Invisible Woman (Classic) 4* - Rebalance & New Costume

S0kun

Invisible Woman (Classic) gets the rebalance treatment and a brand new Future Foundation costume.

*The below is a screenshot to make formatting easier on the forum, but you can also click below to visit her character page on our website:
https://marvelpuzzlequest.com/characters/invisible-woman-classic-4/

Also, our last rebalance of the Runaways was a bit too repetitive so I've formatted this version to consolidate text. Hopefully it's easier to read, but happy to take any feedback you may have.

To help clarify some of the questions we're seeing, @IceIX and I went to our design team to get some more insights on why they certain rebalancing choices. Here's what they said!

Grant Invisibility - 7 Yellow AP
This ability is cheap and pretty powerful for what it does. The biggest strange thing with it is that it doesn’t actually Grant Invisibility until level 3. Even at risk of making it a little OP at levels 1-2 (and does that REALLY matter?), it was updated so that it does this. The rest of the ability starts to concentrate its budget into Protect tiles, which is has flavor, but doesn't really do much of what it says on the tin since it’s an ability that specifically Grants Invisibility. Obviously, removing the Protect tile would be a bad idea and make the ability weaker overall. However, the ability at higher levels stops spending any of its budget on what the ability is meant to do, instead pushing it all into the Protect tile. It feels a lot like Wolverine's Feral Claws, but if levels 3-5 just stopped increasing damage and instead made Strike tiles better. It's functional, sure, but not really the only thing the ability is built for.

Changes

• Levels 1 and 2 should gain turns 1 ally Invisible.
• Level 1 gains 1 low strength protect tile at strength 2 so that the Protect always exists.
• Level 2 should technically lose its Protect tile for balance, but that'd be really bad for ability feel. Reduced the strength of the Protect a little to compensate. Still technically OP, but given that the minimal "complete" character has a level 3 ability, not a huge thing.
• Level 3 stays as-is. It’s actually a little overbudgeted, but didn’t want to reduce the power.
• Level 4 is overbudgeted because it adds a second Protect tile and doesn't fully account for that. Pulling that second tile gives the budget to make the granted Invisibility tile Fortified.
• Level 5 currently uses ALL the budget to ramp up Protect tiles. We can still eat budget with this, but the focus of the ability is Invisibility. After keeping the Fortified Invis tile from level 4, we have enough budget to let the allies go Invisible for 3 turns from 2, then still increase the Protect tile from Level 4's strength 5-> 6.5.
• Overall, this focuses the ability more on it (and the character’s) namesake, making it bar none the best Invisibility ability out there, which it darned well should be.

Force Bubbles - 8->6 Blue AP
The idea in meta when this ability was created/updated was to prevent enemies from using SAPs if they have them, and provide Strike tiles in general. But it also doesn’t affect any tiles but the SAPs, so as you level it the chances of putting out a good number of bubbles actually goes down, depending on the opponent to really do anything first. Easy fix, just have it prioritize enemy tiles instead of requiring them. Great.

Even WITH that change, it’s pretty massively underpowered. This is because since the ability was created, balancing around the budget strength of Locked tiles was adjusted. Again, pretty simple solution, we can lower the AP cost to 6 and STILL end up with extra balancing budget. So lets do that. At the same time, we’ll smooth out the oddity of level 2 having higher Strike strength than level 3 and 4 (which is made up for by adding more tiles, but still). This does result in Levels 1 and 2 losing a bit of per-Strike strength in rebalancing, but it's not a huge amount, and as above, a completed character won't have a level 1 or 2 ability anyway.

Overall, this allows the player to push out more Force Bubbles in general due to the lower AP cost while creating stronger Strike tiles in the process. We could lock even more by reducing Strike strength, but decided against it because while the game does handle lots of Locked tiles on the board, players find lots of Locked tiles difficult to parse matches. So if they’re going to do that, it should be because of multiple casts instead of a one shot burst.

Changes

• Change ability to “random non-friendly tiles prioritizing enemy Strike…” instead of only working against those.
• AP Cost 8->6
• Level 1 / 2 - Per Strike strength reduced slightly. Level 2 reduced Locked tiles from 3->2 (level 3 stayed at 3, so no loss in a completed character)
• Level 3/4/5 - Strike strength increased from 22-35%

Force Field Crush - 10->8 Green AP
The ability itself is fine and the overall thresholds feel reasonable. However, it’s pretty under budget in general. Could do all kinds of futzing with numbers and leave it at 10 AP, which is slow. Lowering AP cost to 8 immediately brings level 1 and 2 into line. Actually slightly overbudgeted, but not by a huge amount.

In filling in the extra budget at the higher levels, decided that simply increasing the per tile conversion damage would be the best way to go instead of improving the already outstanding under threshold damage or increasing the number of bubbles created. The latter we didn’t want to go with because that can cause the same issue as with Force Bubbles in creating too many Locked tiles too quickly. 4 “feels” about the max we realistically want to do for any given cast. So that leaves increasing the per tile damage for converted tiles. Doing that brings it up to par. The under threshold big boom damage did end up getting reduced a little in the bargain, but on a per-AP cost basis, it wasn't by much. And our analytics show that most people are using this with the conversion damage as it is. Which should actually increase due to the AP cost reduction in both this and Force Bubbles. So maybe a little sticker shock there, but in practice, not really a nerf.

Changes

• AP Cost 10->8
• Reduced big boom damage (~33%), raised per tile damage by quite a bit (10%-90% depending on level). This is affected by the AP cost reduction, minimizing the per-AP damage loss from the big boom while magnifying the per-tile damage increase.

Rod5

Could you explain the thinking behind this? Looks like next to no difference, slight nerf maybe.

Where is the 5* Romanoff buff?

Warbringa

I think they lowered the blue and green AP costs perhaps if my memory serves me correct. They lowered her damage on green though and reduced protect tile strength on yellow for one more turn of invisibility if you put 5 in yellow. Seems like the rebalance changes are small and do not really change her that much. Not sure if there were any health or match damage changes to her.

KGB

A few questions:

1) Are those really the 370 and 550 numbers or are they the 270 and 450 numbers? It seems like they must be the 270 and 450 numbers because at L550 creating a 386 strength protect tile (5 yellow covers) is joke because the 450 one would be like strength 190.

2) Is health/match damage unchanged?

Observations:

The Green power looks to have gotten a big nerf if you already had less than the 4 force tiles (the most likely case). Went from 17108 down to 11438 at 5 covers. It was way better before.

At least the Blue cost went down to 6 from 8.

Overall she was probably better before because of the Green nuke.

KGB

OzarkBoatswain

here are all the changes I noticed:
Yellow 7 AP
4* only: protect tiles are weaker; at 5 covers, gets an extra turn of invincibility.

Blue 6 AP (was 8)
4* only: strike tiles around 30% stronger

Green 8 AP (was 10)
4* only: lower base damage and higher per-bubble damage

bluewolf

@Warbringa said:
I think they lowered the blue and green AP costs perhaps if my memory serves me correct. They lowered her damage on green though and reduced protect tile strength on yellow for one more turn of invisibility if you put 5 in yellow. Seems like the rebalance changes are small and do not really change her that much. Not sure if there were any health or match damage changes to her.

@Warbringa said:
I think they lowered the blue and green AP costs perhaps if my memory serves me correct. They lowered her damage on green though and reduced protect tile strength on yellow for one more turn of invisibility if you put 5 in yellow. Seems like the rebalance changes are small and do not really change her that much. Not sure if there were any health or match damage changes to her.

It seems that match damage is almost always the same among all 4s, unless I’m missing something. Obviously abilities can impact that.

As far as health there is definitely some variation there. It seems like the standard number for a 370 is 28659 and Sue is slightly lower at 26692. This makes some sense since she can turn invisible and throw up protects.

Daredevil217

@KGB said:
A few questions:

1) Are those really the 370 and 550 numbers or are they the 270 and 450 numbers? It seems like they must be the 270 and 450 numbers because at L550 creating a 386 strength protect tile (5 yellow covers) is joke because the 450 one would be like strength 190.

2) Is health/match damage unchanged?

Observations:

The Green power looks to have gotten a big nerf if you already had less than the 4 force tiles (the most likely case). Went from 17108 down to 11438 at 5 covers. It was way better before.

At least the Blue cost went down to 6 from 8.

Overall she was probably better before because of the Green nuke.

KGB

Sue at 457 creates 1 strength 189 protect.

OzarkBoatswain

4* health is unchanged. I believe they changed her critical tile multiplier from 3.0x to 4.0x, but that may have happened in an older revision.

OzarkBoatswain

Here is a history of Invisible Woman's powers, with values taken at level 70:
Original, 2013:
Yellow 23 AP
The Invisible Woman hides the weakest member of the team. Turn a chosen basic Yellow tole into an Invisibility tile. While it's on the board, the invisible character can't be targeted.
Level 5: 19 AP

Blue 14 AP
Susan concentrates deeply, locking one chosen tile plus one for every 10 tiles bearing her symbol.
Level 5: for every 6 tiles

Green 12 AP
Invisible Woman shatters a 3x3 area around 1 random Force Bubble, unlocking but not destroying it. If there are no Force Bubbles on the board, she creates 1 in a random location. This ability ends the turn.
Level 5: shatters 3 or creates 3

Version 2, 2014:
Yellow 18 AP
same as previous version
Level 5: 14 AP

Blue 13 AP
Locks 2 chosen tiles in Force Bubbles before creating a Blue Protect tile with a strength of 42.
Level 5: locks 8 chosen tiles, Increases Protect tile strength to 185.

Green 9 AP
same as previous version
Level 5: Each unlocked Force Bubble does 168 damage.

Version 3, 2015:
Yellow 9 AP
The Invisible Woman hides the weakest member of the team. Converts a random basic Yellow tile into an Invisibility tile. While it's on the board, the invisible character can't be targeted.
Level 5: Creates 4 protect tiles of strength 184.

Blue 7 AP
Locks 2 chosen basic tiles in Force Bubbles before creating a Blue Protect tile of strength 64.
Level 5: Locks 4 selected tiles of any type and makes a protect tile of strength 127.

Green 12 AP
Invisible Woman shatters the tiles surrounding 2 random Force Bubbles. Does not generate AP. Each Force Bubble deals 64 damage and is unlocked (but not destroyed). If there are no Force Bubbles, she creates 2 in random locations.
Level 5: shatters 3 or creates 3, deals 1070 damage per unlocked Force Bubble.

Version 4, 2016:
Yellow 7 AP
Creates a Yellow Invisibility tile targeting Invisible Woman. While it's on the board, she cannot be targeted.
Level 5: Creates 2 strength 116 Yellow Protect tiles, then turns her allies Invisible for 2 turns.
5* version gets an extra turn of invisibility at level 5.

Blue 8 AP
Locks 2 random enemy Strike, Protect or Attack tiles in Force Bubbles and creates 1 strength 65 Blue Strike tile.
Level 5: Locks 4 tiles, including countdown and repeater tiles, and creates 3 strength 93 blue strike tiles.

Green 10 AP
If there are less than 4 Force Bubbles on the board, create 2 and deal 917 damage. Otherwise, convert all tiles in Force Bubbles to basic, removing the Force Bubbles and dealing 250 damage for each.
Level 5: Create 4 force bubbles and deal 4,261 damage, or convert force bubbles to basic and deal 639 damage each.

Version 5, 2024:
Yellow 7 AP
4* only: protect tiles are weaker; at 5 covers, gets an extra turn of invincibility.

Blue 6 AP
4* only: strike tiles around 30% stronger

Green 8 AP
4* only: lower base damage and higher per-bubble damage

entrailbucket

The 2013 version was so awful that I used to recommend selling her covers for HP over rostering her.

This is back when we had hardly any use for HP either -- nobody bought tokens and shields didn't even exist yet.

DashBC

@OzarkBoatswain said:
Here is a history of Invisible Woman's powers, with values taken at level 70:
Original, 2013:
Yellow 23 AP
The Invisible Woman hides the weakest member of the team. Turn a chosen basic Yellow tole into an Invisibility tile. While it's on the board, the invisible character can't be targeted.
Level 5: 19 AP

Blue 14 AP
Susan concentrates deeply, locking one chosen tile plus one for every 10 tiles bearing her symbol.
Level 5: for every 6 tiles

Green 12 AP
Invisible Woman shatters a 3x3 area around 1 random Force Bubble, unlocking but not destroying it. If there are no Force Bubbles on the board, she creates 1 in a random location. This ability ends the turn.
Level 5: shatters 3 or creates 3

Version 2, 2014:
Yellow 18 AP
same as previous version
Level 5: 14 AP

Blue 13 AP
Locks 2 chosen tiles in Force Bubbles before creating a Blue Protect tile with a strength of 42.
Level 5: locks 8 chosen tiles, Increases Protect tile strength to 185.

Green 9 AP
same as previous version
Level 5: Each unlocked Force Bubble does 168 damage.

Version 3, 2015:
Yellow 9 AP
The Invisible Woman hides the weakest member of the team. Converts a random basic Yellow tile into an Invisibility tile. While it's on the board, the invisible character can't be targeted.
Level 5: Creates 4 protect tiles of strength 184.

Blue 7 AP
Locks 2 chosen basic tiles in Force Bubbles before creating a Blue Protect tile of strength 64.
Level 5: Locks 4 selected tiles of any type and makes a protect tile of strength 127.

Green 12 AP
Invisible Woman shatters the tiles surrounding 2 random Force Bubbles. Does not generate AP. Each Force Bubble deals 64 damage and is unlocked (but not destroyed). If there are no Force Bubbles, she creates 2 in random locations.
Level 5: shatters 3 or creates 3, deals 1070 damage per unlocked Force Bubble.

Version 4, 2016:
Yellow 7 AP
Creates a Yellow Invisibility tile targeting Invisible Woman. While it's on the board, she cannot be targeted.
Level 5: Creates 2 strength 116 Yellow Protect tiles, then turns her allies Invisible for 2 turns.
5* version gets an extra turn of invisibility at level 5.

Blue 8 AP
Locks 2 random enemy Strike, Protect or Attack tiles in Force Bubbles and creates 1 strength 65 Blue Strike tile.
Level 5: Locks 4 tiles, including countdown and repeater tiles, and creates 3 strength 93 blue strike tiles.

Green 10 AP
If there are less than 4 Force Bubbles on the board, create 2 and deal 917 damage. Otherwise, convert all tiles in Force Bubbles to basic, removing the Force Bubbles and dealing 250 damage for each.
Level 5: Create 4 force bubbles and deal 4,261 damage, or convert force bubbles to basic and deal 639 damage each.

Version 5, 2024:
Yellow 7 AP
4* only: protect tiles are weaker; at 5 covers, gets an extra turn of invincibility.

Blue 6 AP
4* only: strike tiles around 30% stronger

Green 8 AP
4* only: lower base damage and higher per-bubble damage

WOW! This is almost comical! Nice job keeping track of this, surely a record for rebalances?

bluewolf

4 rebalances for a member of the Fantastic Four? Ok.

Checks roster 329 other characters?

Maybe we let her be now….

S0kun

I added some clearer identifiers for the previous stats so hopefully that's easier to read and better show that this wasn't intended as a nerf.

rainkingucd

@bluewolf said:
4 rebalances for a member of the Fantastic Four? Ok.

Checks roster 329 other characters?

Maybe we let her be now….

After 10 years though, they finally fixed her neck

BlackBoltRocks

No one is saying this is a nerf (ok, maybe the very first comment. Definitely not a nerf). What we’re saying is, was this really necessary? Sue was already fine in her most recent version prior to this latest update. What we’re saying is, there are a ton of other characters who do need an update. Sue wasn’t/isnt one of them.

bluewolf

3 Doom feeder update ….

Will ascended 3Doom reward covers for TBA? Or is this an “out of luck” scenario?

Ascended 4s pay out retro rewards….

ThisisClemFandango

We are clearly in the ' broke? Or made better?' territory
An update that wasn't needed who in the grand scheme of things didn't warrant the change
I mean black Knight exists

KGB

@BlackBoltRocks said:
No one is saying this is a nerf (ok, maybe the very first comment. Definitely not a nerf). What we’re saying is, was this really necessary? Sue was already fine in her most recent version prior to this latest update. What we’re saying is, there are a ton of other characters who do need an update. Sue wasn’t/isnt one of them.

What happened to Sue is what happened to another recent 4 (Fury) who got an rebalance didn't need one.
1) The character in question appears in multiple PvE nodes.
2) The powers got cheaper and thus easier for the AI to fire, esp in CL10 in order to do damage that requires healthpacks.

KGB

IceIX

@BlackBoltRocks said:
No one is saying this is a nerf (ok, maybe the very first comment. Definitely not a nerf). What we’re saying is, was this really necessary? Sue was already fine in her most recent version prior to this latest update. What we’re saying is, there are a ton of other characters who do need an update. Sue wasn’t/isnt one of them.

Sue, in her current form before this rebalance, is sitting squarely in the bottom 10% of 4-Stars used in all battles, and even worse when you just look at PVP. She's sitting around such meta-non-luminaries as Hulkling, Northstar, and Namor. Not completely never used, but fairly close.

ThisisClemFandango

Maybe run a monthly rebalance questionnaire and give us like a choice of 5-10 characters and whatever wins you rebalance, not just on here but on all socials.
Then you can better gauge where the need is the most.
I am happy to take 2% of all revenue for this amazing idea.

@IceIX @S0kun

DAZ0273

Does the feeder change mean we are getting a 4* related to Doom? Playable Valeria maybe?