I really like man-thing. He's certainly not the best mystic and not generally the best r5 option, but I had 2 mystic r5 gems anyways, so I wanted to see how good he could be.Honestly I'm surprised considering the hate he got after release. He definitely excels the most in buff heavy matchups against non-poison-immune champs, so he's not generally the best cosmic counter per se.But I've played around with him a lot now and he's for example a great counter to imiw, emma frost or mysterio. Also an incredible counter to vision aarkus, due to his armor break immunity and great nullify.I would say his dupe and a high sig level at that are rather important but not really nessecary for him. Above 50% health it increases his damage output a bit and below 50% health it increases his survivability a lot, which is more noticeable than the former due to his low block proficiency.There would be a few things I'd suggest in terms of rebalancing him. Just minor tweaks that would possibly improve him a lot and compliment his playstyle:- increase the duration of his toxic pustules by ~50%- increase his poison damage in general- inrease his fury potency and/or durationIn my opinion just one of the above tweaks would make him extremely viable, especially increasing the duration of his pustules.
Right after heavy-popping 9 pustules at 100 agitation followed by an sp3 at 98 agitation:- 9 heavy poisons at 100 agitation: 1882 per tick- sp3 poison at 98 agitation: 225Heavy attack at 100 agitation with 98 agitation sp3 fury and 9 armor breaks:- 20196 heavy crit(Almost ideal) poison damage from heavy popping 3 pustules at 100 agitation with 98 agitation sp3 fury:- 3 heavy poisons: 868 per tickJust to have some numbers on his damage output. It's not out of his world, but considering his utility (bleed and armor break immunity, armor breaks, amazing nullify, poison/heal-reduction) I'd say it's pretty solid.However, I do still think a minor tweak to either his debuff duration/potency or to his pustules duration would go a long way.