Man, her SHEILD compatriots really do not like her at all.
For feedback, I will add that giving SHIELD Training the axe was not the answer any of us were looking for. I think the easiest way to “fix” it would have been is what should have been done from the start: Stop requiring NEW characters for the event. There are literally dozens of 4-star characters that could be used, but we always have to have a brand new one. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the original plan for Maria Hill was for her SHIELD Training to require three Karnaks at level 209.
I have a feeling there’ll be something else coming if the release schedule is really going to ramp like this. Too bad we can’t know what it is, but I’m sure it’ll show up at some point.
As for this character, i am really struggling to understand the self-harm on black. I’m extremely curious to see the Blog on this one to see what the point of that is supposed to be.
As for invis because CDs don’t resolve when airborne, aside from the two characters (one of whom is…weeks old?) who have CDs that behave that way already, I guess that’s on-brand implementation. Reminds of the dynamic UI thing for characters that wanted board dependent conditions but the power description didn’t tell you what the current state was. dynamic UI was challenging, but Lockjaw had it and Nightcrawler initially didn’t. Seems like just a case of somebody implementing a thing that didn’t really know where all the bodies were buried.
Maybe they just REALLY wanted us to have a character with a CD we’re willing to sacrifice to Kingp4ns black ability…
To piggy back on an earlier comment, this does just scream to me that there should be another character that controls CDs in general.
A dual-ability, much like Spider-Womans purple, where you can choose to increase OR decrease a CD by # amount.
A passive that causes some effect/damage/whatever when an ENEMY CD completes.
And maybe some sort of ability that uses like 5 AP of a chosen color from the enemy, and creates an ENEMY CD targetting the character in front, on a random tile matching the color of AP, lasting for like 3 turns or something, and gives the enemy a decent S/A/P tile at random.
This stuff is off the top of my head. Probably doesnt belong in here… But when i see moves like Maria’s black, i cant help but think of all the things they havent tapped into yet.
Over 200 characters… And so much more that can be done.
Consider the recent MODOK release countdown mechanic:
(PASSIVE) Any time you fire a friendly power, Doomsday Plan Countdown tiles are reduced by 3 turns. Any time the enemy fires a power, Doomsday Plan Countdown tiles are increased by 1 turn.
They could have been more creative as opposed to having a more drastic Kate Bishop penalty
That black really does feel like it’s missing some key element. Like Emma’s black - it’s just…nothing. There’s some climactic second stage to it that you would hope is there, but a bunch of whatever-sized strikes and insta-death are not super awesome.
This could have been the character that gets to mess with repeater length too…still waiting on that one. So many cool effects are hidden behind lengthy repeaters these days.
Or just lower the level/covers required. It’s not a hard fix. Which is why I doubt ST is going away due to feedback and more due to removing resources.
I’m sure her blue "Get Out Alive’ invisibility power will state in-game that she will avoid the damage from her black when invisible (or airborne / non-targetable).
We’re getting pretty negative on Maria quite early. Her strike tiles are strong for a 4* at level 5. So you need to plan to play her blue soon after her black if you can’t get that CD matched away (to avoid the absurdly high self damage).
So plan around this easily with a bit of timing. She’s not the first character to have 2 powers that really make sense when played in succession (Red Hulk, 4* Thor, Iron Spidey, Ghost, Black Cat, 4orch, Namor, etc). Both of her abilities are cheap btw.
Also, how often do you see general posts about how hard it is to keep an un-fortified CD safe for 4 turns? Lol
All that said, her blue should do more team damage IMO. I realize it’s intended to benefit greatly from her strike tiles.
It would have been fair as well if her CD would have dealt damage when matched or destroyed. Wouldn’t hurt to make this 4K to 5600+.
Her purple looks pretty good. Boost +2 purple AP prior to the match and after just two match-3’s in purple you have some strong traps. Yeah traps aren’t always safe, but play it when there is a ready-to-be-matched purple out there. You may even get 2 of the traps in there at once.
I realize Maria doesn’t speed up PvE or disrupt any meta’s. We don’t always need this to happen, and certainly don’t need the ‘new broken’ combo.
And hey, SHIELD Training didn’t need to go away, dang!
Changing it would have been fine, we’ll hope to see a new version that is equally rewarding somehow.
I believe others mentioned the events we had when characters got a rework (Fury, Kingpin, etc). Those mini-events shouldn’t be too hard to code in some sort of fairly assigned character restrictions, and we get new character shards at the end.
ST was just a boring mode rewarding vet players who had just the required 10 covers of 4* and the iso needed for them, plus whaling the new character for getting the token.It discriminated newer players and I never could complete it, so I will catch sleep after its loss.
I hope they could release a new regular event more exciting and rewarding the same resources but this time for real effort.
If they can achieve it I will be really happy with the change.
The Strikes on black are between the conditional states of Rockets, but since they aren’t there passively are battle start I don’t see her taking his place in Pick 2 on Kitty teams.
Actually, thinking about it a bit, Coulson’s purple, Quake’s blue, and Fury’s yellow all provide some way to help get rid of that countdown. And Quake’s green can just as easily move it out of a corner to somewhere matchable.
Another thought about her black and the potential for self damage.
We caused this. The Dev’s obviously believe we love to play characters that take lots of damage in exchange for other positives during the match.
Hundreds of players in PvP and LR’s have taught them that… with mass play of Bishop.
At least Maria’s damage is going to be preventable quite often. Good luck preventing self damage when using Bishop, and the same with Worthy Cap.
I think she could’ve been a better support rework of the game. Now that we have shards and the 3 star reworked rewards, it’s time the devs rework how to attain higher level supports.
