Bow down to Emma Frost, the White Queen

[GundamY]

What can I say? I was feeling inspired when everybody is hating on Iceman’s cover art. See, instead of channeling my negative thoughts about the game system of MPQ, I could at the very least channel some artistic creativity in the future when people can start using 4 star characters more frequently. But until then, it’s up to the game developers to make 4 star characters more accessible to everybody. So while we wait for improvements through patch notes, I would like to introduce you guys my interpretation of Emma Frost in the MPQ game mechanics ;D

Emma Frost (White Queen)

Power Inhibition -
9 AP: Emma places mental blocks in her adversaries to prevent them from using their powers against her allies. Place a Block Tile (it’s like an Invisible tile) on the board. When there are 3 Block Tiles on the board, the enemy team cannot use their abilities.

Max Level: Requires only 1 Block Tile to stop enemy team from using their abilities. Enemy team’s passive cannot be activated so long as at least 3 Block Tiles remain on the board.

Trauma Healing -
12 AP: The White Queen shows a warm and caring side from her ice queen persona as she mends the psychic wounds her team suffered. Heal your team by 690 health.

Max Level: Heal your team by 4500 health. For every Block Tile on the board, heal 250 extra health as a bonus.

Diamond Form - 16 AP: Due to the secondary mutation, Emma can transform her body into tough organic diamond at the expense of her telepathy. Emma destroys all Block Tiles on the board, gain 1 of your team’s strongest AP for each Block Tile destroyed. The following abilities change once she goes under diamond form. Use this ability again to revert back to normal.

• 
  Refractive Carats -
  9 AP: Emma’s diamond fists will give a major beatdown to the unlucky target. Deal 930 damage to the enemy in the front. Destroy a random tile block of 2x2 and generate 1 Critical Tile from the destroyed tiles.

• 
  Psychic Immunity (Passive) -
  0 AP: The White Queen no longer fears any psychic retaliation from telepathic adversaries. Emma cannot take damage from an enemy’s abilities. She can only be damaged through matching tiles and Attack Tiles while in Diamond Form.

Max Level: Emma destroys all Block Tiles on the board, gain 3 of your team’s strongest AP for each Block Tile destroyed. Emma automatically goes in Diamond Form permanently if her health drops below 50%.

• 
  Refractive Carats -
  9 AP: Emma’s diamond fists will give a major beatdown to the unlucky target. Deal 3800 damage to the enemy in the front. Destroy a random tile block of 4x2 and generate 2 Critical Tiles from the destroyed tiles.

• 
  Psychic Immunity (Passive) -
  0 AP: The White Queen no longer fears any psychic retaliation from telepathic adversaries. Emma cannot take damage from both abilities of enemies and allies or through special tiles. She can only be damaged through matching tiles while in Diamond Form.

I designed Emma Frost as a way to counter Jean Grey and Professor X due to how they spam damage with Critical Tiles. In a way, her power set is the Vision of telepaths, but I don’t know what exactly I could to mitigate the annoyance that those two telepaths could make. But what I do know is that if Emma Frost is tag teamed with Jean Grey and Professor X, you get a triple whammy of mind crushing, so be careful, you guys =O

[Kolence]

Power Inhibition -
9 AP: Emma places mental blocks in her adversaries to prevent them from using their powers against her allies. Place a Block Tile (it’s like an Invisible tile) on the board. When there are 3 Block Tiles on the board, the enemy team cannot use their abilities.
If the tile is placed, I’d rather it blocks enemy abilities on that color only. Maybe make it work for passives too, with an extra condition like a 2nd Block Tile on the same color (but probably with some downside then, like not working on actives instead
).

Refractive Carats -
9 AP: Emma’s diamond fists will give a major beatdown to the unlucky target. Deal 3800 damage to the enemy in the front. Destroy a random tile block of 4x2 and generate 2 Critical Tiles from the destroyed tiles.
Hmm, how about if she destroyed a diamond pattern of tiles (yellow ones) and changed the inner tiles into a mix of TU and her strong color tiles with crit tiles. I’m not sure how exactly is damage calculated on multiple crits, it might be hard to make the damage follow desired progression on cover upgrades. I think 4 crit plus a TU or 3 crit plus 2 strongest color tiles should do over 10k both with a crit multiplier of 4.0, so max damage shouldn’t be a problem at least.

Psychic Immunity (Passive) -
0 AP: The White Queen no longer fears any psychic retaliation from telepathic adversaries. Emma cannot take damage from both abilities of enemies and allies or through special tiles. She can only be damaged through matching tiles while in Diamond Form.
Just make it give her 90-95% damage resist similar to Colossus. She could even have immunity to stun or other effects tied to psychic attacks or whatever makes sense comic lore wise.

Also, on changing into diamond form, 16 AP seems a bit too expensive. Maybe lower the cost but leave the AP gain per Block Tile at just 1 and drain some more from the enemy in colors that were blocked.

[ErikPeter]

Block tiles aren’t fun at all. With a bad tile placement there’d be nothing you can do to get rid of them (like say, using tile destruction powers). Against AI mooks she becomes invincible. Also, her powers are not very straightforward.

Also, I don’t follow how she’s built against spamming criticals. In fact the only way to kill her effectively in diamond form is by using criticals since she is immune to other powers. Her yellow is basically permanent invisibility for her with no way for the enemy to get rid of it. (Besides slowly pecking away at her with match damage.)

Did you mean for her only to be immune to psychic powers, specifically? Because that is more reasonable, but also awfully limited in many situations. Also kind of problematic, people have to figure out which ones it works for, which ones it doesn’t, etc.

Basically I like the general idea of a transformation power, and i like the green attack power which would be good damage (compared to Thing’s, probably a bit too cheap, the double crit is going to pump out another 2-4k easy) and cause big cascades. But as is I think your spec is really over-designed and complex right now. One character shouldn’t have a transformation mechanic, their own special tile type, and unique game-altering powers all in one package.

Diamond form could just create a countdown that makes her completely indestructible. Simple, and sweet.

Anyways I will think about it more and comment again.

[ErikPeter]

So here’s my proposed changes that would keep some of the same goal/idea but be way more straightforward.

Diamond Form 11

Creates a 3-turn Diamond Form countdown tile, and replaces any existing Telepathy countdown tiles. While one or more of these tiles exists, Emma cannot be targeted or damaged by enemy attacks. In addition, Master Telepath becomes Diamond Strike.

5 ranks: Creates two 6-turn countdown tiles. While any of these tiles exist, Emma cannot be targeted or affected by enemy attacks.

Master Telepath 8

Creates a 3-turn Telepathy countdown tile. While one or more of these tiles exist, enemy passive abilities do not trigger on your turn and increase all enemy ability costs by 1.

5 ranks: Creates a 5-turn countdown tile. While one or more of these tiles exist, enemy passive abilities do not trigger, and increase all enemy ability costs by 2.

Diamond Strike 8

Destroys a random 2x2 block of tiles and creates a critical tile at that location.

5 ranks: Deals 1800 damage, destroys a random 2x2 block of tiles and creates 2 critical tiles at that location.

Frost Industries 12

Gives your team a burst of 690 health.

5 ranks: Gives your team a burst of 4500 Health, increases the timers on Emma’s countdown tiles by 2, and strengthens all friendly special tiles by 25%.

So, in this spec, Diamond Form makes her immune to everything unless she is stunned, and at rank 4/5 she can’t be even stunned or otherwise affected. It also creates multiple tiles which makes it harder to break.

Telepathy prevents Jean Grey’s passive, along with match leechers like Daken, at rank 1, and would counter Prof. X’s at rank 2 or 3, whenever it advances to ‘nullifies all enemy passive abilities’.

Meanwhile, I changed up the yellow to allow her to keep her telepathy/diamond form active longer as well as providing a welcome (but not OP) boost to friendly specials. I think there could be some other color considerations (psychics always seem to have blue powers, for example, but she doesn’t) but that’s up to the balancers.

[Malcrof]

The spec is pretty nifty…

For
Psychic Immunity, i would reverse it, attack, strike tiles, and match damage no longer effect her, only abilities.. that way we keep it true to the comics, as abilities are how she is defeated.

For her
, i wouldn’t make it a 2 parter.. but i would add something for the odd covers..
1 cover = 3 tiles needed
2 covers = 3 tiles needed, generates 2ap in strongest color
3 covers = 2 tiles needed
4 covers = 2 tiles needed, generates 4ap in strongest color
5 covers = 1 tile needed, generates 5 ap in strongest color.

[JeffCascadian]

I had done my own design on paper before even knowing that this subforum exists.

Emma Frost

Widespread Psi-Blast 9

Emma lashes out telepathically affecting everybody around her.
1 - Stuns all enemies & allies for one turn.
2 - Stuns all enemies & allies for two turns. Cost increases to 10
.
3 - Stuns all enemies & allies for three turns. Cost increases to 11
.
4 - Stuns all enemies & allies for four turns. Cost increases to 12
.
5 - Stuns enemies for five turns and allies for four turns. Cost increases to 15
.

Focused Mental Strike 8

Emma reaches into her opponent’s mind and causes them severe anguish.
1 - Does 10% of the target’s remaining health, ignoring defense tiles.
2 - Does 20% of the target’s remaining health, ignoring defense tiles.
3 - Does 30% of the target’s remaining health, ignoring defense tiles.
4 - Does 40% of the target’s remaining health, ignoring defense tiles.
5 - Does 50% of the target’s remaining health, ignoring defense tiles. Stuns the target for two turns.

Diamond Form 6

Emma uses her secondary mutation to avoid harm but loses access to her mental abilities.
1 - Creates a 1-turn countdown tile. While this tile is on the board, Emma can take no damage but also can’t use other powers.
2 - Creates a 2-turn countdown tile. While this tile is on the board, Emma can take no damage but also can’t use other powers.
3 - Creates a 3-turn countdown tile. While this tile is on the board, Emma can take no damage but also can’t use other powers.
4 - Creates a 4-turn countdown tile. While this tile is on the board, Emma can take no damage but also can’t use other powers.
5 - Creates a 5-turn countdown tile. While this tile is on the board, Emma can take no damage but also can’t use other powers. All of Emma’s attacks do double damage.

Stunning her own team may seem harsh but keep in mind that she can keep making matches to build up AP for their powers while Widespread Psi-Blast is in effect. Plenty of time for to collect some
for Cyclops or
for Thor, just to name two examples.

Focused Mental Strike is, you may notice, very similar to Deadpool’s A Little Off the Top. What sets it apart is clearly the ability to bypass any defense tiles her enemies have out. What’s that, Mr. Cage? You have invulnerable skin? What a shame that Emma’s going for your mind, not your body.

Finally, Diamond Form makes her impervious to harm but unable to use telepathy. This may not save her from Galactus but it’ll work just about any other time.