Elsa’s obviously really strong and has a solid matchup into literally every hero, but here’s my subjective list on who I have trouble with/have an easier time with personally

(Plus a photo dump because why not)

1. The “Problem”

If you’re like me, when you initially saw the character reveal for Jean in rivals, you were probably disappointed. “Where’s the TK? Where’s the telepathy? Where’s the pink?” The disappointment carried over into gameplay, where her design was very one note and not like what we had imagined for Jean at all. But why is that? What could have Netease done different? Could they have done anything different? Let’s discuss that here! o(^▽^)o

2. The Good, The Bad, and… The Fire Lady is Right Behind Me, Isn’t She?

First, let’s talk about what Jean’s design in game does well, on a purely mechanical/aesthetic level, and also on a narrative level. This won’t be exhaustive, just some off the top thoughts

-Spark explosions are drugs, and it’s because of the sounds they make. Netease does a great job of this for all their characters, but the sound design in Jean’s kit especially is incredibly satisfying. From the sound of stacking multiple spark explosions, to the sound of her flight and the distortion that comes from Crystal Lee’s voice when she ults, that aspect of her design is incredibly good at conveying that hero fantasy.

-Kit design as good storytelling. While I am firmly in the camp of “Jean’s powers in this game should not be this” and that she should someday be reworked, what I must make VERY clear is that, as a creative myself, I respect the hell out of Netease for taking her in a very bold direction narratively, and while the kit design isn’t bold, it informs the story they were trying to tell. The lore pages and story about season 3 were very good, and as a design, making her a foil to Hela absolutely makes sense for the story and in a vacuum is very well done.

Unfortunately the big positives are few, and the complaints I have as Jean Grey’s biggest fan (yes, the title is mine, you may fight me for it. You will lose. /j)are many, but I’ll try to keep it to my biggest gripes and griefs.

-“Where’s the….?” Jean Grey is missing a lot. Telepathy, Telekinesis, pink visuals in her design, all of these things that make the hero who she is on a strict mechanical level are gone and it leaves a big hole. Where’s the hero fantasy? Why can’t I pick up a piece of the destructible environment and throw it at someone? Why can’t I read someone’s mind and know if their most important cooldown is up? And again, why am I not pink? I’m going to try to answer this from Netease’s POV in a later section, but at least these were my initial thoughts and impressions.

-Base Design… so close to being good. To be clear, I really like the outfit of her base design for the most part. The stained glass motif is busy, but striking and pleasant in my opinion. The biggest pain point to me is the Phoenix Force next to her. The look itself is very plasticy and static, her movements are so subtle and unnoticeable she’s basically just a visual obscurant, and she’s just straight up boring to look at. If we want to make consistent and striking designs, why can’t the Phoenix Force also be shattered like stained glass?

-Characterization in game. As I said before, the narrative writing in the lore sections are actually quite good, the creative team for Rivals definitely punch higher than their weight a lot more than people give credit for. However in game… the same can’t be said. Jean has pretty one-note dialogue, not super flavorful, and ultimately doesn’t read as the wonderfully layered and complex Jean that we know and love. Again, a later section will try to explain why that is, but it is a bit of a pain point.

3. Rework Ideas!

First of all, I don’t think Jean needs a rework right this second. In my opinion Wanda, Ororo, and T’Challa are in far more desperate need of reworks than Jean at the current moment, but for fun I’ll talk about one rework idea I found interesting to discuss.

There have been many really fun ideas thrown around about how Jean could look with a different kit design, and the most compelling one I saw from a user a while back is to make her multi role.

Jean as a hero (and a villain) live in a constant state of duality. She’s infinitely kind, compassionate and empathetic. She’s a pacifist with a heart of gold and is THE HERO that’s saves the day, having the ability to heal hearts bodies and minds, all that good stuff. But as comic readers might already know, she’s also a fucking ASSHOLE. Because at the end of the day, her kindness really is a mask to hide how exhausted she is at how she’s burdened with playing the role of Mother, Protector, unending unalloyed good. She’s impulsive under stress, has a massive superiority complex, she’s violent and mean and a bully and that has lead to her being the biggest capital V Villain the xmen had seen during the Dark Phoenix saga in the 80s.

All this to say, the multiple roles rework idea (or one role, multiple form) is super cool! Jean Grey the kind and supportive hero, and Jeannie the Meanie when imbued with the power of the Phoenix Force. I think it could work similarly to Deadpool, because jean’s powers are fundamentally quite similar, but with healing and utility in one form and damage and heat with another, it’s a good idea… but could Netease ever pull something like that off?

4. Why Netease Got it Wrong, and Couldn’t Possibly Get it Right.

When designing a hero shooter, you need to make each hero unique and stand out in their own special way. How Netease decided to do this was to pick each heroes one “thing” and really turn it up to the max (paired with common hero shooter design tropes) with implied complexity underneath with comic history and lore pages.

This is evident in both kit design and also their characterization. We always make jokes about how Magneto always talks about how good he is bending metal, Psylocke is “always” talking about how everyone is a yokai and how different stuff is here compared to the world she’s currently in, and it works because that is the intention behind the design from Netease. There have been definitely misses for sure, Moon Knight and Black Cat as two notable ones, and also Jean Grey. But how could they possibly get her right.

As I mentioned previously, Jean is immensely complex as a character and as a hero, existing in constant state of duality. She’s kind and compassionate, but it’s a mask hiding a lot of complicated negative feelings. She has saved planets from being sealed by black holes, helped people escape their PTSD, and has also committed a genocide and has done all these bad things as a true villain. Taking someone this multifaceted and complicated and attempting to distill her into just one thing is an insane thing to ask of a development team, and while I don’t think Netease did a good job of making her the ultimate telepathic hero fantasy and a reflection of my favorite comics character, I can empathize with them, as this is a near impossible task to pull off.

Everything from trying to encapsulate all that Jean is in a few short lines of dialogue per interaction, to the engineering difficulties that must come from having a character intentionally move destructible parts of the environment, or how to design Jean’s telepathy in an interesting way, it’s all a lot and I give the team a lot of grace.

5. Conclusion

While I’m ultimately disappointed with how Jean turned out in game, I can understand that making one of the strongest Marvel characters ever make sense in a 6v6 team game is not an easy thing to do, nor is it easy to please comic fans. We are a lot sometimes (T ^ T)

This is purely wishful thinking and shouldn’t be taken seriously (unless…?) but think about it!

Staging on an angle, getting ready to go in with our rogue, then BOOM! drop the stun, pop the upgraded teamup, shoot and melee a couple times and the backline is dead!

instead we got crappy little pew pew fire crackers and a D tier jojo stand to lightly slap our enemies….

im still playing her tho, all jokes aside. She’s worse than she was in 8.5, but player positioning is so terrible it doesn’t matter!

To elaborate on the title, i think that the reason White Fox is my favorite support (besides Luna) is that she doesn’t fit into every team comp, and she doesn’t fight well against every team comp as well.

She has a focused design with strong and impactful cooldowns that can enable plays or save her team, and an ultimate that is aggressive and *also* has strong counterplay options as well. This is, imo, how all of the supports should be designed! It’s okay that her primary healing is worse, because it was never good to begin with, and if you are shooting down main and only using your cooldowns defensively, or worse, not at all, why not just play Invisible Woman?

Now I don’t want to even attempt to talk overall balance, but with the strong teamups they got and the introduction of regeneration shields, I think dive is going to be incredibly strong this season. The fact that dive is good makes white fox better, because White Fox’s niche is isolating squishies, killing them with help from a fellow diver, and teleporting away after you’ve done your job. Just look at our teamup options. The developers are begging us to take angles, develop map control, time your engage with teammates and help them with a 6 second stun, instant TP shield, and passive healing with a displacement CC. It’s the most fun way to play her, and I think we at least should figure that out before we doom and gloom about how “bad she is”

Hello there new lovers of “that kick”, Geezers and Glartrox Releasers! I want to make this quick mini guide for anyone who wants to make Elsa their new main for season 9 and as a thread for other Elsa mains to spread some knowledge or share theories on best strategies for season 9.

Team ups- For lovers of the old Elsa playstyle where hyper movement was your favorite thing to do, the Deadpool team up where you get four passive stacks to reduce the cd of your helix advance will be your best bet. However i think the addition of having two traps (and a damage bonus) when you have a Devil Dinosaur on your team can be really useful in niche situations where you have to play a more to control the map/counter an enemy dive hit.

General Playstyle- As a hitscan, Elsa is among the more valuable targets for the enemies to try to eliminate early on in a fight, outside of the supports which are the most valuable. Because of this, it’s the most important thing to prioritize living until you’re able to farm your passive stacks. Playing slow, using cooldowns with intention (like not dashing out in the open with no way back to cover without walking), and following up with your frontline’s aggression. Once you *have* that passive built, you’re free to play a lot more aggressive, taking steeper angles and make plays if you so choose. Elsa is versatile enough that she can leave her most desired lane (which is main) and take angles and control the map with ease.

AVOID “combo content”- I see a lot of content online (usually short-form, fitting) that goes over “the best 650 Elsa Combos to delete tanks” or something like this. The videos almost always involve really in depth explainers on how to execute this high apm melee weaving super complicated stuff, and when they go to show an example in game it involves them absolutely inting their brains out in a gold game to get one kill on a squirrel girl (barely) only to die immediately after.

Now don’t get me wrong, Elsa has a lot of really great burst potential, especially against higher hp targets. And it is absolutely worth learning the basic ability flow and SOME of the more complicated stuff after you get the fundamentals down. But avoid letting this potential of insane damage get in the way of playing smartly and using your abilities with intention. Elsa is still hitscan, and is still very much a squishy, if you get caught out trying to do something stupid, you can only blame yourself.

Movement- Elsa’s Ruthless pursuit, her E on pc, is my personal favorite ability that’s in her kit, because there is so much you can do with it. I’ll go over some ways beginner’s should use it, and as you get more experience and watch great Elsas play you’ll learn even more fun ways to use it.

-Anti dive, the most basic way is to use your kick to hit an enemy into the air and disrupt an enemy making an engagement

-B-hopping, you make an engagement yourself, do damage then follow up to carry your momentum to b-hop away (easiest when you remap your jump to scroll wheel)

-Vertical mobility, using the dash upward and the follow up downwards lets you get 20ish meters in the air, this gives you a free angle to shoot from and also lets you get to high grounds easier

Glartrox- Elsa’s ult is extremely powerful in a lot of spots, and lets you utilize your ability knowledge in a really fun way. Here are some quick tips for using it:

-environmental kills are nice, but don’t put yourself out of position to fish for kills. Often, putting the enemies into your team is a more reliable way to get one or two fight winning picks

-always have your ruthless pursuit off cooldown. If you don’t have good team follow-up, having as much burst potential on your end as possible is the best way to ensure kills. This will require you to play a little more of a divey playstyle to pull off, as if you don’t have any team follow-up, going for backline is optimal

-know how much time Glartrox has. Your ult lasts for a total of 7 seconds assuming no one shoots it, 3.5 on cast and 3.5 on return. Knowing how long you have before it ends can buy you or your team enough time to get picks elsewhere while you have one or two people CC’d.

-similar concept as the first tip, but if you’re playing against a comp that out angles you (spidey, star, angela or psy) and don’t want to swap, be okay with only getting one or two people in your ult. You won’t have four people CC’d every time anyways, one or two people is almost always enough for a fight win if you time it well.

That’s all the initial tips i have, if anyone has anything to add or if there are questions, ask away.

Happy hunting, loves!

In season 8.5, there are many characters in the “hitscan” role that I would personally put above Phoenix. Now, we all here don’t give a shit about who’s better and we play our goat anyways, but it’s undeniable that her range/sustain nerf weakened her in comparison to her mid/short range gun hero counterparts (Star, Psy, Bucky, Elsa, Scott).

Despite this, people in as far up as Celestial 1 and Eternity insist that Phoenix needs to stay a perma ban and let Elsa Bloodstone and Starlord through the ban phase, which is just insane to me.

Now considering the reasons why this is happening is an interesting study in group dynamics and how public chatter and echo chambers influences perception and opinions of certain characters. Parroting high level players, only looking at tierlists from streamers, engaging in ragebait posts are just a few reasons why this happens, but another ive noticed also has to do with short seasons.

Even at the highest level, it takes about two weeks for pro teams to figure out what the meta is for that patch. And the general playerbase is even further behind them. So in terms of balance, the populous is still thinking about Phoenix like she was in s7.5 and s8 with long range poke and high sustain. This is just not the case anymore, as we all know.

What takes on jean have yall seen recently that had you scratching your head? How has your experience been playing her this patch?

Since the start of 8.5 I’ve seen many players in my lobbies playing Cyclops. This is to be expected! Scott is a beloved character from the comics, he’s the new duelist hero, lots of people were bound to try him out and enjoy him.

However, there is a bit of a dichotomy that I’ve noticed among my fellow duelist mains that gets me wondering. Why Scott? In my opinion, Cyclops’s kit design is no more enjoyable than Phoenix, Elsa, Star, Psy or Hela, but many duelist mains from all archetypes flood to play Scott and absolutely hated playing as other hitscan characters in past seasons.

So my question is, why is that? For those cyclops mains out there, what draws you to him more than other ranged heroes? What were you playing before you added Scott to your repertoire? And what stopped you from pursuing similar heroes in past seasons?