Fix a 5* -- Episode 1: The Widow Bites

I'm thinking about posting a weekly thread about each of the sub-par 5*s out there and I don't want to start with the most obvious, because you gotta save those for special occasions.
Quick recap:
Purple - Tell Me Everything
at 5 Covers: 12AP She deals damage and removes up to 3 specials (including repeaters) and the cost of this power goes down for each countdown on the board (min 7).
Red - Acrobatic Takedown
at 5 Covers: 12AP deals damage and if an enemy has 12AP or more in one color, deal some more. Then IF this downs a character destroy 7 AP of a random color.
Black - Red in my Ledger
at 5 Covers: 10AP deals damage and if any allies are below 20% health, she deals some more damage and steals 4 random AP. The Passive aspect is if an ally is stunned, a random enemy is stunned for 1 turn.
Red should target the enemies strongest AP color for any destroying, and it should only cost 10AP max to fire. Maybe also make it's cost conditional on enemy AP pools of 12 or more, so if it's Galactus collecting everything, she can knock him around for cheap. If It's 1/2Thor, then she can get the drop on him as he becomes threatening (better on defense as AI Thor spends AP recklessly).
Black should give a stun as strong as her ally gets. Ally stunned for 4 turns? So is a random enemy. If not that, then at 5 covers, she should be stunning back for at least 2 turns. They way she can set off an otherwise docile Black Panther is silly.
Overall, her power costs are too high. While the damage per AP can be solid, it's not consistently so and she lacks for synergy with other characters in the 5* tier (except those that help everyone like Okoye for damage and Black Bolt for speeding up AP accrual). I'd like to see her work well with 5* Cap (either/both), IM46, but especially Hawkeye.
Now what would you do to fix this 5*? Lemme know! Serious and silly suggestions are welcome!
So let's start with 5* Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff).
Quick recap:
Purple - Tell Me Everything
at 5 Covers: 12AP She deals damage and removes up to 3 specials (including repeaters) and the cost of this power goes down for each countdown on the board (min 7).
Red - Acrobatic Takedown
at 5 Covers: 12AP deals damage and if an enemy has 12AP or more in one color, deal some more. Then IF this downs a character destroy 7 AP of a random color.
Black - Red in my Ledger
at 5 Covers: 10AP deals damage and if any allies are below 20% health, she deals some more damage and steals 4 random AP. The Passive aspect is if an ally is stunned, a random enemy is stunned for 1 turn.
My suggestions:
Purple should decrease based on any specials. It'd make her a good Kitty/Gritty counter that still requires at least 1 match (if you boost everything and purple) to get fired. I'd personally like to see a Stun added to this power, too, as a partial reflection of her 1* prowess. As it is, she's only useful against... Goblin, Hawkeye, Loki, and IM46 in the 5* tier? They hardly need such a counter as none of them are particularly meta strong (and all potential subjects for this series).Red should target the enemies strongest AP color for any destroying, and it should only cost 10AP max to fire. Maybe also make it's cost conditional on enemy AP pools of 12 or more, so if it's Galactus collecting everything, she can knock him around for cheap. If It's 1/2Thor, then she can get the drop on him as he becomes threatening (better on defense as AI Thor spends AP recklessly).
Black should give a stun as strong as her ally gets. Ally stunned for 4 turns? So is a random enemy. If not that, then at 5 covers, she should be stunning back for at least 2 turns. They way she can set off an otherwise docile Black Panther is silly.
Overall, her power costs are too high. While the damage per AP can be solid, it's not consistently so and she lacks for synergy with other characters in the 5* tier (except those that help everyone like Okoye for damage and Black Bolt for speeding up AP accrual). I'd like to see her work well with 5* Cap (either/both), IM46, but especially Hawkeye.
Now what would you do to fix this 5*? Lemme know! Serious and silly suggestions are welcome!
4
Comments
Let each countdown reduce the cost of her purple by 2. Leave it capped at 7 so if you have 3 countdowns out at once it costs 7. Countdowns can be expensive to place, and a couple characters that spam them do it with purple (5*Loki, xpool) so there's not really a ridiculous synergy there.
I just drew my 8th widow today from the hela store. I got the token for it from the hela odindaughter vault. One pull one 5* woot woot!
As a vocal single-5* Champ-haver, I think having any duds at this tier is a recipe for player loss. If your only 5* champ is a liablity rather than a boon, and it's going to take you at least a year to get another one through any reasonable kind of means (saving up the pulls for a store or grinding a 4* to max-champ), it's asking a LOT of a player to stick that out. I would love to see some load leveling going on at the 5* tier.
And effects that are bad most of the time, like "steal/destroy RANDOM AP color".
For example, her red AP drain could theoretically be the strongest when enemy team has rainbow coverage of active powers and has some AP in all colors. But it triggers only after you've KO'd one of the enemies, most likely leaving 1-3 colors unusable for them. So there's a chance the added effect doesn't help at all even then.
To me, she seems like a character meant to punish the other team for leaving her last. In that way, there's synergy already if she completes the unused AP pools by the rest of the team.
Agree she needs ways to have her costs reduced, most of all.
On purple, I actually like it doesn't count all special tiles for cost reduction. All Widows before and after her have had some way of dealing with goons CD's. She seems like the least reliable, removing only 3 tiles while needing more for the cost to drop sufficiently so it might keep pace with goon spamming.
Maybe make the cost go down 2 AP for each enemy CD and Repeater?
Or just give her a flat 2 AP cost reduction for all her powers if enemy has a Repeater in play? Since those are all the rage lately (for better or worse
I really like the OP's suggestion for her red. I'd only add an extra condition for reducing cost. Something like - "Reduce cost by 1 (with some floor) for each AP pool in which the enemy has X+ total AP or has Y+ AP more than you do".
For black, I think the random stun is fine as is. It can throw a wrench in your plans when she's paired with a character that can punish firing powers as soon as you have the AP, like Dr. Strange, or Thor.
The damage might be getting a gradual increase as allies are losing health, something like - "For every 10% an ally is below full health, her black does X% extra damage." Then, if any ally is under 20% health, she does an even bigger damage.
- opponent does a 3-turn stun
- Widow’s passive activates
- random opponent character is stunned
- player has the turn and turn is over
- opponent stun Time is over.
- player still has 2 more turns of stun to wait for
theres not even enough time to take advantage of the stun Widow’s passive provides.
I’m a fan of dropping the AP cost of all her powers by the amount of CDs and repeaters on the field with the minimum cost being 5-7.