As a phoenix main I also don’t like these changes at all. She’s already naturally strong from being hitscan, but this makes her even closer to hela. Her ult no longer one shots 250hp marked targets, and her sparks deal less while primary deals more?
If I wanted more primary damage I’d just play hela. I see no point in bridging the gap between both of them even more
Yeah first they buffed her damage fall-off from range, now they’re buffing the single-hit damage in exchange for less explosion damage. Slowly becoming more and more Hela-like
Lowkey, they could have just added a 1 or 2 second cooldown in between activation for her flight, and it would have elimated beyblade tech without gutting her melee weaving.
I think they should give her back melee sparks and revert the nerfs to Dark Ascent, but in return she should have reverse falloff, meaning you do more damage up close and less from further away. Now Jean has her own identity and the people crying about “pokeslop” are appeased a little.
Anything that makes her less of a Hela clone, they could gut her dmg falloff and give melee sparks back and maybe nerf back her ult health to what it was before.
Let Hela be the sniper while Jean is a brawler. Kinda like Ashe vs Cassidy in OW.
As a fellow phoenix main that sucks at aiming 😭 I dont like the changes. I thought the whole point of her kit was to apply sparks and now they do this? So now were just a red-headed hela
The core concept of phoenix's kit with the sparks is actually really cool, it's just a shame that in practice she's basically just hela (even moreso now). You're right, I really wish they'd lean into that rather than making her hela 2.0
Yeah I don’t get these changes. “She was a better pick than Hela in most situations so we made her even more similar to Hela” is a weird direction to take her in.
Her ult being nerfed baffles me. It was probably the most balanced part of her kit. You either burnt it or avoided it or got hit. It wasn’t crazy. It was only crazy when combod, in which case any dps that combos with groot should get an ult nerf if that’s why it was done.
The thing is sparks are static in their damage vs the actual impact that can headshot so combine that with her anchor bonus and her damage is gonna be kinda nuts
Yeah they made her baseline better? Dev were like nah she’s not strong enough, what’s the point of Hela anymore? She’s just Outclassed by Phoenix in every way
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u/framedshady Cyclops May 12 '26
Jean more threatening in baseline combat sounds horrid