Chandra is so unfun

Hibernum_JC

Meto5000 wrote:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Just to let you guys know, we're actively monitoring the situation with the balancing of Planeswalker abilities. If needs be we will adjust, but we don't want to be too hasty in putting the nerf bat to some things - the meta can adjust itself accordingly. If the meta doesn't adjust and Chandra is used far above other Planeswalkers, we will address the situation for sure, but in the meantime we'd rather analyze the data and see what is going on.

As an FYI, if that's interesting to you folks, in the past the least used Planeswalker was Liliana but interestingly enough she had the highest winrate, by quite a bit. There's plenty of reasons why that could be, but it's something we're trying to keep in mind. We have a ton of data available right now and we can adjust according to the data.

In the past we've done quick balance passes because there were some incredibly pressing matters (Gideon's vigilance was especially problematic, for example) but we'll be taking a bit slower of an approach in the future so that we can properly address issues.

Hey JC, thanks for the update. I'm in the camp that thinks Chandra is slightly overtuned but not by a lot. I think adding +1 or +2 loyalty cost to her first ability would go a long way to making her perfectly balanced. The amount of "guaranteed" damage she does every turn seems to be a little high which puts a huge premium on lifegain that really only white and green (limited) have access to.

I think people discount Liliana not for a couple reasons. The biggest one was that she could be good, but only if you had a deck full of rares which not many players do/did. The other reason is that even when she wins, it takes her a long time to get there. Do you guys have internal data that shows length of battles per planeswalker? Win % is only part of the equation of what it takes to do well in QB. Liliana is in a weird place because she doesn't have the ability to finish the match. She's great at gaining control of fights but she can't do much to take advantage once she gets it.

I agree with you that her first ability might be a bit undertuned. If things remain as they are, we will probably adjust the cost.

As for Liliana, her matches do tend to be long and very control-y (sometimes more than Jace since she's very good at resource denial), so her games tend to last a bit longer. Hopefully with BFZ there's a lot better Black creatures so we hope we'll see an uptick in her usage (right now she's still underused and people are still getting used to playing with Ob Nixilis).

BassMuffinFIve

Chandra is the most used PW because she is the most fun PW. No one wants to play a PW who has 1/3 useful abilities, or less. Playing Jace is punishment after playing Chandra. He has 1 ability that may or may not do something if your opponent has a creature out. Every PW needs to have abilities that are fun to use at all points in the game.

Meto5000

BassMuffinFIve wrote:

Chandra is the most used PW because she is the most fun PW. No one wants to play a PW who has 1/3 useful abilities, or less. Playing Jace is punishment after playing Chandra. He has 1 ability that may or may not do something if your opponent has a creature out. Every PW needs to have abilities that are fun to use at all points in the game.

Chandra is certainly the flashiest Planeswalker right now. Everyone loves to blow stuff up and see huge cascades. That being said, I'm still partial to Gideon as my preferred QB planeswalker. Also, I agree that Jace's PW abilities are just not good in the current meta. This past weekend I ran through the storymode levels with Jace and I mostly used loyalty abilities as an afterthought since they rarely had a large impact on the game. The problem is that right now the only abilities that matter are ones that speed up the game and traditionally that is not how Blue is played. (The same is true of Black).

Plastic

BassMuffinFIve wrote:

Chandra is the most used PW because she is the most fun PW. No one wants to play a PW who has 1/3 useful abilities, or less. Playing Jace is punishment after playing Chandra. He has 1 ability that may or may not do something if your opponent has a creature out. Every PW needs to have abilities that are fun to use at all points in the game.

I guess I could've worded my original post a bit better. The fact that she's the only one that has 3 exceptional abilities is not fun as we're left to choose what's glaringly the best option and not use the others even if we really want to.

shteev

I think Chandra is fun to play, in theory. She's *way* too powerful at the moment, and her power level needs to be dropped. But I like the chaotic way that she plays, destroying random gems and just seeing what happens. Very in keeping for the color red in MTG. Also, there's a nice tension at the moment between her first and second abilities... should you use the first ability and see if you get some random mana, or save up for the second? The tension here is better than on any of the other planeswalkers.

paralistalon

Chandra has always been fun for me to play AS, but I agree she can be annoying to play against (and everyone plays her now, lol). It's not that she has the best creatures, she just has a very high chance of dumping her entire hand in one turn, which is possible to overcome, but it's strategically better to just quit on the spot rather than play it out. Every time I'm paired against Liliana, on the other hand, I do a happy dance because I know I'm going to win in less than a minute. This is really why QBs are unbalanced... since win rate doesn't matter, the meta is all about speed and easy wins.

EDUSAN

chandra is superfun to play as chandra. You can put a volcanic rumbler as your low-cost creature and then fill your deck with mythics and big dudes you can start releasing hell on your opponent by playing one big dude every 1 or 2 turns

The downside of this is that the other PW cant do that. Green used to be able to do that but getting to its 1st skill its a bit hard now

Chandra needs to have her 1st skill's cost up or every PW should have a semi-consistent way of ramp up their mana.

EDHdad

The fact that she's the only one that has 3 exceptional abilities is not fun as we're left to choose what's glaringly the best option and not use the others even if we really want to.

I suspect I play in much more controlling, grindy game style than most people here. When piloting Chandra, I always check the board before playing her first ability. If I can make a red match, or cascade into two matches, or match 5, then I'll do that rather than use the first ability.

The second ability I usually only use if the opponent has at least 2 creatures on board, and if I don't have enough kill spells already powered up in my hand. If have the spells, I'll use those first.

The third ability, I'll usually do whenever I have 21 loyalty, since there are usually some cascades afterward and the loyalty will build back up.

I only play creatures which can damage other creatures - ones with Berserker, Reach or Defender. I play Demolish to kill supports, and Sure Strike to buff and protect my berserkers (only using it when they're about to slam into another creature). Everything else is burn / kill spells. The cards are chosen based on the amount of mana they would require to kill a 12/12 Outland Colossus. (Example, Scour from Existence would take 1 card at 12 mana, while Skyraker Giant (4/3 creature with Reach) would take 3 cards at 11 mana, or 33 total.)

When playing, I put down one creature, then I power up all of the burn spells before playing another creature. The burn spells are saved for an opposing creature, unless I have enough direct damage to kill the opponent that turn.

This probably takes more time than a lot of people want to spend in PvP mode (games sometimes take 7 to 12 minutes), but the win precentage is pretty high. I'm thinking of changing it up for more aggro on the theory that most of the time, even if the opponent has some creatures out, I can probably outrace them.

Anyway, I'm mentioning this because there are several ways to play Chandra. If you're bored with spamming the first ability, you don't have to spam the first ability. Good luck!

madwren

EDHdad wrote:

The fact that she's the only one that has 3 exceptional abilities is not fun as we're left to choose what's glaringly the best option and not use the others even if we really want to.

Anyway, I'm mentioning this because there are several ways to play Chandra. If you're bored with spamming the first ability, you don't have to spam the first ability. Good luck!

You certainly don't have to, but part of the Chandra "problem" is that Flameshot is so efficient. I'm not 60, but at level 55, Flameshot is 4 damage for 3 loyalty (which would be 28 damage for 21 loyalty). Fireball is 20 damage for 21 loyalty. You're losing 7 damage on the exchange there, plus the more frequent cascades.

In my opinion, their efficiency is reversed; Flameshot should be lower efficiency, and Fireball should be significantly higher, thus motivating players to save their loyalty.

EDUSAN

EDHdad wrote:

Anyway, I'm mentioning this because there are several ways to play Chandra. If you're bored with spamming the first ability, you don't have to spam the first ability. Good luck!

its not about spamming the 1st ability is about being able to get more mana each turn, i dont spam it i dont need to, but normally you have something to play and you gamble on getting some free mana with the skill. Sometimes it does nothing (not very frequently but it happens), sometimes you get 3-4-5 mana for free (usually the case) and sometimes you get into cascade-land and it gives you 10-15 mana (which is not that weird)

1st turn... you do what you can if you do kinda well you get enough for her 1st skill next turn (6)
2nd turn... you check if you have a 5 match, if you do, you do it, if you dont play the 1st skill, you get 4mana for "free", the gems placed themselves so you have a 5 match of black (6 mana), you do it, and then you get to match a green and a white (7 mana)
at the end of 2nd turn you amased 23 mana. you got enough for a volcanic rumbler 1st and with 1 match you play iroas champion
and that is not even that hard to do

a less optimistic scenario

1st turn.... you get 6 mana from matching red
2nd turn... you play the 1st skill and get a 7 mana cascade (black and white) and you are able to do a green 4 gem match (5 mana)
you got 18 mana so you got to play Abbot, and you get another cascade for 7 mana + the 3 you got extra you got 10 mana into your embermaw helion.
3rd turn you play her skill again, but you only got a 3 mana match, you do any other 3 mana match and you got at the end of 3rd turn an Abbot and a Embermaw and a card with 6 mana filled from abbot

those are not SO hard to do starts of match.

With another deck in your 3rd turn you are playing a 11-15 mana card and red has 1 15 mana card and a 16 mana card and dealt 8 damage to you just from the skill

span_argoman

madwren wrote:

EDHdad wrote:

The fact that she's the only one that has 3 exceptional abilities is not fun as we're left to choose what's glaringly the best option and not use the others even if we really want to.

Anyway, I'm mentioning this because there are several ways to play Chandra. If you're bored with spamming the first ability, you don't have to spam the first ability. Good luck!

You certainly don't have to, but part of the Chandra "problem" is that Flameshot is so efficient. I'm not 60, but at level 55, Flameshot is 4 damage for 3 loyalty (which would be 28 damage for 21 loyalty). Fireball is 20 damage for 21 loyalty. You're losing 7 damage on the exchange there, plus the more frequent cascades.

In my opinion, their efficiency is reversed; Flameshot should be lower efficiency, and Fireball should be significantly higher, thus motivating players to save their loyalty.

You should compare skills of the same level. When both are level 4 it's 28 vs 25, still a loss of 3 for Fireball. But most QB matches with Chandra don't last 7 rounds or more by the time you have saved up 21 loyalty so Fireball still works better considering the circumstances.

span_argoman

EDUSAN wrote:

EDHdad wrote:

Anyway, I'm mentioning this because there are several ways to play Chandra. If you're bored with spamming the first ability, you don't have to spam the first ability. Good luck!

its not about spamming the 1st ability is about being able to get more mana each turn, i dont spam it i dont need to, but normally you have something to play and you gamble on getting some free mana with the skill. Sometimes it does nothing (not very frequently but it happens), sometimes you get 3-4-5 mana for free (usually the case) and sometimes you get into cascade-land and it gives you 10-15 mana (which is not that weird)

1st turn... you do what you can if you do kinda well you get enough for her 1st skill next turn (6)
2nd turn... you check if you have a 5 match, if you do, you do it, if you dont play the 1st skill, you get 4mana for "free", the gems placed themselves so you have a 5 match of black (6 mana), you do it, and then you get to match a green and a white (7 mana)
at the end of 2nd turn you amased 23 mana. you got enough for a volcanic rumbler 1st and with 1 match you play iroas champion
and that is not even that hard to do

a less optimistic scenario

1st turn.... you get 6 mana from matching red
2nd turn... you play the 1st skill and get a 7 mana cascade (black and white) and you are able to do a green 4 gem match (5 mana)
you got 18 mana so you got to play Abbot, and you get another cascade for 7 mana + the 3 you got extra you got 10 mana into your embermaw helion.
3rd turn you play her skill again, but you only got a 3 mana match, you do any other 3 mana match and you got at the end of 3rd turn an Abbot and a Embermaw and a card with 6 mana filled from abbot

those are not SO hard to do starts of match.

With another deck in your 3rd turn you are playing a 11-15 mana card and red has 1 15 mana card and a 16 mana card and dealt 8 damage to you just from the skill

You're off in the second scenario. For scenario 2, you need 3 loyalty to trigger the skill. Your first match of 3xred only gives you 1. So that's 1-2 more turns before you can fire your skill. Turn 5 to achieve 2 creatures on the board with good cascades is reasonable. And cascading for 7 twice in a row while not rare isn't exactly common either.

Sure in a game of matching gems, shaking up the board improves your chances of getting matches and cascades. But people are probably submitting to confirmation bias if they believe it is not uncommon to triple your mana gain every turn by using Chandra's first skill.

If you ask me, I believe the skill will be better balanced at 6 loyalty cost instead of 3. But I've played enough matches with Chandra to know that the number of times where the skill gives you no better matches or even worse ones are just as common as the good ones.

EDHdad

I should clarify: My primary goals are to maintain board control and optimize mana production, not ping the opponent for 4. 4 damage or 25 damage or 28 damage is irrelevant if the opponent has 100 life and a 25/25 first strike hexproof reach lifelink berserker with trample on the board.

In testing, I found that if you can already produce 6 or more mana with the existing gems (one red match or 2 colored matches), it's generally preferable to take them. Yes, you might cascade into a billion mana, but a lot of times you whiff and wind up with less mana and less loyalty than if you hadn't used the -3 ability.

This is a control strategy, and it usually takes a lot more turns than pure aggro. The trade-off is that it has a higher win percentage. I was trying to hit a 100-game win streak, after which I would probably switch to something more aggro. But I got stopped after 86 or 87 wins by a Koth who kept getting 10-mana by matching 3 red. It turns out that against Koth, clearing the board of random swatches of gems is usually a terrible idea. Often times, it just puts more red gems on the board and allows them to run away with the game.

shteev

EDHdad wrote:

I should clarify: My primary goals are to maintain board control and optimize mana production, not ping the opponent for 4. 4 damage or 25 damage or 28 damage is irrelevant if the opponent has 100 life and a 25/25 first strike hexproof reach lifelink berserker with trample on the board.

In testing, I found that if you can already produce 6 or more mana with the existing gems (one red match or 2 colored matches), it's generally preferable to take them. Yes, you might cascade into a billion mana, but a lot of times you whiff and wind up with less mana and less loyalty than if you hadn't used the -3 ability.

This is a control strategy, and it usually takes a lot more turns than pure aggro. The trade-off is that it has a higher win percentage. I was trying to hit a 100-game win streak, after which I would probably switch to something more aggro. But I got stopped after 86 or 87 wins by a Koth who kept getting 10-mana by matching 3 red. It turns out that against Koth, clearing the board of random swatches of gems is usually a terrible idea. Often times, it just puts more red gems on the board and allows them to run away with the game.

You sound like you're playing pretty much the same deck as me, in the same way that I do, except I'd consider this a beatdown strategy. I mean yes, I use my Exquisite Firecrafts and Ravaging Blazes to try and ensure my opponent's board is free of creatures at all times... but then at the end of the turn, my Embermaw Hellion, and whatever else I happen to have in play, hit my opponent for something like 1/4 of his health total. I call that beatdown.

If you're playing with berserkers, you are better off burning your opponent's creatures off the table... if you lose your creature in combat, you're left with a burn spell in your hand, which is an inefficient way of dealing damage to your opponent.

In fact, Magic Puzzle Quest in general encourages the removal of your opponent's creatures as quickly as possible with burn spells, because of the way Reinforcement works. If your opponent has a 4/4 in play, you're better off killing it before it becomes an 8/8 which deals twice as much damage to you and can no longer be killed by a single cheap burn spell.

Abenjes

and add this wonderful card to red and Chandra is becoming ridiculous

LykoKen

I agree that Chandra is OP. I'm seeing her a lot more in quick battles and I'm getting destroyed 4/5 of the time. Every other PW I win about half the matches but everytime she pops up I have to brace myself for the loss. Overall I'm 2 wins per loss and she is most of my losses. Even the new PW I'm half and half.

Her 2nd ability should only deal 3 damage. Right now she wipes my team before I have even get a turn to power up any of them. I also notice she gets more extra turns. This might be cause she get credit when she destroys a block, but those shouldn't count as matches. She clears a block, gets two 3 matches and then gers another turn. Please check her programming. Thank you.

shteev

What's strange about Chandra at the moment is she's affecting my experience of playing all the other 'walkers. Chandra's first ability is so cheap that you can pretty much use it every turn, so you average turn goes like this: Scan the board, determine if there's a move worth playing, if there isn't, or you think you can do better, or you'd like/need to gamble to do better, or you need to mess up another part of the board, or kill a support, then use Chandra's first ability, and then look for the best move again. With everyone else, you just go: look at the board, make the best move. Playing Jace or Gideon feels pretty boring now.

majincob

shteev wrote:

What's strange about Chandra at the moment is she's affecting my experience of playing all the other 'walkers. Chandra's first ability is so cheap that you can pretty much use it every turn, so you average turn goes like this: Scan the board, determine if there's a move worth playing, if there isn't, or you think you can do better, or you'd like/need to gamble to do better, or you need to mess up another part of the board, or kill a support, then use Chandra's first ability, and then look for the best move again. With everyone else, you just go: look at the board, make the best move. Playing Jace or Gideon feels pretty boring now.

Yeah she definitely has a gamble feel that pays off when you hit a huge cascade and then can match more on top of that. There is very little downside to using her ability if you read the board well and it's so cheap it might as well be free (from the extra loyalty generated just from using it).

BassMuffinFIve

majincob wrote:

shteev wrote:

What's strange about Chandra at the moment is she's affecting my experience of playing all the other 'walkers. Chandra's first ability is so cheap that you can pretty much use it every turn, so you average turn goes like this: Scan the board, determine if there's a move worth playing, if there isn't, or you think you can do better, or you'd like/need to gamble to do better, or you need to mess up another part of the board, or kill a support, then use Chandra's first ability, and then look for the best move again. With everyone else, you just go: look at the board, make the best move. Playing Jace or Gideon feels pretty boring now.

Yeah she definitely has a gamble feel that pays off when you hit a huge cascade and then can match more on top of that. There is very little downside to using her ability if you read the board well and it's so cheap it might as well be free (from the extra loyalty generated just from using it).

Except that there is no gamble. You either get free mana from the matches her first ability makes, or, worst case, you did 4 damage to their face. What's the gamble there?

jollyrogercjf

Plain and simple her first ability needs a nerf. Its not a matter of not being fun to play it is simply a matter of balance.

Chandras ability has great flavor it feels wild and random....like Chandra, but with such a low ability cost and the random gem destruction which has possibility to recoup the ability cost and more it is way over powered.

The damage is actually fine it is on par with what you would expect from a beginner ability. However, you shouldnt be able to cast an ability every turn.

The crystal burst is also an issue for me, not only can it lead to mana ramp, but can double as support destruction.

My opinion i think it should read:

5: deal 3-4 damage to target opponent and destroy a 2x2 section of mana crystals.

And really i think i would enjoy this more:

3: deal 3-5 damage at random to your opponent (4-6; 5 -8).

Thoughts?