Kiora is too powerful

shteev

I've just spent 950 crystals, and 170k (I think?) runes on Kiora.

So I can confidently say that Kiora is RIDICULOUSLY overpowered, and should be nerfed immediately.

She has access to the fastest mana in the game in green, and the best card draw AND removal in blue. Nissa's Pilgrimage/Fertile Ticket/Natural Connection accelerate your cards out of your hand, and Jhessian Thief/Sigiled Starfish/Prism Array/Artificer's Epiphany/Coastal Discovery/Any number of other cards fill your hand up again for minimal cost. God forbid you have access to Day's Undoing, that's a combo which is too powerful to be allowed to exist.

She combines all this fast mana with an inexpensive first ability which gives her even more mana, while simultaneously draining her opponent!

Playing blue gives her access to bounce, still the strongest form of removal in the game, which copes better with Hangarback Walkers than simply destroying them, and can easily deal with Undergrowth Champion, far and away the most broken creature in the game right now. And she can play Undergrowth Champion herself.

And she need not devote any space in her deck to a win condition, since her ultimate ability will do the job (unlike, say, Ajani, or Jace)... and quickly, as well.


Shame on anybody who has bought her and is happily playing away with a 100% win rate without bringing her extreme brokenness to the dev's attention. If Ajani needed a nerf before the last update, and Chandra needed one before that, and Jace needed one before that, and Gideon needed one before that, then Kiora UNQUESTIONABLY does now, and has done for a long time.


Clearly, being able to play more than one color of cards is a huge advantage to a planeswalker in this game. Surely, then, they should be handicapped by having lower mana gains than normal, and abilities with less raw power. Consider the difference between Gideon's 'Sharp Eyes' and 'Call to Arms' abilities... Sharp Eyes is low on power, but provides a situationally useful abilty which combines well with many White creatures and spells, whereas 'Call to Arms' gives you a very high return on power and toughness per loyalty spent.

Rootbreaker

Yeah, she's amazing. I've literally never lost a quick battle with her (except memory leak crashing).

To be fair, they did nerf Day's Undoing this patch (6 cost to 10 cost). You can't talent of the telepath into it anymore.

The other change to my deck is that prism array draws you cards even if your opponent's board is empty now. This is stronger, but I think it slows you down, so it's worse overall for quick battle.

I don't think Jace or Gideon ever needed nerfs. Chandra certainly does (and does again, at least for Quick Battle, since they accidentally reverted the first ability to cost 3 again).

I almost never use the first ability though. My deck is built to ultimate her as quick as possible. I use the second ability if I already have some board presence and can end the game a turn more quickly by getting a guy now rather than waiting for octopuses.

Plastic

Rootbreaker wrote:

Yeah, she's amazing. I've literally never lost a quick battle with her (except memory leak crashing).

To be fair, they did nerf Day's Undoing this patch (6 cost to 10 cost). You can't talent of the telepath into it anymore.

The other change to my deck is that prism array draws you cards even if your opponent's board is empty now. This is stronger, but I think it slows you down, so it's worse overall for quick battle.

I don't think Jace or Gideon ever needed nerfs. Chandra certainly does (and does again, at least for Quick Battle, since they accidentally reverted the first ability to cost 3 again).

Things like this, while powerful, don't generate fast QB wins as Rootbreaker says. Just like old Jayce could have an insane win ratio, he wouldn't ever finish matches as fast as Chandra.

If Kiora can play and rarely lose, but takes an average of 5+ minutes to win, then I wouldn't say she's the best.

EDHdad

Shame on who, specifically? All of the points you mentioned have been brought up many times since Kiora was spoiled.

Yes, she's powerful. But she's not going to win any faster than Garruk, Gideon II, Ajani or even Chandra in PvP mode. And if you're facing her in PvP mode, she can be defeated just fine by any color walker.

With some of the later challenges in the new Oath of the Gatewatch event, you're going to be mighty thankful that you have access to a powerful planeswalker. The opposing walkers can have as much as 412 starting life. One of them can give all of its creatures +3/+3 reach, flying and hexproof for 6 loyalty. One of them does 6 damage to you and all of your creatures. One of them can throw down a creature which kills a support and a 5x5 block of gems, and has huge power and toughness and has berserker and reach. My Kiora / Thopter Spy Network deck barely hobbled out alive. And only then, because Herald of the Pantheon gave me 3 life whenever I cast a support.

They Nerfed Jace, Chandra and Ajani because their first abilities cost 3 loyalty and could basically be spammed each turn. Putting these abilities at 6 makes them on par with other planeswalkers whose first ability costs 6 to 9. They did Nerf Kiora by Nerfing the two most popular cards people put into her decks: Day's Undoing and Noyan Dar.

I agree that 2 color planeswalkers are inherently powerful simply by the fact that they have access to 2 colors of cards. However, this is not a reason to Nerf the 2-color walkers, but to make at least 7 more walkers with 2 color combinations: white-blue, white-black, white-green, blue-black, blue-red, black-green, and red-green.

khurram

EDHdad wrote:

Shame on who, specifically? All of the points you mentioned have been brought up many times since Kiora was spoiled.

Yes, she's powerful. But she's not going to win any faster than Garruk, Gideon II, Ajani or even Chandra in PvP mode. And if you're facing her in PvP mode, she can be defeated just fine by any color walker.

With some of the later challenges in the new Oath of the Gatewatch event, you're going to be mighty thankful that you have access to a powerful planeswalker. The opposing walkers can have as much as 412 starting life. One of them can give all of its creatures +3/+3 reach, flying and hexproof for 6 loyalty. One of them does 6 damage to you and all of your creatures. One of them can throw down a creature which kills a support and a 5x5 block of gems, and has huge power and toughness and has berserker and reach. My Kiora / Thopter Spy Network deck barely hobbled out alive. And only then, because Herald of the Pantheon gave me 3 life whenever I cast a support.

They Nerfed Jace, Chandra and Ajani because their first abilities cost 3 loyalty and could basically be spammed each turn. Putting these abilities at 6 makes them on par with other planeswalkers whose first ability costs 6 to 9. They did Nerf Kiora by Nerfing the two most popular cards people put into her decks: Day's Undoing and Noyan Dar.

I agree that 2 color planeswalkers are inherently powerful simply by the fact that they have access to 2 colors of cards. However, this is not a reason to Nerf the 2-color walkers, but to make at least 7 more walkers with 2 color combinations: white-blue, white-black, white-green, blue-black, blue-red, black-green, and red-green.

Hear hear ☺

zaann85

Can we just stop with trying to nerf things. This is not a multiplayer game. There is no reason to nerf any planeswalker. Making a card or planeswalker weaker only hurts yourself. Any planeswalker can be good for QB if you got the right cards. Next up why don't we nerf Obby. He can do 24 damage per turn with his ultimate. His second ability can kill any creature. Nerf Chandra again. A board wipe for 9 loyalty is absurd. Liliana makes me discard all my high mana cards after wasting turns to fill up. Wah wah wah.

shteev

Well, as a novice Kiora player, I don't yet have the experience to build a deck that wins quickly, I'll grant you. This does not mean that I don't think that one exists.

And also, I'll concede the point that is sometimes a little challenging to prevent one of the story mode opponents from ever casting a single spell and dealing you a single point of damage, whilst achieving one or both of the objectives and wading through his hundreds of life points.

Only a *little* challenging, tho. Merely beating them soundly is childs play.

TheLaughingMann

Believe it or not, I played a solid blue deck with Jace running a Void-Bounce control deck against some of the craziest Kiora decks I've seen. These are the kinds that literally engineer fast mana to play cards that give them life and a fresh hand of cards, or clearing the field in a hurry...and yet, I was able to persevere against some, not all.

The trick with my deck is to get enough Void gems on the field to use some of my creatures' abilities. Here's my current setup:

Fathom Feeder
Benthic Infiltrator
Incubator Drone
Ulamog's Despoiler
Anchor to the Aether
Clutch of Currents
Anticipate
Murk Strider
Scour from Existence
Ulamog's Reclaimer

If I can draw Benthic early enough to get him popping Void gems, or Fathom out quick enough to do the same, Murk Strider is a cheap bouncer. Anchor and Clutch are good bounce cards for decent costs, Anticipate lets me feed my hand with cards when and if I need them. Scour for those pain in the butt cards not worth bouncing (and for more Void gems). Incubator Drone is a cheap and easy double-Defender spawn with a card draw. And the pair of Ulamogs are good with Voids too, feeding me spent spells or getting a hard hitting 9/9 with each play.

I've found that if I can get a steady draw of bounce cards and keep my opponent's hand full (this strategy falls upon the opponent having 5 or less cards in his hand, so it is very risky), then I can deadlock his hand and whittle down his life and reduce his mana supply on the field.

For being a month into the game, I'm surprised how well it works with a bit of patience and luck.

Meanwhile, I'm tearing my hair out with my green and white and red decks. My black deck's second in efficiency to the blue, though.

But yeah, Kiora is nuts with the right card setup. But so is Koth. He's several times worse now than before, and more powerful than Chandra.

jollyrogercjf

Well we are now reaching the point where non-whales are getting access to the card.

After it first released you see a kiora in QB, you know whats coming, it's a nightmare to play against because they will have all the proper mythics and rares to make your life miserable.

That said now that the dolphins and minnows are gaining access it's not a guaranteed loss anymore, other than the 2 to 3 whales you see a couple times a day it's a good match but definitely winnable.

khurram

jollyrogercjf wrote:

Well we are now reaching the point where non-whales are getting access to the card.

After it first released you see a kiora in QB, you know whats coming, it's a nightmare to play against because they will have all the proper mythics and rares to make your life miserable.

That said now that the dolphins and minnows are gaining access it's not a guaranteed loss anymore, other than the 2 to 3 whales you see a couple times a day it's a good match but definitely winnable.

So its not necessarily her abilities but the presence of certain mythics in the deck that make her powerful


I have never lost a match to kiora because she spammed her first ability or summoned the octopi..... whenever i lost it was because of cards like nissas renewal, nissa revelation and AA that boosted her life back up in addition to having powerful synergies with certain blue cards.

And of course the UC, but thats a card which can make any green pw deck OP and has nothing to do with specifically kiora

shteev

khurram wrote:

So its not necessarily her abilities but the presence of certain mythics in the deck that make her powerful

Well, she certainly has access to all the most broken cards in the game at the moment... Undergrowth Champion, From Beyond, Day's Undoing, Crush of Tentacles, Prism Array... and a whole host more.

We can't really balance any of the blue cards for mono-blue planeswalkers because they'll alwyas be better in Kiora because she can play them so much faster, as she has access to green mana acceleration. And we can't balance green cards in light of that color's poor creature removal because when played with Kiora she has access to extremely powerful removal.

I have to say, as well, it's particularly egregious of the designers to make Crush of Tentacles *specifically* to interact well with Kiora, allowing her to stack it's Octopi tokens with her own, especially in light of the fact that poor old Garruk, a cheaper planeswalker, never gets to do this with his tokens (as far as I am aware... he certainly couldn't stack his tokens with Zendikar's Roil, for example).


Incidentally, in an attempt to do the <10 life objective in this weekend's Event's 'Tyrant of Valakut' level, I entered the level starting at 11 life (by quitting a level and taking damage), and won the game on my second attempt (I foolishly played Plummet in my first attempt and 2 Akoum Firebirds respawned from a landfall). I wonder if that's possible with any other planeswalker...

(It didn't give me the acheivement even tho the Game Over screen said I had 0 life, btw)

Abenjes

Every game needs an ultimate form or a most powerful weapon to chase , this is Kiora. She is beyond many players ability to buy and at 950 nearly double the price of the other dual walkers. Surely that would mean she should be just a bit better? Also we havnt seen a white/green or green/red or blue/black walker yet, all those colours scare the bejesus out of me

TheLaughingMann

Abenjes wrote:

Every game needs an ultimate form or a most powerful weapon to chase , this is Kiora. She is beyond many players ability to buy and at 950 nearly double the price of the other dual walkers. Surely that would mean she should be just a bit better? Also we havnt seen a white/green or green/red or blue/black walker yet, all those colours scare the bejesus out of me

I played the regular TCG for a time. Green/red would involve great beasts getting haste or quick spurts of power/toughness or even adding in a little extra damage. White/green's cool in the sense you can also combine great beasts with angels or cards to give them permanent power/toughness gains, and get better lifegain and solid defenders. Blue/black? Oh frick me. Bouncing, disruption, and destruction, oh my.

EDHdad

I have to say, as well, it's particularly egregious of the designers to make Crush of Tentacles *specifically* to interact well with Kiora,

One thing to understand is that, in paper Magic, Kiora actually is in Battle for Zendikar and actually is a blue-green planeswalker whose ultimate does make 8/8 Octopus tokens. Crush of Tentacles is an actual mythic from Oath of the Gatewatch which also makes the same 8/8 Octopus tokens.

Gideon II is in Battle for Zendikar and does make Ally tokens.

Meanwhile, Ajani, Koth, Garruk, Tezzeret and Sarkhan are from completely different sets from Magic's past. So their abilities don't necessarily mesh with the cards from Origins / Battle for Zendikar / Oath of the Gatewatch.

My best guess is that Koth, Garruk and Tezzeret were added to balance out the colors - there is one premium and one free planeswalker for Black, Blue, Green, Red and White. With 2-color walkers, some color pairs are still missing, but every color is represented by at least one 2-color walker. Presumably, more are to come.

In upcoming Standard sets, there should be a new Jace (blue), a new Chandra (red), a new Nissa (green), Arlinn Kord (red-green), Nahiri (red-white), Sorin (black-white).

Blasphemous

shteev wrote:

I've just spent 950 crystals, and 170k (I think?) runes on Kiora.

So I can confidently say that Kiora is RIDICULOUSLY overpowered, and should be nerfed immediately.

She has access to the fastest mana in the game in green, and the best card draw AND removal in blue. Nissa's Pilgrimage/Fertile Ticket/Natural Connection accelerate your cards out of your hand, and Jhessian Thief/Sigiled Starfish/Prism Array/Artificer's Epiphany/Coastal Discovery/Any number of other cards fill your hand up again for minimal cost. God forbid you have access to Day's Undoing, that's a combo which is too powerful to be allowed to exist.

She combines all this fast mana with an inexpensive first ability which gives her even more mana, while simultaneously draining her opponent!

Playing blue gives her access to bounce, still the strongest form of removal in the game, which copes better with Hangarback Walkers than simply destroying them, and can easily deal with Undergrowth Champion, far and away the most broken creature in the game right now. And she can play Undergrowth Champion herself.

And she need not devote any space in her deck to a win condition, since her ultimate ability will do the job (unlike, say, Ajani, or Jace)... and quickly, as well.


Shame on anybody who has bought her and is happily playing away with a 100% win rate without bringing her extreme brokenness to the dev's attention. If Ajani needed a nerf before the last update, and Chandra needed one before that, and Jace needed one before that, and Gideon needed one before that, then Kiora UNQUESTIONABLY does now, and has done for a long time.


Clearly, being able to play more than one color of cards is a huge advantage to a planeswalker in this game. Surely, then, they should be handicapped by having lower mana gains than normal, and abilities with less raw power. Consider the difference between Gideon's 'Sharp Eyes' and 'Call to Arms' abilities... Sharp Eyes is low on power, but provides a situationally useful abilty which combines well with many White creatures and spells, whereas 'Call to Arms' gives you a very high return on power and toughness per loyalty spent.

Don't forget Exert Influence either. I play with that in my deck as well. Sadly though....I don't have bring to light yet.

shteev

Let's say for a second that I'm ok with Kiora being about 10x as powerful as everyone else. I'm not, but let's say I am for the sake of argument.

Can we not at least have some kind of league system? I mean, TheLaughingMann has been having some success against Kiora/Undergrowth Champion decks with his mono-blue deck there, and I've been doing pretty well against them with my Ajani deck. And it's a great challenge to tune your deck up to these high standards (I'm particularly impressed by the lack of rares and mythics in your deck, LTM!), but it does rather mean that almost every other fight in QuickBattle is trivially easy.

Do I really have to play through all these low skill matches, some of them against opponents who have clearly only just started playing, with their Llanowar Empaths and Orchard Spirits?

And what about these events? TBH I'm not particularly glad to have access to Kiora, because she went through these enemies, including the ones with 412 life and powerful loyalty powers, like a dose of salts. The huge disparity in the power levels of the planeswalkers makes it impossible to balance these levels... many players are complaining they have no chance, whereas I have the resources to ensure it's not even moderately hard.

I *am* quite enjoying the challenge of trying to do Tyrant of Valakut's '>90 life' objective at the moment, but that only exists because there's a bug in the game. I'd love to see anyone even get close to completing it without both Kiora and Day's Undoing.

EDHdad

If it wasn't for the bug, the Tyrant of Valakut challenge could be easily done with Gideon I, Gideon II or Ajani with some lifegain cards, and possibly Ob-Nixilis or Garruk running some lifegain cards as well. The Kiora strategy people are playing is a glass cannon. You either cascade into an early octopus or you fail the objective.

Kiora is powerful, but she's not 10 times more powerful than anyone else. Pre-Nerf Ajani was way more consistent and much faster. I had a 250+ game win streak going with Ajani which won in an average of less than 4 minutes, and rarely closed out the game under 105 life (which sadly ended when the screen froze after the last update). By comparison, a Kiora deck generally took at least 7-10 minutes to win, partially due to all the animations and cascading with her various spells. Even then, Kiora could get stomped once in a while by an aggressive Red deck that got off to a fast start.

shteev

EDHdad wrote:

If it wasn't for the bug, the Tyrant of Valakut challenge could be easily done with Gideon I, Gideon II or Ajani with some lifegain cards, and possibly Ob-Nixilis or Garruk running some lifegain cards as well. The Kiora strategy people are playing is a glass cannon. You either cascade into an early octopus or you fail the objective.

Oh, sure. My point is that Kiora can do it NOW, without the life gain.

I guess we'll find out how powerful she really is when PvP finally turns up.

shteev

EDHdad wrote:

Pre-Nerf Ajani was way more consistent and much faster. I had a 250+ game win streak going with Ajani which won in an average of less than 4 minutes, and rarely closed out the game under 105 life (which sadly ended when the screen froze after the last update).

Personally, I think that basing a planeswalker's power on your own performance is a poor way to judge their power level; The AI is not nearly as good as a human player.

I've got over 3,000 wins in QuickBattle, and a 97.5% win average, and a number of my losses were to game crashes or disconnects. I've never lost a game with Jace pre-nerf, and I've never lost a game with Ajani pre-nerf.

But I could DESTROY AI Ajani's with my Ajani deck. They never had a hope in hell. The only games that would give me trouble, and maybe reduce me down below 80 life, were Kiora decks, or decks that ran Undergrowth Champion, or Kiora decks than ran Undergrowth Champion. Some of them, anyway.

EDHdad

In true PvP mode, Kiora would get ROFL stomped by Ob-Nixilis. Go ahead and draw 6 cards and take 48 damage. Then cast your scary octopus which I kill for 5 mana.

I play on two different devices. On one, it took me hours to beat Kozilek with a Kiora Thopter Spy Network / From Beyond deck. On another, I beat Kozilek in one try using Ob Nixilis, using cards which other people had reported being effective on these boards.

People have reported beating the harder event challenges with Ajani, Chandra, Gideon I, Gideon II, Jace, Kiora, Liliana, Nissa, Ob Nixilis and Tezzeret. In the deck lists reported, I've identified 178 different cards, ranging from common to mythic. It isn't necessary to own a Kiora or to have one or two specific mythic cards to have success with this game.

shteev

EDHdad wrote:

In true PvP mode, Kiora would get ROFL stomped by Ob-Nixilis. Go ahead and draw 6 cards and take 48 damage. Then cast your scary octopus which I kill for 5 mana.

If only I could see some way of playing around that.

Ob Nixilis' power level I can't speak to, because I haven't bought him yet. This is largely based on my own assumption that he'll lose games to Undergrowth Champion due to black's general inability to deal with it; I could be completely wrong. My AI Ob Nixilis opponents play him very badly, using up loyalty to lose life and draw cards they don't need. So I don't have experience playing him, or useful experience playing against him.

If I buy him and find that he's grossly overpowered, I'll start a thread for him too

The only reason I haven't started one for Kiora prior to now is I'd have got **** for suggesting an extremely expensive planeswalker be nerfed without having spent the resources on her myself. It wouldn't have been a credible position to take.