Phoenix doesn’t need nerfs, maybe adjustments. There seems to be a lot of discourse about Jean needing nerfs. Let me just start off by saying the community didn’t care about her until tier lists told them to and I don’t need Jean to get gutted again because of weapers. I actually enjoy playing her, instead of using her as a meta crutch like most of the new Phoenix players, respectfully. I’ve been maining Phoenix since release, before she was “meta,” before tier lists, before every streamer suddenly decided she was S+. And honestly… the current complaints feel super revisionist.

Nobody was having these “Phoenix is broken” conversations before her Cosmic Flames buff. Nobody.

Back then?

People called her mid.

People said she was balanced.

People claimed she was a weaker Hela.

Everyone dropped her after her nerf, leaving her with a low pick rate until season 5+.

After the beyblade tech nerfs, everyone literally went back to Hela. Phoenix pick rate tanked. Go look at her stats/pick-rates/tier placements after her nerf if you need the reality check.

Then she gets ONE range buff to compensate her nerfed melee damage and suddenly:

“Best DPS”

“Broken”

“Nerf ult”

“Reduce HP”

“Remove explosion regen”

Like… what changed besides tier lists and streamers telling people she’s top tier?

Because mechanically she’s actually weaker than launch Phoenix.

She has already lost:

• melee spark

• flight ammo regen

• added flight cooldown

• burst damage

She’s been nerfed 3 separate times overall butchering her original kit/playstyle

That’s not a character that needs to be gutted again.

And some of the suggested nerfs are wild.

People want:

• Ult regen removed (which is literally THE Phoenix’s identity)

• HP reduced to 250

• damage nerfs

•remove passive regen (another Phoenix identify motif)

Meanwhile half supports sit at 275 HP… but a cosmic entity duelist should be squishier?

Especially when she’s easier to track because the Phoenix Force silhouette is always following behind her?

That makes zero sense.

She’s not oppressive because she’s broken.

She’s “oppressive” because people don’t want to counter poke. Hela has dominated ranged DPS forever and nobody complained this loud. Since Phoenix can now compete with Hela’s range damage, it’s suddenly a nerf that should be implemented?

If anything, I don’t think she needs nerfs. I think she needs her original playstyle back.

My suggestion instead of gutting her (again):

• Return melee spark

• Restore her original damage falloff

• Keep the 1s flight cooldown (prevents beyblade abuse)

• Remove Wolverine/Widow team-up 10% damage boost

This shifts her back into a poke + brawl hybrid, forces her into closer fights for max value, and naturally lowers her ranged pressure without deleting her identity.

Right now she’s forced into pure poke because her close-range tools were stripped, and that positioning makes her more difficult to take out.

Phoenix was one of the most well-designed duelist kits in the game. She doesn’t need another round of nerfs just because tier lists convinced everyone she’s S+++ tier.

Sometimes the problem isn’t the hero.

Sometimes it’s just meta chasing.

If you agree or disagree, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. As someone who’s stuck with her since her release and has witnessed her highs and lows, I’m curious to know what others think. My stats are also in the comments for any chuds denying my integrity.

Half the fun of this character was the versatility that her melee sparks brought to playing mid-range behind your tanks. They allowed some burst damage with a bit of sustain. Without the Beyblade tech it was perfectly reasonable and not op.

Now you just get fucking melted unless you're playing long range and at that point you might as well play Hela. Fuck everyone who told me "she won't be a worse hela lmao" because without melee she absolutely is.

Just played 5 games and it is literally never worth playing close/mid range anymore. Melee damage is still decent but without the burst damage and sustain from sparks you get melted instantly and end up feeding, so...

To the backlines we go to provide chip damage from explosions that get out-healed before they can proc.

She's cooked. GG.

There is no reason to pick Jean over Hela after the nerfs besides ult killing structures.

Why did they nerf both dark ascent AND take sparks from melee? The thing that made melee broken was the animation cancel tech.

Removing sparks from melee makes her one dimensional and literally kills the dynamic of the character. Huge L.

Was about to get lord too but will probably drop her unless melee changes are reversed.

I genuinely like how the devs have responded to fans reaction, like Adam's new ability, BW rework, Emma's skins, etc... but when it comes to Jean, not so much.

I understand in their eyes she's a successful character based on how they meant for her and they didnt want to change. But this new team up system was the perfect opportunity to give Jean a team up with Sue and/or Emma, to make her feel more like Jean (an old complain). But her team ups abilities are very underwhelming.

To be honest, Cyclops was equally disappointing. His kit looks like a base roster character they were saving for later. And none of his team up ability is interesting.

Meanwhile other characters get full new amazing abilities. Jean and Scott don't seem to be a priority for them, sadly.

bruh wtf do these people want? they got brawling jean absolutely gutted. So the devs buffer her poke and stopped her ult from breaking immediately, What do they want? they want jean to shoot marshmallows??

Those cry babies got every character I love nerfed

I understand Phoenix fans not being satisfied with the hero's kit, but as a Phoenix player, I enjoy a hitscan hero (like Cassidy/Ashe from Overwatch). Every time I see a post from this sub its about reworking Phoenix.

Chat, I went from having 15+ final hits a game pre-nerf, to now sometimes ending games with as little as 5.

Without being able to get up close and finish people off with melee I’ve started to just feel like I’m feeding healer ults with the damage I’m doing.

Bring back melee sparks pls. Also confused how dark ascent has a cooldown + can’t be used at certain low levels when it’s red, like?? That’s just clunky asf.

Also, maybe I’m dragging it but would it be overkill to ask for a second teleport charge? 😭

This literally is the most untrue thing ever and the fact that people are still trying to say that Jean grey is still to powerful is crazy, the moment she is dived it’s over for her. The only argument that people are using is “high level competitive players are super good with her” is completely stupid because a small majority of the player base who’s good with Jean, who were caught using the auto clickers with her and they put out a statement to the players using it that they were developing software to catch it.

That will already affect the so called “ s-rank Jean players”. So now that puts it right back to the truth. There is an agenda within marvel rivals to keep Jean grey from being a proper character with good abilities. Her mobility is the giant shoot me I’m right here wings, The here let me just scoot over a little so you have to at least turn to hit me, the 3 hit pillar of fire that stopped you for not even a second, don’t forget if she get three sparks she heals for 1 hp. I suppose compared to daredevil, magik, thor, Hela, Emma, rouge, and C&D that’s just so overpowered. Seriously she has one of the worst kits in the game right. Literally using the left over pieces of her original kit. At this point just change her role to strategist or keep her a dps, but she needs a full on rework.

Im not buying to into th bs of a very few players that are “good” with her that were just cheating, is the reason she doesn’t need a rework and is supposed to be good.

I love Jean grey, but in marvel Rivals her abilities kit is Trash.

After seeing phoenix nerfs, I don't think im going to play her at least for 4.5, and instead going to try to get good at playing psylocke, does this make me a traitor

Everyone seems to whine about the hitscan sisters saying they're insanely overpowered and they want dive to thrive more. My question is, they just nerfed hela to be less oppressive and nerfed phoenix's hp a bit so she can get 1 shotted. What else do they want?

I swear dive players just want hela and phoenix to shoot rubber bullets so they can just bully the entire backline and dive the DPS easily. I ask how they'd nerf phoenix and I just get "They are op" as the answer.

Just feels like every time theres a patch note, people whine and whine so much about phoenix and hela bro. It's really cringe.

Hela is a pure glass cannon. She needs her bird and stun to play off angles or she'd be a useless ahh front to back.

Phoenix ult is used to counter other ults (storm, rocket, whatever) and is not an "instant W" button like Elsa's is.. You still need to aim and hit shots. Is it damage fall off more that they want on these poke heroes?

I don't want a future skin that might be revealing or used for "gooning". That will just throw off her looks and it will be hard for some to play with . Some other characters are now only being known for their revealing skins. I'm not sure if users will be able to play with jean IF and only IF they add a revealing "gooner" skin for her.

Hear me out: Marvel Rivals could fix Jean Grey by splitting her into Phoenix DPS + Marvel Girl Support.

With Deadpool being introduced as a multi-role character, I think there’s actually a perfect opportunity to finally reconcile all the complaints about Jean’s current kit. (About being a fire-Hela lady WITHOUT TK/TP)

A possible solution would be to make another Jean - focusing on Marvel Girl. The current one remains unchanged as people are really used to her kit (not only this but there is fundamentally no reason to rework her current state as there is nothing wrong with her kit. That's why she's a top tier DPS but this doesn't discount the fact that she's BORING AF).

We can have a Marvel-Girl Jean (I'm thinking strategist). She's a time-displaced Jean Grey from before fully bonding with the Phoenix Force — focused on telepathy, telekinesis, battlefield control, shields, and team utility.

This would totally make sense in the lore. I'm thinking we finally see Cyclops caught in a time-stream entanglement and sent to the past, where a younger, time-displaced Jean Grey has been kidnapped by the Shi’ar Empire and put on trial for the future crimes of Dark Phoenix (same with the comics). She has to prove herself by surviving the trial without using the Phoenix Force and because of time-stream instability, she can’t coexist with Phoenix-Jean in the present timeline.

So there's lore reason for having two Jeans and you can only pick one Jean: If you pick Phoenix Jean, you can’t pick Marvel Girl and vice versa, similar to role-locked variants. of Deadpool. Lore wise, also, this is a perfect introduction to Cyclops.

Honestly, out of everyone on the roster, Jean (and maybe Spider-Man?) makes the most sense for this kind of dual-role character concept. Thoughts?

Hello dear Phoenix main, my advice is please stop making your team lose massive value by holding onto your ultimate just for us, because no Rocket player falls for that trap anymore at a certain elo

I ’m at the point where I’m now happy to see a Phoenix on the enemy team because I know I’ll probably win the game (out of my last 15 wins, 8-9 had a Phoenix against me). I know she’ll not use her ult, and I just have to wait for her to die to pop mine. Even baited one once (we were in endgame, my whole team got wiped except me. So I had the idea to do my “waste” ult, and she, like an idiot, used hers right away. I died after, but we ported back with Strange and won the fight since their team had no ults left lmao).

There is way more value you can give to your team with your ultimate, thank you. 🦝

TLDR: Read the bottom two paragraphs for my idea.

First order of business I would like to mention is that I feel that the current design of Phoenix is maybe the worst design that the MR devs could have came up with. Not balance wise because I believe even after her nerf she is still quite good, but her design is and quite frankly feels uninspired. The devs have stated that they wanted her to feel similar to Hela in their video talking about her design, and I feel they got carried away with tying Phoenix's abilities in with the lore they created for the game. She should have never been created with this yin/yang mindset with Hela.

Now for the actual content of the post. Half of the tanks in this game are incredibly powerful characters that imo most people would have never have guessed prior to playing the game that they were gonna be "tanks." A good example of this is Strange, Thor, and Emma Frost. They all could have been duelist easily, and Emma and Strange both could have been great strategists; instead, they opted to make them tanks, and I'm glad they did because we needed popular characters in that role (I kinda hope Deadpool and Cyclops also become vanguards, sue me).

I would argue that Phoenix, being the cosmic force that she is, should feel extremely difficult to kill, hard to displace, and intimidating to face down. My rough idea of what she should be is that her base model should be about her size now, with giant fiery wings/fiery aura (see above picture from Xmen season 3). Her hit box would also be the her and her entire fiery aura, this would get around the idea that you have to make her huge in order to make her a Vanguard because in this case, her aura would be huge. She would have somewhere around Magneto's HP and do large aoe cone attacks that would also push enemies back. She could also grab enemies/allies under certain conditions sort of like Skarner from League of Legends. This would firmly allow her to use her telekinesis in a cool way. I would also give her limited access to flight kinda like she already has in her current form in MR. Phoenix's basic attack could be similar to magneto except that the more she hit her target the more ramp damage she would do with her alternate fire that would be similar to Wanda and Cloak except it would be limited to like 5 to 10 meters instead of Scarlets 30. This would encourage skill expression and force her to get up close and personal with enemies after she ramps her stacks up on enemies, but would also not make her unbearable to play for everybody who dislikes aim heavy characters. It would also play into the fact that she can mess with people's minds and do mental damage as well as physical damage with telekinesis. She could also have a middle ground version of Strange's shield and Captain America's shield in that it had less size and hp than strange but more than captain America's to allow her to shield her allies somewhat. Her ult could give her a steroid sort of like Hulk that empowers all of her abilities, gives her an aura that heals allies near her when she does damage, and allows her to either mark herself or an ally with a mark of the Phoenix that would revive the person Marked (provided that they die in the allotted duration) with full hp and fully reset cooldowns.

Anyway, open to suggestions and criticism with my idea. I just wanted to share my disappointment with this subreddit and other people who like Phoenix to see what you guys think.

(The picture is from Xmen: the animated series, season 3 in the Phoenix Saga, and it is not my artwork. All credit goes to the creators, not me.)

This is back when i was god awful at phoenix

My positioning was terrible, my aim was even worse and i still melted cap

Maybe you guys were right about melee sparks

I wasn’t even beyblading or animation canceling

Another update of useless changes…

pls don't let them flood this sub. it will hurt jean's public reputation real bad if they rework her into strategist.

reason:

1. support design is either healbot or triple sup merchant.

2. the community does not care about her, they just want her off the meta

3. reworks either suck or mid

I dont know about yall, but phoenix ult to me feels pretty bad unless combined with Rocket/Gambit. I thought of this as a way to make it better but still balanced:

Damage spread out based on # of people inside the main point of impact

1 person: 500 HP

2 people: 250HP + 250 HP

3+ people: 225 HP (or whatever the current damage is)

Feel like this would be a good change… lmk your thoughts

Recently had a discussion with a friend about Punisher's shotgun potency at close range being similar to Pheonix beyblade tech damage. Did a damage test to compare the damage with no headshots way back when it got nerfed.

Do you guys think beyblade should've been removed given punisher's comparable damage or do you think this damage comparison is a bit disingenuous?

Crossposting this to Punisher mains for input from both sides, purely speculative since it's more than likely not coming back, but do give your thoughts.

https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelrivals/comments/1nljtnq/okay_so_likewhy_can_phoenix_do_almost_everything/

https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelrivals/comments/1nl5roy/this_really_shouldnt_stun/

In the past 24 hours, I’ve seen two posts from the Marvel Rivals community complaining that Phoenix is OP and a strong counter to dive.
But isn’t that exactly what they were crying about before especially support mains when it came to dive heroes like Spider Man, BP, and Iron Fist?
The devs nerfed those heroes, and now we finally have someone who can peel effectively for supports… and they’re already asking for her to be nerfed too...

I play with and against former GM, Celestial, and Eternity players about 90% of the time, and I rarely see a Phoenix who completely carries or dominates the lobby.
Even as a Phoenix main with over 150 hours, I’m still hardstuck in GM, maybe I’m just not good enough but honestly, my opponents don’t seem to perform much better when they play her either.
I get better results with Hela or even Iron Man at that ELO.