level 2: Creates a 2-turn Purple Repeater tile...
• Level 3: ...destroys 2 AP in the enemy's strongest color instead.
• Level 4: ...destroys 3 enemy Strike, Protect, or Attack tiles.
• Level 5: ...destroys 4 enemy Strike, Protect, or Attack tiles.

Girl's Best Friend - 11  AP
When the pressure's on, Emma transforms into her powerful diamond form. Fortifies up to 1 friendly Special tile and turns this power into Diamond Skin.

• Level 2: Fortifies up to 2 friendly Special tiles...
• Level 3: Fortifies up to 3 friendly Special tiles...
• Level 4: Fortifies up to 4 friendly Special tiles...
• Level 5: Fortifies up to 6 friendly Special tiles...

Diamond Skin -  Passive
Emma's diamond skin grants her super-strength, but limits her psychic powers. Emma's match damage is increased by 150%, but she cannot fire powers. When there are no Fortified friendly Special tiles on the board, this power becomes Girl's Best Friend.

• Level 2: Emma's match damage is increased by 180%...
• Level 3: Emma's match damage is increased by 200%...
• Level 4: Emma's match damage is increased by 260%...
• Level 5: Emma's match damage is increased by 325%...

Labor for Learning - 8  AP
Emma makes sure her team is fully-trained, battle-ready, and appreciative of the merits of lifelong education. Creates a 2-turn Yellow Repeater tile that places 1 strength 49 Strike tile and improves up to 1 existing friendly Strike tile by 27.

• Level 2: ...places 2 strength 49 Strike tiles...
• Level 3: ...improves up to 2 existing friendly Strike tiles...
• Level 4: ...2 strength 73 Strike tiles...up to 2 existing friendly Strike tiles by 37.
• Level 5: ...2 strength 90 Strike tiles...up to 3 existing friendly Strike tiles by 58.

What do you think is Emma Frost's best build? Vote down below!

Black Duke

5/5/3

Even though Emma is still a fairly new character I think she needs a buff.

Psychic Meddling is fine.

Girl's Best Friend is too expensive for what it does (for comparison only: Shuri's Vibranium Virtuoso creates 6 Fortified tiles for 8 AP) and the inability to fire powers once you're able to activate Diamond Skin lowers her usability.

Labor for Learning's Strike tiles are just too weak to be useful (3* Daken's passive creates 2 strength 56 Strike tiles at level 266).

My simple fix:

• Remove Girl's Best Friend completely. Let her Diamond Skin activate whenever there are Fortified friendly Special tiles on the board and remove her inability to fire powers.
• Let Labor for Learning create Fortified Strike tiles which are much stronger (strength 200 or higher).

Jaedenkaal

Black Duke said:

Even though Emma is still a fairly new character I think she needs a buff.

Psychic Meddling is fine.

Girl's Best Friend is too expensive for what it does (for comparison only: Shuri's Vibranium Virtuoso creates 6 Fortified tiles for 8 AP) and the inability to fire powers once you're able to activate Diamond Skin lowers her usability.

Labor for Learning's Strike tiles are just too weak to be useful (3* Daken's passive creates 2 strength 56 Strike tiles at level 266).

My simple fix:

• Remove Girl's Best Friend completely. Let her Diamond Skin activate whenever there are Fortified friendly Special tiles on the board and remove her inability to fire powers.
• Let Labor for Learning create Fortified Strike tiles which are much stronger (strength 200 or higher).

Really? I think Psychic Meddling is terrible. Labor for Learning at least is cheaper and, if not matched away, continues to affect the match in a meaningful and progressive way. Sure, it's not great compared to BP's Protector of Wakanda, but that's a pretty high bar.

The thing with Girl's Best Friend is that it's kind of her thing. She goes Diamond Form, and it shuts off her psychic powers. It does make her hard as a diamond, though, which the game only represents as increased match damage (and not even base match damage) and not with any increase in durability, which might have been nice. The other problem is in game, you can't choose to leave Diamond Form to use her other abilities again (and labor for learning isn't even a psychic power, she's just a teacher??), although, Psychic Meddling isn't so great anyways, so is it a big loss? ...

She's a mess.

hopper1979

After using her in the last event she needs a rework, I refuse to use her black unless she is paired with 4's it is pointless.  Her pink and yellow are fine but they cost too much to be effective the match is almost over by the time you get one out and the countdown is over, both should cost 5-6 and her black needs to be increase her defense as well as her damage to be worth much of anything.  It is too bad, I like the character but she is down with Kraven and Lockjaw at the bottom of the 4's.

himatako

Even Okoye can't help turning her into a usable character since none of her power deals power damage and thus cannot be boosted by Okoye's black passive. Her only damage dealing power relies on her being the one who tanks even makes it worse. 

She really is a mess and just a liability in any required node. I like her and it's sad to see this character get treated like this. 

Daredevil217

hopper1979 said:

It is too bad, I like the character but she is down with Kraven and Lockjaw at the bottom of the 4's.

Lockjaw and Kraven are WAY better than Emma. 

hopper1979

Yes but it is still the bottom

sinnerjfl

After using her in the current PVE, I don't think she's that bad but she ends up being way way too slow to have any impact on a match.

Two of her abilities work on 2 turns repeaters and her abilities are not exactly cheap either. The costs of the abilities need to be reduced to compensate for that, seriously.

Purple: 9
Black: 10
Yellow: 7

That would already be a good improvement, more in line with a 4* (and not even a good one at that).

It's too bad, she could be decent utility but with these costs the match is almost over when those repeaters get going or you need to bring an AP generator for her (and it's not worth it).

Emma deserves better

STOPTHIS

Black Duke said:

Even though Emma is still a fairly new character I think she needs a buff.

Psychic Meddling is fine.

Girl's Best Friend is too expensive for what it does (for comparison only: Shuri's Vibranium Virtuoso creates 6 Fortified tiles for 8 AP) and the inability to fire powers once you're able to activate Diamond Skin lowers her usability.

Labor for Learning's Strike tiles are just too weak to be useful (3* Daken's passive creates 2 strength 56 Strike tiles at level 266).

My simple fix:

• Remove Girl's Best Friend completely. Let her Diamond Skin activate whenever there are Fortified friendly Special tiles on the board and remove her inability to fire powers.

The canon is (or it at least was, when I read the X-Men) is that Emma can't use her psychic powers when she's in diamond mode. So the restriction has a base in the comics. What they should do is give her purple a change when she's in diamond mode ala Nico and her countdown. A power that does direct damage, because as of right now Emma stinks.

sambrookjm

STOPTHIS said:

Black Duke said:

Even though Emma is still a fairly new character I think she needs a buff.

Psychic Meddling is fine.

Girl's Best Friend is too expensive for what it does (for comparison only: Shuri's Vibranium Virtuoso creates 6 Fortified tiles for 8 AP) and the inability to fire powers once you're able to activate Diamond Skin lowers her usability.

Labor for Learning's Strike tiles are just too weak to be useful (3* Daken's passive creates 2 strength 56 Strike tiles at level 266).

My simple fix:

• Remove Girl's Best Friend completely. Let her Diamond Skin activate whenever there are Fortified friendly Special tiles on the board and remove her inability to fire powers.

The canon is (or it at least was, when I read the X-Men) is that Emma can't use her psychic powers when she's in diamond mode. So the restriction has a base in the comics. What they should do is give her purple a change when she's in diamond mode ala Nico and her countdown. A power that does direct damage, because as of right now Emma stinks.

Isn't she also resistant to damage as well?  Make is so she's also got *at least* Rogue's level of damage reduction in her diamond form, and now we're getting somewhere.

hopper1979

No she gets no resistance buff, if she did her black power might be worth.  Since she is indestructible in the comics in the diamond form you would think that would be addressed but no.  A few minor tweaks and she would be useful but too expensive and black screws up her usefulness too much.  She fell victim to the same issue as Ghost Rider, countdown too long powers too expensive.

dramatist

5/3/5

She has got to be the worst 4*. Yellow might be ok (just ok) if it wasn't so expensive.

Dormammu

dramatist said:

She has got to be the worst 4*.

Is she worse than Jubilee? Winter Soldier? Flaptain? Wait, wait, worse than Kingpin?!?

Being forced to use her in Venom Bomb as an essential is making me agree with you. There's so little offense on that Emma/Starlord/Fishnets team that it makes me almost appreciate Emma's black. Almost.

hopper1979

I am beginning to agree that she might be the worst 4 as well, yes worse than all those you mention above.  She is just too slow it is that simple.  Winter Soldier and Flaptain may be slow but they both hit like a truck.  Jubilee has a stun and tile removal and Kinpins is still a very solid yellow batter even though they killed his black and his yellow countdown is too long.

Frost on the other hand has 3 very expensive powers and the countdown is too long on yellow and pink, she might be serviceable if they were just 1 turn but two is way to long you are typically talking turn 6-9 when you finally start seeing any benefit from casting the yellow or pink power.  The match should be over by then.  Her black is only good is she is on a team she is tanking but it hamstrings her other powers so it is essentially useless (if it had a defensive component to it it would be a little better).  No she is just too slow. the tiles she generates are too week and black kills her utility.  

Nope I will say it she is the worst.  I tried this event to get her to work she needs a rework asap

sinnerjfl

She needs lower cost and also an immediate effect on purple & yellow (remove specials right away and lay down some strikes as well). The strikes should also be stronger even with the buffing she does, its so slow...

Flaptain is still worse in my book.

hopper1979

On the right team his red can one-shot a 5, he is better for that reason alone

Quebbster

hopper1979 said:

On the right team his red can one-shot a 5, he is better for that reason alone

With the right team the fight is over long Before Captain Falcon gets enough AP to use his red...

I mean, I want to like him, the design is pretty neat. But he is slow and that unfortunately means he is of Little use in the speed meta.

hopper1979

Quebbster said:

hopper1979 said:

On the right team his red can one-shot a 5, he is better for that reason alone

With the right team the fight is over long Before Captain Falcon gets enough AP to use his red...

I mean, I want to like him, the design is pretty neat. But he is slow and that unfortunately means he is of Little use in the speed meta.

Well duh, you could say that about any character with the possible exception of 5 Gambit before the nurf.  

If we are talking about the bottom of the barrel we have to look at the positives, his upside is greater than hers for that simple reason, he can do a ton of damage and swing a match (assuming it makes it that long) she cannot, hence, he is a little better.  We are talking bottom 3-5 characters here, nobody is going to be competitive bringing either of them in a match.

AlexR

3/5/5

Emma is, imo, still the worst 4* character in the game. Yes, she is worse than Flaptain and Kingpin and she is a lot worse than Winter Soldier and Jubilee, both of whom can contribute meaningfully to teams. Emma... not so much.

There's 4 layers to her problem: She is very slow. You cannot fully speed her up because repeaters. Once you do pay the cost, she is unreliable (unfortified randomly-placed repeaters). And even if you're lucky enought to succeed after all that, the endresults are basically on par with a weak 3* . She needs a complete rework so SO badly.

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, I still want to find a team where she can at aleast moderately contribute something.

Far as I see it, there are 2 ways to approach this:

1) as a tile spamer focused on her yellow + Nebula and Medusa/Shuri.

Medusa would be helpful; problem with this is that both Emma's and Nebula's repeaters are very fragile. Shuri doesn't fit nearly as well, but has an easier time getting their repeaters to survive. Either way is slow and not efficient enough for my taste, but at least useable.

2) Partnered with 4* Human Torch

There is someone that appreciates repeaters on the board, regardless of how underwhelming their effect is, AND can fortify tiles. And that's 4* Human Torch. Emma/Torch gives you repeaters in 3 colors (yellow, purple, green), and red to use the repeaters as ammunition. Sure, it's expensive to put Emma's repeaters out there. But taking advantage of the fact that Emma's got 2 repeater powers is kinda the only unique thing she really has going for her, dubious honor as it is.

To prevent this from being extremely slow, we need a battery. Our options are 1) Vulture, who'd also bring good damage and spam which makes Torch fortify his and Emma's repeaters, but doesn't feed red that well. 2) Valk, who'll probably be able to feed red, but nothing else. 3) Mysterio, who converts blue to yellow. 4) borrowing 3* land's best battery, IM40 could feed red/green/purple all at once, but takes yellow from Emma.

The loop Emma/Mysterio/Torch create isn't bad. Emma's yellow becomes more spamable, any time she fires another repeater, Torch fortifies repeaters, all colors are useful except black. Only problem is, neither Mysterio nor Emma can do any damage, it all depends on Torch, so against high-health opponents, this is not ideal. Hm. On the flip side, IM40/Torch is more potent, but bad for Emma contributing...

EDIT 3 months later in September: The above is obsolete, since it's more team speculation than anything that actually ended up working. More in the post below.

AlexR

3/5/5

Okay, so. Leaving this here for posterity. 3 months later, after another round of team building attempts with Emma I learned the following things:

* As satisfying as 4* Torch burning her repeaters as fuel is, Emma only makes 1 repeater per ability and they're not cheap. That is just not efficient enough to justify bringing her. Shame, because I still love the idea.

* Partnering her with Shuri for fortification is possible, but sub-optimal. Shuri/Emma will always feel like a poor man's broken budget version of Shuri/Panther and will make you constantly wish you were playing 4* Panther instead.

* As an extension to that, while using her black for tile fortification is an option and sometimes vaguely useful, this should not be the main thing you bring her for. Because she can basically only do this once per battle. Good luck getting her to revert -- usually, one lone fortified tile is going to hang out in a corner somewhere - and even if you do, you need another 11 black AP. Banking on Emma fortifying things more than once is generally just not realistic in a normal battle.

* The only one of her abilities that is halfway salvagable is her yellow. It's not great, but if you're going to try to build around Emma, her yellow is the power you should build around. Every second turn, it does 2 things: it produces 2 strike tiles and it boosts 3 strike tiles.

* Looking at this, Emma is not a good tile producer. She simply takes too long. And she'll take even longer to have enough strike tiles to get the full "boosting" part. For her yellow to be even vaguely worthwhile, you need to supply her with cheap strike tiles so that once her repeater finally goes off, it can immediately go to producing strike tiles AND boosting strike tiles.

* To build around her yellow, you need ALL the following things in her team mates: a battery/speed-up (Emma is slow), good damage (Emma has none), strike tiles for boosting (otherwise it takes even longer for her to do things) and some sort of anti-frustration method that either makes Emma's repeaters more durable or makes you care less about losing them. Last but not least, they need to leave enough space for Emma to meaningfully contribute something.

I found 2 set-ups I liked. Copying those from the Latest Fun team thread here:

AlexR said:

(...)

3/5/5 Emma Frost + 5/5/3 Mockingbird + 3/5/5 Yondu

Mockingbird's red and Yondu's blue are the team's damage nukes. Emma's synergy here comes from 2 things: 1) Mockingbird firing her powers for free and 2) Yondu's black. At @5, his black creates a whole bunch of strike tiles, so Emma's yellow actually has something to boost right out of the gate. And her black, if picked, can fortify things that aren't just her repeaters. And if Mockingbird happens to not pick any of that and instead firing Bombshell/Centaurian Archery, that is perfectly fine with me.

3/5/5 Emma Frost +5/3/5 Hulkling + Wolfsbane

Once again, Emma's main contribution is yellow with black being a possibility depending on how many friendly tiles on the board are vulnerable and would benefit from being fortified. (strike tiles, Emma's repeater, Wolfsbane's invis or purple cds, there's a lot of candidates!...) Hulkling's random AP gathering on purple is quite potent to keep the team supplied and Wolfbane's red is cheap to make strike tiles for Emma's yellow to boost.

  1) First, the battery:

I learned that a targeted yellow battery for Emma won't get you anywhere. At that point, you're running 2 slots just to produce her yellow repeater, that's very inefficient. You beeline to it and... all you get is Emma's yellow, that accomplishes little. An untargeted speed-up like here is SO much more helpful. In Mockingbird's case, she fires abilities for free. In Hulkling's case, his purple collects a lot of AP in all sorts of colors, so he's keeping the team supplied rather than just Emma.

  2) That leads to the anti-frustration part: Sure, Emma's repeater isn't any more durable than usual, but because you don't spend all your ressources beelining to it or really specifically collecting AP for her at all, losing her repeater is just mildly annoying rather than frustrating.

  3) Damage. Mockingbird's red + Yondu's blue // Hulkling's green and Wolfsbane on black/purple.

  4) The cheap strike tiles. Yondu's black // Wolfsbane's red. Both have a secondary effect, so you aren't JUST making strike tiles for Emma.

  5) With the strike tiles and no other active yellow, Emma has a niche in these teams and can actually contribute. Both Yondu's arrow and Wolfsbane's multi-hit abilities also benefit from more/bigger strike tiles especially.

I like the Hulkling/Wolfsbane team best, because the moving parts all click into each other more smoothly than the first team does and Emma gets to do stuff a lot more consistently. For the time being, I can't think of any improvements to the set-up and they do genuinely let Emma meaningfully contribute to a team. Mission accomplished, I guess. Only took me an eternity, lol.

Devs, please buff Emma. This is so sad.

AlexR

3/5/5

NEW AND IMPROVED EMMA.

I didn't expect to re-visit Emma so soon, but here we are! I said above:

* To build around her yellow, you need ALL the following things in her team mates: a battery/speed-up (Emma is slow), good damage (Emma has none), strike tiles for boosting (otherwise it takes even longer for her to do things) and some sort of anti-frustration method that either makes Emma's repeaters more durable or makes you care less about losing them. Last but not least, they need to leave enough space for Emma to meaningfully contribute something.

[*] For one, you don't need to build around just her yellow anymore. Her black is now a useful, strong part of her kit. Her purple is also helpful now, however, it is mutually exclusive with her black. Entering Diamond Form removes the repeater. And since it's now cheap and convenient to use black, that does mean it can be difficult to find moments to use purple. So, you're probably best off mainly building around black and yellow.
[*] Speed-up never hurts and she still plays very well with Hulkling. However, since the tiles from yellow have a much more reasonable tile strength now AND she now also has a 7 AP instant ability to fire in black, she can get by without speed-up.
[  ] She's still mainly a support character with basically no straight-forward damage and appreciates being paired with a damage dealer. However! Because her yellow now makes tiles of reasonable strength and usually ends up fortified so it can keep producing and boosting, she can actually now noticeably contribute to the damage of the team via strike tiles.
[ ] She is still very slow to make her own tiles and appreciates being paired with a strike tile producer. However! Her own tiles now have a reasonable tile strength and with the repeater fortified, she CAN get somewhere on her own as she keeps producing and boosting. Building an actual strike tile team around her is now viable.
[*] She no longer needs an anti-frustration method, hooray!! ...well, her purple still does. But her yellow doesn't anymore-- since her black is now cheap and user friendly (with a way to turn it off, at that!), she can quite reliably fortify her own yellow. Building a fortification team with her is now viable.
tl;dr: Most of the draconic team mate restrictions no longer apply!! Yay! Also, synergy! Both Hulkling and Wolfsbane still make very solid partners for her, individually as well as together. But she's no longer restricted to just them. She's also now genuinely open to synergy for strike tiles and fortification teams. Emma/strike tile producer/5* Kitty-or-Nico for more boosting is an actual decent set-up. Emma/Shuri now actually works properly, too!

Devs, please buff Emma. This is so sad.

Thank you!!