To continue my self-inflicted project, let’s take a quick look at 5* Jean Grey and see what could be better…
5* Jean Grey (Phoenix)
Quick Recap:
Green - Phase 1: When she’s KO’d wait! After a countdown resolve she’s back with an amount of her health
Phase 2: for 9AP do AOE damage to the enemy team and a lesser amount of team damage
Purple - for 8AP Convert some tiles to Red
Passive: When you Match 5, improve friendly special tiles and reduce a couple opposing specials.
Red - For 9 AP generate Strike tiles. When you have more than 5 friendly specials, she creates enemy attack tiles
My Suggestions:Starting outside the powers, she’s weak. She should have more health overall (and maybe her resurrection %s could be adjusted for balance) AND her match damage should be so much higher, not just to be on par with other characters, but also because you want to put her in front and let her take the brunt of the damage from the AI so that she can come back and finish things (if it gets that far).
Taking her powers as a whole, she’s entirely thematic to the character and how characters with these kind of power function in-game. Psychic and fire are both represented in the game in a few characters and her powers align.
Starting with Green, I gotta say that I like it on the whole. I think I’d like to see her countdown fortified, but only because I don’t like seeing her big ability that only fires when things haven’t really gone your way get undercut easily by a simple match or cascade. Playing against her, I don’t see this as being an issue because it’s always easy to save her for last and avoid the issue completely. After being reborn, and given the potential time to get to that state, I’d like to see the damage buffed for the AOE specifically because it is balanced by the team damage. If you’re going to pay in damage to your team, you should get more for your effort. The cost is no problem, but I think the damage should be higher given all the conditions that have to be met just to get to this power.
Purple I truly have zero problem with. I think it’s costed appropriately and the passive which can activate off of it or otherwise is nice, particularly with some good teammates that provide specials for her.
Red needs some adjustments in my opinion. For one thing Jessica Jones effectively outclasses this power with her Red and JJ’s doesn’t have to be constrained by available red tiles for the strikes, not having too many friendly specials, etc. If the drawbacks are going to remain (and I think they should) the damage should be increased maybe 10-20%, just to set her apart and provide a reason to fire it over the other strong Red ~9AP powers at the 5* level. IW Cap’s Rope a Dope is capable of vastly more damage output (hitting up to two targets for more damage).
Overall: She needs a boost, but not nearly as much of one as so many other 5s. Back in the day she was a fine companion to OML. Certainly Kitty has some synergy, but it’s muted by the reality that Kitty works much better with other characters. When she was one of the few initial 5s a 3* (Switch) was basically a BFF for her… and that’s not great. I wish Gambit worked with her because then he could overwrite the enemy tiles she’d make… but nope.
Will she ever see a buff? Who knows…
But please leave a comment about what you would do to improve Jean!
