M19 Balancing Ideas

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
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After the success of my DOM Balancing Ideas thread (DOM Balancing Ideas - MtGPQ General Discussion - 505 Go! Official Forums) I thought I would do it again for M19. I’m starting with my ideas (and assorted other ones from the forums and my coalition) and I will update and change them based on everyone’s input here.

Just like last time, please NOTE:
I’m not including commons and uncommons, since those really aren’t meant to be that great anyway.

Also, these changes are meant to be realistic. Not every card should be super powerful or great in every deck. Also, asking for a ridiculous change is useless, since there is no way the devs would listen.

Luminarch Ascension: Gain 1 shield per turn. 2 gets nutty fast.

Plague Wind: No need for the life loss. Its powerful enough without it. Or keep the life loss, but increase the cost.

Blue Sun’s Zenith: Drop the maximum stored mana to 5. Make it more on par with Day’s Undoing and Behold the Beyond (while still being slightly better)

Summoner’s Pact: Not sure about this one, but it seems really really strong. Maybe up the life loss to make it more punishing but still usable (1.5x powerxtoughness?)

Fraying Omnipotence: Ditch the max of 20. Both players lose half their life, period. Also, allow it to be cast without a full list of targets (creatures on both sides and cards in both hands), just give it a confirmation window instead.

Bone Dragon: Make it 4 or 5 cards to exile instead of 8. 8 is really hard to get consistently without shenanigans, and with those shenanigans there are better options to play.

Palladia-Mors, the Ruiner: NEEDS MORE BEEF. 10/10 for 15 would be much better. 12/12 would be fantastic.

Ajani’s Last Stand: I haven’t heard much about this at all, nor have I seen it played. Tokens should probably be 6/6 instead of 4/4, but I’m not positive. Could be fine as is. Most likely fine as is

Banefire: I like it, but 10 damage never feels like enough for creature removal. Up the stored mana to 12 (or make it X+2 damage). 12 seems to be the best for creature removal/direct damage.

Vivien’s Invocation: This needs to cost more. I’d say make it somewhere in the 21-25 range. That ability in the color of beefy creatures is waaay too good at rare.

Reliquary Tower: This definitely needs a buff. Maybe not ditch the drain, but make it a set amount of mana (say, 10) every turn. Or, keep it the same but have the gem conversion happen after the drain and draw.

Did I miss any? Am I totally off base with these? Did I not go far enough? Comment below!

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It’s essentially just a beefed up version of Murder Investigation. The tokens have flying so if you combo it with Knightly Valor, if the opponent isn’t running a form of support destruction, it runs as a very effective wall.

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Huh, didn’t realize it was a permanent effect (in paper it is a one-time use). That’s much better then. Once I get it I’ll have to dust off my old Gideon infinite token wall deck.

I’ll drop it from the list then. Thanks!

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So as far as Blue Sun’s Zenith and Banefire, I can agree that the number on both seems wrong at 10 mana, however…

The stored mana on every card that can store mana is 10. That consistency makes it easier for players of all levels to remember what the maximum bang on those spells is, especially as it comes up asking if you’d like to cast the spell without full stored mana, and then tells you how much it has. They can deal with Banefire by doing something like it deals X+2 damage to get it to 12.

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Luminarch Ascension: Gain 1 shield per turn. 2 gets nutty fast.

Plague Wind: No need for the life loss. Its powerful enough without it.

Blue Sun’s Zenith: Drop the maximum stored mana to 5. Make it more on par with Day’s Undoing and Behold the Beyond (while still being slightly better)

Summoner’s Pact: Not sure about this one, but it seems really really strong. Maybe up the life loss to make it more punishing but still usable (1.5x powerxtoughness?)

If you add Ball Lightning , I believe these are the optimal cards for this set. . BSZ is the new Omni of magic . Even the second tier of masterpieces, blue’s Bident trident is better than the other colors. Limit the card draw to 3 or 4.

Plague wind will be the objective killer and most annoying in the deck. It should have a mana cost of 15.

Rolling the dice with summoners pact. Your creature better have haste as it would hurt to take damage for nothing. When your health is low… It’s fine.

Lumi hides behind support status and can ramp quickly. Borderline change , but +1 would be fine. Has very good support cards like decree of justice and Lyra.

Good Old Ball Lightning. Very simple and direct. It’s fine.

I’ll mention my favorite card which is blue is Djinn of wishes. Team with oath of tef which is blue again and you have a fun full mana card ramp.

Basically, blue is the best and red sucks.

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How is Ball Lightning fine?! I don’t care that it destroys itself, on contraire that can be a huge advantage and turn it into an even worse offender!

Olivia was incredibly bad because it swung for 11 immediately and was a lifelinker, but this guy is MUCH more oppressive. It has double strike, it has trample (that’s right, at least Olivia damage could be stopped with a simple blocker), it can grow incredibly big, and then it just disappears (did I mention this makes recursions possible?). Hell, add an enraged event effect in the mix and you might just say bye-bye.

And let’s not talk about Murder, Lich’s Mastery and Seal Away.
Murder itself needs to be in your hand for this to work… turn 1 Ball Lightning can be incredibly oppressive and wrecks < X damage objectives.
Short of that, you have Lich’s Mastery which although powerful, is still a liability against red (I only play it when I ABSOLUTELY have to), and Seal Away is this teensy fragile support that goes poof against red.

I don’t mind interesting and powerful cards that require some setup. BSZ is powerful, but I found more often I’d end up dumping it at the bottom of the hand as I was not ready to cast it and wasn’t all that happy to draw multiple copies. The black sweeper is not that much better when compared to Vona’s Hunger either, and I have yet to see it make a big difference for me. River’s Rebuke remains the better card.

For Ascension I don’t really care about how many shields it gets. I had a game where I dumped three of them followed by one Rupture Spire. Be it for me I don’t really rely on the “extra shields” clause, that’s not what makes it incredibly powerful anyway.

Summoner’s Pact is one dangerous cookie. It sure is super cheap, but the damage can stack up and there are quite a few matches where I can’t actually play it because it deals damage to myself. It’s a good card, just nowhere near as insane as Deploy the Gatewatch or Primevals’ Rebirth. And yes, I’d rather pull cards like Gaea’s Revenge, Djinn and Jodah with it, simply because they are expensive so it’s worth cheating them into play, but the damage does stack up. Nowadays, Nissa’s Revelation 20 lifegain is not enough for how fast damage flows back and forward.

As for Vivien’s Invocation, I haven’t included it in any of my decks as it’s expensive enough and nowhere near that interesting. Sure, it can act as removal, but since I play dual colored, I have much better removal at my disposal. It is at best a useful tool for mono-green decks, and nodes that require casting X or less creatures. I’d leave it where it is, it’s anything but overpowered.

Omnipotence has the problem of being uncastable if there are no creatures or cards in hand from what I heard, and that’s a bigger issue with it being underpowered than the 20 damage limit. But I agree it’s useless…

Bone Dragon is bugged as hell from what I heard, so before that is clarified I’m not even sure how it could be that good. I looked at it, put it into the “never gonna get played” mythics closet and that’s that. Too much fuss for too little gain, there are much better recursing creatures out there.

The triple colored dragons are a joke, not worth the hype.

  • I played with Vaevictis and he can be horribly swingy - setting up the game so that it doesn’t gain your opponent cards is not worth the effort. Darigaaz is several levels of power above it. He needs haste!
  • Palladia Mors doesn’t do anything for me just because (s)he is small. Turn her into a 10/10 and she will actually start competing with Gishath.
  • Chromium is just weird, in paper magic he makes some sense, but in MTGPQ he’s useless. He can dodge targeted removal I guess, and that can be annoying, but that’s a problem you already have with hexproof creatures, so players are prepared for that in the first place. The flash on him is totally useless in MTGPQ.
  • Arcades is an interesting cookie. I still have to play with him but he is probably the most interesting out of the four.

Banefire I agree could go higher, but keep in mind that sometimes stored mana can mess with your mana gains and cascades. So there is a delicate balance there. I actually found it much more powerful than I gave it credit initially, and I’m not sure the extra damage cap is needed.

Reliquary Tower is useless, bless its heart.

I’m surprised I hear nobody complaining about useless cards like Amulet of Safekeeping, Courser of Kruphix, Eidolon of the Great Revel, Diregraf Ghoul, Druid of Horns, Guttersnipe, Lightning Strike, Shock and Runic Armasaur,

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Amulet of Safekeeping is the most useless card ever printed. It’s inconceivable that it was totally overlooked in a thread named “M19 Balancing Ideas”. :confused:
Hey, but let’s ruin Vivien’s Invocation. :slight_smile:

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Amulet seems fine to me as a token hate card. Not really sure how to improve it there. Probably should be a rare but its too late to change that.

I don’t think its 10 on all of them (I think the Hydra and Isareth are both 5) but I could be wrong. I agree X+2 would be a fair compromise if they want to cap it at 10 for gameplay reasons.

Trying to address your, um, concerns.

  1. Ball Lightning is really only stupidly powerful with Koth, and maybe Karn if you set it up right. Also, once Murder is fixed it will be a lot more manageable. Also also, I can’t really think of a way to make it weaker without completely ruining it. If you have any ideas, feel free to share them!

  2. Vaevictis seems pretty interesting to play with. I don’t think its been out long enough to really pass judgement on it yet. Same for Chromium (and the flash is useful, think of it like haste in it almost guarantees you get an attack off)

A. See above for Amulet comment
B. I have heard a lot of good things about Courser, actually. Apparently its pretty good in a land deck. Pretty useless otherwise, but really good at what it is good at. I have no problem with niche Masterpieces.
C. I have no idea what to think of Eidolon, to be honest. I don’t have it, I don’t know anyone who has it, and I have never seen it played. Kind of odd that it triggers on itself, though.
D. A bunch of the rest of those are not Rare+, so I don’t mention them (also Guttersnipe is really good with Firebrand Archer gone). Runic Armasaur seems perfectly meh as a rare, I agree, but again I’m not sure what can be done with it.

  1. Chill out on the ranting man. This thread is for more discussion on possible balancing ideas. No need for so much negativity.
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Hydra is 5, Isareth is 6.
Both are decent in decks tailored to their abilities:
Enrage/Mantle of Webs on the Hydra gets it going nicely. I could support it having a Stored Mana cap of 6 or maybe 7. 10 would be nuts (not that I wouldn’t enjoy it, but then you’d see it played everywhere).
Isareth is good in heavy self-discard / own creature destruction decks. She plays well with Liliana4’s 1st ability, and I suspect she’d be good in a Vraska build running Gather the Pack and/or Growing Rties (I have yet to try this last combo). I think she’s fine at 6 from my experience. Give her a cap of 10 and she can resurrect any creature every turn.
The tricky part with these two is if you get them to the battlefield without casting, they have an effective Stored Mana of 0. And I’m not sure if casting a fully-charged reinforcement from hand bumps that up. Reinforcing with a lower-stored value does not decrease that of a higher-stored one already on the field.

Banefire would be good with an “X+2”, so that minimum (5 mana) it’s slightly better than Lightning Javelin. And at full is on par with the damage dealt by Inferno Jet (which is merely a Rare and costs 4 less).

Have you tested Ball Lightning with Sarkan, Fireblood? Just sayin’… :wink:

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I have not, since I have neither of them. Sounds pretty epic though (assuming you mean with his Second ability)

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I’m torn on some of these cards (only on the nerf-side of things, I’m all for buffing useless cards into having an actual use). Moreso the ridiculously good cards that are also masterpieces.

Example: I just got Luminarch Ascension a couple days ago and…dang…that card is really, really good. Like find a place in my powerful-white-legacy-decks-for-it-too good. Dang it’s a good card.

I’ve also enjoyed facing it. It’s insane to fight. You’ve got a handful of turns once it hits the field to end the game (unless you’re running tons of creature or support destruction, then you’re probably fine). Is this card a force to be reckoned with, heck yeah. Wow. Haven’t actually had a card catch my eye in ages like this one does.

But I’m okay with that, because I’d rather play a handful of close, fun matches…then grind hours a day on drawn-out engagements of “meh.” If 5-6 charge events push us to play 20-40 matches a day, I’d rather they be quick :wink:

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Can i get a pinkie refund if they make these changes cause i dumped about 2800 - 3200 to pull blue sun zenith, plague wind, and decree of justice . And i certainly wouldnt have if they are going to run down the nerf hammer.. i ended up completing that elite pack.

And later on when i have more time perhaps ill post my opinions of the cards.

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Indeed I am (second use if his Fireblood ability, first was on the Lightning Mare 2 turns prior, so the Ball Lightning received +9/+9 and +9/+0):

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None of the Masterpieces should be touched. Yes, they are very powerful cards, but they do a lot of good for the game. Firstly, they give us chase cards that are incredibly rare that we will want to play for. If the cards aren’t exciting to get, the game loses a lot of appeal. Secondly, none of them just win the game outright in an incredibly broken way. They are incredibly strong on their own, but I was able to do more with Omniscience and HuF. Next, if they just nerf the best cards in standard, the game will get stale. The current standard is already slow because of how bad Core is. There are good cards, but it doesn’t stand up to other sets/blocks apart from the masterpieces. If you developers are reading this post, please don’t take it as the entire communities stance. Many in my coalitions of over 60 people do not agree with this.

If there are going to be balancing adjustments, then I would like to see Core’s mythics brought up to par with other sets rather than taking the masterpieces down. We have seen complaint after complaint since masterpieces were introduced about them being too weak, and now that they are viable and powerful for their costs, they get an article like this. (I’m excluding Omniscience from them being weak).

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Perfect. Masterpieces are masterpierces !

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I agree that masterpieces should be powerful, that’s why I only tweaked them a little. I mean, come on. Would any of these changes make them not-powerful? I think they would still be game-changing cards to chase, just a little less “easy-button”

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Fraying Omnipotence (as mentioned) the issue isn’t the amount of damage, but the targetting problem…

I would suggest it just get a “do you want to cast” confirmation and then cast if you want it to no matter what because the opponent always has life, so that part is always a valid target.
Requiring creature on BOTH you and opponent sides is oppressive.

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Agreed!

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I like to think of acquiring powerful cards like leveling up your character in a DnD game. Easier games is not always a bad thing. Yeah we still need the big scary boss battles, but we should also be able to defeat some opponents with ease, like going back and clearing the early levels of the DnD campaign. This is important with the demand for grinding in this game to become stronger.

Having every match set up to be a big scary boss battle just gets tiresome after a while, need some variety :wink:

Note: I don’t consider leveling up your planeswalker an equivalent comparison to leveling up a DnD character, because even the best planeswalkers need good cards to function properly. And if you’re a platinum player you need maxed out PWs in many events if you want to stand a chance.

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Good point, updating now with that