I logged in after 3 weeks to see if anything has changed, and damn! I was never a fan of blue, but my card collection drove me in that direction.
Now I’m at a loss as to how to proceed. Mizzium meddler is a shadow of its former self, in fact, it shouldn’t even be a rare anymore.
My opinion is that meddlers ability should be “increase cost of opponents first card by 1 each time a coloured match is made”
This would make it worth playing. This, or adding some kind of combat ability to meddler. Before anyone loses their mind, remember that you now have the option to trash cards in hand that you don’t need/want to prevent hand lock. As it stands, it is marginally better than an uncommon with a poor ability like that.
I’m gonna be looking at all my cards to see what else has been hit with the nerf bat this hard.
Not upset, just saying that I think a little more thought should be given to card rarity instead of trying to appease the masses with a bad nerf on a useful card (myself included, I was very vocal about blue control in these forums)
The new meddler ability actually works quite nice paired with sanctum and tutelage, and keep in mind it’s still a 4/7 for only 9 mana, sure he was nice before cause it was basically an auto win, the AI couldn’t handle it, but that was a little op, what hurts the most with blue is his first two abilities getting nerfed. As you are no longer able to keep up with speed decks.
Slow down there, chief. I never said the card wasn’t in need of a nerf. Everyone knows the card was broken and needed a fix.
What I’m saying is, the skill redesign isn’t great and could have been better to keep the spirit of the card alive. Blue doesn’t have the ability to trigger cascades like red and green. As a result, Mizziums ability is very tame for a rare in its current form.
In contrast, the change to Jace’s 3rd planeswalker ability is fantastic, and makes complete sense.
This would have made a much more excellent OP
Your original point did very much blame the devs for making a bad move in a shoddy way to make people happy. That wasn’t the case. A discussion about potential power redesign is much more interesting
I think an hybrid redesign for mizzium meddler could have been great
Something like: after your opponent matches 3 or more colored gem remove 3 mana from an opponent random non empty card and add 2 mana to an opponent random non-full card.
This way it has an effect similar to previous one and effectively(almost always and on average anyways)drains 1 mana.
The mana drain would “balance” the lost(and excessive in my opinion)benefit it gave against cascades.
Also since it is random there is no chance this screws ai more than a human player.
On theory should not be too hard to implement but I am not a developer so…
Like if i had a card about to be played i would placed it in the last spot but if got lucky with cascades and got more mana that i needed for that last card the “before the last” card would not get any mana, making the card too op. And the worst part is that all that happened on the turn that was not from the player who played the card.
Now its an active effect, meaning that the player playing the card needs to do something to give the card value. It could have nerfed a bit less than what it was but i think that the important aspect of the change is that If im against a mizzler, during my turn, i can do whatever i want to deal with it. It used to NOT let any 1st card be played because no matter how much mana you gained it will in the end remove 3 mana and stop you from playing anything
The problem was never with humans playing against mizzium. Simple strategy against mizzium:
Move a 3 cost card to the top of your chain. Put what you want to play next in the 2nd slot and final slot. All mana overflow charges card #2, and every match/cascade charges your bottom card by 3. There were times where my opponent casting mizzium actually helped me to win because I could charge two key cards simultaneously!
The problem was ALWAYS with the AI. It was a win condition card and made things too easy.
Now, I agree the change to making the effect happen on the casters turn was step 1 in the right direction, but nerfing the ability to this degree was too much. If the mana drain is going to be dropped to 1, I can think of 3 better (and reasonable) options:
A) That 1 mana should be leeched towards whatever the first card is in the controller’s queue. Gives blue some much needed mana ramp,
OR
B) Don’t make it a mana drain, make it so it increases the cost of the opponents first card by 1. This way, if you get a cascade you can seriously handicap your opponent and force them to switch tactics.
OR
C) Put the 1 mana drain towards planeswalker energy. Blue NEEDS constant access to their (now nerfed) first two abilities in order to compete
All of these options make way more sense than mizzium in its current form. And for those of you arguing it’s a 4/7 for “only” 9 mana… Look at it from the perspective of a blue player. There is virtually no mana ramp available for this colour, it takes much longer than you think to cast things.
Err. That’s a mythic. How will most blue decks manage to open it? I assume you’re not talking about people dropping $50+ on crystals. So how are these decks’ pilots going to reliably get a mythic from the new set?
