Thanks for doing this and for the notes.
I’ll be trying him out following this. My gut feeling is that it’s still toward the low end of the power scale but I’d be happy to be wrong.
Well done on the quick turnaround with this.
Well I’ve used him and I dont what is different, if im not using him properly or I am and im not aware of what im looking at
probably down to smarter minds to settle this
I thought it was part of your job description to put a positive spin on everything?
Well all 3 of the characters survived the challenge node
It’s an interesting design, and there might be a place for him, but it’s not in the current metagame.
I tried him out in a few situations (mine is lvl469, 559 with the boost). The Rage mechanic is neat. It kind of works like The Maker’s Progress mechanic. The Maker turns Progress into lots of damage. Frankencastle turns Rage into lots of healing. In a fight against the challenge node that intentionally dragged on forever, I was seeing Frankencastle heal like 150k per turn. His damage powers are weak, so the heal is basically what he’s got.
And that’s ok! OML was the best character in the game for awhile because he had a passive heal! But the problem is the same problem that The Maker has – matches don’t ever go long enough. It’s cool that Frankencastle heals to full every turn, but it only gets up that high once you’ve dragged the fight out to like 20 turns. That’s not MPQ right now, and it hasn’t been like that for years.
I appreciate that we’ve got characters who are designed to reward longer matches, but there’s still no reason for any match to go beyond turn0 right now.
Whenever Heroics start up, then the calculation shifts a bit BUT then you’re only using Frank when he’s boosted.
I don’t know, obviously, if new toons are useable in Heroic nodes all the time or not, but in any case his new toon boost should end pretty soon.
Anyway, if you could get him to tank you might use him on a CN team during a boost week to take hits and not care too much.
There might be something obnoxious you can run with him where you put him behind a guy who jumps in front, or someone who’s a “must kill immediately” threat, but we don’t really see any of those guys right now. The bigger problem is that nobody will have much trouble oneshotting him, so a “start of turn” heal is kind of useless because he’s dead.
Another issue is the low damage. His passive damage is bad, which, like, fine, he’s healing for 100k every turn on that power. His red damage is pretty low too, though. So he’s hard to kill but I’m not sure why you’d be concerned about killing him.
Oh, also:
I didn’t mess with him before the change was made, but I think it’s fairly obvious now why the Rage mechanic worked the way it did initially. His healing is completely ridiculous – they had to put some kind of circuit breaker on there for players who don’t have the DPS to take him down from 200k or whatever in one turn. So they set it up so if you’re attacking him, you can make red/purple/green matches to reduce his healing.
As it stands, I would not want to see this guy in a heroic challenge node at lvl800 or 900. You’d almost have to bring an alternate win condition to that fight, because there’s probably no way to kill him with damage.
Oh yeah, I guess you could just infinite him with Hawkeye.
I just champed him and took him for a spin in PvP and yeah, he just heals all day long. He isn’t that great on offense though.
Ok so after his changes here are my thoughts…
He’s improved noticeably. I’m not sure how much though. I feel like there’s something there that should be exploitable that isn’t yet, offensively. Maybe later with a teammate that properly turns his healing to damage (tried viper, anti-venom, and Mephisto with clunky results).
- His biggest change is to his green passive. Pre-buff, he consumed 2 rage for each tile matched in red, purple, green by either player. Now, at lvl 5, you only lose 1 rage per match by you. This DRASTICALLY drops the rage consumption and makes manages his rage almost an afterthought. Your rage will easily break the threshold needed to get his purple passive going.
- The AOE damage by the purple passive still is barely noticeable. But at least it’s there, it’s consistent, and can be increased.
- Also even though his rage threshold (stupidly) goes up when Procter at higher levels, at lvl 3, it’s significantly smaller. To the point that obviously, this power should probably be at 3 most of the time.
- His red does good damage and nice board shake, actively and passively.
I can put him with Frankie Nova/FosThor and they work pretty well. Or Black bolt/Frankie. Do they work better than if you took out Castle and put in FosThor or another charged tile user? 
of course not. But at least now, I can find a team for him in his events and if he’s required in pve
Also… his healing is crazy good now. Because of it, he’s pretty tanky.
I tried him with Okoye & Toad, it worked pretty well. Toad is still 4* but helps as a black outlet & charge tiles for Frank to gobble up. Okoye boosting Frank & Toad’s damage chewed through the challenge node and you have Frank’s purple to stun if needed. Not meta for sure, but it was fun to play at least!
While he’s boosted, he actually works pretty well with Polaris and KK. His red has synergy with their powers and he tanks and self heals pretty well. The purple stun is a bonus.
Franken-Castle currently feels like a character whose investment and reward are out of balance.
As players, we spend several turns trying to keep him alive, generate Charged Tiles, and build Rage. In today’s PvP environment, surviving to turn 5 or 6 is already a significant challenge due to fast engines such as AP loops, passive damage teams, and burst-focused compositions.
The issue is that once Franken-Castle finally reaches a meaningful Rage level, using his abilities immediately reduces the resource that players worked so hard to build. This creates a frustrating gameplay loop where reaching his “powered-up” state often feels temporary rather than rewarding.
I do not believe Franken-Castle needs more raw damage or more health. The core issue is Rage economy.
A late-game scaling character should provide a meaningful payoff for surviving the early game. Right now, players accept all the risks of a late-game character but do not receive a sufficiently impactful reward once they get there.
My suggestion would be to reconsider how Rage is consumed:
Allow Rage to persist after using Purple.
Reduce the amount of Rage consumed instead of resetting progress.
Or create a threshold system where reaching high Rage unlocks a permanent empowered state.
The goal is not to make Franken-Castle overpowered. The goal is to make the effort of protecting him and building Rage feel worthwhile.
A character designed around surviving and scaling should make players feel powerful once they successfully reach that point. Currently, Franken-Castle often feels like he loses momentum at the exact moment he should be at his strongest.
thank you