Jean-François – 5* Fire/ Red - February 2020 HOTM (Hero of the Month)

With Clarissa on the Horizon, I seem him and her both doing equally well on defense as GM and Clarissa.

You could argue he is a more defensive GM and his defense against ice and defense down will be more useful at sustaining your heavy damage dealers. The good thing about Jean is he hits everyone while Clarissa hits 3. So you have a better chance at burning/posioning down your enemies than GM due to AI.

Did anybody else think of the Team America movie when the saw Jean-Franois? :rofl::rofl:

This my 1st and 2nd red mono



I do well in war I can go 6 for 6 on the other teams top teams 80% of time, I don’t use 2nd red all the time as my 2nd yellow and 2nd purple are very strong teams also I have 35 80’s

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Hay everyone who think JF need buff , please help me to vote.
I want he have initial damage like Vella do, this is make him not to OP but make him more desirable HOTM to give ring to work.
Thx

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Help you vote where?

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@Mr.Spock, here… Buff Jean-Francois (Feb 2020 Hotm)

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Voted :+1:t2:

20 buffs to the Frenchman

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Me too :v: :raised_hand_with_fingers_splayed:

20 votes

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Been a few weeks since I play with my Jean-Francois throughout various War and Raids… and also against him (mostly as a flank)… I can safely say that JF is not a threat at all.

In most of enemy’s team… Jean-Francois usually ended up being one of the least important heroes to take out first. Even compared with Lianna or Magni, I usually prioritize killing them first before JF. I personally never found JF to be problematic or scary.

In terms of having him in my team though, after countless raids, he has officially lost his place to Mitsuko / Guardian Falcon in Raids.

I usually run mono in Raids… with my Red Mono team being Wilbur +20, Boldtusk +15, Jean-Francois +5, Mitsuko (unemblemed) or Guardian Falcon +15 and Marjana +7 .

  1. Jean-Francois’ damage is too … moderate for my liking. It is a different story with Vela because Vela has that initial hit (Vela is now my main Blue heroes no matter the situation except tank).

  2. In a fast moving Raid battle, he contributes very little. The usual SOP involves casting Wilbur first for his Defense Down followed by Boldtusk for his Attack Up buff. This will be followed by Guardian Falcon (if he is present) and then Mitsuko and Marjana. I used to put Jean-Francois in Guardian Falcon’s position, I lose out on the amazing Elemental Defense Down but in return I have a Fire DoT on all 5 heroes. Sometimes I swap out Mitsuko for Jean-Francois (but I often find this to be very less efficient because JF and GF is never a good team… Jean didn’t benefit from Guardian Falcon’s Elemental Defense Down.

This is the situation where I really hope I have Gravemaker. With Gravemaker I can easily swap Mitsuko out… and GM always benefit from the Fire Elemental Defense Down + he has his amazing DoT albeit only to three heroes (which is fine!!)

If Jean-Francois is present with his old Special stats… he will be able to fit in despite not benefiting from Guardian Falcon’s Special simply because of the sheer damage he will inflict. But as of now he is very subpar.

  1. The only time I find Jean-Francois to be useful is against the majority of Season 3 Hard boss. I usually brought along Proteus and Vela… together the three of them always cast THREE DIFFERENT DoT that is very damaging towards the enemy (usually the other two slots are occupied by Kingston / Lianna and Lady of the Lake / Costumed Rigard… depends on the situation).

I didn’t bring Jean-Francois in the recent Pirates event because I can’t bring Proteus along to get the THREE different DoT going… so I decided to fit my team with direct damage dealers aka snipers + Miki + LotL instead.

  1. His other special… the defense convert to defense up special. I personally think this is useless. I think the times where this effect was triggered can be counted in one hand… to be precise… about four times. And all four was triggered by Athena if I’m not mistaken. Kunchen never triggered this effect (as he usually casts before I can cast my JF). As for Grimm, Tibertus and Gormek… we can hardly see these three in Diamond so nope.

In Summary… I personally regretted giving him my Mystic Rings. If only I could rewind the time back… I would definitely have the ring on Grazul instead.

A lot of people might not agree with my assessment… no fancy numbers / calculation / comparison with with THE other fire hero etc… but this is what I feel personally as player of the game.

I am going to try him in my Defense Team flanking Ursena maybe next week… and then raise Telluria and have both JF and Vela flanking her (like what most people I found in Raid are doing). Hopefully in Defense JF will not let me down.

16 Likes

Mits was also my first maxed red 5* and from the ones you have, I would ascend her first… Totally worth the rings in any scenario, imo.

Thank you for the detailed write up.

I did just give my JF rings (before reading you post, but would have anyway) ahead of GM II.

Why?
a) I defended him on the forum and feel I should put my money where my mouth is because I DO believe that he fills a role for me and I will find him useful.
b) He has an ability no other hero has that I value (defense down flip).
c) I use the avatar and love it so thought it is only fair.

I do NOT expect to use him on main raid team but I don’t use GM +10 either.
I would try him on main raid team if his DoT were extended to three turns at the same damage per turn (getting onto main raid team is not easy, 22 5* and 40+ 4* to compete with, so I make this statement as a positive endorsement of JF).

He WILL be very useful on my war teams and the defense flip should make some last flag attacks much easier. He will be very useful against any riposte and defense down enemies, mostly that applies to Kunchen tanks in wars, the occasional Boss Wolf shows up too.

As you stated, JF’s special does not benefit from the defense down heroes and his tiles are middle of the road for a 5* which makes the pairing with G Falcon and Wilbur is less appealing. That said, FEW of the red heroes have really powerful hits. Marjana is the big sniper in red and her damage is on the low end of the fast snipers.

JF does his thing on his own, he isn’t improved by many other heroes and simply makes his contribution and carries on. The burn is legit and helps knock health down to sniping range, the defense down reversal is solid. I say that from having faced him in raids, I needed to fire Kunchen to save my team and cleanse, the defense down flip certainly saved the enemy from death by tiles and/or specials. It isn’t a win button but it improves the odds for JF’s team.

I LIKE him, I don’t love him.

(Edit): I would also give Grazul rings before JF. I adore Grazul. Sadly, that is done from a “social” distance because she did not grace my team.

6 Likes

I wish I had given my rings to ZimKitty. Oh well, you don’t really know until ntil you try a heroe out. IMHO he needs more damage. He’s a far cry from GM (who I dont have but who clearly melts foes.)

Hi,
Jean-François was considered as OP but not Telluria… I don’t understand…

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Telluria was nerfed too. But in my opinion with JF they went a little far.

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That is the question. I mean, I wonder if people looked at his special and thought “look at all these things that he does, +ice defence, reverse def down, and DoT burn damage”, without considering that
all were dispellable or could be cleansed. Now he is out in the wild, we see that the +ice defence isn’t that great, the reverse def down is good depending on the circumstances which is difficult to control if you put him on the defence. The DoT burn damage is minimal and can be cleansed.

When I look back at the beta thread, all that was changed was the DoT reduction from 4 to 2 turns. Someone asked the question earlier in this thread, but I don’t think I saw an answer. Can anyone reasonably say that reducing the DoT from 4 to 2 turns changed a hero from being OP to being useless (in some people’s opinion)? Or was there some other change?

For the record I got him and have ascended him. In part because I don’t have a lot of 5* heroes.

It looks like they did minor tweaks. The problem I have with Telluria, is that collection of special abilities is usually offset by the hero having slow mana.

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Telluria
Telluria was indeed given some negative BALANCE CHANGES prior to her live-release.

The feedback on V3 of Telluria was still mixed. I personally was still of the opinion she needed further changes but ultimately SGG decided to release as is.

Jean-Francois
JF only had 2 versions in beta testing.

V1 was Fast mana, DoT to all & burn for 4 turns (same damage rate tho). Feedback was almost unanimously to apply some form of reduction in power
V2 is the version in the live game where the DoT duration was halved with all other aspects remaining the same.

The feedback on JF V2 was mixed also. Some said still OP, some said just right, the majority tho were asking for the DoT duration to be upped back to 3 turns. Ultimately SGG decided to release as is tho.

EDIT:
You’ll notice I am not using the words “Nerf” or “Buff”. The reason being is that these changes were to PRE-RELEASE heroes. Realistically we don’t know how many iterations these heroes went through before they even MADE it to Beta-Testing… These changes don’t really have an impact on the live game. A Nerf or Buff are changes made to a pre-existing part of the game; these were not as the Beta Testing is Pre-release

Realistically the general population are fortunate to even get information from Beta Testing… If beta testers didn’t share the images (like they are supposed to) & Zephyr (+other mods) didn’t make the beta-beat threads, no-one would be any-the-wiser as to any changes which were made…

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True about the beta beat. I mean based on the hero card in isolation, I would say that Jean-Francois is a fine hero. It’s just that I couldn’t understand why people were saying that he was OP and then suddenly useless when the only difference is the DoT duration.

If he was Very Fast, then I would agree he was OP, but he never was. Maybe I just don’t understand what the hype was about.

3 Likes

Personaly I think you have to ask yourself; how does he fits into your roster in terms of hero’s synergy? He’s unique to even compare to classic vanilla TC20 red 5* hero. JF standalone; probably nothing to be excited at. But having this setup Sniper - JF/GM - Telluria - Vela - Sniper is devastating (I’ve raided a couple of those).

Ultimately, how does he fits into your team really. I’m still withholding of maxing him because;

  1. I don’t have much hero that has great AoE
  2. Too many standalone sniper (Kage, Seshat, Lianna, Marjana, Magni, to a certain extent Fenrir)
  3. I’ve only got DoT hero that only does burn (Azlar and JF). Both of them seem to be overriding each other at the moment when I go mono red on offense.
  4. I wish I have Vela or Yunan then he’ll pair with them very nicely for double DoT.

I’ve also seen this combination of having Yunan, Vela, JF, Finley and BK. That’s just deadly.

I would disagree. JF shouldn’t even be on tanks. And he should take on Attack path for his emblem; simply because that’ll increase his DoT burn. I’ve met JF with 18 talents having almost 500 burn of DoT! He should swap Telly and JF.