u/DJTurtleVortex

With the launch of Season 9, it's clear that there are many bugs and issues that are being found with many characters and their new teamup, and Mr. Fantastic is no different. This post is going to detail and highlight the bugs, issues, and problems with Mr. Fantastic in the hopes that Netease can resolve them as quickly as possible and if there are any that I've missed post them in the replies below!

Bugs:

1. Inflated Form does not have it's movement speed boost. The visual effects are gone and for those used to playing in inflated mode by now, you can really feel the lack of it. I don't see anywhere in the patch notes it was removed, so I have to assume this is a bug.

2. Elasticity decays when Mr. Fantastic enters Rubber Reflexive mode. Prior to Season 9, it was a well-known thing that Mr. Fantastic can essentially pause the decay rate on his elasticity meter for the duration of his Reflexive Rubber mode. Again, Mr. Fantastic did not receive any patch notes changes, so I have reason to believe this is a bug.

3. Inflated Form grants the extra max health at the complete end of Rocket's Team-Up but at the beginning of The Thing's Team-Up. Not sure if this is intended behaviour or not, but it completely confuses and betrays expectations when I'm anticipating receiving the extra health but I die or it comes out so late.

4. Inflated Form can reach unprecedented levels of maximum health when inflating and elongating towards a target at the same time. Granted, the timing is tricky, but it is absolutely possible to achieve in a match. Not only that, but there's a chance you could lock yourself out of using any of your abilities other than your ultimate or Reflexive Rubber as well.

Issues:

I want to preface this by saying, it's no secret that Mr. Fantastic has been rated poorly and the lowest as a DPS for practically his entire time in Marvel Rivals since release for every season including season 9 now. But my goal here isn't to cry for buffs and come up with my own agenda of insane buffs. I don't want Mr. Fantastic to be "broken", I want him to be able to compete with the other Duelists in the game. He has fallen far behind on the power curve, and it's even more pronounced this season with the addition of the new team-ups.

1. The Thing's Team-Up "CLOBBERIN' RESEARCH DEPT." is dead on arrival for Mr. Fantastic players. It's been completely written off. There isn't even a niche scenario that would justify utilizing it whatsoever, the base and enhanced version. Yes, obviously the community will gravitate towards one team-up over another for all characters, some characters have two great ones, some have one great and one decent one, and some are composition and match-up dependent... But this one? Almost all Mr. Fantastic players I know and see online are telling each other and everyone else not to use this one and to use Rocket's Team-Up instead. It's never spoken as "pick the one you prefer" or "choose the one that fits your playstyle". It's consistently been, "never use this one" or "there's no reason to use this one at all".

But why? Well, one of them is that the cooldown is way too high for what little benefit or power it offers. The cooldown is 20 seconds, when you activate this team-up, it's duration is 10 seconds. In fact, this team-up feels like it belongs with the older versions with the way it has a duration and cooldown. It's reminiscent of the older Rocket Team-Up last season.

Additionally, this team-up offers less in comparison to Rocket's Team-Up, it overrides Stretch Punch, it does not generate elasticity, it does not hit cleave to hit multiple people the same way, and it pretty much has to be charged effectively use it. Also, it pushes people away, but for a brawler that's not really what you want to do? Mr. Fantastic has a set range, if he pushes people out of that range, he can no longer eliminate the enemy anymore. The only other benefit is that it grants bonus health, but it scales depending on how much damage you've dealt between 41-75. Why don't I just elongate towards the enemy, get that bonus health, and then deal damage faster using normal Stretch Punch without having to waste time sitting in front of the enemy charging a punch that will push them away from my threat zone?

The enhanced effect is even more confusing. It overrides Distended Grip changing it into a Distended Hammer, so now instead of grabbing an enemy, slowing, and then immobilizing them. I spend a full second charging this ability to be able to launch them, because otherwise all I get is a pitiful amount of bonus health, and then I can't do it again FOR 3 SECONDS?? I only have this ability for 10 seconds every 20 seconds, and I can only use it's enhanced effect twice? One second to charge, three seconds for the cooldown, that's FOUR seconds I can't use this new ability. Why does this have such a ridiculous restriction? It's essentially a charged inflated punch that I get to use every three seconds. I could do more damage with Inflated mode in half the time the duration of this ability is active.

The only measure of worth our community of Mr. Fantastic players have found is to animation cancel it towards the end of it's duration when it expires. If that's the only use case we can discover for this team-up, it's quite frankly a failed team-up.

2. We have been asking for the Rocket Team-Up "Fantastic Amplifier" to be part of Mr. Fantastic's kit before even the older one was released. Ok, imagine for a second you're playing Emma Frost and you reach full energy charge, she immediately goes diamond regardless of your intention, beyond your control, and overriding whatever it was you were doing. That would suck every time right? Or what if you were playing Dr. Strange and you reach maximum Maelstrom energy and he releases it immediately without you having any input? That's what it was like to use Mr. Fantastic's Elastic Strength passive everytime we reached 100 elasticity. As soon as we reach the maximum value, he would enter Inflated Form and undo whatever it was you were doing. Chasing an enemy that you had the range for with Stretch Punch but reached max elasticity too soon? Now, they escape. Want to stop an enemy from killing a teammate but you elongated and reached max elasticity? You get to watch them die will you enter Inflated Form.

That's not to say that the Fantastic Amplifier is a bad Team-Up. It's enhanced effect is wonderful, and the new version is better than the previous one but the fact that a team-up is what allows us to finally control out character properly is wrong and is something no other character has to suffer but Mr. Fantastic. I genuinely don't know why. With Season 9, all we've gotten is a bad team-up that's dead on arrival and actively dissuaded to be used and a team-up we've been begging for a year to be a change that Mr. Fantastic needed to be viable. Hard to be excited.

3. Mr. Fantastic's animations are too long. There's an animation to everything he does. Primary Fire, Flexible Elongation, Reflexive Rubber, Distended Grip, Inflated Form, and even his ultimate. I have lost count at the amount of times, an enemy has gotten away, the strategists heal from zero to max, I've died, etc every time I have to endure these long animations that take away control from my character. Emma Frost can enter diamond form instantly, Hulk gains immunity between forms, and so many other characters gain 'Untargetable', Bonus Health, etc. Half the time, Inflated Form's extra health doesn't garner any value because by the time I enter the dang mode I've already lost it all!

4. Brainiac Bounce is the worst ultimate in the game. That's not even hyperbole. There's so many downsides, this point alone can potentially be longer than everything I've already typed. So, I'll just make a bullet list instead.

• You have almost no control over Mr. Fantastic once he enters his ultimate. You can only control how far the ultimate goes, not how high, low, fast, slow, etc. There's a specific tempo and once the enemy figures it out, they will blow you up or they will escape. Because of that...
• This ultimate poses no threat to a team that understands it. The damage of this ultimate ramps up but A) the damage is so little and B) the rate and limit it ramps up to is negligent to be meaningful because there's damage falloff on top! Basically, in between each bounce the enemy team has so much time to react that they can dash, teleport, block, and (especially with these new teamups) a single healer can outheal the damage of this ultimate. Two healers can completely nullify it, and what's worse...
• A single shield, bubble, uneven terrain bounce, line of sight break (despite getting a hitmarker) can stop this ultimate. Why? So not only do I have no control over this ultimate, the smallest miss and it ends practically achieving nothing on it's own. Using this ultimate feels like entering a cutscene, watching my character either die or provide nothing. The only semblance of value is baiting ultimates, and while on a technicality it's a trade, the value of Mr. Fantastic's ultimate is worth so little that there's more value in it soliciting a response than achieving a reward. It's all risk and no reward.

I could go on for days, but this is unanimously the worst ultimate in the game.

This is the lion's share of issues with Mr. Fantastic. Yes, he's got even more if you can believe it but at least, if these issues are resolved in any positive way, he'll be in a better place. Fun is most certainly an aspect of playing Mr. Fantastic, and I'll never take that away from anyone that enjoys playing him too. I'm no different with the degenerate hours I've put into him as well, but quite frankly, he just doesn't measure up to the other duelists plain and simple and many people don't understand that. Which is why this next part is for the community.

Community:

Many players misunderstand Mr. Fantastic. Some believe he should be a vanguard, others say he's anti-dive, etc, etc. Mr. Fantastic is a duelist, plain and simple. His primarily goal is to deal damage and eliminate the enemy team, like all the others. But what's unique about him is that he has survivability. That's his edge. Just like how Storm can provide, movement speed boost, damage boost, and now even healing.

But just because he has survivability, it doesn't make him an off-tank. He doesn't have any damage reduction, a way to block damage for others, he doesn't have any stuns, inflict anything other than slow (like literally everybody else in the game btw). He can relieve pressure in small amounts, but he's no substitute for a full tank, he wasn't designed to be one. His tools are very singular and not as effective as others. Magneto can provide a teammate with a bubble, Mr. Fantastic can grant 75 bonus health. Devil Dino can grab an enemy and completely reposition them, Mr. Fantastic has a slow projectile grab that can barely catch anyone with half decent mobility and when he does catch them immobilizes them for one second while barely pulling them to him. The Thing is constantly immune to minor CC effects at all times, Mr. Fantastic has only three seconds or less. Dr. Strange can block 1000 damage! Mr. Fantastic has to eat that much with his face. What I'm trying to say is that Mr. Fantastic is a duelist that complements tanks, not substitutes for them.

In addition to that, he's NOT anti-dive. Flexible Elongation does not have the capacity to stop divers. It's too slow of an ability to catch the zipping Spider-man, dashing Black Panther, diving Daredevil, teleporting Magik, and untargetable/invisible Black Cat. Flexible Elongation only connects in front as well, so if they dash while Flexible Elongation si dashing as well, it can break and not be effective. Additionally, he can't earthbound, stun, trap, freeze, exile and now he can't even slow them anymore. He provides knockback only and that's great against flyers exclusively. While there is utility there in the knockback, this is not the tool that will stop dive characters. Moreover, Mr. Fantastic has a range of 15 meters, he can only engage with the divers by the time it's too late because when a diver dives into the enemy, they've already decided that this was the best moment to do so. There are plenty of other characters that are significantly more able to stop divers than Mr. Fantastic such as The Thing, Emma Frost, Namor, Moonknight, any character with a stun longer than one second, and now more than ever strategists. White Fox has charm, shields, and Fox Form, Luna has charm, Adam tether, and freeze, Invis has push, invisibility, shields, C&D have ice block, cloak form, terror cape, heal bubble, etc. You get the idea. Mr. Fantastic is great at peeling, but peeling is not anti-dive, one is a playstyle the other is a transient play.

Mr. Fantastic is one of those heroes where his efforts simply aren't shown in the scoreboard, his ability to grab final hits is low because he doesn't deal burst damage, his ultimate doesn't get hexas like the others. He is the ultimate measurement tool for teamwork because a good fantastic makes a good team better. He's so misunderstood, he just can't compete with the other duelists, and for a very long time has barely received changes throughout Year 1 and 2.

Mr. Fantastic is a brawl bully and a frontline stall machine. If you fight up close and on the objective, he can bounce between everyone, ally and enemy, and fight until he's literally and somehow always, the last one alive. In a 1v1, he can trounce any duelist with ease (except Punisher shotgun holy moly) but the community instantly labels him as anti-dive and a potential vanguard just because he has a lot of health and USED TO have the ability to slow enemies. He was "too oppressive" at being mediocre I guess, so now he's just mediocre, and in a game of superheroes and villains that's not good. That's F tier.

Netease, Zhiyong, Combat Team, I've supported this game with my time (1000s of hours from alpha until now!), I've supported this game with my wallet, I've supported so many other players who are interested in Mr. Fantastic and many other heroes. I've made guides, videos, I'm a pathfinder in the main discord! All I ask is that you in turn support my favorite hero and make Mr. Fantastic fantastic once again. Then again, I am one voice of millions I hope everyone in the replies can share what they feel about Mr. Fantastic in season 9 and overall as a character. And if I'm missing something, I have no doubt other will bring it up.

Been apart of a lot of discussions in this subreddit w/ y'all talking about this guy and I figured it's time we get together and get Netease to buff this hero. I discuss literally every point of view that's been shared in the subreddit in this video, what do y'all think?