Optimum Max Levels For PVP Events

Trollman

So as far as I can tell, when you log into a PVP match, the game will try to give you an opponent that is within five levels of your Planeswalker. This means that registering a level 60 planeswalker can be worse than registering a level 40 planeswalker. If your walker gains less in the last 20 levels than potential opponents are gaining in the last 15, you are actually farther behind by spending more runes on advancing your walker to a higher level. Note that obviously none of this applies to static enemies like in Avacyn's Madness or Story Modes.

Because many planeswalkers are quite back loaded with really significant gains in the last ten levels, all the planeswalkers with only moderate endgame bonuses are putting up relative advantage by being registered in Nodes of Power (or whatever) at level 45 or below. Liliana Defiant at level 60 is simply much much scarier and has a much easier time pulling off an upset win than she does at level 40. A 6-cost Corrupt is much more likely to lock you out of the game after the computer randomly gets a 2nd turn cascade than a 9 cost Corrupt is. So any deck that isn't getting a really considerable advantage by going to level 60 is going to be more consistent being registered at level 35 and never having to face a Level 60 Liliana.

So looking at the chart, I think Jace, Telepath is probably better against the level 33 and under field at level 28 or the level 20 and under field at level 15 than he is at the level 60 and under field at level 60. And my very best win percentage in both quick battle and events is a level 33 Nahiri. That's not intelligently optimized, I just noticed that she never ever loses at that level and have been afraid to pump any more runes into her.

Anyway, what other Planeswalkers do you all think over perform when competing at PVP while under leveled? Do you think there's a significant difference between Enraged match events and others?

motrax

While this is all interesting in theory, the fact that a level 60 walker gets you 6 ribbons and a level 30ish walker only gets you 3 ribbons, totally undercuts the value. It's just always advantageous to level your walker... they purposely designed it this way so that people would be incentivized to level their walkers up.

I still have 1 more level to go for my Kiora, that final level takes like 12k runes and I keep using my runes elsewhere. I haven't done steady QB's for months, but to get the most Ribbons per minute, I will eventually want to max her.

majincob

motrax wrote:

While this is all interesting in theory, the fact that a level 60 walker gets you 6 ribbons and a level 30ish walker only gets you 3 ribbons, totally undercuts the value. It's just always advantageous to level your walker... they purposely designed it this way so that people would be incentivized to level their walkers up.

I still have 1 more level to go for my Kiora, that final level takes like 12k runes and I keep using my runes elsewhere. I haven't done steady QB's for months, but to get the most Ribbons per minute, I will eventually want to max her.

The original post is specifically about events and not QB's. They did balance QB's in an attempt to make stalling level progression of PW'ers not advantageous way back in a long ago update. I remember using my level 1 Gideon to rule in QB because I had power rares that let me win at Koth speeds and still get the same 1 ribbon a level 50 did taking 3 or 4 times as long.

It seems like they should address PVP events as well, except that it takes new players forever to level 5 PW to 60, especially if they purchased 2 color ones. Because their focus is on events now, they have to make it accessible to new players or the new players will not participate and Consequently leave the game.

I don't have the solution to their problem, but they are probably thinking about it.

To answer the original post I think any of the newer PW with large mana gains will be excellent since they seem to gain their primary mana boosts first before filling in their off-color mana gains making them very explosive, particularly if you have the right mana changing supports for their colors (I'm thinking of Nahiri, Jace2, Lilliana2). I haven't looked at the charts, but my alt account plays J2 and I'm amazed how good he is in bronze around level 30, +1/+1 per draw is still very relevant with cheap blue creatures.

Trollman

Optimum levels for QB is more complicated because a level 60 PW gets 6 Ribbons and a level 30 PW gets 3 Ribbons for a victory. So for the level 30 PW to be the correct choice, it would have to more than double the number of QB wins per hour than the level 60 PW would.

Now honestly, I think you might be able to find edge cases where that is legitimately the case. Since many potential opposing walkers get a lot of extra hit points and most walkers you might play are quite front loaded in their mana gains - you'll almost certainly be playing similarly sized creatures at similar speeds at level 30 than at level 60 - but taking many less attacks from them to win. And of course your consistency will likely always go up when you aren't facing level 60 opposition that might randomly take the game away from you with powerful mythics and top tier abilities. But it's also obviously going to be much much closer in QB than in Nodes of Power because in QB the level 60 PW gets bonus Ribbons.

But in Nodes of Power you don't get anything for bringing a higher level PW except that bonuses the higher level actually gives - and it has the very real cost in time and consistency of having to overcome higher level opposition. I strongly suspect that the correct level to play Nodes of Power with is somewhere between 6 and 15. A level 6 Chandra who happened to be full up on awesome cheap cards like Devil's Playground and Inner Struggle could easily roflstomp all the opposition in a very small number of turns. Which would give you faster points and thus better tie breakers.

As a general rule, most planeswalkers get most of their mana bonuses in the first 30 levels with their 2nd and 3rd ability getting many times better and getting a lot of hit point bloat in the latter 30 levels. There are some exceptions of course, Kiora's manabase is pretty sad until near max level, but as a general rule it holds pretty solid. Jace1's manabase is almost idential at level 28 as it is at level 60, but Mindsculpt is unrecognizable at level 60 to its effects for a lower level Jace. Nahiri doesn't need to get out of the 30s to be able to get 6+ mana from two different color matches, but only a level 60 Nahiri is going to use Harbringer in anything other than a weird edge case.

Going to level 60 is thus advantageous if you are intending to get your win consistency from your planeswalker abilities (Kiora and Liliana1 are good candidates), or if you have a combo that you think will always win and just need more life to stay around to see it happen (Jace2 and Koth are good candidates). But if you just intend to steam roller your opponents with the cards in your deck (Nahiri and Nissa are good candidates), gaining levels is probably just bad for your Nodes of Power performance.

afterlife

It seems lv 6~15 isn't enough for PVP events...

I have seen lv 27 opponent in front of my lv 8 nissa
It's not common to meet an opponent with 10+ level higher, for me maybe 10%?
and I know it's not unbeatable...
However it feels unfair, especially you don't know why, am I so unlucky?

Splizwarf

5 levels max difference is not accurate. I have had Ajani at level 50 since a few weeks after he was released, and his opponents in events are literally always level 60. In QB, it's more varied.

Stormcrow

motrax wrote:

It seems like they should address PVP events as well, except that it takes new players forever to level 5 PW to 60, especially if they purchased 2 color ones. Because their focus is on events now, they have to make it accessible to new players or the new players will not participate and Consequently leave the game.

One partial solution would be to make the original 5 PWs cheaper to level than the current standard cost of leveling a mono-colored PW. At this point they have all been pretty thoroughly power-crept anyways, except maaaaaybe Liliana, so it seems like it might finally be time to reduce their leveling costs. Seems like it could only help with retaining/encouraging new players.

Feyda

Uhhh when did you guys ever get level appropriate matches outside of QB? Ever since I started playing this game, when NOP or **** or any pvp event was up, if I put my level 20-40 walkers in I was facing straight level 60s. Not so much an issue now that I have 60s in all 5 colors but it was a HUGE frustration when coming in as a newbie.

majincob

Feyda wrote:

Uhhh when did you guys ever get level appropriate matches outside of QB? Ever since I started playing this game, when NOP or **** or any pvp event was up, if I put my level 20-40 walkers in I was facing straight level 60s. Not so much an issue now that I have 60s in all 5 colors but it was a HUGE frustration when coming in as a newbie.

This past NoP I was reliably getting PW within 5 levels of my lower level Alt's. Never played NoP with sub-60 PW before, but managed to get 325 ribbons in bronze.

Splizwarf

Feyda wrote:

Uhhh when did you guys ever get level appropriate matches outside of QB? Ever since I started playing this game, when NOP or **** or any pvp event was up, if I put my level 20-40 walkers in I was facing straight level 60s. Not so much an issue now that I have 60s in all 5 colors but it was a HUGE frustration when coming in as a newbie.

This is no longer the case. I played the last NoP with Sorin and Arlinn at ~40 and their opponents were roughly the same level. I think it changed in 1.7 maybe? Feels like it was a month, maybe a month and a half ago. A friend of mine began playing in September and she flat-out couldn't touch events because they were still all 60s at that time.

GregDreher

I've seen mostly matches within 5 levels, but the following is frustrating:

If my planeswalker is level 60, my opponent is level 60.
If my planeswalker is level 55-59, my opponent is level 60.
If my planeswalker is level 54 or lower, my opponent is higher level than me, quite often 5 levels higher.

In a match-up like this, when I get my opponent down to 2 life before losing, that tells me I would have won, had the game pared me against an opponent of equal level. And that doesn't help my play experience.

Perhaps the programming of PVP events could be changed to use player decks, but automatically adjust the planeswalker level to match the player.

jayabalard

In general, lower level plainswalkers means that powerful low cost cards are proportionally even more powerful. Lower level plainswalkers miss out on some of the nastier abilities from opponents as well

so if you have good, low cost cards (say 4 to 6 cost especially) you may find your advantage melting away a bit by leveling.

For example: A white deck built around a bunch of low cost cards (lone rider leaps to mind), can be pretty obscene at mid 20s; most of the cards in the deck can cost 4 to 6, so they can be brought out in a single turn.

other random thoughts:
At low level, it's much easier to cut off mana from dual color opponent(eg Sorin), since they tend to have deeper penalties at low levels that can be crippling; contrariwise, while playing one of them, playing just above the level where the first penalties are relaxed gives you a decent boost in power compared to your opponents.
At low level, Chanrda's 2nd tier is less threatening, since it only targets one creature at a time; contrariwise, if playing as Chandra, you want to have tier 3 scorching strike.
At low level, Liliana's discard ability is significantly easier to manage/less threatening, contrariwise, if playing as Liliana you get a big boost by having level 3 corrupt.
Nissa's 2nd tier ability proportionally more powerful at low level than it is at high level, especially with an event that has enrage

octal9

GregDreher wrote:

Perhaps the programming of PVP events could be changed to use player decks, but automatically adjust the planeswalker level to match the player.

While a great idea on paper, in practice this will **** the deck due to mana gain adjustments.

GregDreher

octal9 wrote:

GregDreher wrote:

Perhaps the programming of PVP events could be changed to use player decks, but automatically adjust the planeswalker level to match the player.

While a great idea on paper, in practice this will **** the deck due to mana gain adjustments.

I'm not thinking about grabbing any planeswalker from levels 1-60 as your opponent. Have the game first choose a planeswalker within five levels of yours, and then raise or lower that level to equal yours.

There would be some difference in mana generation between the player's deck and the level-adjusted deck, but it would be small. The biggest impact would be on Nissa's second ability (e.g. you fill your deck with 16 cost creatures because Nissa is level 58), but it's not like the AI uses that ability much.

hawkyh1

lilliana's corrupt would suffer badly from being
less than level 51. discarding 2 opponent cards
every 2 turns(6 mana) is very different from
every 3 turns(9 mana).

HH

wereotter

GregDreher wrote:

octal9 wrote:

GregDreher wrote:

Perhaps the programming of PVP events could be changed to use player decks, but automatically adjust the planeswalker level to match the player.

While a great idea on paper, in practice this will **** the deck due to mana gain adjustments.

I'm not thinking about grabbing any planeswalker from levels 1-60 as your opponent. Have the game first choose a planeswalker within five levels of yours, and then raise or lower that level to equal yours.

There would be some difference in mana generation between the player's deck and the level-adjusted deck, but it would be small. The biggest impact would be on Nissa's second ability (e.g. you fill your deck with 16 cost creatures because Nissa is level 58), but it's not like the AI uses that ability much.

It would make a much bigger impact than it seems initially. My level 55 Koth can afford to use creatures and spells that cost over 20 mana because I know a red match will get me 12 and Reshape the Land will almost always provide me with multiple matches and sometimes cascades of gems, recharging itself to be used every turn. If my level 55 Koth were level synced for a QB match down to level 20, the cards in the deck would no longer perform and would be a pushover. I think level sync will only be needed if we end up with a derth of planeswalkers at given levels, but considering it could even pull from inactive accounts, I don't think this will ever be the case. Abandoned decks could still be grabbed and played by an AI opponent.