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

sambrookjm

Moon Roach said:

@Brigby, any chance you could pull together the usage figures for all characters for 2018?  You can just PM them to me, no need to post them here.

Or put them in their own thread, as I"m sure lots of folks would be interested in this.  I know I would be.

Just wait until after the January contest is over, of course.

Spudgutter

Brigby said:

Spudgutter said:

Thanks for the response and initial info.  Any peek behind the curtain is appreciated.  Any chance for a smaller, more (assumedly) better time frame?  Like the last six months of 2017?  

And maybe even include the entire 4* tier?

I have no problems with rebalances, and can understand some may see each as positive or negative, as evidenced in this thread.  But what i, and others, would really love to see, is maybe an explanation.  

Unfortunately, at the moment I'm unaware as to how to separate the data based on a specific star tier, as opposed to individual characters, but I can certainly show the last six months of 2017 for Thing, Invisible Woman, and Mr. Fantastic.

6/1/17 - 12/31/17

• Thing - 2,924,119
• Invisible Woman - 2,909,663
• Mr. Fantastic - 1,882,239

Now to be fair, I do want to give credit to those that mentioned the effect that event-featured characters have on usage rates, so please note that these are high-level values without any granular breakdowns involved. This is simply the information I have available at a given notice.

Hope this helps!

Pr0spect0r said:

Then again to be fair it's not his job as community manager to dig through those numbers and analyze them completely for our use.

That's true, but if I have the capability to provide some clarity, then I'm certainly not opposed to gathering some quick data for everyone.

Thanks a lot, that is a Fantastic breakdown for us.

That is very telling information indeed, and food for thought.

Dormammu

It's interesting to me how much Baglady gets used over Reed. I never use her unless she's essential. Not that she's a bad character, Sue certainly has utility, but she doesn't have the synergy Reed enjoys with several teams.

Then again, Sue was like the second or third 4-star ever released, so her roster penetration is probably much higher.

RickOShay

Keep in mind, Thing is the only one of the 3 who has covers fed from a 2* onto a 3* (Torch/Torch/Thing).
Invisible Woman and Mr. F are only 'fed' from Doom and 3* Panther respectively. Therefore, basic to mid-level players are much more -likely- to have Things to play with, padding his stats potentially above where competitive players would choose to use him.

bbigler

How about an in-depth analysis:

8 Blue (Flexibility) - Stun for 3 turns and deal 3,498 for every 4 friendly specials. If paired with Cardusa, which naturally produces blue that they don't need, you can have regular stuns with 7k damage.  That sounds really good.  If you pair with a blue generator, like Vulture or IM40, you just get a 3 turn stun for 8 AP, which is mediocre.  If you used a 1*Storm TU at level 5 for 32 Attack tiles, then it turns into a nuke for 28K, so the stun probably doesn't matter, but it would cost 9 TU AP and 8 Blue AP for a monster nuke.  So, in the right situation, this power is great, otherwise it's meh.  I do miss the tile swapping.

0 Yellow - Match enemy special and burst most damaged ally for 669; every 4 enemy special matches, fire a random power for free.  If paired with Cardusa, you get 3 extra AP and this little burst when matching enemy attack tiles.  Not bad, but not amazing either.  Firing a random power for free (every 4 turns?) sounds awesome actually.......it being either Hair Meddle, Imaginaut, Flexibility, Carnage Rules or Symbiote Scythes.  Carnage Rules isn't that disruptive at level 3, and burst healing should soften ally damage from Symbiote Scythes.  Firing the other powers for free would be great. Of course, this power works against any special tile spammers, but it shines with Cardusa.  Medusa, Hawkguy and Mr. F against tile spammers sounds fun, even though they overlap colors.  If you played Medusa, Mr. F and Chavez against tile spammers (like Carnage), then this could just fire off Hair Meddle, Flexibility or Imaginaut for free.  With Chavez and a 5* with 3 Active Colors, then this has a 60% chance of firing a free 5* power. 

10 Black (Imaginaut) - Create 2-turn fortified black repeater that either makes specials, charged tiles, locked tiles or generates 3 AP in Strongest. This is a high price for a random effect, which is delayed 2 turns before doing anything.  Creating some good specials is certainly the best effect.  Locking tiles is disruptive to me; charged tiles may not benefit me; and gaining 3 AP in Strongest may not help me (especially with Cardusa where Medusa is probably the highest level, so I would get 3 Yellow, which is useless).  So, there's a 50% chance for a good effect, after collecting 10 Black and waiting 2 turns.  That just sounds really bad.  In a very long match, the specials could build up though (like Emma's yellow).  There's a 20% chance it could fire for free with Cardusa, but I wouldn't bank on it. 

Overall, I still think this is a nerf because his utility has shrunken.  It's a smaller niche now, as someone else had said.  There's certainly great potential paired with Cardusa and some Storm TUs.  There's possibilities with Chavez and a 5* against tile spammers, but I'm predicting after people play with him for fun, his usage will be lesser than before.  He really has just 2 good powers now, which are highly situational. 

ThaRoadWarrior

I wonder how he plays with Flaptain? I may test it out lol. Special spam on yellow, passive blue, red nuke. 

*edit* ran this team with a champ Flaptain and a champ ghost rider against a random grockamora team in sim with my lvl 209 reed. It didn’t work lol. Then I went back in and took reed/EB Venom (5/5/2 lvl70)/ and Kraven up against a 3* team that came up- that went much better lol. I never used him before so I don’t have anything to compare to. I will say the tile locks look like sue’s Force bubbles more than bag-man’s locks. Do they function like that?

KGB

Dormammu said:

It's interesting to me how much Baglady gets used over Reed. I never use her unless she's essential. Not that she's a bad character, Sue certainly has utility, but she doesn't have the synergy Reed enjoys with several teams.

Then again, Sue was like the second or third 4-star ever released, so her roster penetration is probably much higher.

One thing to note. In the daily resupply list you get 3 Sue covers in year 1 (day 365). I remember when I started playing I was playing fairly casually for the first year and so I had 3 covers of Sue, Devil Dino and X-Force Wolvie. That was pretty much my only 4* characters at that time (roster slots hard to come by) so I was using them as lot as meat shields. I wonder if a lot of new players who are playing casually are doing the same as I was which is why her usage metrics are so high.

KGB

Brigby

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I wonder how he plays with Flaptain? I may test it out lol. Special spam on yellow, passive blue, red nuke. 

*edit* ran this team with a champ Flaptain and a champ ghost rider against a random grockamora team in sim with my lvl 209 reed. It didn’t work lol. Then I went back in and took reed/EB Venom (5/5/2 lvl70)/ and Kraven up against a 3* team that came up- that went much better lol. I never used him before so I don’t have anything to compare to. I will say the tile locks look like sue’s Force bubbles more than bag-man’s locks. Do they function like that?

Just did some testing with Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman on the same team. It would appear that the Locked tiles Mr. Fantastic's Imaginaut tile creates DO synergize with Invisible Woman's Green "Force Field Crush" ability.

1. "Imaginaut" creates Locked tiles.
2. Activate "Force Field Crush"
3. Locked tiles are removed, and the enemy is dealt damage.

MrEd95

Just used him with im40 and dazzler. That was fun

ZommyGD

It’s a nerf.
Mr. F is Mr. F again!

Borstock

After playing with him, I'm not a fan of the cost of his black power, but he can be fun. I think the main issue is that, for 5* players, his blue actually made him useful in certain situations and now he's back into the pile of characters that just don't help enough ever. 

mega ghost

I love these changes and I think some of y'all just want to be mad. First and foremost, these updates change him from being a bland, niche defensive character to a versatile character that is actually FUN and that I want to play. I've had him champed for ages and I can never bring myself to use him, even when he's featured. The only time I actively select him and find him useful is during the Kaecillus fight we get once every month and a half or so. Hardly a reason to keep him as-is.

His old blue? Decent stun. The tile swap mechanic was a nice bonus, but nothing special. Now it's a decent stun with good to great damage added on if you're fighting with special tile creators or have your Imaginaut out.

His old yellow? Useless outside of one defensive team. Now it still has that benefit, but also is amazing against anyone that creates special tiles. I'm finally looking forward to fighting Ultron sentries. This is a great change. I don't understand how so many can't see how good it is.

His old black? I wanted it to be good, but it was always a waste. I'd chase matches to get ok damage, and most of the time it would just get matched away. His new black? Sure, it's random effects, but the effects are actually pretty good and happen every other turn. Plus they feed his blue and it has staying power.

I'm very excited and I'm looking forward to figuring out teams for him.

JHawkInc

Brigby said:

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I wonder how he plays with Flaptain? I may test it out lol. Special spam on yellow, passive blue, red nuke. 

*edit* ran this team with a champ Flaptain and a champ ghost rider against a random grockamora team in sim with my lvl 209 reed. It didn’t work lol. Then I went back in and took reed/EB Venom (5/5/2 lvl70)/ and Kraven up against a 3* team that came up- that went much better lol. I never used him before so I don’t have anything to compare to. I will say the tile locks look like sue’s Force bubbles more than bag-man’s locks. Do they function like that?

Just did some testing with Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman on the same team. It would appear that the Locked tiles Mr. Fantastic's Imaginaut tile creates DO synergize with Invisible Woman's Green "Force Field Crush" ability.

1. "Imaginaut" creates Locked tiles.
2. Activate "Force Field Crush"
3. Locked tiles are removed, and the enemy is dealt damage.

I tested it too, he definitely creates those Force Bubbles when he locks tiles (instead of one of the other lock-tile effects). Definitely makes Imaginaut a little more useful.

Still, it's slow, and it'd be nicer if you had some control over the random effect (maybe like Pumpkin Bombs for Green Goblin, pick a color, and different color Imaginaut tiles do different things? even if it's semi-random, like Black Imaginaut repeaters lock tiles or make protects, and Blue ones make protects and charged tiles, and Green ones make charge tiles and attacks, etc, so each color has two possible outcomes, so the power is kept in check by a bit of randomness, but it's a 1/2 chance you get what you want, instead of 1/6; it would also be cooler having multiple different color Imaginaut tiles out this way).

Ultimately, I like the idea behind the change, but this feels like something that's only 80% of the way ready to be implemented in the game. I don't really see this increasing the usage of Mr Fantastic, you know?

jamesh

A few thoughts after mulling over the changes a bit more:

1. Mr F's old design seemed to be about extending matches through healing and fortified protect tiles.  That both gave you more time to use powers and acted as a deterrent for others attacking you.  That seems to mostly be gone with the healing scaled back massively, and protect tile generation being random.
2. Outside of teaming him with characters that produce enemy special tiles (e.g. Carnage, Venom), the effectiveness of his new yellow is strongly dependent on the enemy team.  If I'm attacking a Mr F, I just need to pick a team that doesn't overly depend on special tiles and I can mostly ignore his heal.
3. If you look at his blue purely as a stun, then it seems overpriced compared to e.g. Gamora or Iceman.  Quantising the damage component on multiples of 4 special tiles makes me think the AI will quite often fire it without the required specials.  I wonder if this was intended, or if they just thought it was a cute way to include the number "4" in the power?
4. He seems even less self sufficient than before.  Previously Imaginaut was his primary damage ability, which you could fire off after 3 black matches, and maybe get extra damage from 50% of matches after that.  Now you need 4 black matches to fire Imaginaut (1 special), then wait 2 turns and hope it procs 3 more specials (although it more than likely won't), then fire blue.  Assuming all Imaginaut effects are equal probability, the power averages out to generating two thirds of a special tile each turn, so it could take a while.
5. On the bright side, casting Imaginaut multiple times stacks the effects unlike the old version.  However, the increased power cost means this would happen even later in the match, if at all.

So all up, he seems even more situational than before.  If the aim was to fix the fact that he is the least used FF member, then I don't see this as a successful rebalance.

wingX

For his blue ability, I think it will be better if there is also a counter for the amount of special tiles on the board so that you don't need to count. Will be good for all those power that depend the number of special tiles on board.

This new MrF's blue ability can also work well with 3*Storm.

furbear00000

I’m going to attempt to put a positive spin on this unnessesary “re-balance”. 

All Reed really lost was his tile swap which was replaced with free power activation, which is nice to have. If you’re playing against Strange or Chavez, you don’t use AP or get punished for using any powers. 

Reed has always been a situational character from the start and this rebalance didn’t change that. He was and still is very useful against special tile producers and still works very well with Carnage and Medusa, in my opinion a little better than before because his blue can hit hard now, harder than his black ever used to. 

Anyways that’s my 2 cents. I’ll still be using Reed like I used to before. 

I do wish they would have spent their time better fixed units that need actual fixing. There are so many. 

Gold_Dragon

I’m gonna check it out the rebalance soon but I used before and I loved Loved LOVED using him with Shuri. Omg. They went together PERFECTLY. Put them with 5* DD and it’s a slaughterhouse. It was one of my favorite teams.

 Now I look at it and.... I really don’t see who he goes with yet. It looks like a bunch of nerfs. His blue is a nerf guys. Anytime you take away board control, it’s a nerf. His blue was beautiful with 5*DD. Heaven forbid Imaginaut was on the field and you matched two green tiles. The health bars would just melt. Now..... I’m pretty much gonna have to either team him up 4* Venom (Eddie) and Kraven or Cardusa (which people were doing anyway). For a power called Flexibility, he sure lost a bunch of it. 

His yellow wasn’t great and it’s still not as you’re trying to get 4 enemy tile matches. The free power makes it better, potentially but it also means you’re either with Venom/Kraven, Cardusa, or..... bust?

Imaginaut’s only problem to me was that it didn’t do a lot of damage. But when you teamed him with DD and Shuri, you could see why it did the damage it did. If it did good damage, that team would be stupid broken. Now.... I really have to look at it. It looks like a lame version of MEH’s yellow power. I don’t know a lot of people who like random powers activating. 

 Gonna try him out and report back. 

MarcusGraves

Blue: This just stinks, it's like you guys tried to make his powers more support based, but then went ahead and ruined what was a PERFECTLY good support ability and splashed in garbage damage on it. I'm going to really rip on this change because you guys for some reason ALWAYS do this to powers in reworks and I never understand why you think changes like this are good. A 7 cost 3 turn stun that dumped out 2 fortified 270 protect tiles was totally fine. I really think you guys changed it cause of the Bishop interaction which is honestly really silly considering we have a character like 4* Rocket and Groot running around with explosive damage combos.

Yellow: This is surprisingly fine, free power casts are good off of enemy special tile matching, less healing is whatever since Medusa already covers this effect in spades.

Black: Simply overpriced power, gathering 10 black and then having to wait 2 turns to finally get an effect is too slow, needs to be an 8 cost power at the least. This is obviously his most important power so thank god you guys at least kept it with the ability to fortify on cast, because 4* Black Panther has similar importance on his yellow power and yet you chose to (and still haven't changed for some reason) not have it be fortified on cast which easily brings the character to a grinding halt when it ends up in a bad spot and just get's matched away/blown up.

If it sounds like I'm being overly critical and mean, it's because a lot of the changes you guys put in (or don't) is simply at this point very frustrating.

ammenell

Brigby said:

UNC_Samurai said:

BlackBoltRocks said:

We’ll. We’ll need to find someone else to use against Kaecilius.

Yeah, there was ZERO reason to tweak his Blue, it was his one good power.

Why do they over-think almost every rework by messing with the powers that don't need fixing?

You could always use Agent Coulson, if you're looking for another 4-Star that can swap tiles? You even get the benefit of those tiles becoming Charged too!

we could just ban Reed. 
i mean, we already have coulson for tile swapping. 

Let's rework gamora, too.
make her blue cost 7ap, and trash the stun, just producing random special tiles.
there are still other 4*s who can stun. 

AardvarkPepper

First, a thanks to Brigby for posting the details for comparison.

That said, I do not like the new 4* Mister Fantastic.  I think players will come around to the new 4* Mister Fantastic, and I can see some good applications for him (though ironically I wouldn't say FANTASTIC applications), but I don't like the change.

==

To the argument that the change was based on metrics, I say:

1)  Raw metrics do not account for real factors.  For example, 4* Invisible Woman has been around a long time.  She's had more time for characters to randomly accumulate covers, and I state (though this also would need confirmation by metrics) that players are more likely to use 4*s that have more covers than less.  (Isn't she a daily login reward?  And how many more events has she been awarded as a cover for?  How many more Invisible Woman covers are there floating out there than Mister Fantastic covers?  I suspect a lot.)

2)  A character with a niche usage doesn't need a "fix" any more than a tool kit's little-used Allen wrench needs a "fix" to be another flat-head screwdriver.  You may not want your Allen wrench all the time, but when you want it, you want it.  You don't want another flat-head screwdriver.

Old 4* Mister Fantastic had a niche usage for precise board control (rare in the 4* tier) and a workable stun at 7 AP, a fairly decent yellow heal (though situational, you could MAKE the situation happen with 4* Carnage), and an AP softening power with a fairly cheap black.  Perhaps not flashy, but he had a unique niche.

New 4* Mister Fantastic has an expensive stun at 8 AP that does indifferent damage (unless the board's populated with friendly specials), a terribly weak yellow heal, and an expensive and unreliable 10 AP black.  Much, much more situational and worse, and though he has a yellow passive that players may now attempt to exploit, it's random so unreliable and on top of his non-self-synergistic powers, places too much weight on teams.

Mind, I do see that firing free powers as a passive is huge.  Mister Fantastic doesn't heal at all well any more, but players that try to abuse his yellow passive will hardly mind.  But I think on balance, it does not work well.

==

1)  Blue:  8 AP vs 7 AP.  At 7 AP, you're one match and one four-match away from firing the power.  Or two matches and a four-match that clears another AP of the color.  Or maybe you have a passive power that randomly feeds AP like Medusa's yellow.  But in practice 8 AP is a lot harder to get than 7.  Again, I'm sure MPQ has the metrics, but that's how I think on it.  Additionally, Fantastic lost his precision board control.  There weren't that many precision board control effects in 4* land. 

True at 8 AP now 4* Fantastic's blue does damage.  But it's *indifferent damage* unless the board is populated with special friendly tiles; it's not enough to make a real difference otherwise.  What's good is either a nice cheap long lasting stun, or nice cheap damage, one prevents enemy powers from landing, the other kills enemies before they can get their attacks off, so more or less those are interchangeable.  "Combine" a weak stun and a weak damage power and have an expensive stun-damage power is just entirely besides the point.  The expense kills the utility.

I can see if you're randomly firing a power as from the new yellow passive, damage plus stun is superior to simply stun.  But filling a team with slow powers just makes the team generally bad.  More on this later.

2)  Black:  10 AP vs 7 AP.  Again, the expense, but this time quite killing.  Yet it doesn't stop there.  What used to be a relatively cheap power that could be fired relatively early that would do additional chip damage (again, early is better than late plus the damage could be increased with Strikes, no?) is now a late firing power that is of random effect that has no immediate consequence.  Random SPA, Charged tiles, random AP feed, or random tile locking?  It just isn't good.  The randomness means the power won't synergize well with those that feed off SPAs, or Charged, or random AP feed, or random tile locking - because only ONE of those is likely to be synergistic with any other particular character, which means the other effects will not really feed team synergy.  And again, it's expensive.

==

So far what we see is an expensive blue that's besides the point (unless fueled by friendly specials which 4* Fantastic can't himself provide), a very expensive random black, and what?  Maybe this could be made up for with a good passive.  So let's take a look.

3)  Yellow:  Big fat team heal (provided enemy matching away friendly specials) versus eeny weeny single target (when you match away enemy specials) heal, not good.  But now the passive may ALSO fire a random team power.

And supposedly this is where 4* Mister Fantastic is good.  Because though his blue is now not good and his black is now not good, every so often, provided the enemy is feeding Specials onto the board, he has a RANDOM yellow power that INTERMITTENTLY fires.  And yes, this can be exploited for speed, and speed is the name of the game.

BUT!  It is not enough.

A character is not simply the sum of the character's individual powers.  It's a question of self-synergy AND team synergy.  How do powers act together as a whole?

I think it's pretty clear that the new 4* Mister Fantastic's blue and black powers just don't get done what a player needs done, when individually examined.  So the key to the character must be in his yellow power, and in synergizing all his powers with other characters (particularly his blue potentially becomes a lot better)

But my thought is this doesn't happen.

First, players are often restricted to using, in practice, two-character teams.  This is a point I hope Brigby may mention to the development team, because I feel (though I could be wrong!) that 4* Mister Fantastic makes sense from a player-chosen-three-character team, but not two.

Think on it.  If you're doing PvE you use two-character teams plus a third Essential character for Essential nodes.  The three easy nodes don't really matter so much, which functionally means you can only specify all three characters on a team for less than half the nodes (if you consider the 2*, 3*, 4*, and 5* Essential nodes).  If you're doing PvP you need to use the provided Essential.  And considering character dilution, exactly how often will 4* Mister Fantastic *be* the featured 4* Essential?  Or even how often will one of the few characters that synergizes well with 4* Fantastic be Essential?  I say not often!  Think about the ever increasing character count!  Think about how specific 4* Fantastic's synergies are!

Let's say you're trying to exploit 4* Fantastic with 4* Carnage.  Well what happens?  Fantastic's passive yellow on attack is slow to start up even with Carnage populating the board with specials, and on defense Fantastic's passive yellow doesn't quite necessarily outpace the self-damage Carnage deals the team.  Once Fantastic's passive yellow does start firing attack powers, neither of Carnage's red or green is particularly damaging (they're not bad), Fantastic's black is indifferent.  Now you could say though the team is slow to start, it potentially does a load of passive damage which is unique, and though it lacks precise board control it makes up for this with stuns - and I would agree.  But consider 4* Rocket and Groot and 4* Gamora.  Instead of deferred damage, that team does *immediate* damage.  R&G/G also have access to Gamora's multi-damage red (which synergizes with Strikes, no?), her instakill black, and her cheap blue stun.  R&G's blue Special is slow so better not used in preference to Gamora, and his green does decent damage.  But already you're looking at some pretty serious competition, and though Fantastic/Carnage self heals some, it's really not *good* healing that will keep pace.  So the team really has to lean a lot on 4* Fantastic's blue damage output, and that's conditional and expensive.  It's not "bad"; R&G/G's red/blue/green versus F/C's red/green/blue in terms of functional powers.  But R&G/G's damage is frontloaded (it all comes in at the beginning of a match) where F/C's damage is backloaded, though I'd say F/C's raw damage output is better in comparison and even superior the longer the match goes.

Or let's say you're trying to exploit 4* Fantastic with 4* Venom.  Or whoever.  It's the same thing all over again.  Again you have Fantastic's black not really doing well, his blue being a bit on the expensive side (though it's good damage conditionally), his yellow not healing much and being slow to trigger attacks.  But really I think 4* Carnage is 4* Fantastic's only good 4* playmate; Fantastic needs friendly specials to power his blue for his blue to be decent, and enemy specials to power his yellow so his yellow is decent.

So Fantastic/whoever, as I see it, don't add up to more than another 4* duo that already exists.  That's where I'm saying, if you have a third synergistic character, maybe you could argue the added synergy makes it worth it, but for general usage, you *can't* count on a third synergistic character (my point earlier about most PvP and PvE not allowing players to specify all three characters on a team).

==

Second, the new 4* Mister Fantastic's powers are too disparate.  His blue is a little too slow (but it's an important little).  His yellow is dependent on matching enemy tiles, is terribly weak single-target healing, and though features an attack power is random so only works for extremely carefully selected teams (again, most PvP and PvE don't allow a player to specify all three characters on a team, so one needs to rely on one of the few characters 4* Fantastic synergizes with, or he himself being the Essential, which is rare).  His black is expensive and random.

So in practice, consider to use him a lot you need to use him on a two-character team with a non-specific third character as an Essential, so the synergies of an ideal three-character team won't be there.  Then what?  You need another character just to populate the board for enemy specials so 4* Fantastic's yellow goes off.  There's really not much point to fielding 4* Fantastic for his black and blue alone.  Think on it.  If you had to choose between 4* Gamora, 4* Iceman, and 4* Mister Fantastic for general synergy, what's your choice?  4* Gamora has a decent damage power, a not great special tile generating power that has an instakill, and a pretty decent stun.  4* Iceman has a good stun/damage power, a board shakeup/AP feed power, and a team damage power.  4* Mister Fantastic has . . . randomness.  Expensive randomness.

==

By this point, some players ought to be shaking their heads and saying "well, what about the COUNTER?  You don't need a second synergistic character on the team like 4* Carnage to populate the board with enemy specials if the *enemy* is already generating enemy specials!  I saved this for last, as it is the most valid point in support of Mister Fantastic.

1)  Defenders using this point need to realize - they're already consigning 4* Mister Fantastic to a niche role, as a counter against particular teams.  It's not that he has self synergy of his own so much.

2)  The new 4* Mister Fantastic STILL isn't good.  I mean hey, if you want to screw with enemy SPA (Strike/Protect/Attack) you run Kraven (though a team with 5* Kitty Pryde will just run him over anyways).  But let's say theoretically you run 4* Mister Fantastic against . . . who?  Who do you run him against?

A)  PvE Sentry bots (those things that populate the board with enemy Strike/Protect/Attacks that fire passive powers that heal, destroy bottom portion of board, and/or create criticals).  Their damage piles up faster than 4* Fantastic can heal, Fantastic's black is useless, and his blue is expensive for only indifferent effect.  Sure, 4* Fantastic's better than literally nothing.  **But another 4* could probably do better in his place.**

B: )  PvP teams with special tiles.  You have 4* Fantastic's indifferent blue, his expensive and random black, and his rarely firing yellow.  What does he really bring to the team?  Who's going to feed 4* Fantastic blue?  You could say 4* Medusa/4* Fantastic is a stronger counter against an enemy PvP team with 4* Carnage than Medusa alone, with blue being fed to 4* Fantastic.  (edit) - and yes on reflection, all right, it has better staying power than 4* Medusa / 4* Gamora.  But it's a pretty niche matchup as I see it.  You're getting that sustained utility off feeding off weak enemy-generated Specials.

As to teams with 5* Kitty Pryde (i.e. enemy Specials that get really dangerous pretty quickly), well they'll just run Mister Fantastic over.  If the enemy has populated the board with Strike/Protect/Attacks, 4* Fantastic is way too slow to do anything about it. 

==

So on balance, I see the new 4* Mister Fantastic as worse.  Blue more expensive - it's not "just 1 more AP", that 1 AP makes a difference that the new indifferent damage really doesn't compensate for, plus loss of unique board control utility.  Black expensive, expensive and random.  Yellow slow to fire and conditional, and though you could argue it's potentially better for speed and speed's most important (and that's true), it's just nasty trying to get those synergies off in practice.

Mind 4* Mister Fantastic's yellow WILL be exploited.  There is no question in my mind it will happen.  But what was an arguably niche character with unique application is now pretty much a random mess to my mind that requires at least two other synergistic members on a team to be of fair utility, and considering most of PvE and PvP doesn't allow a player to select all three characters on the team, well, the new 4* Fantastic is worse.

Ironically, the same changes that I think make the new 4* Fantastic worse make him arguably better in terms of defensive PvP.  Now all his stuff is fire and forget, as opposed to needing more careful consideration.

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(Again - if you're in PvE, the three easy nodes don't matter much.  The three hard nodes you can specify your team but even there you want a team that best counters the enemy.  But even then, there are four nodes in PvE that require Essentials - the 2*, 3*, 4*, and 5*.  And in PvP of course there's the featured Essential for most season events, and again, you want a team that best counters the enemy.  So all in all, new 4* Fantastic's demands for synergistic teammates can't be met, on a duo new 4* Fantastic just doesn't measure up.)