The problem I have is that it really looks to me like Jaina’s design is broken, both in terms of flavor and gameplay. What I was trying to say in my earlier post when I said that she took Ken’s slot is that most of her deck feels the same as Grave’s deck but tweaked to be more aggressive (much like how Ken started out as a “more aggressive” Ryu). Because of both that origin as a stand-in for Ken and her lore/flavor, she’s trying to be both a zoner and a rushdown character at the same time… But she isn’t really succeeding at either.
As MJ pointed out above, her innate hurts her not just in the literal sense, but also because it makes her attack option so card efficient that opponents try to throw her too rarely. They’ll mostly blodge and use fast attacks instead. In theory she should be fine with them playing Block because of high chip damage and Dodge because of Smoldering Embers, but if she wants to keep pressuring with her attacks she needs to hurt herself enough that the chip damage doesn’t keep up with the self-damage on Block unless she plays either a really slow normal or either side of her Jack (and they’re still building a hand faster than her if she plays the Jack, which is meant to be her signature card). Meanwhile the damage dealt by Smoldering Embers doesn’t really make up for getting hit with their follow-up, especially since she probably wants to buy back her attack here too.
Her Jack probably needs an overhaul more than any other part of her character, though, since it’s supposed to be her signature move (remember that her bow is featured prominently in her Yomi art and she uses arrow-based attacks as the core of her gameplay in both Codex and Fantasy Strike, the two most recent takes on her character). Let’s compare how all the characters categorized as Zoners in Fantasy Strike work in Yomi:
Grave
Lightning Cloud (J) is his main zoning tool. 2.4 speed beats or trades with most characters’ fastest normals, and if it’s blocked and does block damage it returns to hand and they don’t draw from blocking. This means that they have to either dodge or play an attack with 2.2 speed or faster if they want to beat it outright, and if they keep blocking Grave gets to prevent the opponent from building a hand any faster than him while also chipping away at their health. Also, if the opponent plays a fast attacks and Grave blocks, he gets to activate Knowing the Opponent for a chance to either accelerate his drawing or get a free Q, neither of which the opponent wants.
Geiger
Time Spiral comes in two flavors. Fast Time Spiral (J) is much like Grave’s Lightning Cloud, down to having the same speed and damage (but not block damage), whereas Slow Time Spiral (Q) is 1.0 speed slower and does 2 less damage on hit in exchange for being a Linker instead of an Ender. Importantly, where Lightning Cloud returns to Grave’s hand if it deals block damage, Time Spirals instead activate Geiger’s Time Stop innate. This shuts down any block-based innates and lets Geiger throw the opponent (still dealing block damage, which is why Time Spiral does 2 block damage instead of Lightning Cloud’s 3). Thus, Geiger doesn’t build his hand at the same speed as the opponent if his projectile meets their block, since he spends two cards minimum when he uses Time Stop, but he does more damage, removes their block card from their hand, and still prevents them from drawing from blocking. Geiger also has two ranks of projectiles instead of one and can retrieve a J or Q each time he activates Temporal Distortion, meaning that he gets up to 12 uses of his zoning tools per game. If opponents try to out-speed them and he blocks, then he gets more fuel for a huge Temporal Distortion combo later.
Argagarg
Hex of Murkwood and Bubble Shield are so important to how Arg and his opponents play that they have to come first. Because Hex keeps doing damage to the opponent every turn that Arg isn’t knocked down, Bubble Shield accelerates that damage and protects Arg if he can win combat with it, and most characters can knock down with their throws, the opponent will want to throw a lot. Because of that any reasonably fast attack is hugely valuable for Arg, since the opponent can then only KD by dodging into a KD move or playing a faster attack that combos into a KD move (and many characters don’t have the second option). I would argue that Arg’s zoning tools are primarily Flying Fish (J, which fits the standard projectile mold set by Lightning Cloud and Fast Time Spiral), Water Spirit (Q, a slightly faster and stronger Flying Fish when combat-revealed), and 2-attack (has normal draw and the same speed as Flying Fish, but the lowest damage of the three on hit). If the opponent blocks or dodges the best of these to play is probably 2-attack because of how little damage it would have done if it hit and because you still draw if they blocked. That said, Arg doesn’t like running any of them into a block or dodge, but that’s fine because of how good Hex and Bubble Shield are. If you go Bubble Shield against their block, Arg gets free damage. Bubble Shield against dodge is even better, since they lose the dodge that could have let them knock Arg down. They can’t just throw all the time, since you’ve got all those zoning options, but Arg likes going block/blodge, and if he mixes in a few throws he can make them more likely to play the fast attacks that his Bubble Shield beats. He’s the only one who can’t keep or recur his zoning tools when he plays them, but he can still use more than just those 12 cards over the course of the game (again, any attack is useful to keep them from throwing Bubble Shield).
Jaina
With all of the above in mind, Jaina’s J has problems. Flame Arrow is the side that’s most similar to the other three characters’ Js, but it’s at 2.6 speed instead of the other three’s 2.4 speed… Already bad, since that means every attack at 2.4 speed beats her J cleanly instead of trading with it, meaning that she needs to use other cards more to compensate. Grave and Geiger both deny their opponents the chance to draw from blocking whenever they use their Js, but Jaina doesn’t—she just deals 5 block damage (which is more than Grave, further confirming my “Jaina is Grave but more aggressive” theory, but less than Geiger because of Time Stop). Grave and Geiger both can get their Js back at little to no cost (Lightning Cloud is automatic if it does block damage and Time Spirals return as part of activating Temporal Distortion, which is such a strong ability that the recur is essentially a free bonus). Jaina can get back her Flame Arrows too… At the cost of 3 life, which is 60% of the block damage she just dealt. So she’s slowly killing herself, effectively only changing the difference in life between herself and her opponent by 2 (worse than all three of the others, thanks to Geiger’s and Arg’s innates adding extra damage on), and not denying her opponent any cards to make up for it.
Charged Shot doesn’t feel like a good combat reveal option either because of how slow it is, though it does have a better block damage to self-damage ratio (7:3 instead of 5:3) and it leads into more damage on hit because it’s a starter instead of an ender, but it seems like a normal would be better to combat-reveal early game than either side of J because of normal draw and K is better to reveal late than either side of J because it’s faster (seriously, why is Crossfire Kick 2.4 speed when Flame Arrow isn’t?) and leads into bigger combos.
Meanwhile, if she successfully predicts that the opponent will play a fast attack and goes for a block or dodge… She doesn’t get any special payoff like Grave or Arg does from blocking, just building toward a big hand like Geiger (except without Temporal Distortion to make it truly ridiculous), and she doesn’t have a good dodge follow-up without Aces.
I’ll admit I don’t really play any of these characters as well as I probably should, so anything I say about how they work or their balance has a good chance of being at least partially mistaken, but it feels to me like Jaina just doesn’t have anywhere near enough reason to combat reveal Flame Arrow (or Charged Shot, but I like the idea from earlier to make it a good dodge follow-up instead). Surely there’s some way to make shooting arrows at people the thing you want to do at least early-game as the archer character?
(Also I wrote most of this before JonnyD and ArthurWynne’s most recent posts, so it kind of ignores them. Sorry about that!)