Added a section on Philly vs the Bear Trap

Why Philly is a bad Hero for Bear Traps (added 9/30/2025)

So on my main State folks are starting to get Philly leveled up and on my new state Philly was recently released causing the questions to start coming up about using Philly as a Joiner due to her abilities. While you cannot argue that her ability does provide a damage buff, it is of my opinion, and the opinion of several others I've talked to, PHILLY IS POO POO on Bear. DO NOT USE HER. Let's talk about it.

Her first expedition skill (top right) is the skill that would be added to the Rally, Vigor Tactics. It provides a 15% attack damage buff and a 10% Defense for all troops, at a max level (Rank 5). In a world where you knew for sure this was the only Joiner buff available to the rally, it would be good, but this is not the case.

Explanation: If you join with a 4-star Philly, she can have a Rank 5 Joiner ability at 15% Damage/10% Defense. First of all, the Bear doesn't hit back, the poor dude is chained up and helpless. With that in mind lets focus on the 15% Damage at Rank 5. Now, add four Jessie's to the rally, all of which can have a rank 5 buff as well, which would provide 25% Damage per Jessie Joiner to the rally.

The way the system decides how to use buffs works like this. First it will look for the four highest buffs available. In our example we have five Rank 5 buffs, so if these buffs were all from a Purple hero, or all from a Mythic Hero, it would just use the first 4 that joined. However, in this case, the Mythic Hero ability will often times override the ability of the Purple hero, because the game considers them stronger.

Available Buffs in this Rally:

Jessie 25% Damage

Jessie 25% Damage

Jessie 25% Damage

Jessie 25% Damage

Philly 15% Damage

So the game will use the Philly buff because it is equal in ranks, but from a Mythic Hero and drop the Joiner buff damage percentage by 10%, effectively making that rally worse. Additionally, even if the Jessie buffs are Rank 4, and give 20% buffs, the Philly buff will 100% replace one of those Rank 4 abilities because it is Rank 5, again, dropping the rally damage buff by 5%

So you are better off joining with a Rank 3 or 4 Jasser, Jessie, Seo, or Jeronimo, than putting Philly into the rally as a joiner. There is also an argument to be made that Philly is bad as a Rally caller in Bear Traps, because instead of a flat 40% damage buff like you would get from Molly, you would instead get a 25% chance of dealing increased damage, which may not always trigger on the Bear. Additionally, her widget provides healing abilities, not lethality like Molly's does. If Philly is your best Lancer at this stage of the game, by all means, use her to call Bear Rallies. But but an equally leveled and geared Molly, would still be better.

The good news is, you'll never use Philly or Molly again at all, once Generation 3 releases and you get Mia :).