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Overview
The main goals for the review of Jean Grey are:
1. Make her ultimate more impactful, regardless of build (TK, Tele, Pheonix should all benefit from the ultimate).
2. Make Pheonix tree slightly more powerful and fun.
3. Either remove auras or make them much stronger, with thought behind, "Which aura should I use in which situation". Note that we are getting more hotbar slots soon, so aura abilities will be more viable for all heroes.
4. Give Jean additional options in boss fights.
5. Make her animations, audio and visuals as compelling and fun as possible.
6. Ensure she gets the right abilities at the right levels.
7. Upgrade her mobility a little (particularly when out of Pheonix Form)
With that being said, here's the current thinking:
Ultimate (Dark Phoenix Wrath)
- Jean's ultimate feels too close to Phoenix Transformation, so we would move it to the Phoenix Tree as a level 29 ability that everyone just gets. It would be replaced with an ultimate that supports all builds.
- Dark Phoenix Wrath would also gain an anti-boss bonus. When in Dark Phoenix form, her basic attacks would gain bonus damage equal to a small % of targets current health, giving her some additional anti-boss options.
- We would give a visual update to this form, so it looks noticeably different from her basic Transformation form.
New Ultimate! "Omega Level"
- "Jean Grey gains +100% bonus mental, energy and physical damage and +100% defense for 10 seconds".
- Leveling the ultimate would increase the duration and reduce the cooldown.
- The goal for the new ultimate is to boost Jean's abilities, regardless of build. Something simple but strong.
Telekinesis Tree - This tree would get a few small upgrades, but is the least affected.
Psychic Hammer - Gains a small chance to stun, scaling for points in the power. This ability can then be used as an interrupt. We will be adding more enemies in the game that can be interrupted at the right time for a big gain.
Mental Focus - The curve on power level would be smoothed out a bit, rewarding players who spend more points in the power and giving higher total power with more points. Would also give a very small amount of critical hit chance with each level.
Kinetic Tempest - Animation cast speed would be increased so it activates immediately. It would unlock at level 11, when new players would start to gain use from it.
TK Flight - Curve of power would be smoothed out to reward players would want to invest more into it. (We are doing this across all heroes, in general).
Telepathy Tree - This tree would have some significant changes.
Telepathic Detection - The power curve of this ability would be smoothed out to reward players who spend more points on it.
Psychic Tempest - We would increase the attack speed of confused enemies significantly while they are confused so they kill each other quicker. We will also reduce the level at which you get this ability. We would also buff the confuse duration so it's more viable. This may still be too weak compared to just killing the enemies (but maybe more fun), so we would continue to monitor it.
Neural Panic - When the boss fearlock issue gets fixed for this ability, it will become fairly useless. You don't really want to fear enemies out of your AOEs, so we would change the "fear" it to a cower style ability that keeps enemies in place, making it easier to kill them, regardless of the abilities you want to use on them.
Auras (Overall) - None of the auras are very compelling currently, so we will buff them all, making Jean Grey a very desirable hero to group with. Note that new hotbar slots will mean players can keep all 3 hotkeyed and trade between them based on their needs.
Reinforcing Aura - This aura would gain all of the combined abilities from bolstering aura, making it the mega defensive aura and a very powerful PVP aura and boss fight aura. The scaling would be increased greatly to reward players who want to focus points into the power.
Rejuvenating Aura - This would become the new low-level aura because it now provides a much-needed move speed boost. It would also gain a small health regen aura and the existing spirit regen aura would be increased. This will become an extremely desirable aura for many areas of the game.
Bolstering Aura - This aura would be redesigned to add a small amount of crit chance and crit damage for you and your allies. This synergizes well with some of the new mechanics in the Phoenix tree.
Phoenix Tree - The goal for this tree is to make the Pheonix build a top-tier build for Jean Grey.
Flying vs Hovering - We would make Pheonix form actually fly instead of hover. This would obviously be huge for movement.
Phoenix Avatar - As a big buff to this ability: You would also gain Phoenix Force when you land a critical hit. This synergizes well with several other buffs planned to Jean Grey and provides more build options. Not to mention the higher uptime of Phoenix form.
Phoenix Charge - The damage of this ability would scale much higher (probably double current) to provide another damage option for players. It could still be a "one point wonder" or a damage source, depending on your playstyle.
Phoenix Corona - This ability would be buffed significantly. It would provide a crit chance while active and have the cost of absorbing damage cut in half. It would also be smoothed out to scale better with points in the power.
Phoenix Tempest - Cost to maintain this form would be reduced by 1/3 to start with.
Phoenix Rebirth - The scaling of all aspects of this ability would be increased to make this an option for players would want to select it. Players would also receive a very short invulnerability buff when they respawn after death.
Audio - We would cut the "moan"-like sounds and references to Scott.
Bugs - We are working on cleaning up transformation and animation bugs.
