Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards) Character Rework (1/9/19)

CartoonScience

I'm also disappointed. His active powers now cost more and the effects of his powers are random.
He loses the certain ability to generate defense tiles & AP and gains the ability to fire a random power and create random tiles.
The cost for his black seems a bit high. Also, if you're getting a power with the random power to create charged tiles, why not create critical tiles?
He's still probably useful in certain teams, but this rework makes him feel a bit weaker.

StevO-J

Yeah, when comparing his new black ability to 4*BP's yellow... I don't get this at all.

I was hoping there would be some reasoning given as to why Mr.F was reworked, but alas it was not to be. I believe that it has been said somewhere on the forum a while back that reworks take up quite some time and resources, so why do we now get a rework that nobody asked for when there are so many weaker characters out there that could have been improved? And why the hell did the Gambit rework take 8-9 months to appear when about half the people on the forum where quite vocal about him being OP back then?

Ye gods... none of this makes sense. Well, I guess Mr.F went from 'cool when boosted' to 'only when essential' with this rework. This is disappointing to say the least.

Dragon_Nexus

StevO-J said:

so why do we now get a rework that nobody asked for when there are so many weaker characters out there that could have been improved?

And it bares repeating, he was fine as he was. Not top tier and not garbage tier either. And with this being a celebration of the Fantastic Four, nerfing him makes even less sense.

Especially when people have grumbled about how boring Thing is for a long time, and changing him for the better would have been true to the celebration this is meant to be.

jamesh

HoundofShadow said:

I'm wondering how many special tiles does Imaginaut create? I see plural.

There's a list in the first post giving the possibilities for 5 covers in the power: 4x locked tiles, 2x strike tiles, 3x protect tiles, 3x attack tiles, generate 3 AP, or 5x charged tiles.

bbigler

I'm frustrated by this change too and want to add my voice to everyone else's........he was good the way he was, and didn't need to be "rebalanced"! This is a nerf in my opinion.

He used to be useful with Coulson and Quicksilver against bosses.
He used to be useful with Shuri and Panther. 
He used to be useful with Bishop.
He used to have synergy with Invisible woman and Thing.
He's still useful with Cardusa, but I think the old version would be better. 

This makes me think the dev's don't listen to us. There are a dozen other characters that need to be "rebalanced".

maguirenumber6

This rework doesn't seem to make much sense. Many don't seem convinced it was necessary. Certainly others characters are far more deserving of a rework, especially considering he's already been reworked. Time will tell whether it is a good or a bad thing.

whitecat31

BlackBoltRocks said:

I don’t have the capacity to analyse right now. Can someone tell me if this is a buff or nerf? His Blue sounds vastly worse, Yellow is much better, Black...isnt so board-dependent now I guess?

It is a nerf. They raised the cost. They ruined his wonderful blue ability.  They reduced the team heal, they made stuff random on his black and cost more.   His name is still Mr.Failtastic. 

HoundofShadow

@jamesh thanks for pointing out. I was focusing on the images.

If we were to look it from another pov, could it be the devs read all the players feedbacks and most players (including in-game players) prefer Mr Fantastic to Thing rework. Again, the devs have shared what metrics they used to determine which characters need balances. The players probably use feelings to decide balances while the dev use data to make the changes.

Bowgentle

Brigby said:

steakleather said:

This is entirely because of his prior synergy with Bishop, correct?

His rework was already in the works, while Bishop was still being designed. It was just a coincidence that they had such great synergy.

That actually worries me.
Character interactions shouldn't happen by accident, they should be designed.

But with the vigorous testing that is being done, I'm not suprised.

Adding my voice to the chorus of people saying "Thing before Mr. F".
It's weird that he gets a second, completely unnecessary rework, while other characters don't get any attention at all.

MrEd95

As somebody who uses him regularly with medusa and carnage, i really like this. Yes the blue and black are a little more expensive, but for the way i use him, i would definitely say he has been improved. 

While he loses strength on his heal, it does have the advantage that the player has control over it, while having a better side effect than gaining 3 green ap sometimes. And the smaller health boost is mitigaten by his black potentially creating more tiles than his blue ever did, which feeds medusa’s healing better.

i understand why some people are disappointed by the changes and how it affects their specific combos, but for me, i think this is awesome. Think how good his blue could be when boosted with a lot of friendly tiles. He could even potentially pair well with mohawk storm or dazzler if needed

y4747

to me, it looks like they switched him from a very unpopulated, always useful niche (tile swapping), to a very populated niche against enemies that make lots of special tiles (carnage etc), which he shares with quite a few other 4*.
that being said, his yellow was already pretty good for that - team burst is useful against carnage and friends...

his direct damage is highly conditional, and alone would require him to both fire the rather expensive black first and have that randomly creates specials, at least twice.

the only thing i'm not sure of is the random friendly power firing - i had high hopes of mockingbird because of them, but it turned out meh.

i think they turned him from a generally decent toon with a almost unique swapping mechanic who had an advantage vs. (and with) carnage and friends, to a bad toon that might explode when facing toons creating many specials.

i'll be interested to see how he plays, but on the face of it, i'd call this a nerf.

... i will also add my voice to the chorus of "why him" (though as opposed to some others, i think Thing is fine) when there are other characters in more dire need of a rework, and bet either bishop or an as-yet-introduced blue generator is on the way.

ammenell

awesome rework. 

take away his swap, maybe reed won't be played in 10% of all matches.

oh wait...

good bye, shuri, reed and cage.

himatako

I hate this change so much because he's one of my favorite character in MPQ. Him and IM40 have helped me beating so many deadly PvE nodes or 5-star essential nodes where my 5-star characters are too weak and I had to rely on perma-stun from the combination of IM40's yellow and Mr. F's blue. The battles were challenging and really felt like a puzzle game since I had to calculate and think about every move I make. I like how his old Imaginaut can be deadly with the right set up. It was fun to make matches and see bonus damage that is boosted by strike tiles. The only thing they should have changed was his yellow. 

If anything, I wish this wasn't a change but another version of his character or a new character. The change looks interesting, but I'll miss his old powers set :-/ 

DAZ0273

Not sure what to think. Mine isn't champed so I have never seen the best out of him or used him for Kaecilius, especially as 4* Elektra & Patch have always been more than enough for that. Likewise not having a useable Bishop meant that particular teams advantages have not crossed my path.

Don't particularly like that his powers are more expensive, especially Imaginaut, his relative cheapness was part of the appeal of using him when I did.

I guess the damage on blue will probably help out with his Crash.

Chrynos1989

As much as I think some of these changes are... unorthodox, all the crying is as bizarr, i haven’t seen a single MrF in the last 3 pvp season, it’s not like they destroyed the most used char in the game. Okay, those who used him with bishop are pranked now, but as someone already stated, you don’t now if this isn’t building some kind of synergy with future chars. Also, no one asked if his blue is working with okoye black, would be a nice thor counter, stun plus boosted damage

broll

BOO!  No RNG moves!  Move should do the same thing every time.  Game has far too much RNG without RNG moves.  It's bad enough Supports are plagued with it, you start bring it into character designs regularly and I'm done.

Felessa

Well, I'm one of those who only used Mr. Fantastic as another tile swap character against Kaecilius, so I will miss that a lot... Yellow and black seems ok. But as many have pointed, I too think other ones, like Thing, needed a rework more than Reed.

Sm0keyJ0e

I think too many people are looking at this rework in the space of the game's current state. And in that state, it makes little sense outside of Bishop (but really, Iceman or Gamora would be better partners for stun spamming than Mr. F).

I think his potential future interaction with an unreleased character is more likely to blame for this.

Malcrof

Mr Fantastic + Carnage = fast pve clears now

BumpoTheClown

They've removed the little team synergy bonus that he had on Yellow. It was next to useless, so no great loss. But the optimistic part of me hopes that this is sort of clearing the decks so that they can introduce real team bonuses through some other mechanism that isn't tied to individual character powers. There's a lot that could be done there potentially. I feel like affiliations are an underused aspect of the game right now.