Changes to Chandra, Roaring Flame - 05/19/2016

Hibernum_JC

Hey folks,

We've just pushed a change to Chandra, Roaring Flame. I'm here to explain what we did and why we did it.

The change is a small one but one that will have a big impact on the game - her first ability's cost has been increased to 6 for every rank.

It's a change we know a lot of you have been requesting, and I figured I'd take advantage of this to explain the thought process behind the nerf, the possibilities we explored and why it took so long to fix something that seemed so obvious.

First and foremost, the reason for the change is pretty much what you guys have been expecting - Chandra's power level with her first ability made her too strong. Internally, when we tested the change, it did not feel bad. We knew it could get out of control, but we really liked the direction Chandra was taking. Obviously we turned out to be wrong, as it gave her a massive power boost and made games unfun, especially when playing against the AI who pilots a Chandra.

The big problem with her ability is the gem destruction, specifically two things: it generates a lot of cascades, which essentially boils down to her having the equivalent of multiple matches per turn, and it greatly devalues supports as gem destruction will lead to more supports being popped.

I looked into a few different ways to fix her. The choices basically boiled down to the following:

Increase the cost to 6, so it's much more difficult to spam (6 has the be the cost - 4 or 5 isn't enough as it still is spammable quite a bit. Leave her cost at 3, but remove the gem destruction Increase the cost to 4 and make the gem destruction portion of the ability to destroy a single gem rather than a block

We felt that removing the gem destruction from the ability changes a lot of her flavor, and felt boring. Using an ability that simply does a bit of damage every other turn or so (her mana gain is much lower when it doesn't destroy gems) simply lacks any sort of oomph.

We actually tried leaving a single destroyed gem instead of a 3x3 block. It looked promising, but after tests it still was not as satisfying as destroying a big block of gems. Not to mention that doing this meant we still had to increase the cost of her ability a bit.

We know it took a while before this was changed, and while it seems obvious that it had to change, I'll explain our thought process little.

Our internal stats showed Chandra was getting an increase of play, and this was confirmed by a lot of what we saw on social media - a lot of players were using her. She was actually below average before 1.4.0 hit. Getting a small increase of play towards the median is something good, and initially it just showed this was the trend, so while some players were unsatisfied with playing against her, it did not seem necessary to act immediately. It's actually against our balancing values to react too quickly to trends (unless they completely break something) - Chandra could have very much been a flavor of the month type of thing, and balancing against that is not to anyone's advantage.

We also strongly believed that the addition of the new Planeswalkers would shake up the meta a little, and that players would discover suitable counters to Chandra. This simply did not happen because of how Quick Battle is set up and it's complete need for speed, so even if players found a counter to Chandra, it is still slower than playing her and losing/winning again.

For these reasons, we changed her first ability. We will continue monitoring the game and see what comes up.

Feel free to ask me any questions regarding this! I'll pop in regularly during the day to answer anything that may come up.

BassMuffinFIve

It's interesting that you literally just buffed her, and are now nerfing her. Makes one wonder about the testing

Was removing/lowering the damage from her first ability considered?

Any plans to make new PW's more on the same power level as the originals, or can we continue to expect that new PW's will be stronger than the ones released before them? Now that you have nerfed Chandra, Kiora and Gideon need to be looked at. Unless, making new PW's better than old ones is part of the plan, thus forcing us to buy them if we want to compete...

Plastic

When does this update take effect?

I had a thought about her first ability that I'll just throw out there. Instead of destroying random blocks of gems, maybe she could blow up X amount of red gems and Y amount of adjacent gems around those red ones.

The 6 loyalty cost is much needed though!

Edit: I see it's live already. Disregard my question.

Hibernum_JC

BassMuffinFIve wrote:

It's interesting that you literally just buffed her, and are now nerfing her. Makes one wonder about the testing

Was removing/lowering the damage from her first ability considered?

Any plans to make new PW's more on the same power level as the originals, or can we continue to expect that new PW's will be stronger than the ones released before them? Now that you have nerfed Chandra, Kiora and Gideon need to be looked at. Unless, making new PW's better than old ones is part of the plan, thus forcing us to buy them if we want to compete...

Yeah, we did just buff her. In all honesty, it was overbuffed, and it shouldn't have been. Internal tests showed it was fine, as I said, but internal results and live results can often differ. In this case, it gives us a lot of data about how these changes affect the meta, and it's something we're taking into consideration.

As I stated in the post, the problem was never the damage she causes. The ability damage is completely fine, and it's not game-changing. The problem is the gem destruction, which has the potential to create massive mana gains, but is still a very interesting ability.

Kiora is meant to be powerful but she has drawbacks - her mana gains are lower than other Planeswalkers (+3 to Blue and Green only, and 0 to other colors) makes her a bit more dependent on Blue and Green. You don't necessarily win 100% of the time with Kiora.

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is a special case also - he's highly specialized for BFZ, and is definitely much weaker when using cards from other sets. Again, if we figure out there's a problem, we will address it, but right now Chandra truly needed a fix.

Rootbreaker

I don't have Kiora yet, but I'm interpreting your " (+3 to Blue and Green only, and 0 to other colors)" as meaning +0 to other colors. Is that wrong, and red/white/black match 3s actually give 0 mana, while blue and green give 6?

Hibernum_JC

Rootbreaker wrote:

I don't have Kiora yet, but I'm interpreting your " (+3 to Blue and Green only, and 0 to other colors)" as meaning +0 to other colors. Is that wrong, and red/white/black match 3s actually give 0 mana, while blue and green give 6?

No, no, no.

Kiora gains 6 mana from Blue and Green matches, and 3 mana from White/Black/Red matches.

Sorry for the confusion.

Rootbreaker

If it's just +0 to other colors, +3 to two colors, is still better than what the Origins walkers get, +3 to their main color and +1 to friendly colors.

HomeRn

First of all, THANK YOU for the change to Chandra, that was long overdue! Nice to know that the development team also provides some of their insight when they address a problem like this as you've put it out to us. If only the team that handles the pricing structure was like this...

Now, can I steer your attention to Undergrowth Champion's "immunity" to being destroyed for some reason? I do have it in my deck for Nissa - the AI constantly tries to destroy it with Scour and other outright creature destruction spells and nothing happens to the Champion (not even the -1/-1 effect!). I don't run Reclaim as I do not have room for it yet, but considering the glitch I mentioned - and many others have in the bug forum before me - I only hope it gets corrected before this gets out of hand.

buffbeardo

Nice job devs! I'm happy to see only the casting cost of Chandra's first ability was adjusted. Her first ability is fun to use and I'm relieved to see it will remain so while being less exploitable. I love red magic but even I must admit 3 for Chandra's first ability was silly broken.

BassMuffinFIve

Hibernum_JC wrote:

BassMuffinFIve wrote:

It's interesting that you literally just buffed her, and are now nerfing her. Makes one wonder about the testing

Was removing/lowering the damage from her first ability considered?

Any plans to make new PW's more on the same power level as the originals, or can we continue to expect that new PW's will be stronger than the ones released before them? Now that you have nerfed Chandra, Kiora and Gideon need to be looked at. Unless, making new PW's better than old ones is part of the plan, thus forcing us to buy them if we want to compete...

Yeah, we did just buff her. In all honesty, it was overbuffed, and it shouldn't have been. Internal tests showed it was fine, as I said, but internal results and live results can often differ. In this case, it gives us a lot of data about how these changes affect the meta, and it's something we're taking into consideration.

As I stated in the post, the problem was never the damage she causes. The ability damage is completely fine, and it's not game-changing. The problem is the gem destruction, which has the potential to create massive mana gains, but is still a very interesting ability.

Kiora is meant to be powerful but she has drawbacks - her mana gains are lower than other Planeswalkers (+3 to Blue and Green only, and 0 to other colors) makes her a bit more dependent on Blue and Green. You don't necessarily win 100% of the time with Kiora.

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is a special case also - he's highly specialized for BFZ, and is definitely much weaker when using cards from other sets. Again, if we figure out there's a problem, we will address it, but right now Chandra truly needed a fix.

True. Chandra was the worst offender of the 3.

Can you name one PW that Kiora has lower mana gains than? /confused
All the original PW's are now 3/1/1 and some of the newer ones are 2/2/2 or in Garruk's case, 2/3/2. Kiora has more mana gain than all the original PW's...

I think you may be overvaluing the +1 the original PW's get to their colors though. +1 is negligible, while +2 and +3 are amazing. That's one of the reasons Gideon's 2/2/2 is so game-breakingly good. By your logic, a PW who got +1 to every color would somehow be equivalent to a PW who got +2 and a +3? It just doesn't work out like that. The original PW's basically play as "match your main color, and nothing else from that tunnel vision" and the new PW's play as "you can match one or more colors to great advantage"

If this was somehow balanced by the new PW's having mediocre abilities, this would be fine and dandy, but that is not the case. Kiora and Gideon have amazing abilities that you want to use every game, are cheap, and will win you games. I suppose you could make the argument, like you did, that Gideon's overall power level is limited by the cardpool he has access to, but the same is not true for Kiora. She has twice the cardpool of other PW's!!!

With the new PW's having strictly better mana gain, and no real drawbacks to show for it, I don't see how anyone could argue that this isn't a clear cut case of power creep. Now, don't get me wrong, power creep is a fine thing to have in a game. It is neither here nor there. Bad nor good. But when you introduce a higher price tag with said power creep, (how much is Kiora going to be? 500? 1000?) then you are stepping into the Pay2Win category. And that is what I was asking earlier. Can we expect this Pay2Win strategy to continue? Or are you actively trying to balance all the PW's to be equal?

TLDR nerfing Chandra makes all the new PW's pay to win. Chandra was the only base PW on the new PW's level.

Rootbreaker

BassMuffinFIve wrote:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

BassMuffinFIve wrote:

It's interesting that you literally just buffed her, and are now nerfing her. Makes one wonder about the testing

Was removing/lowering the damage from her first ability considered?

Any plans to make new PW's more on the same power level as the originals, or can we continue to expect that new PW's will be stronger than the ones released before them? Now that you have nerfed Chandra, Kiora and Gideon need to be looked at. Unless, making new PW's better than old ones is part of the plan, thus forcing us to buy them if we want to compete...

Yeah, we did just buff her. In all honesty, it was overbuffed, and it shouldn't have been. Internal tests showed it was fine, as I said, but internal results and live results can often differ. In this case, it gives us a lot of data about how these changes affect the meta, and it's something we're taking into consideration.

As I stated in the post, the problem was never the damage she causes. The ability damage is completely fine, and it's not game-changing. The problem is the gem destruction, which has the potential to create massive mana gains, but is still a very interesting ability.

Kiora is meant to be powerful but she has drawbacks - her mana gains are lower than other Planeswalkers (+3 to Blue and Green only, and 0 to other colors) makes her a bit more dependent on Blue and Green. You don't necessarily win 100% of the time with Kiora.

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is a special case also - he's highly specialized for BFZ, and is definitely much weaker when using cards from other sets. Again, if we figure out there's a problem, we will address it, but right now Chandra truly needed a fix.

True. Chandra was the worst offender of the 3.

Can you name one PW that Kiora has lower mana gains than? /confused
All the original PW's are now 3/1/1 and some of the newer ones are 2/2/2 or in Garruk's case, 2/3/2. Kiora has more mana gain than all the original PW's...

I think you may be overvaluing the +1 the original PW's get to their colors though. +1 is negligible, while +2 and +3 are amazing. That's one of the reasons Gideon's 2/2/2 is so game-breakingly good. By your logic, a PW who got +1 to every color would somehow be equivalent to a PW who got +2 and a +3? It just doesn't work out like that. The original PW's basically play as "match your main color, and nothing else from that tunnel vision" and the new PW's play as "you can match one or more colors to great advantage"

Yeah, even matching random colors, Kiora generates more mana than Origins planeswalkers.

Garruk is a lot higher at +2W +3G +2R +1B though, and Tezzeret is a little higher at +2W +3U +2B.

Of course, all of that assumes that you don't match on the primary colors more often than average, which you certainly will, and ignores Kiora's first ability, which generates mana.

Hibernum_JC

I was comparing Kiora to the new BFZ Planeswalkers, who typically generate more mana than her and the Origins Planeswalkers. Sorry I wasn't clear about that!

As for Undergrowth Champion's immunity problem, sadly this is a code bug that was discovered too late. It should be fixed in our next update.

Ekkias

If you do decide to nerf any of the new planeswalkers (Kiora, Gideon 2.0, etc) will you be compensating those people who paid money for them?

Otherwise, that's a pretty obvious bait and switch...

ChrisTot

Just curious...did you test letting her destroy a 2x2 grid as well?

mouser

Change is live, but I don't see a notice in-game anywhere. Hopefully that's coming soon.

HelloWorld

Rootbreaker wrote:

Yeah, even matching random colors, Kiora generates more mana than Origins planeswalkers.

Not really.

Origin walkers use a +0/+0/+1/+1/+3 arrangement for an average of 4 mana per match. Kiora uses +0/+0/+0/+3/+3 for an average of +4.2 but in all actual practice her cascades just are not as great as others since three of the five colors offer no additional bonuses. The newer Gideon uses +0/+0/+2/+2/+2 for an average of 4.2 as well with better cascading from the spread. Tezzert has +0/+0/+2/+2/+3 for 4.4 and Garruk is the highest with his +0/+1/+2/+2/+3 for 4.6 and a bonus to almost every color.

Now Kiora's 1st ability also gives +6 mana which is nice. But remember Nissa gives +3 mana & +3 green gems which can match for another +6 or even set up an extra match for even more. Chandra used to cascade all the time making multiple patches per turn before the nerf thanks to destroying huge chunks of the field which also helps wipe your opponent's supports on top of the extra damage, through the nerf will help reduce some of that. Until you cap Kiora's 2nd ability, fetch & +16 mana, she really doesn't have anything to bring about in the mana department. And afterwards, well she will undoubtedly be a higher shard costing walker just like the Gideon & Ob. Like Ob Nixilis costs twenty five times more shards than Liliana and it'd be unfair to the demanded cost if they weren't any better than the origin walkers.

What makes Kiora seem mana crazy to probably the the green element. Animist's Awakening is a very useful card that doesn't show up in D3's card spoiler. It should only be cast when you already have eight green gems on the board (the AI always tries to prioritize it), so if you're using Kiora you should probably stick to matching blue when you can. Nissa in my experience is devastating with it, not just because of the gem match, but Nissa's 1st ability when spammed always ensures you have enough green gems after a support or two and the bonus card draw along side it means your hand it stocked full of cards waiting for repeated mass mana dumps.

Alicrast

I agree completly with this nerf. Thanks! When you go about balancing the game do you ever look at win ratios? What data do you reference in order to make balancing decisions?

shteev

Now that Chandra isn't quite the crazy cascade machine that she used to be, can we have Jace's Mind Sculpt back to being activated gems now? It took me ages to figure out why you decided that making the gems trapped rather than activated was a buff, rather than a nerf, and the only conclusion I could come to was that trapped gems activated during cascades. (During testing, I didn't find it worked so well... sure, the first activation of Mind Sculpt would cancel out most of a cascade caused by a Flameshot, but it cost Jace 15 loyalty, and Chandra only 3.... 6 now).

In fact, do you think maybe you went a bit overboard nerfing Jace as a rule and he needs just a little sliver of power back? I'm not saying he wasn't too good before, I don't think I ever lost a game playing him in 1.3.1, but he's not an attractive prospect to play at the moment, at least without Noyan Dar in your deck.

PapiLouis4

shteev wrote:

Now that Chandra isn't quite the crazy cascade machine that she used to be, can we have Jace's Mind Sculpt back to being activated gems now? It took me ages to figure out why you decided that making the gems trapped rather than activated was a buff, rather than a nerf, and the only conclusion I could come to was that trapped gems activated during cascades. (During testing, I didn't find it worked so well... sure, the first activation of Mind Sculpt would cancel out most of a cascade caused by a Flameshot, but it cost Jace 15 loyalty, and Chandra only 3.... 6 now).

In fact, do you think maybe you went a bit overboard nerfing Jace as a rule and he needs just a little sliver of power back? I'm not saying he wasn't too good before, I don't think I ever lost a game playing him in 1.3.1, but he's not an attractive prospect to play at the moment, at least without Noyan Dar in your deck.

hes still a beast with thopter network, but thats even harder to get than noyen dar being a mythic and all xD

BassMuffinFIve

shteev wrote:

Now that Chandra isn't quite the crazy cascade machine that she used to be, can we have Jace's Mind Sculpt back to being activated gems now? It took me ages to figure out why you decided that making the gems trapped rather than activated was a buff, rather than a nerf, and the only conclusion I could come to was that trapped gems activated during cascades. (During testing, I didn't find it worked so well... sure, the first activation of Mind Sculpt would cancel out most of a cascade caused by a Flameshot, but it cost Jace 15 loyalty, and Chandra only 3.... 6 now).

In fact, do you think maybe you went a bit overboard nerfing Jace as a rule and he needs just a little sliver of power back? I'm not saying he wasn't too good before, I don't think I ever lost a game playing him in 1.3.1, but he's not an attractive prospect to play at the moment, at least without Noyan Dar in your deck.

Yes they did over nerf Jace quite hard. He is definitely the worst, if not the 2nd worst PW now.

Not to mention a bore to play. He needs some pizzazz! Although that seems to come at a 250 or more crystal price tag these days

BassMuffinFIve

HelloWorld wrote:

Rootbreaker wrote:

Yeah, even matching random colors, Kiora generates more mana than Origins planeswalkers.

Not really.

Origin walkers use a +0/+0/+1/+1/+3 arrangement for an average of 4 mana per match. Kiora uses +0/+0/+0/+3/+3 for an average of +4.2 but in all actual practice her cascades just are not as great as others since three of the five colors offer no additional bonuses. The newer Gideon uses +0/+0/+2/+2/+2 for an average of 4.2 as well with better cascading from the spread. Tezzert has +0/+0/+2/+2/+3 for 4.4 and Garruk is the highest with his +0/+1/+2/+2/+3 for 4.6 and a bonus to almost every color.

Now Kiora's 1st ability also gives +6 mana which is nice. But remember Nissa gives +3 mana & +3 green gems which can match for another +6 or even set up an extra match for even more. Chandra used to cascade all the time making multiple patches per turn before the nerf thanks to destroying huge chunks of the field which also helps wipe your opponent's supports on top of the extra damage, through the nerf will help reduce some of that. Until you cap Kiora's 2nd ability, fetch & +16 mana, she really doesn't have anything to bring about in the mana department. And afterwards, well she will undoubtedly be a higher shard costing walker just like the Gideon & Ob. Like Ob Nixilis costs twenty five times more shards than Liliana and it'd be unfair to the demanded cost if they weren't any better than the origin walkers.

What makes Kiora seem mana crazy to probably the the green element. Animist's Awakening is a very useful card that doesn't show up in D3's card spoiler. It should only be cast when you already have eight green gems on the board (the AI always tries to prioritize it), so if you're using Kiora you should probably stick to matching blue when you can. Nissa in my experience is devastating with it, not just because of the gem match, but Nissa's 1st ability when spammed always ensures you have enough green gems after a support or two and the bonus card draw along side it means your hand it stocked full of cards waiting for repeated mass mana dumps.

What makes Kiora seem mana crazy is the fact that she is mana crazy. Nissa gets 3 mana and 3 green gems for 9 loyalty. Kiora gets 6 mana for 6 loyalty. Do the math. And drains 6 from your opponent for free.

This game has become Pay2Win until Gideon and Kiora are balanced. Otherwise, the only strategy in this game is opening your wallet.