An Alternative perspective on Invisible Woman

Thought I'd finish writing and post this during never-ending maintenance!

I was lucky enough to pull Invisible Woman from a recent 6* crystal; and a little research made it pretty clear that she's considered almost good, but needing a very high skill, for only modestly high reward. A lot like Star Lord, she needs a very specific and careful playstyle to ramp up her damage; and a single mistake puts her back to square one. This makes her far less desirable than alternative high-damage champs like Ghost, Corvus's, etc. Only ideal for really, really skilled players; most of whom would have better options.

After playing around with her for a while I've decided that this opinion of her is just plain wrong. Or at the very least, short-sighted.

Whilst she does have some drawbacks, and she really does have the capability to reward very skilled play (check out MCOC Daniel's video below), she's actually a surprisingly forgiving and versatile champion to use - even for beginners, or someone (like me) with a modest skill level, at best.

Forgiving and versatile enough for me to take her into LOL (easy path) at 1/25, and for her to be incredibly valuable there.

One of the reasons you might have thought IW was a bad choice for LOL is the Mark of the Labyrinth; which grants the defenders a 10% Evade chance. Surely that would render her useless?

Far from it. Invisibility proved to be a splendid defence; allowing me to recover from any Evades my opponent made, and quickly regain control of the fight without taking a single hit. Sure I lost a bit of my damage output periodically. But I didn't get annihilated! And, heck, I'm not that skilled, and was never expecting to make it to fifty Dodges without making a mistake anyway!...

As an (at best) average player, playing with Invisible Woman is actually surprisingly rewarding. As soon as she's invisible she gets a huge Critical Rate boost, so the big yellow numbers start coming a lot faster. The Energy damage as a follow-up is a nice extra bonus (and it's what provides the payoff for the really skilled player); but the actual Crits alone make a major difference to her damage output. Enough difference not to really miss those little red numbers if you finally mess up and block a hit or get tagged as you dash back. Just play defensively, wait out the ten seconds cooldown, and start again.

So she can help you cope with Evade champs (as long as they aren't evading too frequently). Where else does Invisibility act as a safety net for the low to average player? Failed intercepts. Mis-timed dashbacks. Opponents with tricky-to Evade or Unblockable Specials (Dr Doom, for example). In fact, you could argue that it does more for the low-skilled player than the high-skilled player.

Do you hate Mesmerise nodes? Well, Invisible Woman takes them in her stride. Get evaded; and you'll stand (stunned) as your opponent flails helplessly at the air, never once landing a blow (and building up your force-field whilst they do, if she's Awakened!).

Struggle with Oscillate? Dodge your crazily aggressive opponent, then whilst they're blocking you can batter them down, because you've reduced their block proficiency to zero with your Vulnerability debuffs.

Opponent with strong Power Gain effects? Block their hits to Exhaust them, instead of working on Invisibility.

My recommendation for the community: don't give up on Invisible Woman; and certainly don't tell 'beginner' players not to use her. Sure she could be better (suggestions here!), but I think she's potentially great for beginning players, as she's actually a champion with built-in training wheels, who encourages you to develop vital skills like dodging and intercepting. She doesn't really need Awakened, and has the potential to reward ever-increasing skill with ever-increasing damage. That sounds like a pretty decent champion design to me! Add thoughts below!

A couple of CCP videos below:

https://youtu.be/ifMH0Z4t6v4

https://youtu.be/pdCnjbRCJYk

Comments

Lvernon15

Yeah, she has insane damage potential in the right hands but for a less skilled player she’s one of the safest characters to run, her main drawback is a lack of utility imo

TP33

I’m surprised you didn’t mention the insane fury on the sp2 she gains, build up force field to around 300 and you are SLAPPING opponents

Magrailothos

I’m surprised you didn’t mention the insane fury on the sp2 she gains, build up force field to around 300 and you are SLAPPING opponents

It was a bit of an essay already. But yes, she can do crazy damage; and once you've got the hang of dodging, you don't really need the forcefield so much, do it's safer to sacrifice it for the extra damage on SP2.

YoMoves

Yeah, IW's critical problems are a complete lack of immunities and a skill floor to optimize her damage that otherwise would be a turn-off. Not having any power control hurts too. With Mr. F she's a lot more sustainable, though.

_Quetzalcohuātl

Thank you for this thread bro, I just pulled invisible woman as a 5 star and am planning to take her straight to R3 but the negative reviews are really grating to the point where i'm reconsidering. I already have ghost at 4/55 but IW looks super fun to play with great damage potential so why not jump in hey

Thicco_Mode

Really great write up. I might consider testing mine some more

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borntohula

Yeah, IW's critical problems are a complete lack of immunities and a skill floor to optimize her damage that otherwise would be a turn-off. Not having any power control hurts too. With Mr. F she's a lot more sustainable, though.

She doesn’t have immunities, but have you tried her with full suicides? She heals. A little, but enough to top you off most of the time. More without prefight ability. So, in a way, she can function as a double immune. She’s grown on me a lot. 6-2. Unduped.

FRITO_Man

Not sold on her either
what you listed above isn't the optimal way to play her. I agree that her invisibility is great but ghosts phaing is way more safe and can actually with hood phase through anything and be intangible. However, IW isn't my favorite since you need to intercept a lot. OP nice post but I wouldn't rank her up if you aren't very good and rely on parry a lot.

pseudosane

Still not sold on her... I was hoping the CCP videos actually showed taking a tough path in Act 6 but they are just punch-bag stuff.

I have used my r5 sig200 with MrF in act6. She is useful. Not the first answer to many nodes, but a useful toolkit to have nonetheless.

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SpideyFunko

She seems cool. Haven’t really gotten around to her at all, as my Fantastic Four luck is pretty bad

pseudosane

Still not sold on her... I was hoping the CCP videos actually showed taking a tough path in Act 6 but they are just punch-bag stuff.
I have used my r5 sig200 with MrF in act6. She is useful. Not the first answer to many nodes, but a useful toolkit to have nonetheless.
Would you rank her up over Mr F? Also how is she unduped?

I wouldnt. MrF>IW in terms of sheer utility. IW was a prestige play at the time. MrF has a lot more utility than people give him credit for. The dupe isnt needed for her at all, just makes her prestige higher and a little annoying on defense.

pseudosane

Where i use IW a lot is on the lanes which have destructive feedback. She is incredibly forgiving there. One slip up there can mean death (at times). She has this awesome safety net.

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SidDDragon

I enjoy playing IW and have her at r3 and would like to take her to r4...she works well with suicides with her healing from them while the forcefield is active and her not relying on parry means I can have fun with a full intercept style play but the one thing I dislike about her is her rampup..u need a few stacks of vulnerability to do god tier level damage but for that u first have to build up the vulnerability and then play perfectly to maintain them...that buildup before u can start doing damage is what i dislike about her and starky even though once fully setup both those champs are capable of doing some amazing damage

TheHoodedDormammu

She just needs to be able to parry for a certain amount of times while invisible

Lunae

Thought I'd finish writing and post this during never-ending maintenance!

I was lucky enough to pull Invisible Woman from a recent 6* crystal; and a little research made it pretty clear that she's considered almost good, but needing a very high skill, for only modestly high reward. A lot like Star Lord, she needs a very specific and careful playstyle to ramp up her damage; and a single mistake puts her back to square one. This makes her far less desirable than alternative high-damage champs like Ghost, Corvus's, etc. Only ideal for really, really skilled players; most of whom would have better options.

After playing around with her for a while I've decided that this opinion of her is just plain wrong. Or at the very least, short-sighted.

Whilst she does have some drawbacks, and she really does have the capability to reward very skilled play (check out MCOC Daniel's video below), she's actually a surprisingly forgiving and versatile champion to use - even for beginners, or someone (like me) with a modest skill level, at best.

Forgiving and versatile enough for me to take her into LOL (easy path) at 1/25, and for her to be incredibly valuable there.

One of the reasons you might have thought IW was a bad choice for LOL is the Mark of the Labyrinth; which grants the defenders a 10% Evade chance. Surely that would render her useless?

Far from it. Invisibility proved to be a splendid defence; allowing me to recover from any Evades my opponent made, and quickly regain control of the fight without taking a single hit. Sure I lost a bit of my damage output periodically. But I didn't get annihilated! And, heck, I'm not that skilled, and was never expecting to make it to fifty Dodges without making a mistake anyway!...

As an (at best) average player, playing with Invisible Woman is actually surprisingly rewarding. As soon as she's invisible she gets a huge Critical Rate boost, so the big yellow numbers start coming a lot faster. The Energy damage as a follow-up is a nice extra bonus (and it's what provides the payoff for the really skilled player); but the actual Crits alone make a major difference to her damage output. Enough difference not to really miss those little red numbers if you finally mess up and block a hit or get tagged as you dash back. Just play defensively, wait out the ten seconds cooldown, and start again.

So she can help you cope with Evade champs (as long as they aren't evading too frequently). Where else does Invisibility act as a safety net for the low to average player? Failed intercepts. Mis-timed dashbacks. Opponents with tricky-to Evade or Unblockable Specials (Dr Doom, for example). In fact, you could argue that it does more for the low-skilled player than the high-skilled player.

Do you hate Mesmerise nodes? Well, Invisible Woman takes them in her stride. Get evaded; and you'll stand (stunned) as your opponent flails helplessly at the air, never once landing a blow (and building up your force-field whilst they do, if she's Awakened!).

Struggle with Oscillate? Dodge your crazily aggressive opponent, then whilst they're blocking you can batter them down, because you've reduced their block proficiency to zero with your Vulnerability debuffs.

Opponent with strong Power Gain effects? Block their hits to Exhaust them, instead of working on Invisibility.

My recommendation for the community: don't give up on Invisible Woman; and certainly don't tell 'beginner' players not to use her. Sure she could be better (suggestions here!), but I think she's potentially great for beginning players, as she's actually a champion with built-in training wheels, who encourages you to develop vital skills like dodging and intercepting. She doesn't really need Awakened, and has the potential to reward ever-increasing skill with ever-increasing damage. That sounds like a pretty decent champion design to me! Add thoughts below!

A couple of CCP videos below:

https://youtu.be/ifMH0Z4t6v4

https://youtu.be/pdCnjbRCJYk

All that just sounds like evade with extra steps

Also with her ability to place exhaust debuffs tied to her forcefield, duration on them already being too short, it’s an ability that might as well not be there in terms of actual usefulness. Every blocked hit drains the shield and no shield, no exhaustion. This only had the slightest chance of being viable with the entire F4 team due to her perfect block synergy, but even then a 65% chance to place them is too low to make them viable especially against someone like Hyperion. Theyre more there to reduce damage after a slip up then actually control power.

In labyrinth she might feel viable with just one just one fight, but I can’t imagine anyone not going insane trying to use her for a whole path lol. That being said Mister Fantasic is a way better option and less maddening for labyrinth which speaks volumes about her actual usefulness. Yes her miss mechanic is useful until you realize that in labyrinth the amount of time it’s takes to rebuild her up has consequences, other then that it wouldn’t be a problem if you didn’t mind really, really, really, really long fights, but up against the labyrinth enrage mechanic you really have to play her perfectly to finish in time. Making use of her miss against labyrinths evade completely contradicts any viability she might have had in there otherwise.

Using her against mesmerize is also convoluted unless she’s your only option since it’s easier just to use specials to counteract it. Against mesmerize you have to play well enough not to lose your invisibility or else your stuck using specials anyway if mesmerize happens to triggers while her invisibility is on cool down. This little balancing act only adds a level of uncesseary difficulty. Again “viable”, but convulted along with using her against oscillate. It’s already hard enough to maintain vulnerable debuffs against champions in regular fights, but against the overly aggressively super jacked oscillated noded opponents that flail around good luck...

As far as being a beginner friendly champion, no argument can really be made there except that the trade off for those training wheels is a loss of all her damage. Beginner players are better off learning to parry then intercept, but if you do parry invisibility is lost and that safety net is gone so it becomes one or the other, you either exclusively parry with her and have no invisibly or intercept 10 seconds at a time lol. Beginner players are better off using champions that have real then Invisble Woman. Using her misses also isn’t helping beginner players if instead of learning how to actually evade specials, they instead come to rely on that miss mechanic itself because it’s just hurting them in the long run.

Again in summary, that just sounds like evade with extra steps.

TripleB

IW is a great champ, but she has huge problems. Imo she's the most risky champion in the game, but the reward isn't the highest. U can lose your stacks even if u play perfectly. U mess up when Darkhawk, Cable, Punisher, Bishop and many other champs throw their specials. When Claire charges her heavy or throws sp1, u messed up, despite having class advantage here. U can't fight MS, despite having class advantage.

What I suggest:
Remove her bleed vulnerability when she fights with class advantage
Give her ability to parry once X seconds without losing invisibility. Logic is "u parried opponent, now he know where's u and u can't do safe parry anymore". If u parry one hit of special attack, u dont lose invisibility too.
Improve Vulnerability mechanics

I think they used IW-s vulnerability mechanics to make Black Widow's Insights, and I think IW will become more valuable if her Vulnerability start stacking the same way as BW-s charges.

For example, u got to 25 charges and messed up, stacks should become inactive (so ull stop doing additional dmg per stack) and start falling off once per 0.5–0.8 seconds. When ull gain invisibility back, u will have some base stacks to ramp up quicker. It will lower her risk in longer matchups and risk/reward will become more "balanced". Now it's not far from balanced imo, u can use someone like Guilly 2099 and get access to much more

Wow, I really liked the idea to change her vulnerability to something like Black Widow's, I think that would make her much more desirable but not overpowered at all! Wish Kabam considered this when they revisited her a few months ago.