Aj has decent manna gen across the board and amazing built in control. Also the red / white synergy is the best of what we have right now. He’s not my favorite, but he’s definitely the most versatile and the best.
Sorin with Gisela & Give no Ground or Brisela is crazy good, and his access to life gain in both cards and creatures plays well into his third ability. I’d say his only downside is all his abilities require you to have creatures on the board to use, so he can be hard to pull himself back if your board state gets wiped. His +4 in black and white is great, and his access to removal from both colors is always useful.
All in all, though, I like that he’s just really hardy due to his ability to gain life. He’s a planeswalker I feel safest taking into new content while learning.
Even though I like Ajani better, I think Kiora is probably the best overall. Blue/Green is a great color combo, and her abilities are great in almost any deck.
Best is 100% subjective and dependent entirely upon your card collection.
Card inventory notwithstanding, Kiora probably takes the cake here. Her 3/3/0/0/0 works fine due to green ramp and she’s able to access all of blue’s oppressive control. See also: killwind.
For me personally, I find that my nodes often contain Nahiri, Sorin, Arlinn, and Sarkhan. My blue collection is not great and definitely holding back my Kiora, Saheeli, and Dovin.
A lot of people give Arlinn grief. I don’t personally understand it - she’s my second most consistent planeswalker, with Nahiri on top. Maybe it’s a card inventory thing?
She’s decent, but if you don’t have good wolves to play, all but one of her 6 abilities are locked out. Id be curious to see what’s in your arlinn deck. I was so happy to see a red and green combo pw before she came out, but since then, I’ve been slightly underwhelmed with her performance in practice.
Fertile Thicket
Nissa's Pilgrimage
Inner Struggle
Demolish
Animist's Awakening
Devil's Playground
Season's Past
Zendikar Resurgent
Harness the Storm
Olivia, Mobilized for War
Devils/Olivia/Resurgent are best buddies, and the SP helps me cycle back the supports I inevitably destroy with all my gem conversion.
For events that require werewolves I do end up playing Ulrich & GRB, but I’ve been lucky with my access to those.
I might be an oddity - I play my PWs for the color combos they offer me rather than their abilities. Sarkhan is a lot of fun with HtS & black’s cheap removal. Dragons? What are those?
Nahiri by a short step before Kiora - and that short step is because Nahiri plays better without top mythics, while Kiora needs a really solid cardbase to do her wonders…
I wanted to vote Saheeli, because of her amazing mana gains and her access to blue and red. However, her abilities are just sub par unfortunately. I voted for Kiora even though she’s not my favourite, mostly because of her amazing versatility with abilities.
Sure, color combinations are the primary reason to get excited about planeswalkers, but having useful abilities is certainly better than having useless abilities. Plus, Sarkhan doesn’t need dragons. He can MAKE dragons from any creature. He can kill his own Devils to kill your creature and give him a 6/6, he can pop his own Despoiler for a free dragon, he can kill an Amalgam and bring it back the next turn.
Arlinn, by comparison, is useless. Her abilities just sit there.
Red/green’s biggest problem is that it’s a one-dimensional pairing that Arlinn exacerbates.
But I got lucky with pulling Ulrich, Geier Reach Bandit, and Descimator of the Provinces for her. She’s one of my strongest decks, but largely because of cards, not so much because of her.
Maybe? Though it’s also planeswalker level. I just got Nahiri the last time she was in the store, so she’s still pretty weak, whereas I got Arlinn a while ago and have her at 60. Plus Arlinn can tutor them up whereas Nahiri can’t, and Arlinn get benefits from green mana ramping like Nissa’s Pilgrimage or Fertile Thicket. So there are different strengths to each.