Fantastic Four Vol.2

Introduction

The Fantastic Four update bingo card. Human Torch is cracked for PvE but there's not much to use him for outside World Boss. Reed and Sue are usable but just fine. Thing is forgotten about and just a support. Doom fans are annoying as shit. That only makes a 2x2 bingo card which doesn't work but it fits with the 4 theme.

This update was also responsible for introducing the new Multiverse Saga gamemode type (with the added controversy of Franklin being paywalled at first), as well as the Emblem system to go along with it.

• Characters

  The Fantastic

  Human Torch [The Fall of the Fantastic Four]

  Human Torch [The Fall of the Fantastic Four]

  Despite an arguable animation downgrade (the old 4th skill is dearly missed), Human Torch pretty much gets the same bump he did with the [Classic] uniform. Amazing in World Boss with great damage but limited versatility.

  He feels a lot like a Blast (and white) version of Miles: free character, elemental, pretty proc-friendly, goated for WBL, but only one ABX and 0 ABL restrictions. A good buy if you are a fan of the character or just looking for someone to push WBL with, but not too useful outside of that.

  Invisible Woman [The Fall of the Fantastic Four]

  Invisible Woman [The Fall of the Fantastic Four]

  Blast Female Human Hero is one of the most unfortunate combinations for PvE, so wisely this is a PvP-focused uniform. It also adds her to the growing list of characters with debuff removal on a Uniform Passive, making her a good choice for Otherworld Battle. It's also a general passive applying to All Allies, unlike most of the other F4 support abilities.

  Her standalone PvP performance is quite solid at Tier-4. While not Timeline material, she is good enough to contribute in an Otherworld lineup, which is clearly what she (and arguably the whole update) was designed for. You likely wouldn't build her for PvP if she didn't have the debuff passive, but it's a nice cherry on top since she does have it.

  A side-note is that she has one of the fastest charging Tier-4 skills, right up there with Jean with a full charge each rotation. Might have been huge if she were more PvE-oriented, but as it stands it's just kind of cool.

  Fantastic Four (2005)

  (This means the mediocre ones)

  Doctor Doom [God Emperor]

  Doctor Doom [God Emperor]

  A very highly-anticipated Doom uniform that is actually pretty good but not meta for anything. With the hype around this particular uniform, anything short of meta-breaking would have been a disappointment, and what we actually got was worse.

  (It should be noted that the ThanosVibes community stands behind the Netmarble decision to have this character stink. Doom fans deserve nothing.)

  While he's decent in both PvE and PvP, he's not good enough to fill a hybrid role with either a pure PvE or PvP build. Whichever way you spec into, there are better options already: he's not ABX/L meta, his skills are badly designed for a Proc CTP that would help his WBL performance, and the recent flurry of Native Tier-2 and Tier-3 PvP metas means he falls short of being a Timeline pick also. The skill animations are also underwhelming and too similar to his previous uniforms.

  Most people will likely end up with Doom as a reserve Otherworld character. Not an ideal result for a character with the same costs as Jean, who was meta for just about everything for a whole year. Doom fans will likely have to wait for Robert's take on the character and hope the MCU buff carries him a lot further.

  Mister Fantastic [The Fall of the Fantastic Four]

  Mister Fantastic [The Fall of the Fantastic Four]

  Quite similar to his rival Doom. An ok hybrid-ish uniform that would be no one's first pick in either PvE or PvP, but probably decent enough if you invested all the way into either and really like the character.

  In the PvE aspect he is nothing special - his one ABL day is covered by cheaper characters (Hulk, Doctor Octopus) and he's not a clear step above the other middling WBL Combat Heroes like Moon Knight and Black Panther. He does have the benefit of Thing's support and could do some tag play with Human Torch in certain restrictions, but not noteworthy.

  In PvP he'd be one of the main dealers of the Fantastic Four Otherworld team that this update desperately wants you to build, but requires Franklin's Artifact for any real longevity. Certain accounts might be able to do decently well in Timeline, but that would be the minority. Ultimately the main reason to Tier-4 Reed would be to place him in the Otherworld team, which is obviously not ideal for a Native Tier-2.

  The Thing [The Fall of the Fantastic Four]

  The Thing [The Fall of the Fantastic Four]

  There's not much to say here. The animations are actually really nice, but without a Tier-4 you'd not be using them much. His support passives from the [Classic] uniform have been increased with some decent new buffs to HP and Attack coming from the uniform passive.

  Could pair pretty well with a PvE Mister Fantastic as they match in the 4 main tags (Combat Hero Human Male) or Human Torch's 3 tags (Hero Human Male). And obviously on the PvP side he could slot in to a full-F4 Otherworld team.

  Franklin Richards

  Franklin Richards

  Just from a visual standpoint Franklin does not live up to the lore: Molecule Man set the blueprint many years ago and Franklin has thoroughly disappointed with very unspectacular animations.

  On his own there's not much to expect from a Lv.70 - he essentially exists to carry his Artifact which provides the extremely useful Immortality effect to all Fantastic Four teammates. However the duration of Immortality ranges betwee 1-4 seconds depending on Artifact rank, significantly lower than the single-character ones. This makes it all the more crucial that you get a high ranking one.

  As most of the F4 characters (except Invisible Woman) would likely never be banned, it's a formidable lineup but obviously extremely costly as you'd have to buy Franklin, get his Artifact, and probably have at least one of Reed and Sue Tier-4.

  The costs of the character also can't be ignored. The Multiverse pack is definitely worth it for late-game accounts for the extra Emblem mats, but at almost Epic Quest Deluxe Pack pricing, unlocking a character that is fairly useless without an Artifact is not ideal. Having a 4-Star Artifact drop as part of the first clear rewards would have made it an easier pill to swallow but that was not the case.

  Useful if you are in the intersection of people who really love Otherworld Battle and really love the Fantastic Four, but way too much of an investment for his own support viability, let alone the total cost of building the F4 Otherworld team around him.

  Valeria Richards

  Valeria Richards

  Kind of thrown in there with Franklin, less powerful than him and with less impactful support. Both children require an Artifact for the support to be any good as well. She'd probably be the one of the 6 Fantastic Four characters to be left out of the F4 Otherworld team.

  Her leadership is mostly void as it's not that impressive in general and doesn't apply in Otherworld. Her Artifact support is very good at high ranks, but strangely leans PvE. Might have a place in a World Boss team if you luck into the Artifact, but probably not worth going out of your way to select.

  Despite all this, she's a farmable and free character which is always helpful for new players, even if just a Shadowland clear.

  Fant4stic (2015)

  (The shit one)

  Victorious [Emperor Guarder]

  Victorious [Emperor Guarder]

  Not too sure why they bothered as this uniform is lame in every way. Not that skills really matter for a character stuck at Tier-3, but they are horribly uninspired and flow very poorly.

  Her main use is obviously a support for Doom (unless the restriction is for Males), but with Doom himself not being meta for anything it's a hard sell. The leadership is also not amazing, providing total 100% attack for Doom but no damage buffs - even the support Artifact she has is just more attack. Quite sad for a dedicated support especially when someone like Ronan exists (50% Attack lead, 40% Damage passive, similar support Artifact) and can support all Universals.

  Also worth noting is how useless her support is in PvP, which is where most players would be using Doom. Her and Doom are not good enough of a pair to use 2 out of 3 Timeline slots on, which just leaves Otherworld (where leads do not work period) and Alliance Conquest (which speaks for itself). Just awful and it wouldn't really have hurt to make her support passives much better than they are.

  The greyscale portrait makes it looks like the character is unavailable in the character select screen and she might as well be.

• Multiverse Saga

  Feels like a blend of Story Mode and Epic Quests in terms of mission structure. Lots of dialogue and little missions which are cute and have some interesting mechanics, made better by the fact that you only have to do them once. The biggest pain with Story Mode is having to run through every stage all over again, so the inclusion of a boss stage at the end that you can auto-clear is much appreciated.

  However it does feel like a bit of a waste of development effort that all these unique stages were created to literally only be played once.

  Franklin Pack

  The main drama around the Franklin pack was its initial hard paywall requirement. It has now been changed so 5,200 Crystals can be used to purchase it in addition to the real-money price. Even still, the value of the pack is a subject of debate, especially factoring in Franklin's own value - or lack thereof.

  The rewards are the more interesting part, as Multiverse is the primary method of farming Emblem materials. There are also a fixed set of Emblems that can be farmed in the paid mission, so you can acquire more in addition to doubling your rate of material farming from the free boss stage.

  There's definitely a strong argument to be made for buying the pack - as more Emblems and Collections are added (and for more useful gamemodes), there will be a significant advantage given to accounts that have been farming double the materials from the start. While not a priority for newer accounts, it's something to consider for a late-game as you look towards optimising for future content.

  Future

  New stories in Multiverse Saga are said to be coming yearly, which likely implies a new large set of Emblems and Emblem Collections to come with 2 new boss missions. This should also theoretically double Emblem acquisition.

  There is not too much else to say about it - the story aspect is cute, but ends up just being another mission on the Status Board for farming the new materials.

• Emblems

  Probably the most elegant implementation of an account-buffing system yet. Most of the confusion around how it works seems to be people in disbelief that the system is as simple as it looks.

  Unlike the convoluted Card/Sword mechanics, Emblems follows a format very similar to unlocking and ranking up characters - you own the Emblem once unlocked, and use a fixed amount of materials to level and rank up. Farming the Emblem mats is RNG but once the materials are yours, you are guaranteed progression.

  The only annoying parts of the system are the uncertainties: whether new methods of farming the currently shop-only Emblems will be added, when we can expect new Emblem Collections, and whether new ways of farming Emblem data will be added outside the (stated to be) yearly Multiverse Saga additions.

  With the current three Collections benefitting World Boss (which is useful), Timeline (which is niche) and Rifts (which is pretty useless), it's also a toss-up on whether to hoard Emblem mats for more useful future Collections, or use them now to get better daily rewards. Likely no way of knowing until it happens.