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

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

Here are the full details for Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards)'s character rework set to be implemented tomorrow, 1/10, after the daily patch update.

 Flexibility 

<-- New Ability | Old Ability -->

 Master of the Fantastic 

<-- New Ability | Old Ability -->

 Imaginaut 

<-- New Ability | Old Ability -->

Imaginaut Effects
(All effects are listed at level 270, power level 5)

• Locks 4x random tiles
• Creates 2x strength 252 Strike tiles.
• Creates 3x strength 236 Protect tiles.
• Creates 3x strength 236 Attack tiles.
• Generates 3 AP in the team's strongest color.
• Converts 5x random tiles to Charged tiles

Brigby

Woops. Added effect values of level 550. Will update to 270 in a sec
Updated to level 270 values

ThaRoadWarrior

Wow, this seems dramatic

fmftint

Looks bad. 
Blue cost more, no swap, no protect tiles, conditional damage
Yellow dependant on enemy special tiles may or may not do anything
Black cost more, no damage, random effect

BlackBoltRocks

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

Tony_Foot

Came in to read the rework, saw lots of stuff to read and decided I couldn’t be bothered as I would never use him anyway.

Thanks anyway for giving us the rework we never knew we wanted.

Yelena rework next?

DarthDeVo

No more Okoye/Mr. F/Bishop combos. Or using him against Kaecilius. Basically, back to being essentially useless. 

HoundofShadow

Mr Fantastic has turned aggressive. He's a potential anti-Carnage/R4G/Medusa character.

Ability 1: Pair him up with Storm or use a team-up Storm to create 32 Attack tiles. 32/4*3498= 27,984 damage. You can save up 16 blues if you want.

Ability 2: free random friendly power fired for every 4th enemy special tile matched. Anti-Carnage/Medusa/R4G?

Ability 3: to complement ability 1, I guess.

5/5/3 if you got the right environment.

On the flipside, he works well with all three of them as well, or maybe not R4G.

UNC_Samurai

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?

Brigby

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?

Blue is definitely different, but in my opinion, I wouldn't necessarily say it's worse. The change turned it more from a defensive ability into an offensive ability. It now has a direct damage component, instead of Protect tile generation. The direct damage component is also multiplicative, depending on how many friendly special tiles are on the board. It still maintains the 3-turn Stun, as well, so you still have an element of defensive capability too.

His Yellow ability granting a free ability cast every 4 enemy special tile match can be incredibly useful.

In my opinion, Black is far more useful now, because you're very likely to have some sort of effect trigger, now that it's a 2 turn Fortified Repeater tile, as opposed to waiting to match 1 of 3 colors.

steakleather

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

marshall

This makes no sense at all. He doesn't work well with other FF characters now.

His blue got worse since he depends on special tiles he can't reliably generate for damage. Also with that change we lose one of the few high level tile swapping powers in the game.

His yellow introduces an interesting new mechanic that has potential for the future, although I'd be curious where in the UI this will be displayed.

His black seems much worse since it's random. It was a great power before that made him a powerhouse solo. Isn't he supposed to be a strategist/inventor? How is that represented by a random power? These random powers do useless things most of the time: burst heal when you are mopping up the last enemy or weak tiles that don't help you turn around a match.

I get it that he maybe needed some rework with Bishop, Blue needed to be pricier, but still. Very confusing. Heaps of other characters that need reworks: Thing, Emma, Wasp 5*, Kraven's blue power, Falcon 4*...

Brigby

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!

Brigby

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.

MaxPowers

Shame about his black ability, I really like the old one. Get a cascade going, maybe throw in a few strike tiles and you have potential nuke damage.

We'll see how he synergizes with other characters, but I feel like Thing was more deserving of a rework.

UNC_Samurai

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!

I concede that, those of us who haven't seen him in testing will want to actually get a chance to play with him before passing final judgement.  But I'm not sure if "You still have this one other character in that tier that can do X", is a great selling point for removing a character's one good ability.

Kolence

Black - too costly now and does too many things at random. 
Yellow - way less health restored. Positive is it can work even when the enemy is stunned or doesn't have tile movers, but still it can be useless against some teams.
Blue - no more tile swap...  
Damage looks like it isn't capped, but again, without support from teammates (or enemy?) he'd have to rely on his black random effect for friendly tiles.

Guess we'll see how he plays in practice soon. At least, he should still work with Carnage/Medusa. Maybe slightly less healing on that team (but it was probably an overkill anyway), but now with a big nuke on blue.

I'll miss tile swapping on blue though. It worked nice for crits with 5*s or Professor X, and with Shuri's passives. Cage's yellow too.

Borstock

Yeah... I don't get it.  

Twomp_thaDJ

DarthDeVo said:

No using him against Kaecilius. Basically, back to being essentially useless. 

Forgive my ignorance.. how was he used against him???

JHawkInc

I like it. Sort of. It's different, I kinda like the kit.

But I almost feel like you could have released a 4* Valeria Richards with this kit (based on her in the current F4 run), themed all the powers names/text based on her intelligence, and then just left Reed alone. But I understand he had some busted interactions with Bishop, so I'll accept it was necessary and that the other changes were meant to even out the parts that were forced to change.

We'll start from the bottom up. I like Imaginaut. Feels like a good representation of Mr. Fantastic building some new gadget to solve whatever problem is at hand. Shame the effect is random, though (Reed would clearly choose the right gadget for the right situation, but I guess getting to pick an effect is a little too powerful, as it would bring this power more in line with Goblin's purple). Shame the bonus damage is gone, but not having to rely on other colors is nice, and not having to keep the tile alive is nice. Power is expensive, but it triggers every other turn, and it's fortified. Solid black power to run with 4* Panther/Shuri. Locking tiles is solid for helping IW. Making special tiles in general kinda buffs/augments other F4 members (either adding variety, like Reed making Protects for Human Torch, or by reinforcing what they already do, like making those Protects for Thing).

Yellow... Used to trigger when the enemy matched your tiles, now that you can make more of your own tiles... it doesn't anymore. It triggers when you match enemy tiles, which makes it more aggressive, and more targeted (you can actually choose to chase down enemy tiles to match, rather than waiting on the AI to match yours). Less healing, no bonus F4 AP (which never really worked anyway). But every 4th match you get a free friendly power? That could be rad, and sets him up to have some benefit against Medusa and Carnage and Rocket & Groot.

Blue. No swap. No protects. Keeps the stun. Gains damage, but it scales differently than others (high damage per 4 friendly tiles, where other characters always measure it per individual tile). Loses the utility, loses what made it work with Bishop, gains damage potential that can theoretically work with all other F4 members (and will work better with them than that green AP from his old yellow ever did). Imaginaut would need to fire twice (and make special tiles both times) to start doing damage at all, but with special tile users the damage could be pretty... Fantastic. Keeping the stun is nice.

Looks like the Reed vs Doom crash will be more interesting, looking forward to that.

I think I like it. It didn't really need to change, but making his black not rely on matching non-Reed colors, and removing the useless green AP generation from his yellow, neither are bad changes. He's more suited to both working in and against the special tile users we've got, and seems better suited to combo-ing with other F4 members.

Definitely need to playtest this some to get a feel for it. I think it'll be good in the long run, but it'll be a rough transition, because it's more of a lateral move to keep him useful while nerfing the Bishop thing, instead of a straight buff (like many earlier reworks were), so it means we're losing good stuff to get new good stuff, instead of losing garbage to get good stuff, you know?

babinro

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?

Its a nerf. 

The character has become very situational and even then his outcomes are left partially to chance while at the same time being slow. You could argue MrF is now stronger in a niche capacity as a counter to specific matchups....but that's faint praise when you consider that several low tier characters can make the same claim.

I'm happy to be proven wrong of course since judging characters on paper has always been rather hit or miss.