Note: As a member of the Marvel Contest of Champions Content Creator program, I was granted early access to a 5* rank 3 Sig 200 Mr. Fantastic for the purposes of this review. I do not get to keep this champion and he will be removed from my account shortly after this review goes live.

Thanks for checking out my first champion review. If you’ve been following my champion guide series, this will follow somewhat the same format, but will include more general observation as I don’t have as much experience playing the champion.

View Champion on Auntm.ai

Key Information/First Impressions:
Reed Richards, the final member of the Fantastic Four, has finally joined the Contest. While not a heavy hitter, he does have some utility uses, and may become another Nick Fury or Heimdall that you want on your team even if you aren’t playing him. He’ll be a key synergy piece for anyone already playing one of the other Fantastic Four members, as well as other champions like Void, Darkhawk, Wasp, and others that benefit from having debuffs on the opponent (credit to Kam & Pandaman Pete for this last observation).

Reed Richard relies on placing multiple debuffs on the opponent. He does this through both his special attacks and his pre-fight abilities. He has elements of both a single-fight and multi-fight ramp-up champion.

Persistent Charges/Pre-Fight Abilities
Using his Persistent Charges, Reed can activate up to three pre-fight abilities that will place debuffs on the opponent. These debuffs are Petrify, Suppress and Siphon, and will help Reed control the enemy’s power gain, regen and offensive debuffs while damaging the opponent via the FF synergy. What is new about Reed is that you can activate his pre-fight abilities, take another champion into the quest, and the abilities will still be active!

Reed starts the quest with 2 Persistent Charges, and can store up to 5.

Pre-fight debuffs are refreshed via the SP2 and heavy attack.

Careful Study
This is similar to an awakened Sentinel’s Analysis Charge, but works in a different way. Basically, you want the opponent to keep throwing the same special attack so you can build-up Careful Study debuffs on themselves, which will reduce the opponent’s special attack. After three Careful Study debuffs are applied, it converts to a passive for the rest of the fight, and the next 5 fights the opponent is in. Careful Study debuffs count as 3 debuffs for Reed’s other abilities, so they are quite valuable for increasing his damage.

Signature Ability:
Reed’s signature ability has two parts. The first is a chance to evade an unblockable hit, and the second is an increase to his damage based on placing Careful Study passives on the opponent. Both of these abilities seem nice to have but not Star-Lord/Aegon level important to have. However, Reed is now the highest prestige 5* science champion and #9 overall for 5* champions, so we’ll probably see some Sig 200 Mr. Fantastics for that reason alone.

Team Building/Key Synergies:
Reed has a lot of synergies. If you’re fighting with Reed, Invisible Woman is pretty much a must-have as she makes his debuffs last 25% longer, which is critical to his damage. She also grants the FF synergy (as do Thing and Human Torch), which cause the opponent to take 4% of Reed’s current attack rating as direct damage per second.

Thing grants all Fantastic Four members a fury buff on the last hit of their SP2, and as this is likely the special you’re going to spam with Reed, it’s another important synergy.

There is another synergy called Shared Knowledge – Robotics with She-Hulk, Sentry, Doctor Octopus and Vulture that allows all Tech and Science Champions to place an indefinite power sting that can stack up to 3 times on the opponent.

For testing purposes I was running the full Fantastic Four with She-Hulk. Reed also has a self-synergy that I was unable to test.

Mastery Setup:
As Reed has no immunities and needs to spam specials to keep his debuffs and damage up, he doesn’t appear to be suicide-friendly. As a debuff heavy champion, despair will likely be a useful mastery to have active, and there could be some interesting interactions with inequity and resonate as well, but I didn’t have those unlocked to test.

Alliance War Defense:
As a champion with a build in evade, Reed is going to have at least some utility on alliance war defense, but his specials are very easy to dodge, and anyone with true strike should take him down easily. Be careful with champions that have unblockable attacks, as a duped Reed has an extra chance to evade these attacks.

Special Attacks:
The SP1 places taunt and stagger debuffs on the defender, making it the utility special attack for Reed. This attack has obvious benefits vs power gain/All-Or-Nothing nodes and buff heavy champions.

The SP2 is the special to rely on to build up Reed’s damage, because it not only refreshes the pre-fight debuffs, it will copy them up to three times. It also places a 5-second shock debuff on the opponent.

The SP3 gives Reed a passive 20-second fury if the opponent has a debuff on them, and the attack bonus is increased for each debuff. This would be useful in longer fights where you have already stacked the maximum number of pre-fight debuff copies from the SP2.

Pros:
Given his reach, I found him an easy champion to intercept with. The first medium attack does feel a little slow, though.

Cool animation additions to the rest of the FF.

Through his pre-fight abilities, Reed is a different kind of power control champion than we have seen before. Instead of draining power he limits the power gain, uses Taunt debuffs to force the opponent to throw a special, and with the Robotics synergy, the Power Sting debuff punishes the defender for doing so.

Unblockable specials will be useful in certain match-ups, but do come at the cost of overall damage.

Extremely easy to keep his Persistent Charges topped off, so you can use all three every fight after the first.

Cons:
Extensive champion description and numerous abilities create a barrier to entry for even experience Summoners.

Not likely a good option for timed fights.

Feels like you are always watching the timers on the opponent, and like you’re trying to prevent the debuffs from falling off vs building more up.

Heavy attack is key to his attack rotation, and is one hit with a very short reach. Will be tricky to use in stun-immune fights.

You’re going to need to collect at least Invisible Woman, and likely Thing, Human Torch and Sentry or She-Hulk as well to really get the most of out of Reed as an attacker. This means you would be bringing a science-heavy team.

Debuff immune nodes and champions that can shrug debuffs neuter his damage potential.

If you’re bringing Reed for the cross-fight abilities, you’re going to have to play him to build the charges back up if you need to use them more than once per quest.

Pro Tips:
In general, it seems like you want to activate as many of the pre-fight abilities as you can for maximum damage. Then weave in heavy attacks to refresh the debuffs as you build up to an SP2 to copy them.

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-Dano357