Kiora is too powerful

zaann85

Once again, we don't need anything nerfed. These new challanges if anything have showed us this. We can win against impossible odds with jank cards if we get the right strategy rolling. Also to reinform people, this is NOT a multiplayer game. Why would you want to handicap yourself by making cards worse. I hate to say get gud, but seriously this is a Magic game. There are answers for everything! Yes newer players will get stomped in QB, yes they can't win first place in an event. Just because you are mindlessly matching gems in a QB trying to catch top 10, and run into something that beats you doesn't mean it needs to be nerfed so you can go back to mindlessly swiping your overheated phone plugged into your charger while you watch netflix. Seriously, stop the tears because you don't like something because it beat you. Maybe if you would have actually payed attention to your card order you might have won.

I hate to see what you say when the other green dual walkers come out. Green Black is too OP because it has so much mana ramp, so it casts all these OP cards and can pump out so many kill spells and just use green's life gain to counter blacks life sacrificing downside. Or maybe Green White is too good because it can spew out matches and summon an ally army on turn one. Maybe Green Red is too OP because you can rain down fire from the skies and nuke supports like nobody's business. Red Green counters my Tezzeret! Boo hoo. Just stop guys for real.

span_argoman

shteev wrote:

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.

Wrong assumption, Demon's Grip and Weight of the Underworld work very nicely on Undergrowth Champion. And yes the AI is terrible at playing Ob Nixilis.

From what I see you're still being criticised for this thread because:
1. The planeswalkers were not meant to be equal, this is reflected in their crystal prices.
2. Kiora doesn't earn points in QB that much faster because her card animations take a significant amount of time, especially if you're going with a Noyan Dar deck.
3. It's better to have stronger planeswalkers considering the new Events which are PvE and super challenging for most.
4. If you're gonna call for all strong planeswalkers to be nerfed, you're not gonna have many fun toys to play with.

I don't think Kiora needs a nerf. The nerf to Animist's Awakening and Day's Undoing did plenty to rein in her power level.

shteev

span_argoman wrote:

Wrong assumption, Demon's Grip and Weight of the Underworld work very nicely on Undergrowth Champion.

Well, we'll just have to disagree on this point. I stopped playing Liliana because I didn't consider these cards to be strong enough. Perhaps you're a better player than me... if so, I dread to think of how powerful Kiora is in your hands. I've only been playing her a few days and am still learning new tricks and card combos.

span_argoman wrote:

From what I see you're still being criticised for this thread

I am, rather, aren't I? I thought I made one or two quite constructive points about dual colored planeswalkers and high powered planeswalkers, but sadly these have been largely ignored. Never mind.

span_argoman wrote:

If you're gonna call for all strong planeswalkers to be nerfed, you're not gonna have many fun toys to play with.

Well, you're a regular here, so you'll have noticed I didn't call for Gideon to be nerfed, or Jace to be nerfed, or Ajani to be nerfed. In fact I was extremely glad to find out how powerful Ajani was because it gave me a chance against Kiora/Undergrowth Champion decks in QuickBattle.

I did think Chandra was a little OTT when Flameshot cost 3. I think most of us did, didn't we?

I was, however, rather surprised to discover that Ajani was seen by the developers as a clear candidate for a nerf this time around, whilst Kiora was unaffected and, indeed, unmentioned in the patch notes.

khurram

shteev wrote:

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.

Funny you should say that, because i actually completed all the challenges without using Kiora or days undoing (i have both).... and i completed Tyrant 90 life objective with Ob.... it didnt count of course because of the bug... i dont completely understand the bug to work around it or i would do it without kiora

khurram

shteev wrote:

I was, however, rather surprised to discover that Ajani was seen by the developers as a clear candidate for a nerf this time around, whilst Kiora was unaffected and, indeed, unmentioned in the patch notes.

I think the devs consider a pw ability candidate for nerfing if it does something significant for a very cheap and spam able cost. Remember when gideons first ability used to cost 3 too?

glggwp

why so serious about a single player game...

venomAA

I did the 90 life challenge with a nissa deck. In fact i ditched kiora in mora than half the games of the event for liliana resurrect op stuff. A lil bit faster. I only used kiora for the spam support goals.
You will only be able to know what is truly broken when and if they enable true pvp. The three days ai pvps are too easy and you want speed not really op stuff.
So until true pvp comes stop calling for nerfs

shteev

venomAA wrote:

I did the 90 life challenge with a nissa deck.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that it had Undergrowth Champion in it.

Abenjes

Mwahahah UC and evolutionary leap smashes the 90 plus life challenges

Jazzpha

The most consistent counter to Kiora that I've found is just to play any ramp-style deck that can pump out huge minions quickly (or somewhat quickly), and just race her down before she can get some insane combo going. Sure, if she cascades into a turn 2 Thopter Spy Network, you're going to have a very bad time, but that's the case with most Walkers, even the original 5 (A nutso Chandra opening cascade can still crush me, even not considering the un-nerfing of her first Ability).

The current Kiora counter I'm using is Eldrazi Koth, but any Koth deck with big minions could probably do that trick. As long as you can outpace Kiora in dropping high-stated powerful minions, you can close the game out in short order. Even more easily if you can give your creatures Trample, which punches through defenders easily.

Sure, certain combos with Kiora are almost impossible to beat (Day's Undoing, Noyan Dar, and so on), but in the grand scheme of things, losing one battle out of 75 or so isn't going to make too big of a difference in the grand scheme of things. It feels really **** getting slaughtered, true, but when I remember all the times I cascaded into an absolutely bonkers opener against the AI, it's harder to get really mad about it. Comes and goes, and all that.

Upstartes

I mentioned the following in a different thread, but it seems relevant here.

I'm not too concerned about Kiora's power level. However, I find it odd that Ajani got a heavy rebalancing of his second ability while Kiora was left unchanged. It seems like the intent was to make Ajani's abilities on par with the single-color PWs, yet Kiora's abilities have been left significantly better.

Of course, I have Ajani and not Kiora, so I have a bias related to this change. But it just seems inconsistent.

shteev

I've been playing some Kiora in QuickBattle today.

Honestly, the idea that Kiora is somehow slow is laughable.

People talk as if somehow you HAVE to play with Part the Waterveil which slows you down, or you HAVE to cast all your combo spells whenever they fill up with mana.

Just throw a Harbinger of the Tides in your deck, and something else that deals damage quickly like a Woodland Bellower or Disciple of the Vault, stop casting spells when you're ahead and they waste your time, bish bash bosh, win in 5 minutes.

majincob

shteev wrote:

People talk as if somehow you HAVE to play with Part the Waterveil which slows you down, or you HAVE to cast all your combo spells whenever they fill up with mana.

See? I told you that waterveil was ok, but not necessary

span_argoman

shteev wrote:

I've been playing some Kiora in QuickBattle today.

Honestly, the idea that Kiora is somehow slow is laughable.

People talk as if somehow you HAVE to play with Part the Waterveil which slows you down, or you HAVE to cast all your combo spells whenever they fill up with mana.

Just throw a Harbinger of the Tides in your deck, and something else that deals damage quickly like a Woodland Bellower or Disciple of the Vault, stop casting spells when you're ahead and they waste your time, bish bash bosh, win in 5 minutes.

I don't recall people talking about Part the Waterveil, might have missed it. I do recall people saying that spamming spells to boost Noyan Dar slows down the game a lot cause of the spell animations. Yes you do want to cast those spells once they're filled cause you get +3/+3 to Noyan Dar per spell cast.

No one said Kiora was slow. But she's not some super speed demon completing matches in 2 minutes. So many planeswalkers can execute the deck idea you proposed (spam big creatures) in the same amount of time. Koth can do sub-5 minute matches, BFZ Gideon with Veteran Warleader can too. Ditto Sarkhan with Dragons. Ajani still can even after the nerf, thoughi really think they shouldn't have nerfed the second ability. If you think 5 minutes per match is OP fast you either need better cards or to be better at the game.

And in reply to your earlier post, whatever points you made about Kiora and dual-colour planeswalkers have already been discussed when she was first released and isn't anything new. Try searching through the forums to find out what people concluded.

My guess why the developers didn't nerf Kiora is that their data told them that anyone with Animist's Awakening was wrecking havoc, whether Kiora, Nissa or Garruk. So they nerf that, Noyan Dar, Undergrowth Champion, and Day's Undoing to see the impact before deciding whether Kiora is truly OP for a 950 crystal planeswalker. But that's just my guess.

ShawnP1

I thought the PW were all fine, because this isn't PVP and the AI plays like; well a faulty human created computer program plus anything it could do so can you in QB its like saying to a restaurant owner " Your food is far too delicious, so stop making it so good. " you end up only hurting the other people eating there who are like " Don't say that I really like this place! " So why complain that a weapon you can use is "too" powerful? If you don't like winning so easy or so fast then use some one else be creative! Make a janky new deck aim for blue elemental or red lizards or something.

venomAA

As many mentioned before kioras spell cascade animations kills kioras speed. I have been able to outspeed kiora by 1-1/2 minute with a liliana reanimator suicide ramp going for kills in avg 5-4 minutes. Heck i been able to outpower kioras decks with the same deck too. Even if they run walker or uc. Kioras main abilty is stabilty in life. More often than not ill burn the pots with the suicide deck, while kiora allows me to play using 1 every hour or little less

soultwist

I'm maybe a little old fashion (I played paper magic before the concept of planeswalkers and still don't really understand how they work in paper magic) but it always seems to come back to the cards for me. I never dread getting any particular planeswalker as an opponent, it's the cards they play that will make it hard or easy. Even Chandra at 3 for first loyalty. If I can't beat everyone every time I figure I need to be using better cards.

Part of this of course is, as has been mentioned, the AI isn't one of you that I am facing.

As a disclaimer I have none of the new planeswalkers but I have started to consider getting some of them.

I can run all 5 of the originals in QB and don't have to worry about anything. Are they the absolute fastest as possible? No, probably not. Are they fast enough that I don't have any problems? Yes. The only times I have ever needed or wanted to quit a battle was pre-nerf Mizzium Meddler.

I don't mean to imply that I beat down Undergrowth Champion or other things like that every single time but it's certainly not a sure loss. And then again it's the card that is giving me the trouble rather than the Planeswalker.

EDHdad

Just throw a Harbinger of the Tides in your deck, and something else that deals damage quickly like a Woodland Bellower or Disciple of the Vault, stop casting spells when you're ahead and they waste your time, bish bash bosh, win in 5 minutes.

If all you do is throw down beaters, any planeswalker can win in less than 5 minutes.

If Kiora is literally "10 times better" than any other walker, she should be able to win in 30 seconds.

shteev

I'm fascinated by the fact that everyone seems to think that Harbinger of the Tides and Disciple of the Vault are beatdown creatures.

span_argoman

shteev wrote:

I'm fascinated by the fact that everyone seems to think that Harbinger of the Tides and Disciple of the Vault are beatdown creatures.

Thanks for taking a straw man and failing to address any of the points brought up by people. I think you can do better than that cause this is just at trolling level.