So, after playing with a level 260 3/5/5 Mr. Fantastic (that’s the way the covers fell), I have come to learn that Imaginaut is the worst use of AP since they changed hexbolt. Maybe a 1 cover Silver Surfer Singularity. But in 4* land, only a single use Double-Double cross is worse.
Even boosted to level 335, Imaginaut only does 997 damage when you match yellow, red, or green. Unboosted it does 806. It does not even stack damage… a second Imaginaut will not increase the damage yield. If you match any other color, the CD will slip closer to 0, bringing about a quick end to any damage increases.
- Imaginaut costs 9
AP.
In order to equal the damage per AP of any of the other recent 4* release characters you pretty much need to be hitting at about 800 damage per AP. With this ability, you would need to make 9 matches of three specific colors before your tile gets destroyed in order to accomplish that. This can be sped up with the use of strike tiles.
- Imaginaut doesn’t play well with MRF’s friends
As stated, Imaginaut really needs strike tiles to get in required damage before the CD tile goes away. None of the F4 make strike tiles. Lots of them make protect tiles (MRF, Thing, IW) and Torch makes attack tiles, but none of those helps out. Then, if you do manage to find someone who makes strike tiles to pair him with, most of them are going to make strike tiles on red, yellow, or green tiles, thus forcing you to match away your own tiles in order to trigger Imaginaut.
One of the things that MRF does is heal and produce green AP when your opponent matches one of his team’s tiles. He only produces green AP if you bring in the F4 with him. Generally this is going to be Thing if you are playing a 4* MRF. Thing’s green can do a lot of damage, but it also blows up his own tiles, along with the Imaginaut tile. You want the Imaginaut tile out when collecting the green required to activate Yancy, but Yancy is very likely going to blow it right up.
- Conclusion and recommendations
Even boosted and with five covers, I find that Imaginaut will usually get in about 1-5 matches of the right color before the board loses it.
Here are a few things that can be done to fix this terrible ability:
a) Allow it to be placed on the board
Random placement of this tile leads to bad things. Allow us to Cap Shield it and put it somewhere safe. The goal of the CD was to force us to match three specific colors in order to keep the CD alive… it shouldn’t be so easily destroyed.
b) Have the CD deal damage if it is destroyed or matched by the enemy
I mean, the animation makes it look kind of like a bomb. Why not make it trigger if the enemy matches it. It fits with MRF’s yellow. If you don’t want to increase the match damage bonus, then make it deal 5,800 damage if the enemy matches it (at 270 and 5 covers). The CD tile may still be blown up or self-matched by the stupid AI on D, but at least it gives a chance of harm.
c) Increase the damage dealt
As stated, it currently takes about 9 matches of three specific colors to yield the damage per AP of other abilities. Those abilities do not require matching specific colors, they just deal a mountain of damage per AP. As it stands, for 9
AP, I’ve never dealt more than 5,000 damage. Many times I’m dealing much less. At 5 covers and level 270 Imaginaut should be doing 1900 damage per match. It is still forcing you to match three specific colors to do that damage and there is still no guarantee that you won’t lose your tile. As I stated before, even when I’m specifically trying to match those three colors when Imaginaut is active, I usually don’t get more than 3 or 5 matches of those colors before losing the tile.
Consider Hulkbuster. For 9 
AP he is doing 630 damage per AP without having to do anything else. Currently, MRF would need to make 7 matches to deal that kind of damage without losing his CD tile. If you are going to add the limitation of making the team match three specific colors and have the risk of losing the CD tile, the damage per match needs to go way up.
d) Stack damage
If you have multiple Imaginaut tiles active at the same time, they should stack damage. Otherwise there is no reason to have a second CD tile in play at the same time and the ability to use that ability should be disabled while there is another CD tile active.
e) Steal AP or some other trick
Imaginaut can be salvaged if it had another effect. Like it heals the team, or it drains AP, it steals AP, or it neutralizes enemy tiles at the start of your turn so long as it is still active. SOMETHING to make it worth your while to keep this damn tile alive.
f) lower the AP cost
The other alternative is to just make this a 6
AP ability and do nothing else to change it. At least you would be able to use it early in the match, which would help you take down other support characters while collecting the AP that you wanted. At 9
AP I feel cheated any time it gets destroyed too quickly by some random chance. At 6
AP I would be able to replace this tile much more easily and the damage per AP would actually be very close to where it should be.
Anyway, feel free to comment on this poor ability design. Maybe D3 will recognize that without a damage ability, MRF is going to be a rarely used support character. And no one will ever bother to put covers in Imaginaut, because even at its absolute best, you would need some crazy cascades (and hope that those cascades didn’t destroy your CD tile) to come close to ever being worth the 9
AP.
