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

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Comments

  • MarcusGraves
    MarcusGraves Posts: 495 Mover and Shaker
    -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.
  • peterdark
    peterdark Posts: 151 Tile Toppler
    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
    AardvarkPepper Posts: 239 Tile Toppler
    edited January 2019
    @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
    Chrono_Tata Posts: 719 Critical Contributor
    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
    BlackBoltRocks Posts: 1,158 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited January 2019
    @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
    DAZ0273 Posts: 9,569 Chairperson of the Boards
    -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
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,125 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited January 2019
    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
    AardvarkPepper Posts: 239 Tile Toppler
    OJSP 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.. :smile:

    Edit: if you want to see my roster (I'm just above you on the leaderboard :lol: )
    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
    RickOShay Posts: 452 Mover and Shaker
    edited January 2019
    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
    AardvarkPepper Posts: 239 Tile Toppler
    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
    MirrorKnight Posts: 72 Match Maker
    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
    Straycat Posts: 963 Critical Contributor
      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.
  • Yepyep
    Yepyep Posts: 952 Critical Contributor
    edited January 2019
    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
    AardvarkPepper Posts: 239 Tile Toppler
    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.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited January 2019
    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.