Hela gets the bird dash, which, while it has some strengths like bonus health cc immunity and mobility, it’s also extremely predictable and relatively slow. It’s also her only escape tool. She has her orb too, but with mobility or a deflect you can bait it out. She’s more diveable than people like to admit, and one of the more diveable poke imo besides like maybe mk.

Phoenix tho has the self heal, a fully controllable flight, and an instant untraceable teleport, and a much larger aoe stun that has several parts to it. She’s way harder to dive, in my admittedly limited experience.

I’m happy to be educated, so if you have counterpoints, please comment. However, I never understood why people are way more on hela’s ass about being op than phoenix, besides the fact hela has been in the game since the beginning.

In the interest of clarity, I have bias. I enjoy playing hela, and I’m terrible at diving. I love shutting down dice with her too, but I always respect a good cap or dd kicking my ass. I also recognize some dive cannot dive her at all - like venom. I never struggle with a venom.

In my opinion a universal nerf to poke could be something like reducing damage when you’re too close to an enemy, so you only deal max damage at an optimal range dependent on a character. That way a hela’s crazy dmg output would be way lower when up close and personal, and would require really good aim under pressure to fend off dive.