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

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.

==

(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.)

BlackBoltRocks

@AardvarkPepper are you obliged to write PhD dissertations every single time you post?

MarcusGraves

AardvarkPepper said:

-snip-

This is a fan...(almost said it) amazing write up on what's wrong with this new MF.

I really just hope dev's don't just shrug everything off and go "ok we're done, next". It always feels like the playerbase has to be really vocal and push back when changes are made, otherwise these announcement threads  eventually close like they always do and nothing happens for like 4-6 months because they skip to whatever project is next.

zodiac339

It would have been nice for Imaginaut to work like this (IMO, it would be interesting):
Create a 2-turn Fortified Repeater tile on the least prevalent color on the board. Each time it reaches zero, it moves to the current least prevalent color and has an effect based on the color it was on: Creates Strike (black), Protect (yellow), or Attack (red) tiles, creates Charged tiles (blue), generating team’s strongest color AP (purple), and locking tiles (green).
Maybe swap blue and green. By appearing on the color that appears least, it protects itself somewhat from matches, and by being color-based, it provides player clarity on the effect.

peterdark

As someone who is transitioning to 4 * land I think I'll give him a pass until I have spare roster slots... by that I mean he is probably going to be near the bottom of the pile

AardvarkPepper

BlackBoltRocks said:

@AardvarkPepper are you obliged to write PhD dissertations every single time you post?

N . . . . yes?

Jokes aside, if I make a criticism I want whoever reads it to know exactly where I'm coming from.

Criticism without specifics is venting, not discussion.

OJSP said:

My Mr F is boosted to 458 in his event. With lvl 1 IM35 and Storm to beat the seed teams, I use Storm's Hailstorm before Mr F's Flexibility to deal up to 84k (Storm is 5/4/4, so she makes 24 attack tiles). If she is 5/3/5 and makes 32 tiles, he deals 112k. Outstanding!

I'm thinking of swapping IM35 with IM40 later to get a lot of blue AP and perhaps use Carnage instead of Storm for climbing.

1)  Use 3* Storm instead of 1* Storm.  I'm sure you have 3* Storm so you can switch her powers around as you like, and 3* Storm is better than 1* Storm anyways.  Plus 3* Storm is boosted.  So hey.

2)  IM40 (3* Iron Man) charges your blue AP up but otherwise has no synergy.  You need enemy specials to power 4* Fantastic's yellow or friendly specials to power 4* Fantastic's blue damage.

I'd say if you want to screw around, try Medusa/Carnage/Fantastic.  It's different than it used to work; now you screw around with matches until Medusa's purple fires and populates the board with more friendlies, then you fire Fantastic's blue a bunch of times for stun and damage then finish off with Carnage's red and green.

It's like yeah you can get blue AP faster with IM40, but if you don't have friendly / enemy specials on the board, might as well just use 4* Gamora or 4* Iceman or something.

3)  If you want to throw a 3* or something into the mix, either 3* Storm/ 3* IM40 or maybe 3* Hawkeye/ 4*Carnage

Chrono_Tata

Well, looks like our worst fears have come true. While I'm sure there are situations where new Reed can be used, however you look at it this is a significant nerf. It's even more baffling that this is done to coincide with the FF celebration event. 

BlackBoltRocks

AardvarkPepper said:

BlackBoltRocks said:

@AardvarkPepper are you obliged to write PhD dissertations every single time you post?

N . . . . yes?

Jokes aside, if I make a criticism I want whoever reads it to know exactly where I'm coming from.

Criticism without specifics is venting, not discussion.

What's there to specify? Your posts are so long. Do consider cutting them down and/or summarising your points, then it'd be much easier for fellow forumites to read. Not many people here have the time or desire to peruse an academic thesis.

DAZ0273

MarcusGraves said:

AardvarkPepper said:

-snip-

This is a fan...(almost said it) amazing write up on what's wrong with this new MF.

I really just hope dev's don't just shrug everything off and go "ok we're done, next". It always feels like the playerbase has to be really vocal and push back when changes are made, otherwise these announcement threads  eventually close like they always do and nothing happens for like 4-6 months because they skip to whatever project is next.

It might well be brilliant (haven't read it myself, it is a bit long but Aardvark Pepper seems to know his stuff) but if the Dev's have limited time for interaction or reading feedback as it is, they are even less likely to read posts that you have to scroll down for what seems like several days unfortunately.

ThaRoadWarrior

I feel like he'd probably be fun with Prowler so you can double-dip stealing the enemy tiles and firing off free abilities. Plus Prowler can create enemy specials. Once my Reed (waiting on iso) and Prowler (needs many covers) are champed I may try and run that. Also seems like a few of the new characters have conditional tile-spam powers (nebula, dazzler) which could make for a solid team with him. 

AardvarkPepper

OJSP said:

AardvarkPepper said:

Use 3* Storm instead of 1* Storm.

That defeats the purpose of trying to get easy retals at the beginning of an event and creating points for the shard. With a championed 3* in the team, then I'll get hit by people with 3* and 4* champions. I would then need to use my 3*s and 4*s sooner and the points stop being generated. It's not uncommon for me to get a lot of defensive wins and beatable retal nodes to get 575 or even 800 with 2 lvl 1*s if the featured character is good..

Edit: if you want to see my roster (I'm just above you on the leaderboard )

Nah, don't need to see your roster.  Are you one of those with the level 399 3*s and the two 1*s?

RickOShay

I haven't seen anyone mention that his blue counts CD's as part of the 4 special tiles needed to add the damage. In fact, I think it counts repeater tiles as specials as well toward the damage component. That's cool and potentially helpful. 

I miss his tile swap and the protect tiles it used to produce, sure, but these changes open Mr. F. up to more teams, and that's a better change for the game overall than what has 'ruined' some of our few niche combos. 

This change was not necessary, unless a future broken-level interaction would be on the way. The overbearing negativity on these forums is sending people away though. Structured and thoughtful criticism and feedback is warranted, but the other posts turn away fans and could hurt the games player numbers in the long run (yes, more than disappointment from these changes causes).  


Update: I was hoping that if the damage from his blue downed an opponent that the stun would hit the following enemy, this is Not the case (so, wasted stun if it's a KO). 

AardvarkPepper

BlackBoltRocks said:

What's there to specify? Your posts are so long. Do consider cutting them down and/or summarising your points, then it'd be much easier for fellow forumites to read. Not many people here have the time or desire to peruse an academic thesis.

You don't like lengthy posts.  That's your prerogative.  I write lengthy posts.  That's my prerogative.

If you're worried on behalf of other people, don't be.  They can skip over posts as easily as you can.

In abstract, I agree, "summarizing" is a wonderful concept.  But in practice, it doesn't quite work out that way.  In practice, I think there's a great deal of detail that need be considered for there to be a practical discussion.  As I wrote, criticism without details comes down to venting.

Take my criticism of 4* Fantastic.  To restate my case - to "summarize", as you put it - the new 4* Fantastic suffers from needing a three-character team for best synergies.  His black is random and expensive so offers poor synergy with existing characters that require Charged, Strike/Protect/Attack, protected by Force Bubble, or random AP feed; his blue is expensive for a simple stun and blue's damage is conditional on synergy that is in practice difficult to achieve, and his yellow's passive healing is weak and his passive power firing is intermittent and conditional.

And what?  What happens when I summarize exactly like that?  Readers that don't *already* understand all the nuances come away with the impression that I haven't thought it through, that my criticisms are because I simply don't understand.  Because, they argue, if you use Fantastic with Shuri/Panther, you now have an outlet for black, or they say 3* Storm can populate the board with friendly Specials so 4* Fantastic's blue does good damage, or they'll counter that passive power firing feeds speedy matches, and speed is the most sought after quality in a character (which it is, granted a certain amount of durability).  And those arguments are all correct and valid refutations of the "summarized" criticism.

Which is why I explained things in more detail than that.  The new 4* Fantastic is just too specific.  You can easily feed his blue damage situationally but that leaves his yellow underutilized.  You can trigger his yellow for attacks but that leaves blue underutilized.  You can feed both blue damage and yellow attack powers with Carnage, but that leaves a player without precision board control and no AP feeds.  It's not a comparison made in a vacuum.  4* Rocket and Groot/Gamora specifically have multiple colors they're decent in, a cheap stun, with two fairly damaging powers (note the green though slow feeds into AP gain).  4* Fantastic/Carnage doesn't particularly have healing worth considering, and though the sustained backend damage ends up quite good, the absence of frontloaded damage, lack of AP feed, and Fantastic's relatively expensive stun means the team sustains damage.

This might seem all right.  But it's not.  4* Rocket and Groot's Strike tiles can be used for frontloaded damage with any number of other characters, and though R&G's blue is slow and his green slow as well, at least the green offers an AP refund after a fashion.  4* Gamora solo has a red multi-step power that benefits from Strike synergies with other characters as well as a cheap stun and an instakill.  Both 4* R&G and Gamora are generally useful in terms of damage, and where they're not super useful in terms of synergy, at least those synergies have some chance of being pulled off individually or can be contributed to by a variety of characters (i.e. having a team that can use assorted AP colors makes R&G's green AP feeding not so bad, and if a team can match away purples or create special purples, then Gamora's powerful instakill can trigger).  The new 4* Fantastic in contrast *depends* on other characters generating enemy or friendly specials.  On the one hand you have two independently powerful 4* characters with conditionally utility or powerful synergy.  On the other hand you have a weak 4* character that absolutely relies on outside special tile generation.

But then there's a valid refutation that Carnage can provide special tile generation, and Medusa healing and AP feed. But as I wrote that's a three-character team, and in practice, in PvP and PvE, a player often ends up only specifying two characters of a three-character team.  So unless one of those three characters is a character that synergizes well with the new 4* Fantastic, 4* Fantastic won't be used.

So again, the "short version" stating the new 4* Fantastic doesn't work well is not sufficient.  You can see my point, I hope, that criticisms of the "short version" have a good basis.  It's for this reason that a detailed post is necessary, to show that some of the easier-to-anticipate specific counterexamples don't quite hold up under examination - and that examination in detail is necessary to really demonstrate the point.

Again, if you already fully understand the points without reading them, sure you may find it onerous to read through things you'd already considered.  But this post isn't directed at those that already agree, nor those that categorically disagree.  The post is intended to provide context for that want to fully consider the points - or at least the points I think more relevant.

And even then, considering the "short version" of my criticism of the new 4* Fantastic, what?  There's still the valid abstract refutation claiming the new 4* Fantastic may be used as a counter to particular enemy teams; native synergy isn't needed if Fantastic's a counter.  So again, the specifics need to be considered, because the abstract criticism *seems* to hold weight.  But my argument is Medusa's healing and flipping is more generally useful against weaker enemy special generating teams, and against stronger enemy special teams involving 5* Kitty Pryde, 4* Fantastic is just too slow.  It's not that 4* Fantastic is absolute trash, in fact he can come out with a speed/stun lockdown advantage in some matchups.  It's simply that he's surplus to requirements in *most* cases and ends up with a very niche role.

And yes, I could be wrong.  Even though I think I've thought things through, it only takes a couple very good counterexamples to pick apart a case, because a good counterexample can define the meta.  But I say, where is that specific meta-defining counterexample?

@BlackBoltRocks I'm sure you would be able to forgive me for being wrong.  Perhaps you would also be able to forgive me if I happen to be right.  Not about 4* Fantastic (I think I could be wrong there, sure), but about posting in detail.

DAZ0273 said:

It might well be brilliant (haven't read it myself, it is a bit long but Aardvark Pepper seems to know his stuff) but if the Dev's have limited time for interaction or reading feedback as it is, they are even less likely to read posts that you have to scroll down for what seems like several days unfortunately.

If it were for work, I'd provide a one paragraph summary, a five page brief, and fifty pages of substantiating documentation with a load of footnotes and nice graphs.  Maybe a pie chart or two.

Tell ya what, why don't I try to stick to something like that for future posts.  Except of course I can't provide substantiating documentation because I don't have the metrics.

MirrorKnight

I still don't get the motivation for these changes. 

If this rework had been planned for a while because he had the lowest usage numbers, it really feels like that should have been reevaluated with what seems like a pretty excellent synergy with Bishop, Shuri and P4nther. His numbers would have only gone up as people champed Bishop.

If they wanted to make his kit more cohesive, and exciting, this seems like a miss. (Imaginaut could have done that, but in trying to everything, it feels like it does nothing)

If they wanted to be more cohesive with other F4... again, mark was missed.

All right, I'm done talking about this. The change is out, and I don't see them addressing our questions beyond what Brigby has already said.

Straycat

AardvarkPepper said:

  Not about 4* Fantastic (I think I could be wrong there, sure), but about posting in detail.

Yea, I kinda think you're wrong about both.

About posting, there are too many characters to try to layout synergies and consequences with each.

About Mr F, I take your main point being that he requires too much help to be useful. I think before he was much more limited in his teammates, with his F4 teammate handcuff, and with his friendly tiles + enemy tile mover stipulation to get any use out of his passive.

Now he is at least an easy partner to add to any pve goon node, boosted or not. Its slow, but he can create tiles on his own to make his stun damage condition. Add in the recent trend of characters needing friendly tile spamming and he makes sense with a lot more teams than before.

helix72

Brigby said:

6/1/17 - 12/31/17

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

Here's the thing: numbers are like terrorists. When you first capture them they don't tell you anything, but if you torture them long enough you can get them to say whatever you want.

As Brigby pointed out, taken alone you have to look at these very skeptically. Over the period:
1) How often was each buffed?
2) When they were buffed, were they buffed alongside other toons they have synergy with?
3) How often was each a featured character, either in PvP, PvE, or CoT?
4) How often was each a mandatory in Shield Training?
5) How many people have each on their roster? If 10M people had Thing and he was used 2.9M times that's not as impressive as if 2M people had Mr. F and he was used 1.9M times.

All I'm saying is while it is interesting to see the numbers, taken in a vacuum be careful drawing concrete conclusions. It's like watching American football, where they love to trot out meaningless statistics like, "you know when the Lions are on the road playing on grass in afternoon games where the temperature at kickoff is under 42 degrees and the moon is in a waning phase they are undefeated"...

Yepyep

I never really understood how to really use MF's old blue power, other than for the obvious board control. Also, I only champed him in mid-November, so I'm no expert. Which is just to say that I'm not really sure I'll notice much difference with his new power-set because I never got a real grip on his old one.

But @OJSP's pretty brilliant idea IMO of using him with Storm got me thinking. He could prove to be pretty great with 4* Black Panther, too, especially in wave nodes. There's unfortunate color overlap, but BP's blue is essentially useless so that can aggregate nicely for MF, and over time BP's yellow can flood the board pretty well with durable specials. 4BP is pretty lackluster, which is a bummer, so they might be in the market for ways to get him some good partners and Reed happened to fit the bill.

Seems like his blue would make him a fun match with C4ge, too, who can also seriously rack up the specials. This seems like a great team for the goons that trigger C4ge's black. There's overlap here, too, but they're in passives. EDITED to say that anything that makes C4ge even more fun is good in my book, because he's one of my favorites to play.

My biggest concern, by far, is the inflation of his power costs effected by the change. One of his best features before was cheap powers, and while 8 blue maybe isn't so bad 10 black pushes that power to something that might not be fired and definitely will not be worth striving for.

As for the nerf vs. buff question, there's a good argument to be made that, stun notwithstanding, board manipulation is the premier power in the game. I think taking that power away, by itself, makes this a nerf. But not a major nerf because there was never that much in Reed to nerf. Which brings me to the question everyone is asking: why him? I agree completely that Thing is much more in need of a re-work but I don't think anyone here predicts that a Thing re-work will be a nerf -- and, as a general matter, there might be well-founded institutional concern that buffs are likelier to have unintended, detrimental consequences than nerfs are likely to have.

AardvarkPepper

Straycat said:

Now he is at least an easy partner to add to any pve goon node, boosted or not. Its slow, but he can create tiles on his own to make his stun damage condition. Add in the recent trend of characters needing friendly tile spamming and he makes sense with a lot more teams than before.

You're trying to sell the idea that a championed 4* should require eighteen AP plus favorable RNG plus time to set up a three turn stun and conditional 3500ish damage.  And if not?  Shifting focus to Fantastic's yellow is six of one, half a dozen of another; it's the same refutation against 4* Fantastic being good, only the mechanics shift a little.  Fantastic's still totally dependent on other characters, and still underperforms.

There is just this big numbers gap.  You want to feed enemy specials for yellow, you want to feed friendly specials for blue, you want to feed AP because the blue is slow, and on top of that the black is expensive and RNG.  It's not one thing or the other that's an issue.  It's all of them combined.

And sure, you don't need a "perfect" combination.  But my point is it's slow, no matter how you look at it.  One way or another it's slow, or unreliable, or both.

Saying new 4* Fantastic "makes sense with a lot more teams"?  With what team precisely?  He's an underperformer on a lot of teams.  But you don't take underperformers on teams, you take characters that do what needs doing.

Straycat said:

About Mr F, I take your main point being that he requires too much help to be useful. I think before he was much more limited in his teammates, with his F4 teammate handcuff, and with his friendly tiles + enemy tile mover stipulation to get any use out of his passive.

What handcuff?  If you have a steak dinner coming and there's a free small salad that goes with it, but you don't like eating salads, what?  You can't eat the steak?  1667 team healing - that's the steak.  3 green AP is the free salad.

Friendly special + enemy tile mover?  As opposed to now needing friendlies to match enemy specials AND needing a loaded friendly board?  Before, you could run Carnage, sure.  You could also run Blade, or whatever other friendly special tile generating character (there's a number of them).  But now?  Now you need BOTH enemy and friendly specials.  And if you don't have one or the other, you just ate some big ol nerf-cookies.  4* Fantastic's healing and defensive capabilities were hugely nerfed, if you only feed the yellow proc the blue is now more expensive and lacks board control; if you only feed the blue damage the yellow healing is awful and you still don't have board control.

Limited in teammates?  Look.  With old 4* Fantastic you could beef up with friendly specials for the heal, which required just one other character to generate those specials.  If those were Strikes, that synergized with the old (and cheaper) black for chip damage.   And again, the heal hit the whole team.  You didn't have to hit it every turn but it kept off the health pack usage for the entire team.  And the blue?  The blue could generate AP, neutralize enemy Countdowns, generates Protects, all at the same time.  It was just so good. Conditional, sure, and took setup, but it didn't require anything near the kinds of shenanigans you need for effect for the new 4* Fantastic.  Even if you didn't fire it to maximum effect, you probably still got good defensive milage out of it.  If not a straight match, if not a 5-match, maybe a 4-match.  Whatever.  It worked.

Offense to cut clear times is the name of the game.  But it's not that old 4* Fantastic was categorically bad, or even terribly niche.  Just a bit niche, and defensive, but not "bad".

But now?  Now to say he's LESS limited?

I say how?  Way less healing.  Way less defense with more expensive stun and absence of board manipulation.  Black's random.  Your strengths are conditional blue damage and yellow proc.  But the yellow needs a lot of enemy specials to proc, and the blue needs friendly specials to proc decently.

Now he's limited to championed 5*s / boosted 4* flavor of the month if you want his yellow for good proc.  But then his blue is weird.  For best effect you need to save up AP and have a power to populate the board with specials, before firing blue, but that's contrary to how stun timing is normally used for best effect.  Now instead of popping it on a character that's about to fire a power, you have to drop it right after populating the board.  And if you had a one-trick pony for populating the board, if you stockpiled AP, then that's less early stun which can affect the course of the game.  If you waited to populate the board with specials, thats was delay before the specials could affect the game.  And I say that's not a trivial difference.  If you really don't care about 4* Fantastic at all, if you already had a powerful synergistic duo and Fantastic's just the third wheel icing on the cake, sure.  But he's not the cake, he's the icing.  Isn't that true?

And if you're feeding blue by generating friendly specials?  If you're generating friendly specials passively, all right.  If you're paying AP for it, still all right.  And why is it all right?  Because the blue can do a whopping load of damage when properly synergized.  But that doesn't change the fact that the stun timing still happens weirdly, that it's more expensive, that you don't have board control, and also (and not just incidentally) Fantastic's healing got heavily nerfed.  So again, nerf cookie.

Plus black.  10 AP and it's random.  Ugh.  I mean okay, chip damage, even boosted by Strikes . . . maybe not great.  But 10 AP black random?  That doesn't end well.

==

So how is it that new 4* Fantastic is *generally more flexible* as one might say (ha ha) than old 4* Fantastic?

I say new 4* Fantastic is more niche.

And if you're a championed 5* / deep bench of 4*s using Fantastic for his yellow procs at PvE SCL 7 - yeah, I don't buy that reasoning.  That doesn't make 4* Fantastic a "better 4*" because it's applicable to a subset of players that self-limit to a particular SCL.

Trilateralus

I haven’t seen anyone discuss the fact that Flexibility is now a stun and nuke. Unfortunately the stun activates first and the target is the same for both. So if you can arrange for the nuke to kill the target (no small feat) the stun is wasted. What a poorly designed power. 

HoundofShadow

Off the top of my head, if you are facing the likes of Dr Strange, Bishop, 3* Hulk, Rhulk, and especially Rogue, stunning them before downing will be welcomed.