Is Jean Grey's "Psychic Feedback" power a game-ruiner?

counterfeitfrog

So I'm a huge fan of MPQ -- I've sunk embarrassing amounts of money into it, and building up my hero deck is like crack cocaine. And I'm not the kind of guy to complain about grinding on a tough level or that a character has an overpowered move.

But I keep noticing the same thing happening any time I fight a team with Jean Grey (All New X-Men) on it, and it's beyond irritating at this point. She has a "Psychic Feedback" power that, if you make a match-5, takes the game board away from you, stuns you, gives you damage AND destroys 3 AP. Now, I'm not complaining that this power is "too powerful," because hey, the player can use the character too! But any time I'm in a fight with a Jean Grey team, because of this power, I'm usually just sitting around WATCHING the game happen for long stretches of the match. And this strikes me as really bad game design in an otherwise well-balanced product. This is a game that otherwise rewards match-5s as a core component of strategy, except with this one character, where DURING MY TURN, it's suddenly not my turn and I'm watching the enemy rattle off six moves. And this seems to happen a LOT in a Jean Grey match.

Again, I don't care that it's overpowered. But at the point where for half the run time of a three minute game I'm watching the AI play and not getting to engage or strategize because of this stupid power of Jean Grey's, it's more of a screensaver than a game. Just my humble two cents.

wirius

Jean Grey serves a very important niche as a cascade counter.

You can still match 4's, and match fives come up VERY rarely on their own. If you do major board shake up or color production though, you're in trouble. As such, don't use characters like that on Jean. Will it be a little slower? Yes, but that's the point of the power. I honestly think her power isn't a comment on Jean's power, its a comment on how powerful and often people rely on cascades or color generation on the board.

MarcusGraves

I'm not wild about her passive just because even if you're careful and play slow, you can still be massively punished with a loss of 2 turns by an accidental 5 match you didn't want and I think that's really just wrong.

I don't think she's worth testing your luck on unless you have a team that can quickly get rid of her or keep her under control with stuns.

Losing because of what should be a positive accident that you had no control over being turned on you just feels awful and dirty.

mpqr7

I've beaten her thousands of times in pvp, so I'm not too worried.

I do love that her power is so strong that every time I see a potential match-5, I get terrified, and I have to triple-check to make sure I'm not facing her

Also when you are facing her, and you see a match-5, you just need to be creative and match it in a way that doesn't match all five, so either just match-3 or match-4. That way the opponent can't get it either. And don't use any powers that will cause cascades or major board color changes.

TxMoose

can't imagine what you think of xpool/thing combos. jean is fairly straightforward - deny purple hard, deny green soft and don't make match-5s unless they will win you the match after the stun. sometimes i still make the match-5, take the damage and just finish the match after that. if it won't finish the match, avoid it. that's harder to do if you have to use fist or a board shaker/cacascade maker, but jean isn't that hard to deal with. i prefer facing her over iceman.