**** Wasp (Janet Van Dyne) ****

1468910

Comments

  • wymtime
    wymtime Posts: 3,757 Chairperson of the Boards
    In playing her in the Hunt I can see how her passive can be very good in long fights. The problem is gathering 9 blue to get the AP train rolling and making sure she has a rainbow team around her. I have been running OML with X-23 and getting black green or purple is the only benefit to me.
    Jean buster is probably a better combo but if you fire Hulkbusters blue oh lose thevAP steal. Her black is meh. It does quick damage and can have utility but there are much better blacks powers in the game.
    As a character I want someone with 2 abilities I really want to use and the only ability she has that I find really useful is blue and it takes a while to get going. I actually think her abilities work better as TU's rather than having her in the fight. This way she can be used with Yellow protect tile generators or her black can help do quick damage, stun, give strike tiles.
    My recommended fixes are this
    Yellow: switch all special tiles attack to strike, strike to protect, protect to attack.
    Blue start triggering at 7 blue instead of 9.
    Black do 4K damage and give protect tiles instead of strike. This way she is hitting then hiding and can flip the protect to attack tiles.
  • Jabrony_Geoff
    Jabrony_Geoff Posts: 378 Mover and Shaker
    I don't like to criticize but I'm bitterly disappointed with the Wasp.
    Do you know how many times she's saved the Avengers bacon in the Comics?

    This Is a poor representation of a founding member of the Avengers.
    She needs to be buffed with immediate effect.
    Poor show guys, poor show.

    #nuffsaid.
  • Jabrony_Geoff
    Jabrony_Geoff Posts: 378 Mover and Shaker
    wymtime wrote:
    My recommended fixes are this
    Yellow: switch all special tiles attack to strike, strike to protect, protect to attack.
    Blue start triggering at 7 blue instead of 9.
    Black do 4K damage and give protect tiles instead of strike. This way she is hitting then hiding and can flip the protect to attack tiles.

    This is my kind of Wasp
    #nuffsaid
  • Polares
    Polares Posts: 2,643 Chairperson of the Boards
    I am also a bit disappointed with her, I expected her blue to be better, but the problem is that the random component of the power makes the tile land a lot of the times in colors you dont need or the other team doesnt have enough AP. And blue is her only special power, the other two are quite meh (other chars can raise the power of your special tiles in a much better way, like ProfX and Falcon, and the damage for black is nothing special, good, but not spectacular).

    So my fixes would be:

    - I guess there is no way of fixing the random component of the power, so at least, lets make it trigger before, so I agree 7 is a much reasonable cost.
    - Black might be better if she created two tiles, one shield and one strike. This would also make her yellow more useful, because she would be able to start buffing from the beginning both the attach and the defense (no need to double cast).
    - And then make yellow buff a little less but create one extra strike tile (so a combo of black + yellow puts two moderately strong strike tiles and one shield).

    I think those three changes would make her much better in general.
  • Mitchjewitz
    Mitchjewitz Posts: 84 Match Maker
    After using her at 0/1/2 with falcap and iron fist in the hunt for her essential, I think she is actually decent. Once she gets blue AP, she steals AP every turn and her power activates regardless of another CD on the board. If you pay attention, she creates a new CD before the one from the previous turn resolves.
    Yes she isn't a nuker, she isn't an aoe-er but she is a good support character with a little bit of a punch.
    More on the team: she puts out a CD and 1 strike tile, IF puts out 1 attack tile. Falcap boosts two special tiles and one CD.
    With stealing the enemy AP, and boosting my special tiles, the way I win is just by widdling down their health. I barely even use the divebomb before I win the match.

    When she is fully covered, stealing 2AP and doing more damage, she will be a support beast.
  • carrion_pigeons
    carrion_pigeons Posts: 942 Critical Contributor
    When I first read her blue, I understood it to work like Blade's black, where you put down a countdown and it goes off *every turn*. I thought it would be amazing, and totally worth collecting and holding a bunch of blue for. Having tried it and realizing that the countdown tiles don't reset themselves, but just go away, I'm not nearly as excited. It's just a worse version of AP steal than anything we've seen. Granted that there aren't many alternatives in 4* land or above for that effect, so that makes it more interesting, but random colors, unreliable quantities, able to be interfered with by the AI, and doesn't even start working until the midgame at best - that's a lot of hoops to jump through.

    I wish she stole specifically your strongest color. Then you could use her as a kind of targeted weapon, to build a team that specifically drains a particular color and just dismantles the right (i.e. wrong) kind of team. That would have been fun gameplay. Would have been great fun against goons particularly.

    Her yellow is way too narrow for general use, and has no disruptive application. It's almost as bad, AI-wise, as Vision: you'll constantly see the AI using it when it's strategically a disaster. It's the sort of ability that really ought to be something like 2 AP, except for the obvious abuses with certain other characters that would cause. Also, adding attack tiles to the rotation would have made the skill have tons more gameplay and way more interesting. As it is, there's no real merit to building a team that goes to that much effort to make good shield tiles. I think maybe it could have been a passive that flipped all shields to strikes and all strikes to shields at the start of your turn, with maybe a very minor buff included. That doesn't solve the strategic disaster the ability represents, but it does make it part of the game instead of just a major annoying flaw with the character. Plus, as a passive it would be free instead of a terrible waste of perfectly good AP.

    Her black is nice. It plays interestingly with her blue and her yellow and ties things together in a neat way, and is a good cheap nuke to boot. If her blue and yellow were actually any good, that would be awesome. :p
  • Mawtful
    Mawtful Posts: 1,646 Chairperson of the Boards
    When I first read her blue, I understood it to work like Blade's black, where you put down a countdown and it goes off *every turn*. I thought it would be amazing, and totally worth collecting and holding a bunch of blue for. Having tried it and realizing that the countdown tiles don't reset themselves, but just go away, I'm not nearly as excited. It's just a worse version of AP steal than anything we've seen. Granted that there aren't many alternatives in 4* land or above for that effect, so that makes it more interesting, but random colors, unreliable quantities, able to be interfered with by the AI, and doesn't even start working until the midgame at best - that's a lot of hoops to jump through.

    Yup. Thoroughly disappointed after testing this out for the first time. What a load of hot garbage.
  • Tiger_Wong
    Tiger_Wong Posts: 1,013 Chairperson of the Boards
    So basically, it's "waaaah! Why isn't she overpowered?!"
  • Mawtful
    Mawtful Posts: 1,646 Chairperson of the Boards
    Tiger Wong wrote:
    So basically, it's "waaaah! Why isn't she overpowered?!"

    That may be true if she were even moderately powered. But she's not.
    All I'm asking for is balanced characters with power sets that are both interesting and thematically relevant to the character. I don't think that's too much to ask.
  • Polares
    Polares Posts: 2,643 Chairperson of the Boards
    Mawtful wrote:
    Tiger Wong wrote:
    So basically, it's "waaaah! Why isn't she overpowered?!"

    That may be true if she were even moderately powered. But she's not.
    All I'm asking for is balanced characters with power sets that are both interesting and thematically relevant to the character. I don't think that's too much to ask.

    We have had some very interesting new mechanics in some of the new 4s, the problem is that sometimes they look like very nice when you read them (like blue) but then when you really test them they are quite meh. The idea was nice, but the exact implementation was not, I think Wasp is one of the biggest exponents of this sentence.

    And yeah, it is not about overpowered chars, it is about useful chars, and she doesn't look like one (especially when you need 360k iso to max a 4, why waste so much iso into her when there are much better options).
  • We_are_Venom
    We_are_Venom Posts: 308 Mover and Shaker
    I've been using her with Daken and find her yellow to be pretty good. A team like Wasp/Falcap/OML might work, with OML tanking all but blue. Keep flipping tiles and pound down with Cap red. For 16 yellow AP, the increase in power is debilitating for the other team.
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    Fighting a high level Wasp in the Gauntlet, paired with Drax and War Machine... I just left Wasp for last. Her impact on the battle was pretty much unnoticeable. Poor thing. icon_e_sad.gif
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    Quebbster wrote:
    Fighting a high level Wasp in the Gauntlet, paired with Drax and War Machine... I just left Wasp for last. Her impact on the battle was pretty much unnoticeable. Poor thing. icon_e_sad.gif

    But those are terrible partners for her. Neither drax nor wm make strike or protect tiles, and drax conflicts with her black.

    I have come around to the "she isn't great camp because her blue requires too many ap to get started." but this is a slightly unfair evaluation. Pairing her with daken, or a 5/3/5 nova, or even 2* bullseye, should make her a fair bit more threatening.
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    Vhailorx wrote:
    Quebbster wrote:
    Fighting a high level Wasp in the Gauntlet, paired with Drax and War Machine... I just left Wasp for last. Her impact on the battle was pretty much unnoticeable. Poor thing. icon_e_sad.gif

    But those are terrible partners for her. Neither drax nor wm make strike or protect tiles, and drax conflicts with her black.

    I have come around to the "she isn't great camp because her blue requires too many ap to get started." but this is a slightly unfair evaluation. Pairing her with daken, or a 5/3/5 nova, or even 2* bullseye, should make her a fair bit more threatening.
    True I suppose. It was the first time I faced a high-level Wasp, so I was a bit disappointed.
  • notamutant
    notamutant Posts: 855 Critical Contributor
    https://youtu.be/JS1_0-nrydI

    Analysis video. She really stinks. Too many things for one character with none of them quite working out well.
  • stochasticism
    stochasticism Posts: 1,181 Chairperson of the Boards
    notamutant wrote:
    https://youtu.be/JS1_0-nrydI

    Analysis video. She really stinks. Too many things for one character with none of them quite working out well.

    This was an amazing video. Spot on with the analysis and I was laughing out loud quite a few times. That yellow is just bad. Maybe if it was 5ap and had the boost increased it would be viable. The other skills aren't much better. A bottom of the barrel 4*.
  • Mr_Sinister
    Mr_Sinister Posts: 356 Mover and Shaker
    So I've been using wasp a bit and I've found her most useful with 4 cage and x23. The tiles come from enemy powers (not great but they are free) the overlap is such that 4 cage yellow sucks enough her's is used while his red covers x23 passive. That leaves only blue as a color but used, which is exactly what you want.
  • Tiger_Wong
    Tiger_Wong Posts: 1,013 Chairperson of the Boards
    3* Spider-Man
    3* falcon
    Wasp

    I've used this and it works. My wasp is only 2/1/1 but the synergy is clearly there. A big problem to me is that of the main shield casters, many of them use the same color as wasps tactical intuition. Magneto, Cap, and falcap all use yellow for the shields.

    But 3* falcon doesn't. And Spider-Man gets his on any purple match for your team. So get those shields up as much as you can and with falcons yellow passive, you're pumping up the strength of your tiles before and after the switches. You only need one falcon bird strike + tactical intuition to completely flip the match in your favor. But unlike bullseyes black passive, you don't have to struggle to kill a character to get it to go.

    Of course a big problem is you're only doing damage with strike tiles and wasps black. But this team works/will work. At least not on defense.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    Tiger Wong wrote:
    3* Spider-Man
    3* falcon
    Wasp

    I've used this and it works. My wasp is only 2/1/1 but the synergy is clearly there. A big problem to me is that of the main shield casters, many of them use the same color as wasps tactical intuition. Magneto, Cap, and falcap all use yellow for the shields.

    But 3* falcon doesn't. And Spider-Man gets his on any purple match for your team. So get those shields up as much as you can and with falcons yellow passive, you're pumping up the strength of your tiles before and after the switches. You only need one falcon bird strike + tactical intuition to completely flip the match in your favor. But unlike bullseyes black passive, you don't have to struggle to kill a character to get it to go.

    Of course a big problem is you're only doing damage with strike tiles and wasps black. But this team works/will work. At least not on defense.

    And you cant use spidey's blue if you want wasp stealing ap.
  • jobob
    jobob Posts: 680 Critical Contributor
    Just try her in a wave PVE with 4Cage and PX. Granted, it's a limited situation... But she's phenomenal with those 2.