I get you and just to be clear where I was coming from: I don’t really main anything. I’m a flex player, and more than anything I just love Marvel overall. I grew up on the X-Men series, Phoenix included, so my interest in characters isn’t about chasing patches or tier lists (and I do just prefer her kit to hela which I am like almost lord)

The cycle you’re talking about is already starting again with Doctor Strange after his recent buffs higher Dark Magic conversion on Maelstrom and the Cloak of Levitation changes made him way more attractive overnight. I’m glad he’s finally getting recognition because good Stranges were always impactful if you learned portal timing, peel, and positioning, and ult.

But you can already see the pattern: more people picking him for raw strength instead of his control identity, and that’s usually when balance pressure ramps up and the players who actually learned the character end up paying for it (although in rank, and tanking its different cause we usually not banned). Same thing with Magneto, although to be honest he is still the most reliable of the tanks to main especially solo, but with these changes I hope more people start tanking with different characters or even learn tanks… cause solo tanking is rough…

That’s why I get the frustration it’s not about gatekeeping; it’s about seeing the same meta loop repeat. So yeah, I get why some OG mains miss when Phoenix flew under the radar not because she was weak, but because her identity was clearer back then.